On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Casber Wang of Sapphire Ventures
- Lara Banks of Makena Capital Management
- David Cohen of Techstars
We asked guests to share the best question they’ve ever been asked by an allocator.
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:
0:18
Welcome back to TFR on today’s special segment, we ask guests to share the best question they’ve ever been asked by an allocator. Here’s the segment called Best LP question.
0:36
On today’s special segment, we have Casper Wang of sapphire. What’s the best question a founder or investor has asked you? The
0:43
best question a founder has asked me is, if I missed a quarter, the founder missed quarter, what would your reaction be, right? What will be your real advice like be? And I think that’s a very important question, right? Again, it’s probably not one question. I just generalizing, but I do think it’s very important thing for every founder try to really get a sense right. Ask in very clear words, clear terms, ask multiple times, right? Like, you know, what’s the catch here? Like, what exactly do you do when a company doesn’t work? I think that’s a very important thing. And again, like, folks are aligned when things are going up into the ride, and it’s so easy to cheer leading. But you do want people, and I do think, like, for me as investor, when I think about a founder, right? Like, I want people who are challenging me, right? I want founders, you know, who are challenging me in a way where I send a customer intro over to you. Tom and Sarah. First thing he said is, like, hey, is this the right person? Right? That I should be talking to, like, how much contacts have you given to that person? Right? So the next time I know what, exactly how, I should pitch a solution to potential buyer for my founder, right? So I do want people who can challenge me. And I do think founders in some ways, you know, again, winter fundraising, everything is going so well that it’s just easy. It’s just human nature to not think about what happens when, you know, when stuff hits the fan, right? So I do think like, you know, Warren’s probably not 80% of the conversation, but 20, 30% conversation. I think you should think about like, what happens when things don’t go well, right, perfect.
2:26
On today’s special segment, we have Lara banks of mechanic Capital Management. Lara, what is the best question a fund manager has asked you?
2:34
I kind of two here. One is kind of a tongue in cheek, but one manager asked me, like, will you still be here Anders, because we always ask those questions around, like their longevity. And I think at least at this point, kind of career, he saw so many LPS transfer seats and kind of, oh, can be a revolving door, and really hard for these fund managers. And so he made the joke like I was the only person who was still in my seat. But will that still continue? And I completely can relate with that painful situation. The second thing is just like, will you judge me? Like, if when I come back in, you know, the next Bond, especially for a fund one or fund two, like, how will you kind of, if I’m doing doing a good job. And that’s where we go through that in part of the memo that shows kind of an X fund. And I think that’s actually a great kind of level setting, the GP and LP of like, this is what we are think for success. How does that align with what these are? So I really appreciated understanding kind of what, what we think is how we judge success versus how they judge success. And
3:51
on today’s special segment, we have David Cohen of TechStars, what’s the best question a founder or an LP has asked you?
3:58
I’ll give you one of each founders have asked me, you know, can I speak to two or three entrepreneurs you’ve worked with that have failed? I think that’s super smart. You know, everything’s great when times are good and things are rolling, but like when it gets hard. What? What does this person do as investors? So that kind of reference checking that founders have done on me, I think, has been really smart. And I just say, Yeah, I was on this guy’s board, and this company failed, and you should talk to him. LPs, I had an LP that I really admire, that a long time ago was really sort of probing with me and people around me about my marriage, which I thought at the moment, was out of bounds, you know, I was like, Oh, that’s weird. Like, Why would, why would he be asking about that? And I think it’s because, like, if that doesn’t work, it’s really disruptive to somebody’s personal life, if there’s like, things going on there. And so while it felt a little weird, like, I kind of now respect it, you. And you know, it can be a big time suck to go through a big relationship change, right? And they were just probing on that. So I thought that was a pretty smart question. But there are
5:15
many 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.
