On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Heidi Roizen
- Phin Upham
- Gregory Ho
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 Heidi Roizen of threshold ventures, Heidi, can you tell us a story highlighting a critical lesson that has changed. The way you invest critical
0:44
lesson that has changed. Yeah, I will. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you kind of a generic one. And this may go back to the question you asked for for the young VC, the problem with being an entrepreneur is almost every entrepreneur I know is an optimist, because it’s hard to be an entrepreneur without also being an optimist. But the challenge of that is you become a VC, and you bring that optimistic attitude, and you’re a former entrepreneur, you see the good in everything, and you think everything looks good, and everybody looks good, and I want to help everyone, and you make too many investments. And it turns out that that’s actually not the way to be a good VC. The way to be a good VC is actually, in a way, to set your high order bit to know and say, I’m not going to do any investment. And you only do one when you absolutely get so excited about it that you’re going to do it the best VCs I know. And again, this varies, right? Because, for example, when you’re super early stage, you probably want to place a lot more bets, right? But when you’re series A you don’t place, you know, your your your power curve is a little bit different, right? And you’re going to put, you’re going to, you’re going to do 25 deals in a fund, but you really probably three or four of them at least, are going to be the, you know, the really big operational ones, you’re not going to get one in 100 like you might if you’re a seed investor. You do 100 you get one. It more than makes up for everything else at the a level, at a you’re not, that’s not the game you’re playing. And so I think the discipline to actually, you know, do the best deals that sounds so I’m sorry that is, that is such a bad answer, but it is a little bit like, you got to see a lot, you know, my partner Emily says, we, we can only do the deals we see. So one of the things is, you got to go out and you got to see a lot. But at the end of the day, that, you know, it only takes a few good deals a year to be a super, top performing VC and, and so I think this idea of, I’m an optimist, but I also have to, I also have to sort and rank and and try to, you know, not just let, let my optimism, you know, my optimism about every there’s a good in everything. I mean, at the end of the day, if you’re not going after a super big market and you’re not going after it with a great team, it’s probably not gonna, it’s probably not gonna be one of your winners. And once in a while, you’re wrong, by the way, once in a while, something pivots or something comes out of it, and sure enough, that’s the winner. And that’s what makes our business so fun, doesn’t it amazing? We
3:25
on today’s special segment we have fin Upham of Haymaker Finn, can you tell us a story highlighting a critical lesson that has changed the way you invest
3:33
look? I mentioned fraud a while ago. You know, like the more you interact with fraudulent those CEOs that do stuff when there are desperate situations, the more you appreciate human nature and the mistakes, and the more appreciate the more you appreciate the role of VCs. Like people always sort of denigrate VCs as like not being value add and not being good, and largely not being managers and all this. I think there’s, there’s a lot of truth to that, but I think that where VCs can really earn their money in the current environment is making sure that they do true oversight, and they truly are careful and make sure that the rules are respected and followed, that desperate founders don’t make desperate decisions to save for good reasons but bad outcomes. And I think that that obligation of of like, what you call like governance, is actually like a very important thing that VCs have been failing at for a long time. VCs do not provide good governance at startups. They don’t know how to do it. They don’t do it well, and they’ve never tried. I think that returning governance is something that I’ve learned, that I need to do, and to truly not just be a cheerleader, but to be a true fiduciary. And I think VCs need to seriously step up their game there. And as I’ve seen more and more problems with fraud, and more and more problems with VCs who are asleep at the wheel and not doing their job. The more I’ve started to take governance into consideration, and the more I think that like that’s a lesson learned and a thing that I am focused on more and more every day.
4:59
You. On today’s special segment, we have Gregory ho of Spring Mountain Capital, Greg Can you tell us the story, highlighting a critical lesson that has changed how you invest very
5:10
early on, I’d listened to someone who was pretty wise person, and I’ll avoid names here, who was patient enough to explain why he was doing was right, and the the thought, Okay, that’s great. Very inspirational person. And so I talked to everybody into investing and the and it didn’t turn out. It didn’t turn out. But because the you can be inspired. You can have people you respect totally, but you realize that you know, you develop something spent a lot of time you think is an insight. You think you’ve thought it all and and in our investing, we, whenever we look at an idea, particularly in life science, we assemble a board of individuals who are even challenging to really see if, if we’ve we verify anything we we do, we verify that it’s not just one. No matter how you can be a Nobel Prize. And we have talked to Nobel Prize individuals and and you got to get as convincing as much as you love the person. We all have our limitations. We all have our blind spots, and if you’re going to be responsible as an investor, you have to eliminate those blind spots. Perfect.
6:38
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.
