On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Phin Upham
- Sandeep Patil
- Jill Chase
We asked guests to discuss the most visionary founder that they’ve worked with and what makes them so special.
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 discuss the most visionary founder that they’ve worked with and what makes them so special. Here’s the segment called visionary founders.
0:36
On today’s special segment, we have Finn Upham of Haymaker Finn, who is one of the most visionary or inspiring founders you worked with, and what makes them unique
0:46
so many I think gusto. I think Josh Reeves is a really inspiring founder. He is just so committed to his values are so strong, and he’s so committed to providing a better product, and, importantly, a great work environment for his employees. And the number of examples here are well reported, but he truly cares about his employees, and they truly work harder for him. Peter once said that in a weird way, and he said this publicly that in a weird way, Silicon Valley is the last place where cults can exist. And what he meant by that was a founder of a company, in a weird way, is like a cult leader that is without enough data to know he’s right or she is right. That person says jump. And every one of the company jumps in a direction that could be a total failure, but is not based on data or rationality or logic, but is based upon the conviction of the founder, which he got or she got, through lots of different ways. That’s very different than Goldman Sachs, where, if the if the CEO of Goldman Sachs said to all the bankers, stop doing the stuff you’re doing. We’re all gonna go and make lemonade. Now it would be 100% quit rate. Everyone at Goldman would leave. Nobody wants to make lemonade. They’d all go big bankers at JP Morgan, there’s no they do what they do, and they get paid. It’s just a matter of getting paid to do it. And the Goldman has no I mean, Goldman’s a great firm with a great culture, don’t get me wrong. But like Goldman, it’s not a cult. Or actually, Goldman might be the most cult, like of all the banks, but like Citigroup is not a cult. Nobody at Citigroup, like, thinks Citigroup is like the best, most amazing place, and the CEO you jump through fire for, they work there because they get paid well. And whereas even at this point with like startups like Facebook, can turn on a dime, because everyone believes that mark. I follow Mark, what Mark says is, by and large, what I want to do. And that’s a truly exceptional thing. I think Josh earns that faith of his employees. He earns it by the way he cares about them, the depth of his thinking, his thoughtfulness, his carefulness, his systematicness. And it’s really exceptional to watch
2:46
on. Today’s special segment, we have Sandeep Patel of QED Sandeep, who is one of the most visionary or inspiring founders that you’ve worked with, and what makes them unique? Oh,
2:58
so I would take maybe couple of names. Bini Bansal at Flipkart, is one of the visionary founders. I really learned how to be audacious from him. I was his chief of head of strategy. At some point we raised the $4 billion round. So a lot of interactions with him. Then we went after and changed the way the business development team operated. And so a lot of interactions with him on that, having worked at Capital One at McKinsey and in investing before, you tend to have a very sort of grounded view, if you will, of what growth would be. You’re good at thinking about the base case, what this would be. And what Bini brought to the table, what I learned from him was really thinking about upside, how wild the upside can be right. I still recall we had just, I had started as group head of strategy back in 16 and he had just bought phone pay. Phone pay is one of the largest payment companies to come out of India, right? It will IPO in next couple of years, and it will be a damn good IPO. And this is not investment advice, but I have a very strong belief in that, that company too. And Binya just bought it for 20 million, when it was basically a few sheets of paper, right? And I had, I recall this debate with him that, hey, this is a payments company, UPI in India, the main payment rail does not really make money, so how will this company ever make money? And Bini was strong believer in innovation. He had a very strong thesis, a strong belief that if you can capture payments, that really is customer attention when it comes to financial services, and it can be a great platform to add other financial services products, in fact, other products on top of it. And that theory has really borne out in phone pay, right? So from Benny, I really learned how to be audacious, how to think about the upside scenario and how wild that can be, how crazy that can be. So very inspiring founder to work with. Love it
4:51
on today’s special segment, we have Jill chase of capital G, Jill, who is one of the most visionary or inspiring founders you’ve worked with, and what makes them. Unique.
5:00
Oh yeah, I have two. That’s maybe cheat code, but I’ll give you two. One is Eric, the CEO of magic dot Dev. He is just like, he’s one of those people that every single person who meets him, no matter how impressive they are, are like, Wow. This guy is brilliant, and he is one of the best human beings that I’ve ever met. Like, he is just everything, he’s so principled. Everything he says is, like, highly thoughtful and logical and based off of his underlying, sort of very strong moral compass. And he’s just, he is a force of nature and in that route. And I think it’s very obvious to everyone who meets him that folks just like want to spend more time around him, to be honest. And then the second is Parker Conrad from from rippling. He, you know, through our diligence process and beyond, he just has, like, he’s a visionary. I think there’s like, I don’t think many people would argue with that, and he is an exceptional executor, especially on the product side. And I think, you know, that’s obviously catapulted rippling into really compelling links. You
6:04
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.
