On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Sami Inkinen
- Heidi Roizen
- Eric Boduch
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.
Want to keep up to date with The Full Ratchet? Follow us on social.
You can learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our LinkedIn and Twitter.
Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and we’ll send a list of potential investors right to your inbox!
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 Sami inkanen of Trulia and Virta health. Sami, if you could share one piece of advice with a new founder, what would you tell them, as you’re
0:47
starting make sure that you have unexplainably fallen in love with the idea, with the opportunity, with the direction that you have, that that would be the number one thing, like make sure that you feel it, even if you can’t explain it, because the journey is going to be long, you’ll only finish in six months a year if it fails. And you don’t want your thing and idea and business to fail if you succeed, guess what? You’re looking at, 1020, years of your life. It’s kind of daunting to think about. I built, truly, for about 10 years. Now I’m just about 10 years introverted. That that’s a kind of a long time by any standard. You cannot sustain your interest, your excitement, your motivation, your mental health, unless you fall in love with the mission of the company. So make sure that there’s something unexplainable and that cannot be a spreadsheet analysis. It has to be a feeling. Love it
1:52
on. Today’s special segment we have. Heidi Roizen of threshold ventures. Heidi, if you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor,
2:00
what would you tell them? It’s about relationships, not about transactions, and that’s pretty true of life, but it is, is don’t, don’t focus on optimizing for the transaction. Focus on optimizing for a relationship with another human being, and that will serve you really well over time. Love it on
2:21
today’s special segment, we have Eric bodak of Pendo rev cast in 24 and up. Eric, if you could share one piece of advice with a new founder, what would you tell them?
2:32
So a lot of that depends on the founder, and you know, the opportunity they have, but let’s go back and emphasize some of the stuff we talked about with product market fit is the thing is, like, don’t, don’t scale up your organization too early, you know, make sure you are ready to scale before you start to scale. Keep that team lean and small. You know, five, six people, maybe even smaller, you know, until you know you have something. Wait till things start to break internally before you hire to fill it like, don’t, don’t hire in advance of demand. You think is there product features you think you need to build? Maybe a little on the product side, definitely on the go to market side. Don’t build that too early. Build that when, like, you know, you’re, you’re working from 7am to 10pm you know, talking to customers, and then you realize, okay, we got something here. You know, everyone wants to buy. I’m the constraining factor, because I can’t talk to enough customers. Do enough of that, but keep it lean and mean. It’s easier to pivot, it’s easier to move if you have to. It’s easier to keep people all aligned on the vision. And you know, that’s it’s hard, especially if you’ve been successful before, not over over spending and over building love it.
3:50
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.
