Fireside with a VC

Greg Kidd on Fireside with a VC. Greg recently acquired VastBank | Fintech Pioneer | Early Investor: Twitter, Square, Coinbase, Solana | Ex-Ripple (#10) | Built & Scaled First Company to IPO | Co-Founder, GlobaliD | CEO, USBC | Ex Federal Reserve | Former roommate with Jack Dorsey. Greg and I get into a few topics, including all things related to the future of finance, banking, payments, USDC vs USBC, identity being added to crypto payments and transactions, open banking and fair access, democratizing money, 10,000% markups banks take on ACH and wire transfers over the Fed charges, banking without borders, who needs Visa, Mastercard, Amex, Google or Apple to take rent on payments and how to stop this, importance of securitization and tokenization of real assets, risk management in a world of crypto and digitized centralized and decentralized banking and finance.  

How can AI help enterprises unlock valuable insights hidden in tens of thousands of contracts, invoices, and financial documents? Terzo is using AI to revolutionize enterprise data mining, tackling the complex world of Fortune 500 sales.

With 90% of global IT spend concentrated in the Fortune 100, is it possible to build a multi-billion-dollar company without selling into the Fortune 500? We break down the differences between servicing Fortune 500 giants versus the faster sales cycles of smaller enterprise customers.

Other key topics include:

• The balance between acquiring new logos versus expanding within existing customers.
• Striking the right 30/70 revenue growth balance to align with VC investors.
• How AI SaaS sales cycles differ from classic SaaS sales models.
• Navigating complex enterprise sales processes, including the role of the “AI Czar” who can either block deals or demand bakeoff POCs, creating temporary inflated ARR for startups.
• The percentage of AI deployments actively in production versus those stuck in R&D.
• The internal business units that must be aligned to close a large enterprise AI SaaS deal.
• The long game: spending a year to get into a budget cycle for the following year.

E118 Voice AI with Phonely.ai CEO Will Bodewes on Fireside with a VC discussing how the Voice AI space is evolving so quickly to integrate into existing systems and workflows of the HIPAA compliant front desk at a medical clinic or large call center delivering huge cost savings, rapidly increasing revenues, and providing a much better level of service with automated switching into most spoken languages and constantly improving and A/B testing what works best.

Links and Resources:

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/mp6zt5pqvzg.

Find all episodes of Fireside with a VC on your favorite podcast platform: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC.

Learn more about Phonely: https://www.phonely.ai/.

Contact Phonely CEO Will Bodewes: will@phonely.ai.

E117 How to develop business relationships on Fireside with a VC with Ablorde Ashigbi, CEO of 4Degrees and the host of the podcast The Relationship Edge. 

Links and Resources:

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/5WN6hGo17XI.

Find all episodes of Fireside with a VC on your favorite podcast platform: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC.

Learn more about 4Degrees: https://www.4degrees.ai/.

E116 Nada CityFunds, a new way to own real estate, w/ CEO Tore Steen on Fireside with a VC. Tore is the CEO of Nada which operates CityFunds. Nada helps homeowners and individual investors solve the challenge of accessing and investing in home equity by providing a platform for home equity investment without additional debt or monthly payments. Homeowners sell a home share in exchange for cash and investors may invest in a CityFund that owns home shares in many homes in a specific high growth city or invest in the entire basket of home shares across multiple cities. Tore previously cofounded CrowdStreet, the largest online real estate investment platform in the U.S. having raised and invested over $4.4bn primarily from accredited and retail investors, where he raised over $50m of VC funding and additional venture debt funding. Tore joined Nada first as a board member and now as CEO.

Links and Resources:

E115 Intel Capital, Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) putting the silicon back in Silicon Valley, Jennifer Ard, Managing Director, Head of Investment Operations at Intel Capital

Links and Resources:

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/kzB5m6ViVzE.

Find all episodes of Fireside with a VC on your favorite podcast platform: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC.

Learn more about Intel Capital: https://www.intelcapital.com/.

Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennifer-ard-cfa-32a69b3/.

Follow Andrew Romans on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/romans/.

Join our Newsletter to get our insights and curated content from the VC-startup ecosystem - Fireside with a VC: https://subscribe.7bc.vc.

E114 How Antler became the most active VC globally so quickly – Anthony Millet, Partner & Co-Head Antler Capital, on Fireside with a VC

Anthony Millet discusses how Antler quickly became the most active VC globally since founding in 2018 with a team of 300 investing in 500 startups per year out of offices in 30 cities on 6 continents. Pre-Seed to Series A and beyond. Meet Anthony Millet in person next week in Palo Alto at the 7BC Venture Capital event October 29, 2024 from 5 to 9 pm.

Links and Resources: 

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Y92-7ZscN2Y.

E112 A walk through an NVCA VC Term Sheet for a Series A funding round with Jason Putnam Gordon, legendary Silicon Valley VC lawyer and Partner at K&L Gates, one of the premier VC-focused law firms. This episode literally walks through every term in a term sheet with a lawyer and VC discussing each term, explaining what they mean, and which ones are worth fighting for. Lawyers like Jason can be very expensive but worth every penny. Strap in for a free masterclass!

Links and Resources:

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/F2MnHqWFBHA.

Find all episodes of Fireside with a VC on your favorite podcast platform: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC.

E111 Breaking up big tech monopolies on Fireside with a VC speaking with Manish Patel, founder of Nava Ventures, a $175m VC fund in San Francisco, Teaching Faculty at Stanford University, early Googler, and former General Partner at Highland Capital Partners. Talking about his history at Google pre-IPO and the current state of monopolies with Google, Apple and Microsoft and what should regulators do as well as regulatory capture with Open AI and other tech titans. Manish also talks about Nava VC and their Series A concentrated strategy backing 15 startups per fund from a roughly $175m fund.

Links and Resources:

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HSjpaXNrclE.

E110 Austin, Texas Venture Capital on Fireside with a VC speaking with Chris Shonk, cofounder and Managing Director of ATX Venture Partners. Discussing the evolution of Austin as a tech corridor from early semiconductors to IBM, Tivoli, and a string of startup hits early days of VC here and how Austin founders had term sheets from Silicon Valley requiring relocation to California in the old days and now the reverse is happening. How Austin has become the fastest growing VC town with the highest density of VCs per capita in the United States.

Links and Resources:

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/HLO6VVARRM8.

E109 Pre-Seed venture capital on Fireside with a VC speaking with David Lambert, Cofounder, Right Side Capital Management (RSCM) one of the most active pre-seed or pre-VC investors in Silicon Valley and across the US and Canada.

Links and Resources:

Watch the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/cspNXaMmorI.

E108 Fireside with a VC speaking with Alice Vilma, Managing Director and Co-Head of The Next Level Fund at Morgan Stanley Investment Management. Alice explains how the Next Level Fund looks to promote financial inclusion and provide founders of tech and tech-enabled startups with much-needed access to investors—along with the tools, resources and connections they need to grow and thrive. We discuss how the fund encourages underserved segments of the market to apply for funding and what that process entails. The economic case for funding diversity and making change happen.

Links and Resources:

E107 In this episode of Fireside with a VC, we discuss scenario planning for China & Asia and the relationship with Silicon Valley. We explore future opportunities with Francis Bassolino, Managing Director of Alaris Consulting, who has been helping companies of all sizes enter, succeed, and exit China over a span of 30+ years. Francis is also an adjunct professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business in Shanghai and Chicago. Having lived in Shanghai for over 21 years and in China since 1988, he brings extensive insights into the region.

We delve into the history of what has happened and the opening of China up to today. We also look at different scenarios such as an invasion of Taiwan, a blockade of Taiwan, no invasion or blockade, China with no reforms, with reforms, and the potential for a return to high growth in China. We examine how these different scenarios will impact the greater Asia region and the West.

Our discussion includes the relationship between China and Russia, particularly days before Russia invaded Ukraine when Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced their partnership has “no limits” and vowed to deepen cooperation on various fronts, including the Russia-Ukraine war. We talk about the bargain between the Chinese people happily giving up civil liberties for a prosperous life and 10% growth consistently over decades.

We also cover the impact of recent oppressive COVID-19 lockdowns, the period of low growth, the lack of job opportunities for the youth, and the generation of young Chinese not getting married, having children, or working in post-Jack Ma China. Is the Chinese economy in a freefall now?

Furthermore, we discuss the evolving relationship between Silicon Valley and China, what it might look like in the future, and different scenarios and opportunities for Western companies to grow revenues and lower costs with the Chinese partnership.

Links and Resources:

E106 Fireside with a VC speaking with Ken Goldman, former President of Eric & Wendy Schmidt’s family office, former CFO of Yahoo!, Fortinet, Siebel Systems (acquired by Oracle), Excite@Home, Sybase, and Cypress Semiconductor. Discussed the changes in VC, going public and the reasons companies should go public again, the problems secondaries for founders create, how to leave a company ethically, general advice on how to win in the big leagues, selling Siebel to Oracle, the dynamics of changing CEOs, lessons learned from board of directors dynamics at Yahoo!, working with activist shareholders, how enterprise software companies should or should not go international, running Eric and Wendy Schmidt’s family office, and now speaking at family office and other conferences.

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/krSWnl3eGco.

E105 Fireside with a VC speaking with Venktesh (Venk) Shukla founder of Monta Vista Capital and former President of TiE Silicon Valley, Chair of TiE Global. Venk explains the core values and magic of TiE. We discuss what Venk learned from making his first 20 investments and how he developed his framework for his Monta Vista Capital seed stage VC fund and how he invests in pre-revenue and very early stage startups. We also discuss investing in AI, the secondary and exit markets.

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/lrsNia672Eo.

E104 Fireside with a VC speaking with Bruce Barton, founder of Parkworth, Wealth Management for Tech Professionals in Silicon Valley and the author of Author of Personal Finance for Tech Professionals In Silicon Valley and Beyond. Discussing tax and personal finance issues specific to employees and founders of publicly traded and privately held tech startups and how equity compensation can get rather complicated and must be navigated to avoid being double taxed.

1) Double taxed on RSU share sales – How to avoid getting taxed twice.

#103 Every CANADIAN startup or investor should listen to this episode! Fireside with a VC speaking with Kevin Kliman CEO of Humi discussing getting healthy lowering costs, maintaining growth, the tradeoffs to consider raising a growth VC funding round or not, and when to raise. Discussing Humi’s business which is processing $4.5bn CAD of payroll every 4.5 months. Humi is the payroll, benefits, & insurance platform for Canadian companies. Discussing Humi’s new product for the Scientific Research and Experimental Development (SR&ED) tax incentives where Canadian startups get 66% of tech employee salaries back in cash.

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/ei1xRFoHIzY.

Episode #102 Fireside with a VC speaking with Tige Savage who cofounded Revolution with Steve Case, founder of AOL – America Online, one of the biggest internet companies in history reaching a peak market cap of $200bn dominating email, internet connectivity, online news, and chat. Tige discusses all things venture capital with a wealth of multi-decade experience covering a wide area of topics on how to run a high-performing VC fund year over year and best practices on investing, governance, legals, portfolio construction, sectors, overall strategy, and today’s exit market.

Discussing the organization of Revolution with 1) Revolution Rise of the Rest – their $150m pre-seed fund, 2) Revolution Ventures – the $150m VC fund Tige manages with a concentrated 15 portfolio companies per fund, and 3) Revolution Growth which continues to invest in Series B and beyond. Discussed the pioneering thesis of investing across the US rather than being concentrated in the Silicon Valley, New York, Boston or other highly evolved tech corridors and why Washington DC matters.

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/FzartNaPUoY.

Fireside with a VC episode #101, Andrew Romans on The American Dreams Show with Alan Olsen discussing the future of venture capital covering Seed to Late Seed & Series A and Late Stage Growth VC and what has changed over the past few decades.

Alan Olsen is a fixture in Silicon Valley and cofounder of GROCO Family Office Advisors, Advisors to the Ultra Affluent and organizer of Legacy Builders. We Protect Our Clients’ Lifestyle & Resolve Complex Tax & Wealth Concerns

Fireside with a VC episode #100 speaking with Vibhor Rastogi, Global Head of AI investments at Citi Ventures, discussing how to determine startup valuations and how much capital a startup should raise. How much to raise should be driven by enough time runway to achieve the next key milestone to unlock the next funding round - be that product, revenue, users or other measurable business milestone KPIs. How the market is changing. Expect to need at least enough time 1) to reach the next business milestone and 2) to raise the next funding round. Expect at least 2 quarters to raise the next funding round in today’s market. How much dilution should a startup expect to take from each funding round ranging from pre-seed to late seed, Series A, B, C, D? How to tie expected exit valuations to today’s valuation? What can a realistic exit be in a good scenario and a bad scenario? What are expected exit multiples and discounted to today’s valuation with the consideration of dilution from future funding rounds? How to calculate future dilution or reserve strategies for various ownership target percentages. Corporate Venture Capital (CVC) best practices at Citi Ventures – Citigroup. How to manage conflicts of interest as a strategic investor compared to a pure financial investor. How Citi Ventures can add value to startups across industry verticals.

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/T7yffG5sJ3E.

Find this and all full episodes for Fireside with a VC on your favorite podcast platform here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/FiresideVC

https://www.citi.com/ventures/

Fireside with a VC episode #98 speaking with Eric Ver Ploeg, Founding Partner of Tunitas Ventures about key data and trends in the US tech Series A fundraising environment as well as specifics about how much cash funding a startup should raise at pre-Seed, Late-Stage Seed and Series A as well as the many other considerations with regards to terms and legal structures do’s and don’ts.

Fireside with a VC episode #97 speaking with Igor Jablokov, CEO of Pryon $159m VC funding and founder and CEO of Yap, which Igor sold to Amazon which became the nucleus of Amazon’s Alexa & Fire TV. Pryon was the code name for Alexa. Discussing the evolution of humanity with AI, risks of AI, what we need or should expect with regulations, where innovation is happening, what are the OSI layers of the AI world, how the Fortune 500 will adopt or fail to adopt true AI, other relevant key industries ranging from nuclear power plants to healthcare and the military.  

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/N0H-zb5I72A.

Fireside with a VC episode #96 speaking with Kristine Di Bacco, Partner at law firm Fenwick, discussing tough terms for startups in the context of flat and down rounds as well as more punishing terms for startups. What is common and expected in today’s market for up, flat, down rounds as well as convertible notes and SAFEs? Planning today’s current round in a way to set a precedent for the next funding round balancing valuations and terms. A deep dive on the difference between pre- and post-money SAFEs vs convertible notes, QSBS, etc. What to expect for typical governance, board of directors construction, etc. across multiple financings for startups. Secondaries in the bull market leading up the peak in 2021 compared to today’s 2024 market and what to expect for funding and exits in 2024 and beyond. How she cofounded and built Fenwick’s New York City office and is now back in Silicon Valley. Understanding differences and similarities in the New York compared to Silicon Valley ecosystems.

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/Q6eV6oqg2Is.

Episode #90, Down rounds & pay-to-pay provisions, raising at a lower valuation on Fireside with a VC

Ben Kern, Partner at Winston & Strawn LLP, corporate securities veteran, discusses the details of how startups raise funding in down rounds at lower valuations than the last funding round as well as more punitive financings that cram down or wipe out existing investors that do not Pay-to-Play wiring capital into the new financing. We discuss the different tools in the tool kit of how these financings are legally structured and what it means to all parties and how to sail through these very choppy waters.

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/0RqBNqLGckQ.

Episode #89, Jarred Kessler, CEO, EasyKnock fintech, real-estate tech, 15th largest home owner in the US

• Discussing the dynamics of inflation, interest rates and the volatile US residential real-estate market;
• Running a New York fintech / real-estate startup before, during, and after Covid;
• Raising over $120m of equity funding and $600m of debt financing;
• How they became the 15th largest owner of single residential homes in the US in less than 7 years;
• The Operating Company/Property Company (Opco/Propco) company structure;
• Overseeing high-velocity growth in headcount, acquiring and integrating other companies successfully;
• Managing growth between funding rounds; continuing to innovate product development and service offerings;
• The interesting interplay between credit card debt, interest rates, inflation, the housing market;
• The changing percentage of Americans that qualify for a home mortgage;
• Advice on how to raise VC funding;
• The difference between raising VC vs debt financing;
• Managing growth vs profitability, pushing back on investors, and preparing for fundraising in the next economic cycle;
• Various paths to an exit for a company like EasyKnock

Find the full episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/qJttkx2KJRA.

Episode #88, Everything you need to know about Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS), the exemption that allows investors in startups or investors in VC funds that invest in startups to NOT pay capital gains tax on the greater of the first $10m of capital gains or 10x the cost basis (what you paid for the stock). A discussion of what qualifies and what does not, how this plays with the amount of funding, the value of the balance sheet at the time of the investment, holding period, how to tack or rollover, SAFEs compared to priced rounds and convertible notes to get the tax exemption, how it applies to founders and not only investors, how to document it and when it does not apply.

Roger Royse is a Silicon Valley career corporate and tax partner at law firm Haynes and Boone.

Episode #87 Discussion with Catalina Daniels and James Sherman, authors of Smart Startups: What Every Entrepreneur Needs to Know-Advice from 18 Harvard Business School Founders published today by Harper Business. This book has 18 interviews with a compelling list of founders that all raised VC funding and managed to get to an exit via M&A or IPO. The authors and interviewees can be forgiven for all having gone to Harvard, but they do share their learnings from their experiences founding, raising, building and exiting. We discuss these learnings with the two entrepreneurs and angel authors in this episode of Fireside with a VC.

The discussion covers ideation and coming up with the killer idea, team building comparing solo founders to balanced teams, raising angel and VC funding, execution, pitfalls across the board including the risk of raising too much VC funding, complexities of M&A exits and how to position for success and guard against land mines.

Find this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/l8ZeL7CnUvk.

Episode #86 Flint Capital investing in Israeli startups coming to the USA

Fireside with a VC speaking with Andrew Gershfeld at Flint Capital based in Boston and Tel Aviv talking about funding and supporting Israeli startups and helping them grow into large US companies.

Find this episode on YouTube: https://youtu.be/3sEIYeIri_E.

Episode #85 Building startups on SalesForce – Place RevOps automation and connectivity

Fireside with a VC talking to Brandon Metcal, CEO of Place, about RevOps (revenue operations) to solve financial forecasting and cash management with sales starting in 2020. Also discussing automating and synchronizing sales to finance, to human resources and other components to streamline SaaS companies that run on SalesForce and now SalesForce CPQ.

Talking about lessons learned from both Place and his previous business where Brandon raised $28m in funding and sold the business making a profit for investors, founders and employees.

We also take a deep dive on how to partner with SalesForce and lessons learned from over 20 years of working within the SalesForce ecosystem.

Place has also carved out a slice from their last funding round for investors on WeFunder to increase the network of support for the company.

Fireside with a VC discussing flipping your business into a US Delaware C corporation from outside of the US. Many startups and teams are born in Europe, South East Asia, Middle East, Africa, LatAm, Canada and everywhere and need to consider if they should flip to the US and if yes, technically how to do it. Considerations on attracting new investors from the US vs the country in which the business was created as well as tax considerations of flipping early or flipping later. Discussing specific tactics to minimize the tax burden and consequences for existing and new investors as well as founders and early employees.

Fireside with a VC discussing how technology has evolved from mainframe-dumb terminal architecture to client-server architecture and making sure that all the right software is on each endpoint, making sure each endpoint is configured correctly, quickly, and efficiently, making sure cybersecurity attacks do not happen, and if they do rapidly rebuild from ransomware for new clients, eliminate vulnerabilities, reduce risk, automate application packaging, deployment, and reduce IT headaches. The economics of modern smart IT and keeping all software up to date. Reducing months to weeks for new customers that have been hacked.

The types of vulnerabilities are changing. How Aiden is staying ahead of the puck on what IT thresholds are changing to and how to program alerts and keep organizations in their own redefined compliance thresholds and providing that information to client organizations. Providing visibility of IT business intelligence to the CEO and C-suite.

#82, Understanding pre & post SAFEs, convertible notes vs priced rounds with Daniel Zimmermann, Partner, WilmerHale

Fireside with a VC is hosting a series of discussions on specific legal topics with the best lawyers from Silicon Valley and around the world. This episode is designed to help founders, VCs, advisors and supporters of startups understand everything they need to know and all the moving parts in convertible notes, pre-money and post-money SAFEs compared to priced equity financings. We start out explaining the key parts everyone needs to understand and then quickly get into an in-depth detailed conversation about how important these legal matters are and how it can be the difference between making a great return or not from an investor's perspective and steering clear of icebergs that can sink your startup or have you end up owning much less of your startup on the day of exit.

Daniel Zimmermann is a legendary corporate securities lawyer in Silicon Valley, a Partner at law firm WilmerHale and an absolute experienced expert on this topic.

Legals is something every founder, angel and VC should be an expert on and we are amazed on a daily basis how many investors and founders fail to understand the basics and moving parts, which ones to push for when negotiating and the finer subtleties that normally only come from decades of experience.

Find this episode on all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/pI6J1Q6W6dU

https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-zimmermann-lawyer/

Fireside with a VC hosting Brian Nugent, Founding General Partner of Sway Ventures at Professor Romans’ class on VC at Chapman University. Discussing a wide range of topics including:

· Brian’s path to VC from Cisco to startups to venture capital.

· Career advice for junior and senior folks to break into a career in venture capital.

· ESG, women and minorities in venture.

· How venture capital works.

· Each stage of funding from friends and family, pre-seed, late stage seed, series A, B and growth funding rounds and considerations.

· Pros and cons of investing at seed vs growth rounds, ownership targets / expectations for dilution, returns, timing and risk / reward profiles.

· How Sway Ventures adds value.

· Tactics for proprietary deal flow, avoiding bidding wars with other VCs, and delivering value to portfolio companies.

· Primary sources of deal flow.

· Common threads of most successful Sway portfolio companies. What are the characteristics of winning companies?

Find this episode on all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/t17ruj6yFK0

Fireside with a VC speaking with Aakash Shah and Surya Viswanathan, the founders of neonVest, how their platform is democratizing access to VCs for early-stage startups. NeonVest allows founders to instantly get Zooms with VCs, successful founder operators and other superchargers to help with funding, refining and improving their pitch, company strategy, financial model, SaaS metrics, exit preparation, referrals, operations, tech and product, valuation, culture, sales & marketing, pitch deck, pricing & biz models, term sheets, legal, market dynamics, talent & hiring, ideation & user testing, board formation, market sizing and everything else from angel and VC funding to company building and exiting. We also dive into the value prop to VCs and other superchargers and why they participate in this marketplace for Zooms and meetings. We close talking about the current market dynamics for Seed to late stage growth financings in Silicon Valley and around the world.

Fireside with a VC diving into a round table discussion with The Band of Angels, one of the oldest and most active angel groups in Silicon Valley covering the current seed and early stage investing and fundraising market environment and conditions. How are valuations and terms changing, the importance of QSBS tax and when to use priced rounds, convertible notes and the dangers of SAFE notes.

Disclaimer: many of these angel groups are LP investors in our VC funds and active members of our network sourcing deal flow, conducting due diligence, taking board seats, actively adding value to our portfolio companies, impacting our exits and helping us raise more LP capital for our VC funds. Many of the members of The Band are highly successful senior executives from large tech titans as well as successful entrepreneurs that have founded startups, raised angel and VC funding and experienced the spectrum of positive and negative outcomes making them more valuable than many VCs to have in your corner in good and bad times along the startup journey.

On all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb

YouTube: https://youtu.be/D_3mqnLF-7w

#78, Jack Guedj, Band of Angels, one of Silicon Valley’s oldest & most active angel groups

Fireside with a VC diving into current seed and early stage investing and fundraising market environment and conditions. How are valuations and terms changing, the importance of QSBS tax and when to use convertible notes and the dangers of SAFE notes.

Next episode #79 includes the roundtable discussion with the Band of Angels. Jack Guedj is also an active member of Sand Hill Angels. Disclaimer: many of these angel groups are LP investors in our VC funds and active members of our network sourcing deal flow, conducting due diligence, taking board seats, actively adding value to our portfolio companies, impacting our exits and helping us raise more LP capital for our VC funds. Many of the members of The Band are highly successful senior executives from large tech titans as well as successful entrepreneurs that have founded startups, raised angel and VC funding and experienced the spectrum of positive and negative outcomes making them more valuable than many VCs to have in your corner in good and bad times along the startup journey.

On all podcast platforms: https://open.spotify.com/show/57V2XYhekz5ETiOwtanWIn?si=a835a3f3b5804cbb

Episode #74, Charles Hudson, Managing Partner, Precursor Ventures on Generative AI

*Discussing how investors and founders can think about new generative AI startups that appear to have build products in days or weeks compared to years.

*What this new technology means for developing moats or barriers to entry for startups that can create working products so quickly.

*Early days of emerging managers with SoftTech VC / Uncork Capital and working with other emerging managers generating much higher returns than the large 30 year funds.

*Founding a new VC emerging manager and migrating from small ticket LPs to larger institutional LPs.

*Portfolio construction for early seed and strategies for follow on investing.

YouTube: https://youtu.be/qTz9frTbkq8

Episode #76, Claus Skaaning, CEO of DigiShares tokenizing real estate assets

· Discussing tokenization of real estate and other assets via white label solutions as well as launching their own real estate crypto exchange in the US and Europe enabling users to not touch crypto on or off ramps with everything working legally, licensed and compliantly.

· Why tokenization is important?

· How it lowers backend costs saving money and improving the performance of customers?

· What kind of assets are being tokenized other than real estate?

· The importance of fractionalization and democratization of the asset class.

· Creating trading liquidity and growing the demand for finite real estate supply.

· Raising money from investors in the current marketplace.

· How the world will be different as a result of all this digitization of large asset classes in 5 or 10 years from now?

Contact: cs@digishares.io

https://digishares.io/

Episode #75, Hadley Harris, cofounder, ENIAC Ventures, NYC Seed Fund

· Discussing strategies for Seed investment as well as Opportunity Funds for doubling down in winners.

· How much diversification is required for optimal risk mitigation and impact of winners to fund results

· Evolution of the New York startup ecosystem over the past 13 years since ENIAC’s first fund

· Acquisition market in New York

· How to price a seed round and determine the right amount of capital to raise.  

· How much dilution is expected in a first pre-seed round.

· What milestones are expected to get to the next late stage seed round.

· Convertible notes vs SAFE notes vs priced rounds

· What tech sectors are getting the most interest

· Making sure startups have more than a thin layer on top of ChatGTP

https://youtu.be/Lj0OffldWyQ

Recording of the VC Insight Panel at the sold out 7BC Venture Capital event in New York City at Pillsbury March 7, 2023.

VC Insight Panel

Andrea Lamari, General Partner, Manhattan Venture Partners (MVP)

Steve Brotman, Managing Partner, Alpha Partners, Senior Advisor, Pritzker Group

Wiz, Chief Astronaut, Spacecadet Ventures, The Marketing VC

Jonathan Shriftman, Partner, Expanding Capital

Andrew Romans, General Partner, 7BC Venture Capital, moderator

Talking about everything from seed to growth stage capital, dynamics around pro rata equity rights to complex structured secondaries.

Many thanks to sponsors and partners Fidelity, Better Engineering by Salsa Mobi, neonVest and Pillsbury.

Episode #72, Krishna Srinivas, cofounder, LiveOak Venture Partners on Fireside with a VC

Ahead of SXSW very happy to share our podcast with one of Austin’s VC OGs discussing:

• Ten lessons on entrepreneurship from summiting Mt. Kilimanjaro with his wife and kids
• 100% all-in on Texas, early stage, tech and tech-enabled services, Seed to Series A entry point
• Close to $500m AUM at LiveOak
• The evolution of the Austin, Texas VC startup scene
• What sectors and topics founders were working on and how this evolved to today
• Who were the VC funds in the 90s, early 2000s when there were literally fewer than 5 active VCs, then 15 VCs with representatives from NEA, Polaris and other big funds and then the collapse back to 5 to 8 active funds and the rise to today with Austin being a leading city with one of the highest concentrations of VC funds per capita
• The perfect storm of conditions for Austin to become a #2 market after California with huge tech talent and still total lack of local VC capital
• Lessons from the 2000 dot-com crash relevant to today’s 2023 market, how the current batch of startups will move forward from early to growth stage

YouTube: https://youtu.be/1zRJeFouxPA

Episode #71, Andrea Lamari, General Partner, Manhattan Venture Partners (MVP) on Fireside with a VC