On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Han Shen
- Craig Shapiro
- Kevin Jiang
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 Han Shin of iFLY Han, who is one of the most visionary or inspiring founders you’ve worked with, and what makes them unique?
0:44
Yeah? So way too many, right? So that that’s another podcast subject, yeah. And one guy I definitely admire a lot is Eric Yuan. Did you ever have him on your show? I have not. Okay, let me reach out to him. So we all know Eric Yuan is the founding CEO of zoom, right? He’s also immigrant, so that alone gave me a lot of inspiration as an immigrant founder and investor. And what inspired me most is when he started zoom, it was a very unpopular idea, right? Let’s face it, right? Let’s you and me. Let’s say we work on the same fund, Investment Committee. Time roll back to the year he was raising right how would you and I have a debate on whether we should have put money into his company? But the reality is, he did not take no as No, but focus on his deep insights into what actually made sense, what is needed, and had a very strong kind of a team around himself to build and go from scratch. To me, that’s the kind of founder quality I really admire. And of course, there are way too many of them. Like I said, I’d admire them as a group, right? So to me as investor, I constantly remind me that we don’t know everything, and let’s not pretend we know everything. Let’s continue to maintain this degree of humbleness to keep on learning right and learning gets us not only the fun part, but also the chance to reveal something that’s not obvious to other investors, and that’s how I’m going to compete in this very crowded landscape this
2:24
on today’s special segment, we have Craig Shapiro of collaborative fund, Craig, who is one of the most visionary or inspiring founders you’ve worked with, and what makes them
2:32
unique? Yeah, I mean, I work with, I’ve had an opportunity to work with so many incredible founders, but Ben and David, the founders of ollipop, do stick out. They’re, you know, everyone and when, when, when we invested, you know, when they were just getting started. Everyone thought they were crazy. I mean, to take on Coke and Pepsi seemed, you know, beyond kind of crazy, and yet they were really dogmatic about their vision and the the opportunity, and they’ve executed so, so well, I mean, it’s, it’s wild. You know, I don’t know how familiar you are, but they’re now their root beer is outselling a and W Root Beer, like it’s, it’s a big business that’ll do, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue this year. So it’s that they stick out in the crowd, for sure.
3:31
It’s awesome. I’m a happy customer of volley pop. And have some local buddies who are investors in it. So they rub it in every time I see them. You know, it’s, I’ve got the career maker investment
3:47
on today’s special segment, we have Kevin Jang of Mangusta capital. Kevin, can you tell us about an exceptional founder you’ve worked with and what specific thing they do that’s unique to any other founder?
3:59
Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the most impressive founders that I’ve actually worked with that’s in our portfolio is Trevor kyverco from Sapien. So sapien is building a decentralized data labeling network for AI applications. They’re providing the opportunity for people all over the world to earn rewards by doing data labeling tasks for training AI models, anytime, anywhere, and get rewarded for doing that work. Trevor is one of the most driven and smart individuals that I know, but I think what makes him really stand out as a as a leader and as a founder, is being able to build a team that truly, truly complements and supports and also lets them shine above and beyond what he’s able to do. And so I think one of the things I really respect about founders is that they’re actually not. Afraid to bring on a players, and they’re not afraid to let others outshine themselves. One of the big issues that we see is oftentimes a founder wants to be the top dog and wants to be, you know, the most impressive person around the table. But if you’re able to actually find someone who doesn’t have an ego and wants to bring in the best A players around the table. I think that makes a much, much better team, and helps add dimensionality across your team that the founder isn’t able to provide because they have, you know, they have one skill set, and they can bring in other people that provide other skill sets. Awesome.
5:42
Now, 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.
