On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Barry Schuler of DFJ Growth Ventures
- Shashank Saxena of Sierra Ventures
- Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital
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 Barry Schuler of DFJ growth. Barry, who is one of the most visionary or inspiring founders you’ve worked with, and what makes them unique? Feel like we did cover this. But do you have another name
0:47
for us? Yeah. I mean, look, Alon, fantastic for sure. Steve was amazing. I think he was a loss to the all of our in our industry. I had been spending a lot of time lately in the and Brian Armstrong, I would, you know, he’s had a very strong vision there. He’s done an amazing job as a first time CEO. You know, we’re seeing some really amazing talent spending a lot of time at the confluence of Life Sciences and Technology. We call the category life tech. And we’re making investments in this space, we have a tendency to like, not want to be where the herd is, but, you know, venture off into where other people are. Not all that that focused. And there’s some exciting things going on. I think cures for cancer are in sight, and we won’t do the drugs themselves, but, you know, so there’s an area of genetics called populating population genomics. And the idea is, is that, you will, it’s now inexpensive to get your gene sequenced, and now you can use that data to diagnose conditions and diseases. And there’s a company called helix we, we invested in James Lewis, very visionary CEO, brilliant scientist, brilliant businessman. No one will have heard of him, but he’s he’s fantastic.
2:14
On today’s special segment, we have Shashank. Saxena of Sierra. Shashank, if you had to choose one visionary founder or leader that has inspired you most. Who is it and what is it about their leadership approach that resonates
2:28
for me? It would be Steve Jobs, because I grew up in that era when Steve was still alive. In fact, the first time I got excited by technology was when I had heard about him as part of a class paper and assignment that I was doing and I started researching Google is relatively new back then. So on Google, I remember searching and finding out and reading all about and after I found out about the old days of Apple, then I got to see in action firsthand the iPod and the Mac and the whole reinvention of Apple. So for me, it’ll always be Steve Jobs
3:10
on today’s special segment. We have Jeff busgang of flybridge. Can you tell us about an exceptional founder that you’ve worked with in the specific thing they do that’s unique?
3:19
I think the founder I would point to is Raghu yarligada. And Raghu is the CEO and co founder of Falcon x. And what I think is so incredible about Raghu is his ability to be very high and very detailed. So Raghu is that rare founder who can operate at the most senior strategic levels. In fact, he was a part of the White House crypto summit that President Trump held. So you can imagine this Indian immigrant who had come to America to attend Harvard Business School and build his career in tech. He worked at Google and had this amazing run at Google. He gets invited to the White House to be a part of the crypto Summit. He’s in the Lincoln room. He’s he’s in front of the 20 or 30 other CEOs that are invited with President Trump and the various Cabinet members who were there, and everybody’s going around the room. And he’s got to think of the two or three quick sound bite things that are the most impactful things. And Raghu is brilliant at that. He can just come up with that synthesized, insightful, very strategic, very high level articulation of what matters. And he’s incredibly effective at doing that. And then he can sit down with the low level engineers and product managers and get into the weeds on product flows and architecture. He was trained as a product manager at Google. He’s deeply technical, and so his ability to range up and down, I think, is quite incredible. Many of our founders are very good technically, but are not able to operate at the strategic level. They wouldn’t know what to do in the White House. Some of our other founders are very good, interpersonally and strategically. But don’t have that technical depth and rely on teammates and collaborators and co founders for technical depth, and Raghu is that rare founder who can who can do it all.
5:17
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.
