YouSaid · the spoken record

Apurva Mehta

lines on the record: 33
first: 2020-08-17
most recent: 2020-08-17
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Most recent would have been in March of this year. We co invested in a company called SourceGraph, which was led by Craft Ventures on participation by Goldcrest, Capital and Redpoint Ventures. We've known the founder since the business started. It was an early investment of Goldcrest Capital, had met the founder over the last four to five years, and were thoroughly impressed with the team and product they've built. The opportunity came to us for the Series B, literally at the start of shelter in place in many places. And we're excited about what their vision was and how they were executing on enterprise sales. It's an enterprise sales business. We had gotten to know the business really well and we were able to step in at a time where people froze up on capital.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most like to change about the world of tech, and maybe venture more specifically. The biggest thing I would say is transparency from an LP perspective, it's an enigma. People don't understand the asset class. GPs, I would say, are coming around from a transparency perspective. And as we build summit peak, we're trying to build a platform that is educational. So we educate our LPs and we're transparent. They know how we're deploying capital. They know what these companies are doing. And I would love to see more of that. We have great relationships with our GPs, so I don't feel like I'm ever in the dark. But that being said, I think as an industry, it is this black hole of how do people generate returns and what are they doing with our capital?”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anything Indian by background, but London is one of my favorite cities and I could eat my way through London in any Indian cuisine. So whether that's Dishum, Jim Kanna, the list goes on, but I love all of the Indian restaurants in London.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Clearly articulating their edge and differentiation, we see hundreds of pitch decks and we walk away from some calls and walk away not having learned anything. Why are they different? Why are founders going to back them? That is the key thing that first-time fund managers need to think in a deck, try to articulate.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Juggling wearing multiple hats, which is being an investor as an LP, running a business, fundraising, just all of that in one.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Recently, probably a few years ago, Ray Dahlio's Principles. It's a great book to dig into and develop decision-making skills, which we use daily, whether investing or personally, it's just phenomenal from that perspective.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we made in a COVID world where we weren't able to get on a plane to meet somebody and have a meal with them and just spend time getting to know them. I mean, we have to do everything via Zoom and reference calls. We are okay with that and we've done that pre-COVID. I think it's going to be tough for LPs. It's going to be strength of relationship and network that ends up bringing LPs to the table. But I also do believe LPs are going to have to shift the way they think. If people aren't getting on planes for the next six months at a minimum to travel, you're going to have to innovate how you do diligence, which means that you're going to have to, you know, if you want to continue to allocate capital, it's going to mean doing it via Zoom, I suppose.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And GP dinners, where we would collaborate and have all of our GPs around the table and ask them to bring a founder. And this was pre having a fund. We were building our name and our brand as, look, let's bring the venture community together. Now, I know funds do this all the time and bring founders together, but we were doing it as an LP and saying, let's bring funds together, and they can share ideas. And so fast forward post-COVID, we still do that. We do GP Zoom happy hours, Fund of Fun Zoom happy hours, various things to kind of continue to bring that community together. So in a COVID world, being located in Texas is no different than pre-COVID. And we still have that strength of our network to help us to navigate. As far as being an LP, again, I don't think it matters all that much to us. I mean, we like strong relationships with our GPs. Josh Buckley is an example of an investment.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so pre COVID, location didn't matter, meaning we started this in 2012, we dedicated just the resources. Myself and Patrick, we spent all of our bandwidth in Silicon Valley. We became members of the battery. We did all of our meetings there, and we built our network in Silicon Valley to the point where now location doesn't matter. You being in the UK, I'm sure you can attest to this. It's about who you know, not where you're located, and what kind of relationship you have with those folks. So we spent the time, I would say, required then to build our network in the valley, which means that today everybody is a phone call, text, or WhatsApp away. And pre-COVID, what we did was we would be in Silicon Valley at least two weeks of every month. And we built a community around what we do. So, you know, in addition to just being an LP, we would organize community events and we would have founder dinners.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With Sequoia Capital. They are great funds and they're great investors at various stages. And you want to see companies being well funded by some of them. And so we think about those as metrics, again, maybe less at the earlier stages, but when you get into mid to later stages, absolutely. I think it is something LPs like to see. It is something that we certainly are keen to understand. And if they're not in the company, that's okay too. That means it's maybe misunderstood. It's misunderstood by some of the bigger brands, and that just means it's undervalued potentially. So I know that was almost a non-response. I mean, we care about it. We care ultimately how well the company does. And as long as it's financially stable and has the right backers, that's the most important. But it is nice to see, and we have one of those slides in our presentation too, of we invest alongside of the very best.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know. I don't know because when you look at the GP presentations, they say our companies are backed by the very best funds at later rounds. I mean, we see that in GP presentations all the time. Ultimately, as long as the company is doing well, it's well funded and they have the right people at the table, that's all that matters. And if you were to ask some of our GPs, they could care less what the name of the firm is at the next round. It's, again, the value add of that fund. Are they going to help this company grow from a $50 million revenue business to $100 million revenue business? And that's what's most important. And we would agree there. Again, we want to see the companies do as well as possible. And so whatever that warrants in terms of the investor and who that investor is, that's the most meaningful piece. Look, I would be bullshitting you to say that it's not important to us. Those brand names do matter, whether that's benchmark capital in recent horror.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, we want to be investing in venture irrespective of what's going on in the market. And our GPs are generally that way too. They are investing year in, year out, and they always want to have capital to be backing the very best entrepreneurs. And we want to make sure they have that capital. So I think you can mitigate it by understanding that pacing and sizing accordingly. So in our own fund, we know that some managers are going to come back every year with a new fund or every eighteen months. And so instead of a normal sized allocation, you cut it in half so that we can have the capital to go back fund after fund after fund. So there are ways to get around it. The last thing we do is give advice on you're deploying too capital too fast. The only thing we can do is internally track metrics and see are they continuing to invest the way that they said they were going to invest and track progress in other ways beyond TVPI and DPI?”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Are in the business of backing GPs, and the pace of their deployment should not be something I should be giving them advice on. When we back them, we understand how quickly they're going to deploy capital. And there's a rough schedule of what that pacing should look like. I think it gets tricky is when GPs keep coming back and you haven't necessarily proven anything out. You spend a fund one and you come back with fun two within 18 months. And that's okay. I think the decision to invest in a GP is generally a two or three fund decision. And there are certain metrics that you can track that we think of internally when there's very little distributions because it's venture and it's early. So it's not just purely reliant on distributions. You obviously should see some marks in the portfolio. So I think when you go in, you have to go in with eyes wide open knowing how quickly a GP is going to deploy. We're cycle agnostics.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And fast forward, and when we created our business, it was the same conversation. You have to have a 2% GDP commit on a hundred million dollar fund. That's $2 million. I'm not 22, but Patrick and I spent our careers in the Endowment Foundation space, which frankly is different and does not pay millions of dollars a year. And so putting $2 million as a GP commit is a lot of money. It is when we say we have skin in the game, every ounce of our net worth is invested into our fun one. whatever's remaining into our fun two. So I have empathy for GPs on that GP commit. We do love seeing a higher number eat your own cooking. Some of our GPs have 10%, 15%, 20%. They're fortunate to be in that position, but we do have empathy with GPs that are in the position that they can just scrape together the two. And we have a lot of respect for that as well.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, this is another interesting question having just flipped the switch from LP to GP. So as an LP, we did the same. I mean, we said, wow, you have to have 2% at a minimum. And I just went and said to you that management fees are keeping the lights on and GPs aren't getting rich off of them. And they generally haven't made a ton of money yet. One of our GPs anecdotally, he had spun out of a family office. He was raising his first fund. It was a $25 million fund. And we were the anchor investor. And we pounded the table as an LP. You got to have 2%. You have to contribute a certain amount in cash as opposed to management fee waiver. And we didn't realize what that hardship necessarily entailed. I mean, he had to sell an apartment to generate the cash to make his GP commit as high. And he didn't have the liquid net worth to do it. He did it. And I have a lot of respect for him for doing so.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“End of the day, because we're a fund of funds, we have to be sensitive to fees. But that being said, when it comes to running a business, we generally are not sensitive to the management fee. I mean, so you're right on that. We're not sensitive to it because we understand that whether you're a new 50 million GP or a new 25 million, the management fees are going to run the business. And a lot of these GPs, whether it's a first-time fund or not, they haven't necessarily made a ton of money. And unless you're independently wealthy, the 2.5% is literally just going to pay for the office and pay for a nominal salary in what's most likely an expensive city. So we rarely push back on management fee. I mean, ultimately that 2.5% in tears down so that you do get to an average of 2%. And I agree with you. I think LPs generally are okay with that. On the carry side, I would also agree LP”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't do it. I think you slog it out. It's expensive capital. Ultimately, as a GP, now we're in that seat, it's okay to give an anchor investor a break on fees. That's one thing. But giving up a PC or management company, it makes that LP very expensive. And ultimately, I think as a GP, you come to resent that. You're already working so hard. Everything you're doing are for the back ended economics. And then to give a portion of that up would be difficult. So whether you're a solo GP, we know it's tough having gone through fundraising and going through it again. It's that emotional roller coaster. There are LPs out there. There's family offices. There's fund of funds. It just giving up a piece of the management company is just, it's hard to reverse decision.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's our belief. I mean, we'll see. But look, there are exceptions to the rule, and we have an endowment foundations as part of our own LP base. And so I certainly believe that they are good LPs, but we are seeing the shift more and more in these solo GPs and micro VCs. They are taking more and more capital from funda funds that have a steady capital base. And I think it's also the speed of decision making. The process can be much quicker. And there's, again, no different than why an entrepreneur wants capital from a quote-unquote solo capitalist and the speed of decision-making to invest and be able to be a helpful GP, a VCGP, I think likes the capital from a fund of funds because of that same exact concept, which is the speed of our decision making. There is no red tape. There are two of us making a decision and we can move quick on diligence and reference calls and there's no investment committees. So I think it's a similar concept.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And this is all we're doing. We don't mind being severely concentrated. And so long as our funds continue to say what they're going to do, we're going to continue to be there. I think the very best way one of our GPs put it, an LP was doing a reference on us for our fund one, and they asked one of our GPs, why would you take summit peak capital over an endowment foundation? What makes them different? And the GP answered, he said, look, they staked their career on this. They left what they did to build Summit Peak. They're not going anywhere. You know, if I perform, they will be in my fun vintage after vintage, whereas an endowment foundation, there's turnover in investment offices every five years, and that's a less sure place that I'm going to get capital.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't have a strong feeling. Look, it is, especially in this environment, it's tough because you have seen a lot of endowment and foundation groups which could represent significant concentration of a portfolio or of a fund. Right now they're retrenching and the retrenching because this environment, they don't know if schools are going to open up in the fall or if you're a healthcare institution, you've been hit by COVID in various ways and endowments and foundations similar to maybe the global financial crisis are focused on liquidity in tough times. And so if they're going to represent either as a whole a large part of your capital base or individually a large part of your capital base, I would agree that it's tough while it's attractive to have that much capital from one LP when it comes time to fundraise again the fact that that could create a hole would be, I think, difficult. On our end, this is our business.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And relationship. And then there's the investing side, and they know how we invest. And so it's something that we were able to tap into for our fund. And we should tap into it more. I mean, frankly, we did a poor job of not really reaching our entire network. I mean, look, we're early in it, so that's why we have Fund too and now a fund behind us. But it's something that I would say gave us a lot of success in raising capital, which was our network.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it was a year and a half of sleepless nights and this constant chasing your tails to raise capital. So that's one thing that I would say or give advice to not do again. We made it through. We raised capital and raised enough capital to meet our commitments. Like I said, we had supportive GPs that said, hey, we know you don't have money and we're okay if you commit to our fund. We know you're good for it. And that is we couldn't have done it without them. If you miss that capital call, it's okay. You can catch up. Or we won't call capital from you for six months and you'll be okay. But that being said, I would never do that again. So that is the never do again. You know, as far as what went well, we tapped into our network. When you look at our fun wan and our funu 100% or nearly 100% of our capital came from people we've known for the past decade and being an LP for so long you build an LP network and the people that came into our fund, they know us so there's trust.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, on what we would do differently, a lot of our LPs know this story, but little known to other people, we committed the entire fun before we had even lined up an anchor investor. So we had nearly 80 million of company investments as well as fund investments. By summer of 2018, right when we launched. And the reason for that was all of the GPs we wanted in this portfolio were raising capital and we wanted to make sure that we could secure our LP advisory board seat and secure our allocation to what I would call now hard to access funds. And so we had an $80 million overhang of capital commitments and yet to raise any money. And a few months later.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In three words an emotional roller coaster, look, we are fortunate to have an amazing group of LPs. We raised Fun Juan from 2018 to 2019, and we raised $84 million. It was nothing that we had expected, meaning I don't know if we had expectations. Our expectations were probably, you know, we've been doing this for a decade. We have a track record, we have a portfolio of GPs that you can see. This should be easy. And we quickly realized how difficult it is to raise capital. That being said, for the first time fund and putting up an $84 million fund, we're extremely proud of the amount of capital we raised. We sort of slogged it through. And we also had GPs that were just great partners along the way and supportive through that process.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Solo capitalists that are that. They are entrepreneurs, turned investors, that they know what you've been through. They are sitting across the table and saying, look, I can help you build this. And it's not to say that brand name firms can't do that, but there's more bureaucracy and there's more red tape for a multistage firm, for instance, to be able to make a decision as quick as a solo GP.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, we've been a believer in this space for quite some time, and we're not just believers in the solo capitalists per se, or, you know, as Nico put it, the rise of the solo capitalists. We think in the micro VC space, there are platforms that make sense as well. I think entrepreneurs, at least from our understanding, as I mentioned earlier on reference calls, entrepreneurs care less and less at the seed stage about brand, the legacy firms, they've been around for a long time, and their capital is certainly valuable, but there is a stage where that matters, but at the seed stage, you want to know that you're sitting across the table from the decision maker. The person that is going to roll up their sleeves and help this business out in a pandemic or whatever the next crisis that we hit. And if we haven't already, we're moving more and more towards this idea that at the seed state, pre-seed seed, and even up to the series A, you have these”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And you fast forward to today, and that number is over 1,000. And so look, we're still bullish on the space. I think the fact that there are even more GPs today makes it even more inefficient, even though there's tons of capital, it's still, I think, the most inefficient segment of venture capital. But we believe it is the best way to play into tech innovation. You are at the earliest stages, which means that you're getting into a company at the ground up and the funds that we invest in have significant ownership. So we think that the ability to generate venture returns, quote unquote, you have the greatest chance at the early stage.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, look, when we started this eight years ago, institutional allocators were generally down on venture as an asset class. If you look back to 2012, there was an overhang of illiquidity in venture post the global financial crisis. And add to that, the legacy brand name firms in Silicon Valley were hard to access. Generically, most allocators would say, if you can't access the brand name firms, don't bother building a venture portfolio. And so call it contrarian or call it stubborn. My partner, Patrick, and I, we decided to challenge that view and decided to try and build a venture portfolio in this new way, focusing on early stage investing. We felt that it was the most inefficient segment of the market, and we decided, look, let's back micro VCs and early stage funds centered around startup ecosystems. As far as the evolution, the simplest way to put it is the space has exploded. If you look back to 2012, I think by all accounts, there were probably a hundred micro.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And we hold a lot of weight on that. And Venture, again, it means less about what former colleagues and things like that say to us, but it really means a lot when a founder gives a reference of why a GP, why a VC is value-added, and why they would take their capital over and over again. It is one of the key areas for us in doing work on a GP.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Take it with a grain of salt, especially when a GP is providing references. We do the same in our business. We provide references to people. In addition to that, we use every other means possible within our network to reference beyond what somebody is giving us on a piece of paper. And so after you've taken that with a grain of salt, we put a lot of weight into it. I care a little bit less about when somebody's leaving a firm and what that firm is going to say. In early stage venture, the most important piece is references from founders. And, you know, I would say in any new fund we are doing anywhere between 30 to 50 reference calls with portfolio company founders. In some cases, we will do that with cold outreach. We know a portfolio. We know what legacy investments look like. And we use this little use tool called LinkedIn and connect to founders. And I don't know, people seem to be openly willing to chat about their experience.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was going to get him into deals, and he had a phenomenal network. And at the time, it was let's take a shot on this. If we're wrong, it is not meaningful to the portfolio. If we're right, we get to go build a venture portfolio. Look, it was not obvious then for sure, but it was the same way people took a chance on us a couple of years ago. We were taking a chance on Ray and it's paid off in spades.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We were new to venture then, and as we were new to the space, we were trying to understand the early segment of venture capital. Ray came to Fort Worth and maybe as a sort of the quintessential venture GP, he was in jeans and a t-shirt and sneakers. And it was different. It was different than every other asset class that we were investing in. We had a meeting. We went through his angel portfolio, which was called Orange Wall, and he was putting together his first fund, the benefit of when we were coming into his first fund was 50% of it was invested. And at the time, it was, let's take a chance. It was a small allocation for us as part of a big portfolio. And what we saw in him was hustle. He had the hustle to want to help us build our name. He had the hustle to get himself into deals. And when we did reference checking, that's what proved a lot of that out, which was his hustle.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my partner, Patrick, and I founded Summit Peak in 2018. So we're two years into wearing a GP hat, but we've been LPs for a long time. As LPs, we spend 15 years as allocators. Most recently as co-CIOs for a children's hospital endowment in Fort Worth, Texas. And as part of that role, we were fortunate to build out a venture program which helped build our name and network in the community. And since you mentioned Ray at caffeinated, he was our first allocation in the venture space in twenty twelve and has been instrumental over the years in helping us build our name, build our brand, opening doors and introducing everyone in his network to us.”
2020-08-17 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source