On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Jill Chase
- Eric Boduch
- Mike Whitmire
We asked guests to tell the most important lesson they’ve learned in their career.
The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area.
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Transcribed with AI:
0:19
Welcome back to TFR on today’s special segment, we ask guests to tell the most important lesson that they’ve learned in their career. Here’s a segment called Lessons Learned.
0:35
On today’s special segment, we have Jill chase of capital G, Jill, can you tell us the story highlighting a critical lesson that has changed the way you invest. Oh,
0:44
yeah, for sure. Like I said, I and this will just be a big slice of humble pie served to myself. But I started investing with basically zero finance and experience in 2020 and at the time, I was working for my GP Derek zanudo, who is like an exceptional he, he came from private equity background. He is exceptional, especially on the finance side of things. And he very intentionally, was the person who was training me. And we came into 2021 and I felt like my strengths were like, get in front of all the hot companies and all the hot names and bring them in and make sure that we were sort of getting a shot on goal. And I was very much coming at it from like, this is an exceptional company getting us a shot on goal. Like, we have to invest in this company. And I think Derek’s perspective, which at the time, felt very frustrating to me, but was extremely right and helpful for me as an investor, was like, there is a difference between an exceptional company and an exceptional investment. And these companies, I agree with you, are exceptional, but the prices that they’re getting done at are harder to see. It’s harder to see the returns from them. And so, like he was like, you just have to trust me, like you just have to be patient. And I’m always like, Oh, thank god Derek had me on a leash for that time, because I he was so right and I was so wrong. And you know, I think we ended up making a lot of really good decisions. And I think again, like those companies are exceptional, and hopefully, you know, we will continue to get the chance to back them over time. But he was right. Like a lot of the prices in those rounds in the sort of early 2021, days, were hard to see, you know, underwriting to good returns. So I learned a lot. And I am like, I always think about that. It’s now I have a team of my own that sort of works for me. And it’s always like, the first thing I say when we sit down, I’m like, Okay, let’s start with the what you need to believe math. Let’s think about like, we know this is a great company. Do we think this will be a good investment?
2:32
Amazing?
2:40
On today’s special segment, we have Eric bodak of Pendo rev cast in 24 and up. Eric, can you tell us a story highlighting a critical lesson that has changed the way you lead? I
2:50
mean, I can tell a critical listen just about that. It’s like, you know, you you’ve been successful before, and now all of a sudden, you think, Oh, I, I can see this. In the future, we’re going to have this need and this demand, and then maybe the market changes on you, right? We move from zero interest rates to higher interest rates, and the demand you thought you had and the product you have isn’t far enough along. You need to build more product, but you’ve already hired out go to markets. Now you have to scale that back, or lay that off, or slow that down, and it feels like a miss, right? That’s, I think, you know, compounding those two answers together, that’s a great scenario where I you know, you get ahead of yourself and there’s external factors, not everything is in your control. You know you can control what you build, what you do, but you can’t control things like, you know, interest rates or what the competition has done, or, you know, massive changes in the marketplace or regulations or all those things. So don’t get ahead of yourself.
3:48
On today’s special segment, we have Mike Whitmire of flow cast. Mike, can you tell us the story, highlighting a critical lesson that has changed the way you lead?
3:57
Yeah, I learned this at Cornerstone. So one of the more inspirational things that our founder, who I’m also a huge fan of, Adam Miller at Cornerstone, whenever he would open up about the market and the competition and be really transparent about what was going on, even as just an accountant closing the books, doing, you know, seemingly meaning, seemingly small job, I would get fired up about that and just understanding what was going on With the business. More broadly, I did not have that at Ernst and Young you know, I’m one of, I’m one of 100,000 employees. The CEO is not getting up talking about our strategic initiatives, and here’s how we’re going to kick PW sees as or anything like that. It’s not, you’re not having those kinds of conversations. But Adam would get up there and just talk about the competition, talk about the market, talk about what’s going on at at the at Cornerstone, talk about our customers. And I found it really inspiring. And so when we started flocast, I took that to the next level. We are extremely transparent about what’s going on within the company, outside of the company, investors, competitors, all that good stuff. And I found that to be really motivating for employees. And when you understand where you fit into the bigger picture and what’s going. On that right there. It’s a seemingly small thing that really, really empowers people and gets some more bought into the mission of what you have going on. So for any leaders I would, I would recommend being very transparent with the team. It causes natural buy in. And that’s something I learned, yeah, lesson I learned at Cornerstone
5:20
that will conclude this installment of investor stories. If you’re enjoying the program and would like to see it continue, take a moment and leave a five star review in iTunes. Okay, that will wrap things up for today until next time over. Prepare, choose carefully and invest confidently. Thanks for joining me.
