On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Phin Upham
- Sandeep Patil
- Jill Chase
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:
0:02
Nick, welcome to the podcast about venture capital, where investors and founders alike can learn how VCs make decisions and reach conviction. Your host is Nick Moran, and this is the full ratchet.
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 Finn Upham of Haymaker Finn, if you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor, what would you tell them?
0:44
Oh, man, well, I think most people shouldn’t be investors. So I’d say don’t do it. And if and only really want to do it, they should, because most people will fail at being great investors. They’ll be okay at it in good market. What makes someone great look it’s all there. It’s all the basics. Like, you need to be really thoughtful about strategy, really thoughtful about, you know, about technology, really, really thoughtful about leadership. But then there’s like the ability to be, have that be obsessed with finding that thing that’s different and unique, and being willing to be unpopular. I mean, I think the ability, the willingness to make unpopular choices and live and die by those choices, is really hard. And I think that’s probably the the true not just like doing it randomly by just like shattering everything and being like, here’s my bet. That’s my bet. I made it, but a really thoughtful de risk version of conviction, true conviction, and then living that conviction is really hard. Not just conviction because the numbers make sense, but conviction on things that others can’t see and that you sort of only feel. And that ability to get conviction because of a feeling of an esthetic sense of a good startup that’s really hard and really powerful and unteachable.
1:49
I mean, as you’re adding fewer but excellent people to your team, I don’t remember the exact words, are you looking for people better, fewer, but better, better, fewer, but better people to your team, on your core team, as opposed to the portfolio. Are you thinking about people that don’t care about what other people think? I mean, are you thinking about people that are kind of rebels in that way? I mean,
2:11
yeah. I mean, we want fewer team members that are better. We want fewer company portfolio companies that are better. We want fewer we want fewer ideas that are better, like that’s just so critical to think, to not waste your time with that stuff that’s just not good and mediocre. And so yeah, we think about we try to apply that to as many parts of life and our firm as we can.
2:37
On today’s special segment we have Sandeep Patil of QED Sandeep, if you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor, what would you tell them? Oh,
2:47
I think so. There are a lot of challenges that you will face as a founder, right? As a you’re to think of everything from front to back, from product to customer to technology to operations to all of those things right, the the way to anchor, at least the way I found the advice I would give them is to always anchor around where you want to go, right? If you try to tackle each of those decisions individually, then the world looks really complicated and very difficult, and you’re left with sort of switching gears constantly to think about different aspects of building the startup. What is really helpful is to have clarity around what customer problem you’re trying to solve and what the solution set can look like, and then always orient yourself on every decision to build closer to that destination, you know. So that’s not just simplifies your decision making process, it actually makes sure that everything in the organization is pointed in the right direction. That would be my one. And
3:47
what about advice? And what about advice for a new investor, a young new investor,
3:52
learn, learn, learn. There’s no plethora of learning. The most popular advice I got when I got started at QED was that don’t worry about investing for the first year, year and half, even two years. Just learn, meet founders, learn the country, learn the geography, learn the verticals, and then start investing. I obviously did not listen to that advice at all. I didn’t follow through. I invested 201 50 odd million, like we invested within the year, year and half of me joining into India and then in Indonesia, so but that’s because I had a network in India, and I really knew the founders and the verticals I really wanted to invest in. But for someone who’s really coming from a blank sheet of paper, stepping into investing for the first time, there’s so many new aspects to pick up on, so many nuances that actually become really important for you, once you assume the board position, once you assume a position of rise, once you gain the credibility to advise the founder right that don’t rush into investing like that. A lot of investors have this objective that I have to do my first deal, and then I have to do my second deal. And of that, don’t worry about all that. Just learn first the investments shall happen once. Understand the ecosystem.
5:01
I love that advice, you know, it’s you hear a lot of conflicting perspectives. Like Fred Wilson is popular on his blog for saying, you know, I didn’t make investments for like, I think it was the first couple years. All I did was study and learn, you know, before I started investing. And then, like, Brad Feld was on the program, and he said, if he could go back and do it all over again, he would have invested in a lot more earlier, and just, you know, spread way more bets. And because you learn the most by actually getting into companies, and you learn what’s not good, what’s good, etc, yeah. So look, it’s tricky. You know, it’s like, yeah,
5:34
see my aspect, my perspective, is very simple, right? As a founder, you need to find three, four good investors, right? Because ultimately that’s the number of board members that will matter before you go public, right? So you can meet hundreds of investors. There are hundreds of VCs and hundreds of growth investors and all of that. But ultimately you’re looking for three, four good guys will sit on your board. We’ll be able to provide you the required capital to build a company as an investor. Also, that problem is flipped, right? I don’t I’ll meet hundreds of companies. I’ll probably make 10s of investments. But what will make my track record? What will make my reputation? Who will create will be the strongest advocates for me in the market, will be a handful of companies, right? So if you want to invest in hundreds of companies, to learn the art of investing, by all means, right? But when you really come to it, when you really want to put your conviction on the table, it ultimately matters a handful of times. All others are sort of efforts that you made and then didn’t pan out. So why rush you have time to do that. Just do it the right way, perfect on
6:41
today’s special segment, we have Jill chase of capital. G Jill, if you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor, what would you tell them? Ooh, that’s
6:50
an easy one. I would say, become an expert in something like it’s very in my view. Founders jobs are so hard like the and the last thing they want to do is raise money like they want to go build their company. And the best thing that you can do is be respectful with their time and show up like super prepared and in some way adding value, whether it’s just like a new way to think of something or a competitive landscape that they didn’t have time to do that you can show them like become an expert in a category, and then meet companies in that category, and at least then you’re using founders time wisely, and you’re hopefully making good decisions for yourself. Awesome.
7:35
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.
