On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:
- Casber Wang of Sapphire Ventures
- Hemant Mohapatra of Lightspeed India
- Lara Banks of Makena Capital Management
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:
0:19
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 Casper Wang of sapphire, if you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor, what would you tell them? This is
0:44
somebody who shared it with me. I think it’s even more true today, right? I think, like early on and the way venture works. And Nick, you know this better than everybody else is, you know, the associates of different firms talk to each other and share deal flows, and, you know, share their views on the market and whatnot, and those are incredibly valuable relationship. They should be building. But I don’t think there’s anything that replaces the real hard work to go deeper, right? Like, if you want to know about AI, don’t listen to this podcast about what I talked about. Like, go really deep on this topic, right? Think about, what are things that VCs or CNBC, Bloomberg Wall Street are not talking about, right? Go talk to the real buyers. Form your own thesis, because I do think, like one the unfair competitive advantage of a younger person in the industry and in life in general, just you have more time. Yeah, you just have more time. You have less obligation, less experience, more time. Exactly, going deeper is important, right? Like by that, I mean, if you go on chat, go on chat, GPT, and if I do a, you know, quick prompt, and I get all the answers you have, that’s probably, you know, not good enough, right? Like, it’s not just about information, you know, deal, flow, sharing, right? It’s not just about, you know, when Warren Buffett started investing, the commercial advantage for him is actually get to the New York Stock Exchange on time and get the proxy of that company’s filing right like today. That’s not a competitive advantage. So think about what that is and go really deep. Is probably my best advice. It’s great.
2:18
On today’s special segment, we have Hemant Mohapatra of light speed. If you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor, what would you tell them?
2:27
Somebody asked Michelangelo, how do you paint so perfectly? And his response was, first you be perfect, and then you paint naturally. And the most important lesson for me is that work at building your instinct, and once you have gotten a good sense of your sphere of knowledge and your sphere of competence back yourself. Because frankly, if you have spent time with the greats, if you have studied the greats, and you feel somebody who is not a great yet, but you feel instinctually that it is pointed in the right direction. You kind of feel the same things that you feel when you hear about the greats and you have spent time with the greats, more likely than not, this person is going to surprise you on the upside. And at that point, it is so hard to, anyway, find these people. You don’t exist. Literally, you don’t exist. It’s so hard to find them and not backing yourself then is a criminal mistake in a in our job, then go back yourself. Have the confidence and back yourself. Don’t look for conviction. Don’t borrow conviction. Don’t look for consensus. Back yourself. Love it
3:38
on. Today’s special segment, we have Lara banks of mechanic Capital Management, where, if you could share one piece of advice with a young, new investor, what would you tell them? This is
3:47
just such a people business. And I think when you’re a young investor, or at least you know me, starting as a quant, you spend a lot more time, you know, working on the spreadsheets and trying to be kind of in the weeds. But quality of people is so important. And so what I actually tell the younger people on our team is get to know the you know, your peers at these annual meetings, and understand kind of what they’re excited about, what they are doing. And that actually helps me understand like, is this manager attracting really good talent? Is this manager being able to also explain what they’re doing to those people who are at that younger level. And so I think that that’s something that is maybe less appreciated when you’re early in your career, but quality of talent is really what drives these organizations.
4:42
So 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.
