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Angela Tran Kingyens

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38
first
2015-05-21
most recent
2015-05-21
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1
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  1. “The most recent investment that we made public, so we've done Tucson's, but I will speak to the one that we made public, is a company called Head Out, which is essentially Hotel Tonight for activities, experiences, or travel tours. They're kind of like a mobile concierge for travel. Why we invested? Three things. It's a perfect mobile use case because it's on demand. You can purchase an activity just the day of. How many times when we go traveling across different cities do we actually plan weeks and weeks and weeks in advance? We just don't do that anymore. The second thing that makes us excited is it's a super fragmented market. There's vendors out there who are offering all these amazing activities, but it's just so difficult to discover them. And then, of course, the last piece is that the founders are just stellar.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “And I would see that we're now less likely to do anything in e-commerce or hardware because it's less capital efficient than software companies.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Probably ad tech, you know, it comes down to, we love founders who are category leaders that are going under going after markets that are not too overcrowded with existing companies that are all doing the same thing. Because in that case, it's really hard to differentiate.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “We do. We try to maintain our pro rata pretty much all the way to series B, and then once there are bigger players at the table, we take a step back.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Long term, it's all numbers, so your return on investments will tell you how well you do. Short term as a seed investor, the only thing you can really hope for is that companies get great follow-on funding from the top tiered BCs.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yes, they're changing the way in which people move from A to B and democratizing that in a way that it's not owned by companies, but by individuals.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Is fantastic. And of course, there are some great VCs who blog very often. Anything that comes out of Union Square Ventures, follow them. Fred Wilson, Albert Winger, everybody there is just incredible, super smart. Yeah”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So Mattermark has a great daily newsletter I think everyone should sign up for if you're an aspiring VC Dan Primax term sheet is incredible he summarizes pretty much anything in finance in a given day”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I love, I mean, of course, I start out with Mattermark and Angelis and Crunchbase, and of course I subscribe to a bunch of blogs. What are your favorite blogs? Newsletters.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “But hey, but understanding that there's nothing and building a thesis and understand, so understanding that there are holes in the market. And coming up with a thesis on whether or not you think something is going to work is really important. As an investor, it's better to have conviction than to just be completely opportunistic and follow everyone else blindly.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “And then in the cardpool case, I asked myself, could we use technology to improve carpooling? And or better yet, is the reason why carpooling isn't as prominent right now, the fact that is it because technology is not helping? And the more research I dug into it, I realized that that wasn't actually the case. People just don't like to carpool because of the inconvenience. And it's not necessarily the coordination part. It's just the fact that they don't have the freedom. So, the end of that analysis, this is my long win and answer, I just decided that there's probably nothing in that space, in that middle.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “And so at the time, those like Uber Pool and Left Line did not exist. And I thought to myself, would there ever be a company that just offers shared rides and did some thinking around it? And I thought, well, for them to these companies to actually achieve the liquidity, they would essentially have to be Uber first.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “And so I thought, okay, well, we have two ends of the spectrum. Is there anything in the middle? And so I asked myself that and thought, if I were to build something in between, you know, the on-demand versus the not so on-demand and private versus public, what would that look like? And I thought, well, there are probably two categories there. There's carpooling, improving carpooling, and also shared rides. And when I think of carpooling, I think of it in a very traditional sense. How do I get to and from work? It's the same route every day. And then in the shared rides case, I think of what Uber and Lyft do now, which is offer like Uber pool, and I think it's Lyftline, if I'm not mistaken.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Looked at Angelus as well as Crunchbase for companies that And what I started to do as I went through this list is categorize them in a way that made sense. And, you know, the categories might shift, but ultimately I kind of categorize or divided them into a couple of things. One, you know, the on-demand private rides like the Ubers and the lips of the world and sidecar and then on the other end of the spectrum I found that there were public, you know, the tube in your case or the bar and the caltrain in California. So moving a whole bunch of people not really on demand gets you from instead of A to Z, it's bringing you from B to Y and you got to figure out the first mile and the last mile.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, no, no, it's a funny, it's not funny, but I think when I first started doing these deep dives, it was a lot easier because I would just go down a particular vertical. And now that we're more focused on a theme or a business model like marketplace is a little bit challenging. So this month, I can't say that we deep dived into a particular industry, but I can give you an example of something that we have looked at if that's helpful. So for example, I looked for a while at logistics of moving people, so transportation. And the way I did this was, you know, I looked into Mattermark, which is one of our portfolio companies. I have to give them a plug. And of course...”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “I mean, the same questions that you just asked me, you know, how can you be helpful? How can you be strategic? I think the great thing you can do is ask existing or current portfolio or current founders of that VC's portfolio for feedback on how they've interacted with that particular VC”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “So I encourage people to look for strategic investors. Obviously, this means that you want someone with a deep Rolodex that's going to be able to connect you with customers, with future VCs when you start thinking about raising your next round And of course, you want someone who's responsive and generally helpful and are not driven by their deep biases and know how to ask the right questions. It's very much like a marriage, so you're going to be working with this BC anywhere from five to ten years”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “So at version one, we know that the first 18 to 24 months after we invest are probably the most important time. So we try to be as involved as possible. And this means we talk to our founders anywhere from two to three times a month. But of course, we're constantly exchanging emails and we are, we participate as much as the founders want us to participate. On a personal, I like to help companies with their product or data project. So, you know, helping anywhere from interviewing potential data scientists, because I can leverage my background all the way to digging deep into their data as though I'm a data science scientist in residence.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “We call those like full stack marketplaces. So there's still a lot to be excited about, and things will evolve depending on what the needs of the people are. So I'm pretty bullish.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, yeah. We're also seeing an evolution of the marketplace towards more on demand, the Ubers of the world or the lifts of the world, delivering a service right away. We're also starting to see full stock marketplaces where the intermediary takes, or you as a marketplace or intermediary takes a lot more of the responsibility, the trust. So as an example, we've seen these P2P marketplaces for selling and buying cars where, well, there's now companies that buy the car, hold the inventory, which is a greater risk, but therefore can control the quality before selling it to the buyer.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “How do I see the future of marketplaces playing out? I think there's still a lot of ways in which we can connect people, so that's definitely what makes us excited. We're starting to see, I think in the very beginning, a lot of consumer marketplaces, so connecting ordinary people with businesses, but now we're seeing more B2B marketplaces, which is really, really exciting because of the monetization factor. You know that money can definitely be made because money should be made.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “We're very exhausted. At this point, marketplaces is pretty, it's still pretty narrow. I think going any more narrow than that would be a bit difficult.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “And we get excited about marketplaces and platforms because of the inherent network effects that are associated with them. We can see that there are a lot, you're bringing two sides of a puzzle together almost or, you know, to supply and demand or buyers and sellers in a way that was never possible before. And the potential to scale is just huge if you're able to do this right. So that's why we get excited about this. But going back to the focus, I think if you have more partners like these bigger funds, you're able to focus you as an entire fund are able to look at almost anything and everything. But even within those funds, you have GPs that are very specialized. So one might specialize in healthcare, another might specialize in transportation, another might look strictly at marketplaces and platforms. Think as an individual, there's only so much thinking and investigation you can do.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So, I think there's two questions there. So, the first part, why do funds focus? I think the reason for, I mean, it really depends on the size of the fund. So for us, there's just the two of us and we need to focus because there's just, we only have so much bandwidth.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Well, it's, you know, for me, obviously, the valley is a very, very special place, but it depends on what kind of startup you're building. I would argue that if you were in... Entertainment, you might want to consider LA if you were in the life sciences, you might want to consider Boston if you are in media and ad tech or something or other, you might want to consider New York for that kind of network. But I think the network really also depends on where your main customers are and that's where you should be.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I wouldn't argue against them. It just really depends on what stage you're at in your business and what you need. So generally speaking Would probably consider two things one, the location of where this accelerator is, because the ecosystem around you is really, really important. And two, and very similar to, I guess, the first point is just the quality of that network or the quality of the network of that accelerator. How can they help you and so on and so forth, which is actually very much tied to the location of the accelerator?”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “So, those facts are interesting, but they're not really actionable. So the actionable insight that would come out of it would probably be you need an umbrella. But it's little things like that. I think in academia, we're taught to just find as many interesting things as possible. And to speak to what I had mentioned earlier, I was just really, really thirsty for application and not just theory.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And then the last point is thinking about delivering actionable insights and not just interesting facts. So one silly example that I always give is interesting for us to say, hey, the sky is gray or that, you know, in your case, the sky is cloudy, but there's nothing really rain.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “So, one of the things that we encouraged the PhDs to do was be open to feedback and move as quickly as possible and iterate that way.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “The lean method, correct? So when we think about when I was doing my PhD, I wouldn't want to present anything until it was absolutely perfect. But as you can imagine, this would mean that there's not a lot of movement or agility in industry if we operated that way.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “And then the second point is really shifting one's mindset in academia from rigorous to the industry way of thinking, which is much more iterative.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “That's a really good question. And I think, excuse me, three things come to mind. The first thing that we tried to get PhDs to think about in their transition from academia to industry is learning the language of that industry. So whether it's technical jargon or the cultural jargon or picking up a programming language that is more relevant to industry. So as an example, most of our PhD fellows worked with huge data sets and had to code, but a lot of them were doing it in MATLAB, for example. Most data scientists in industry are using Pythons and then calling queries with SQL. So it was just a matter of shifting those skill sets. The transition isn't difficult. It's just a matter of knowing that you have to make it and then practicing”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Sure. I think a lot of the investors now are on Twitter. They're avid blog writers. So there's always ways in which you can communicate with VCs whether or not it's asynchronously. There's so much more that you can do beyond that cold, that first cold email.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Probably say the same way It's one of those things where you really have to be focused on what it is that you want to get out of a relationship, just like in any kind of relationship and hope that someone vouches for you so that you can get that FaceTime. It's always a challenge. Everyone is very, very busy. So I think the key to building any kind of relationship is making sure that there's progress going forward. So let's say I meet Harry today and I give Harry advice. Hopefully Harry takes that with Gusteau and comes back with progress so that we keep building a relationship that grows and shows that there is progress being made.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “I think as an entrepreneur, the best way to interact with a VC or get that introduction from a VC is to get a warm intro from a mutual contact, whether that contact is another entrepreneur or an investor. And the reason for this is because investors are just Overwhelmed with the amount of companies that they see on a given basis or a daily basis. So as a result, it's always great to have someone vouch for you so that you are identified as a signal amongst the noise.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “The best way to network with VCs depending on which perspective you want to come from as an entrepreneur or as another investor.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “A program called Insight, where we actually took the top PhDs in the country and trained them to be data scientists and then placed them to technology companies like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google, Twitter, and of course the long tail of startups who need data scientists And so, after a year and a half of doing that and being exposed to the tech that was happening in these companies in which we were essentially recruiting for, I decided that it was time for me to move on to my next challenge and through lots of networking in the valley where everyone's super generous with their time and constantly pay it forward. I was able to meet Boris Wertz, my partner, who's the managing director and founding partner of Version One Ventures. And he convinced me that VC would be a great fit for me. And here I am two years later, almost two years later.”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Yeah, I think my transition from academia to working at a startup all the way to becoming a VC has actually been quite serendipitous, but it all started with exposure to tech and engineering through my parents. I was constantly encouraged to look or to study in the math and sciences, and fortunately it was something that I was good at. Being in tech is pretty much the only thing that I had ever known. And I had great examples as my dad's a professor. So I went to university in Toronto, did my bachelor's in engineering science, and then went on to do a master's in PhD in financial engineering, but realized that there wasn't that I wanted to do something more with application and not just theory. And eventually somehow found my way to the valley, got married actually, and then partnered with a Y combinator grad who together we launched”

    2015-05-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 038: How Make Connections with VCs and Maximise Employability with Angela Tran Kingyens @ Version One Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source