On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Oren Yunger
- Laura Chau
- Jon Terbell and Ted Clark
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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You can learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our LinkedIn and Twitter.
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 Oren younger of notable capital Oren, can you tell us a story highlighting a critical lesson that has changed the way you invest when
0:44
when I first aimed to break into Vc, everybody asked me, Why you instead of just being a barrier for entry, I had to pass that question stuck with me and still shapes how I operate today, an industry full of seasoned, connected, brilliant individuals, I constantly ask myself, how do I provide value? Each morning I rise with that challenge, driven to innovate and outpace others, and not just others, but also former myself. I strive to never stop pushing and really push for myself and for the companies I work with, and personally, I always had the kind of the hustle gene I played basketball growing up. My coach used to call me Charles Barkley, not tall enough, not fast enough, but wins because he comes with high energy and extremely determined. So I’m determined and and can be, you know, how do I how can I win? And how can I make my founders win
1:42
on today’s special segment we have Laura Cho of Canaan, Laura, can you tell us a story highlighting a critical lesson that has changed the way you invest.
1:50
You know, the last couple of years, inventor, no surprise, have been more challenging for investors and for founders. And I’d say one of the things that I’ve really taken away is building deep relationships with the rest of your board members, with investments, because when everything is going up into the right there’s not that much to do. But when companies are going through more difficult times, having a really high functioning board where it’s easy to call everybody, where everybody is on the same page about the business understands what’s happening. It makes it a lot easier to be able to talk about what to do. And, you know, I’ve had some companies where investors had misaligned incentives just because of the past rounds or how things were structured, and when it came to making difficult decisions to set the company up for success in the future. You kind of had to talk to your other board members or CO investors to see, you know, would you be willing to take this small hit to hopefully set the company up for the long run? And if you’re taking the hit because of the way the the capital is structured versus me, you might not want to do that, but if we can have that open and honest conversation, because we’ve built the relationship, because we’ve been working together, well, hopefully it can get everyone on the same page and a company set up for success, which is first and foremost and most important thing. Great.
3:20
On today’s special segment, we have Ted Clark and John turbell of forbridge partners, Ted and John, can you tell us the story, highlighting a critical lesson that has changed the way you invest Well, I think that
3:31
you know, over again, over decades, we’ve learned that in many cases, The ambition of founding partners to create a big business. Bigger is better, is often in opposition to great returns. In our view, it doesn’t mean they’re not going to have great companies in their portfolios, but it often becomes an assets under management and an IRR focus versus a TV pi focus, and that’s fine if you want an index or you want to put billions of dollars to work. We believe that the exciting part of venture is about the upside, where, in most cases, that’s a small to medium sized fund that’s aligned. And so, you know, we had many of many great names at Babson that as we evolved that strategy, we walked away from because we wanted more upside. And so instead of doing multi billion dollar venture funds with dozens of partners, you know, we wanted the the old fashioned seed and early stage funds that have two to four partners, two to five partners and a few 100 million under management are in that fund where we think, you know, we believe there can be tremendous upside
4:52
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.
