Origins: Inside Venture Capital

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Renata Quintini & Roseanne Wincek, Renegade Partners Dec 15, 2020

Show notes

Renata Quintini and Roseanne Wincek are general partners and co-founders of Renegade Partners, a new venture capital firm investing at the "supercritical" stage. Supercritical stage companies have raised institutional financing, have a product in market, and the budding signs of customer love, but are early, young organizations who are still writing their stories. Before Renegade, Renata was a partner at Lux Capital and Felicis Ventures, and before that an LP at the Stanford University endowment investing in private markets and venture capital. Roseanne was trained as a biochemist before joining Caanan and then IVP, investing in companies primarily at the growth stage. This was a fantastic deep dive into their decision to start Renegade Partners together, how they got the firm off the ground and raised their first fund, the unique opportunity they now see in the market at the supercritical stage, and how they plan to build a lasting firm.

Matt Auxier, The University of Chicago Nov 17, 2020

Show notes

Matt Auxier is a portfolio manager for The University of Chicago's private equity investments, focusing primarily on venture capital. He examines investments across asset classes and researches new investment opportunities. Since joining the Office of Investments in 2012, he has also served as an operations analyst and senior portfolio analyst. In this episode, (among other topics) we discuss how Matt's investment philosophy has evolved within venture over time, including both small emerging managers as well as established larger managers, and how the University of Chicago is responding to the Covid-19 crisis and diversity challenges within venture and startups broadly.

Sahil Lavingia and Steve Schlafman on new VC structures Oct 13, 2020

Show notes

In this special episode of Origins, we discuss new VC fund structures with Sahil Lavingia, the founder of Gumroad and manager of one of the top rolling funds on AngelList, and Steve Schlafman, who combines professional coaching through his firm High Output with active angel investing using a traditional fund on AngelList. Both operators and investors, Sahil and Steve provide a fascinating look into how the venture industry is evolving, and how they combine their experiences operating and investing in new, more flexible structures. We discuss their professional backgrounds, why they started investing, time spent at more traditional VC firms, and why AngelList and other alternative fund structures are increasingly attractive to "solocapitalists." Finally, we dig into how they see these structures, as well as the industry at large changing in the years to come, and why these new structures are here to stay, for both VCs and LPs.

Lisa Edgar, Top Tier Capital Partners Sep 23, 2020

Show notes

Lisa Edgar is a Managing Director and member of the Investment Committee at Top Tier Capital Partners. She focuses on manager selection, due diligence and investment monitoring of Top Tier’s primary investments. Leveraging her 25 years of experience, Lisa is particularly interested in helping up-and-coming micro funds structure themselves for success in the future, including strategic fundraising, thoughtful portfolio construction, effective capital deployment and management succession. Prior to Top Tier, Lisa was part of the asset management team at WR Hambrecht + Co focusing on new and emerging private equity funds. Before that, she spent ten years at Horsley Bridge Partners. Lisa began her career as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. In this episode, we discuss Lisa's unusual path into technology and investing, her work helping to build Horsely Bridge in their early years, and how she thinks about fund investing at Top Tier today, as well as building out their micro VC and international investing practices.

Frederik Groce, Storm Ventures & BLCK VC Sep 09, 2020

Show notes

Frederik Groce is a Principal at Storm Ventures and a co-founder at BLCK VC. After finishing school, Frederik spent two years as CEO of Stanford Student Enterprises (SSE) with more than one hundred employees and total assets exceeding $18 million – including overseeing Stanford’s accelerator program. In this episode, we discuss Frederik's path to VC out of college, and how he's learned on the job and been promoted multiple times at Storm Ventures since. We also discuss his work as a co-founder at BLCK VC, which was formed to connect, engage, empower, and advance Black venture investors by providing a focused community built for and by Black venture investors. Finally, we touch on the role that BLCK VC plays within the context of the larger BLM movement, diversity & inclusion within tech, and what can be done to change the problems facing our industry and society at large.

Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, The Chainsmokers + Mantis VC Aug 11, 2020

Show notes

In this special episode of Origins, we interview Alex Pall and Drew Taggart of The Chainsmokers, one of the most successful artists and producers in the world, and now active VCs through their firm Mantis. We discuss how they got into music, their break as DJs and rising up the early charts of Hype Machine and then Spotify, as well as more recently how they discovered angel investing and how they're building Mantis VC. Safe to say this was one of the most interesting episodes we've ever recorded and hope you'll give it a listen. As always, a huge thank you to Carta, the title sponsor for this season of Origins. It's a core product that we use daily --> Get 10% off when you use the Notation Signup Link (Terms and conditions apply). This season is also sponsored by SVB and Cooley, two of the earliest and most trusted supporters of our work at Notation.

Josh Kopelman, First Round Capital Jul 07, 2020

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Josh Kopelman is the co-founder of First Round Capital, a pioneering seed-stage venture capital firm. He's been an active entrepreneur and investor in the Internet industry since it's commercialization. He co-founded Infonautics while still an undergrad in 1996, which went public in 1999. He then co-founded and ran Half.com, a fixed price marketplace connecting buyers and sellers of used books, movies and music products, which he sold to eBay in 2000. In this episode, we discuss Josh's early career as an entrepreneur and all of the lessons learned having started two companies, taking one of them public at a really young age, and then selling Half.com to eBay at the height of the dot com. We discuss his early angel investing practice, including investments in companies like Linkedin and Delicious, and the ultimate decision to start First Round Capital with his partners, raise institutional funds, and build out their unique "platform." As always, a huge thank you to Carta, the title sponsor for this season of Origins. It's a core product that we use daily --> Get 10% off when you use the Notation Signup Link (Terms and conditions apply). This season is also sponsored by SVB and Cooley, two of the earliest and most trusted supporters of our work at Notation.

Hunter Somerville, Greenspring Associates Jun 24, 2020

Show notes

Hunter Somerville is a General Partner at Greenspring Associates and is responsible for the sourcing and due diligence efforts on fund, direct and secondary opportunities. He's also actively involved in the assessment of micro-vc managers for the Firm. Additionally, Hunter serves on the LP Advisory Boards for firms such as Bullpen Capital, Redpoint China, Fika Ventures, Foundry Group, among many others. In this episode, we discuss Hunter's path at Greenspring (and LP firms in general), leading to his promotion to General Partner, how he spends his time at the firm and evaluates opportunities and managers, how the firm is responding to the Covid-19 pandemic, and his outlook for the future.

Atul Rustgi, Accolade Partners Jun 02, 2020

Show notes

Atul Rustgi is a Partner at Accolade, working across both early-stage venture and late-stage growth equity strategies. Prior to joining Accolade in 2007, Atul worked at McKinsey & Co. and the Robin Hood Foundation. In this episode, we discuss Atul's unique experience evaluating VC managers over the past decade, and Accolade's strategy investing in both very small early-stage venture funds and much larger late-stage growth equity funds. We also discuss Atul's deep conviction around portfolio construction, fund size, and ownership. Finally, we discuss his views on the impact of Covid-19 on the venture ecosystem today and his outlook for 2020 and beyond. As always, a huge thank you to Carta, the title sponsor for this season of Origins. This season is also sponsored by SVB and Cooley, two of the earliest and most trusted supporters of our work at Notation.

Kanyi Maqubela, Kindred Ventures May 13, 2020

Show notes

Kanyi Maqubela is a Managing Partner at Kindred Ventures. He previously served as a Partner at Collaborative Fund, where he was an early advisor to Tala and Walker & Co., and a board member at Buffer, Camino Financial, Spruce, and True Link. Kanyi is also a co-founder at Heartbeat Health, and has served as a Lecturer and Adjunct at New York University Tisch School of the Arts. In this episode, we discuss everything from Kanyi's childhood to founding his first startup out of Stanford to joining Collaborative Fund to ultimately founding Kindred Ventures with his partner Steve. But in between his story, this was a fascinating conversation about the arc of venture capital, how to build an investment process and conviction, and navigating the current Covid-19 health and economic crisis. As always, a huge thank you to Carta, the title sponsor for this season of Origins. This season is also sponsored by SVB and Cooley, two of the earliest and most trusted supporters of our work at Notation.

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