On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Daniela Binatti of Pismo
- Mike Schroepfer of Gigascale Capital
- Joseph Ruscio of Heavybit
We asked guests for the most important piece of advice that they’d share with folks early in their venture 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 for the most important piece of advice that they’d share with folks early in their venture career. Here’s the segment called key advice.
0:36
On today’s special segment, we have Daniela Bonacci of Pismo. Daniela, if you could share one piece of advice with a new founder, what would you tell them?
0:45
I think it’s, it’s, as I said, it’s very hard to build a company, but it’s so it’s important to be open and to listen to market, to potential clients, to investors, but also it’s important to to, you know, to have the gut, sometimes to stick with your position when there’s something that you are not in agreement, especially with investors, like usually, again, not investors are extremely important, but sometimes depending on the fund and depending on the business, they are not Exactly specialists on what we are doing, so understanding what’s the time to listen, to pivot and to be humble, to do what they are suggesting, it’s important, but also sticking to what you feel is the most important step for your business. It’s something that it’s also important to have in mind. You
1:43
on today’s special segment, we have Mike schrepfer of gigascale schrep. If you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor, what would you tell them? One piece of advice, you know, I would say that you just really have to understand your your market and your team that you’re going after when you’re investing, and realize that, you know, I think the math on investing is it’s about 100 to one reduction, so you’re gonna meet 100 companies before you invest in one. And there’s kind of no getting around that math that you just need to meet a lot of teams and people and really calibrate, you know, your radar on what’s a great market, what’s a great team. And the best way to do that is by having, having lots of repetitions, reps, making your end go up. And so there’s, there’s no getting around that. And so everyone has to do that. So what we do to, you know, even though we get great introductions every day, we still meet a lot of companies. And so I think there’s just that. And then it’s not one piece of advice, but I think it’s just like, going back to my, my theme of, like, I think everyone tries to distill my experience in investing. When I go talk to everyone is like, everyone, is like, everyone, like, has a set of rubrics they’re using to, like, make their life easier. It’s like, well, we don’t do this, we don’t do that. We don’t we don’t invest in PhD only founders. And then you actually, like, look at their portfolio and be like, Well, wait about, what about this company that doesn’t meet any like, oh, no, no, no. But that, that that founder, like, I’ve had the experience, and you can do the same thing to me. I’m gonna say some things. You’re gonna look at my portfolio like, what about portfolio, like, what about this one? Like, oh, but there’s this reason and, like, I think that you have to remember that that, like, everyone’s gonna have a system. You’re gonna meet. A lot of people are like, Oh, we only do XYZ. Like, that’s really smart. We’re gonna only do XYZ. It’s not right. Those are all like, guidelines to help you, yes, but fundamentally, you have to be like, opening yourself up to luck. Like, you’re gonna take 100 meetings and be like, Man, that pitch was terrible when I came into my inbox and you meet the founders like, Oh my God, these founders are incredible, and they’ve literally, like, crashed their car into a gold mine, like, even though they’re found, and that’s why the pitch deck sucks, is because they didn’t need to make a good one, you know. So you just, you just gotta be like, opening yourself up for those amazing opportunities, and you can’t get too overly obsessed with we have these set of rules, and so we can’t do this thing, because then you’re gonna miss out. You know, my favorite is people saying they only invest in second time founders. I was like, Cool, so you wouldn’t have invested in Nvidia, meta, Amazon, like, I’m just gonna go through all the like, trillion dollar companies. Like, none of those would be ones you invest in, right? So, you know, you know, I think it’s, I love secondhand founders. We invest in a lot of them, but, like, we don’t have a hard and fast rule about it. If you’re awesome and you got a great idea, we’re gonna invest I mean, this is a such a great point, and it goes back to a previous point. You made about a lot of reps, like, 100 companies you see for everyone that you do. I was talking to my team about this recently. I said, you know, you have to get so many reps in order to know when you can break those rules. You know, know when they’re guidelines and when they’re firm, and without all the reps, you know, it’s really hard to have that context of, oh, this is so special. You know, this role is not as important.
4:42
You on today’s special segment, we have Joe Ruscio of heavybit. Joe, if you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor, what would you tell them?
4:52
Yeah, so I would tell them really two things. One, because we all come to this role from our own word. Or non conformist, just like everyone else kind of thing. Understand, like, as an investor, what your your particular path, what superpowers it gave you. Lean on those. And then also, I think the clearly, the mistake a lot of people in this profession make is like, Do not assume that that just then, translates into other areas, right? Like, understand, like, where you’re you’re strong, lean on that and then augment in places where you are not with either your partners or your network. Find a way to complete that picture. The other piece that’s just even more tactical is this job can can be all consuming in that, like, if you’re doing it right, the number of things you ideally would be doing will always hopelessly outstrip the number of things you can do, which is very similar to like a founder. I mean, I was, I was used to that coming from a founding background, but what I wasn’t used to is just how the whiplash from the context switching, like, when you’re in a company and as a founder, like, Okay, I’m prioritizing the marketing person’s concern against the engineering person’s concern, but they’re all ultimately in the same we all have the same shared goal as a VC like you sit at the nexus of all these different people, like your portfolio companies, companies you’re pitching you your LPs, and everyone has a completely different context, different problems, different you know, you’ll talk, you’ll have a board meeting in the morning where we’re talking about whether or not We have to wind the company down, and you’ll have a call with another founder who just, like, is blowing their quarters out. And like, what’s the strategy to fundraise? And so you just have to be prepared and build systems to deal with like, Okay, how do I prioritize and going importantly, rightfully, none of those people care about anyone else’s concerns, and which is totally valid. And so you gotta it’s a just, it’s about, I think it’s a tougher balancing act than a lot of people kind of new to the role appreciate.
6:52
You know, if we’re thinking about the two by two matrix of urgency, and it’s easy to be in the top right and address the urgent and the important, it’s hard to be in sort of the bottom right and just address the non urgent, but the important on a regular basis. Yes, constant battle, constantly see, yeah.
7:10
I mean, I’m, I don’t think anyone’s ever perfect at it. I’m eight years in. I’m every day, every week. I’m like, How can I do this better this week? But I’d like to think over time, I’ve gotten better at it.
7:26
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.
