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Arteen Arabshahi

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33
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2015-08-03
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2015-08-03
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  1. “It's an amazing combination of founders. So one of the founders has incredibly relevant industry expertise, and the other one has amazing expertise in customer acquisition. And I think those are probably the two hardest things that a marketplace for insurance will face. So that was just like a no-brainer.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “We did an investment out of New York called Policy Genius. We did a Series A, and it's a marketplace for life, rent, pet, and disability insurance. So we said yes to them because, well, first of all, that is a massive market, right?”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “This is a cop out because it's not a tech app and it's not like where your traditional answer, but New York Times released this article and an app alongside it a while ago, which was 36 questions that lead to falling in love with somebody. And I've just been obsessed with the questions. I think they're really fascinating. So I'm not in a relationship. I'm not really actively looking for one or anything, but I just love using these questions with my friends. So it's things like, is there something you've dreamed of doing for a long time and haven't done it yet? Why not? you know, things like that. And it's just been awesome to build deeper relationships with my friends around that. So I've been using that a lot.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's a tie. I'm a huge fan of Ben Evans and his mobile letters. It's unbelievable. I mean, like, the analysis, the quality, it's awesome. And then I think strictly BC, the two of them are just very narrowly focused, so not for everybody, but for me, those two really hit home.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “If I feel like I know more about the sector than the entrepreneur does, there's no way we'll invest because I probably have a 60 to 70 percent understanding of a lot of things. But if you're starting a company in that space, you should know 120% of it.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Fight Club by Chuck Polonik. I think it's partially because it was one of the first grown up books that I read, but also because it kind of taught me how to question the status quo, approach things with a different perspective.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Yeah, a huge shout out. I mean, and they're an LA company as well. And so I'm a big fan of that. And I think, again, that's another one of those things where for some people, that is their rock, right? That type of stuff is their core. For other people, other stuff may work. I know for me when it comes to day-to-day stuff, this is stuff I haven't done enough research into yet, but I really like whenever I've done like, I'm not a big yogi or anything like that, but I've done yoga classes here and there. And like the breathing part is always the most profound for me. So like breathing exercises are very interesting to me. And again, it's something that I haven't done enough research into yet. But like I think, you know, what Headspace is doing, what Column is doing, just all this type of stuff kind of fits together in like this overall just like holistic approach to like happiness and health and all that sort of stuff.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “So, I haven't myself. I have a lot of friends who have, though, and I'm a huge fan. I just haven't done it myself, to be honest. It's one of those things where it's like, man, I got to start doing that. I got to start using Headspace.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “That I was going through, and it was just because I became very regimented and very productive about like, okay, I'm going to work out these times. I'm going to exercise. I'm going to keep busy. I'm going to, you know, send these emails, all that type of stuff. And so for me, that was the way I was able to kind of overcome it. And it worked. I don't think that's the way that it works for everybody. But for me, that was my solution.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “me was back in college it was after I got back from New York but before I had kind of gotten into any of the tech stuff and what was really you know the difficult part for me then was just this notion of like I didn't feel like anything I was really doing was worth it if that makes sense like in school I just felt like the things I was doing weren't quite significant enough and so that was probably the hardest part about it for me that kind of put me into this like yeah spiral of kind of like depression self-doubt you know all this type of stuff where what made me get better to be honest and what made me feel better was actually throwing it all towards something that I thought was productive right and so again this is like a very you know unique way in which I felt like I was kind of solving my day-to-day struggles but you know so I talked about the the cold emails I sent I sent all those emails while I was in like probably the worst month or two of like the self-doubt”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, I think that when it comes to this topic just in general, I think there's a couple of caveats that I always like to start with, right? One is that I think that it's an incredibly personal experience where every single person, I think, goes through something like this, but they go through it in their own ways in their own different ways. And so, you know, things like, okay, how do I deal with it and how have I dealt with it? I'm happy to share my answer and I will, but it's also like, I think that will be different for every person, right? And I think the most important part about this is figuring out for yourself what exactly it is that helps keep you going, right? What is like the thing that is kind of your common denominator or something like that that is just like keeping you solid and grounded, right? So I think everybody has that in a different way and everybody has to find their own. When it comes to me personally, yeah, I think for me I went through probably the hardest patch.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Obviously, that's a terrible example, but you kind of know what I mean. I think that the broad scale approach to markets is it's a pretty binary one. And when I've seen entrepreneurs try to convince investors that, oh no, this market is big enough. It's like, at the end of the day, I honestly think that most investors' minds won't get changed. I think that people have a very guttural reaction to the size of a market. And maybe you can prove the wrong of facts and figures, but I think that a lot of the times it's harder to do so.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “That's a good question, but it's probably not when I have a good answer for it. So I think the way I like to put it, to be honest, is that if you have to convince an investor that the market is big enough, they're probably not going to do it is kind of my notion. So I think that it's kind of like it's more of a do we believe that this market is growing and is this market big enough already that there is still, you know, there's enough to make it interesting. I think that it really is kind of a binary thing though. It's kind of like, okay, if you're going to create a marketplace that sells a very specific type of speaker to a very specific type of listener, right? Like that's probably not going to be a big enough market. But like if you're going to create a marketplace that is selling all sorts of audio things to the masses, right?”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “On the info emails of VC funds. Whereas at that point, again, like super naive, no foot in the door at any of these places, I was like, oh, I'll just email their info. But I realized later on that obviously. Yeah, exactly. Which is like probably not the best response ratio.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, no, I mean, it was all just, yeah, it was all just me kind of looking around. I think, you know, I think these days, it's not that hard to find people's email addresses, right? Like at the end of the day, I think probably 80 to 90% of people, it's just their first name at the domain, right? Or it's their first name initial and their last name. So I think that was kind of my standard. The two things that if I were doing it now I would do differently. One is I think reportive that Gmail plugin is awesome. I'm not like an investor or anything. I just love the fact that you could plug in an email and you could automatically know if it's right because if they pull up the person's LinkedIn and social profiles and things like that, you know that the email address is correct. So that's actually a bit of a fact check that I'll use now sometimes, even when I reach out to founders. The other thing that if I were to do it again, if I were to send all those emails again, I probably wasted about 50 emails.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Six months later, they merged. So it's a funny story, but yeah, I think just kudos to Brad for being so on top of that type of stuff, even at the level that he is at.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, it's tremendous. And I was literally some random kid emailing him from the University of Arizona with almost no relevant background. And he replied and gave me all the right people to talk to at TechStars. So the great irony was that I was actually in final run interviews with Tech Stars Boulder when I got the opportunity with Accelerate Labs and the timing was funny because TechSar is Boulder was like, yeah, we won't be able to tell you for sure for another week or two, but accelerate needed an answer before then. And so I ultimately passed on Boulder to go to Chicago. And when they asked me, they're like, yes, like out of curiosity, where are you going? What did you accept instead? And I told them accelerate. And everybody there was just like, all right, well, we'll see you soon. We worked pretty closely with them.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “just because Brad is like, I mean, the guy, his email response etiquette and ratio is just tremendous because literally, you know.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So I think my experiment had too many variables. So the reason I mean that is that the people that I sent the personalized emails to were actually usually like the hardest people to reach, right? They were like the kind of like the tier one people who aren't going to answer cold emails most of the time. So I would say my conversion rate was actually about equal across the board. But I think that if you were to remove the factor of like, okay, like how difficult are these people to reach in general, it would have been better the ones that were personalized? Like had I personalized every single email, I think I would have gotten way more responses than what I did. I just was optimizing for time and efficiency, which actually reminds me. I think that the person that I always, you know, so Troy from Texas, Chicago obviously was a super helpful part of that whole process, right? Ended up hiring me and all that type of stuff. But the other person that I always like to give a shout out to, and I know you interviewed him recently or going to, is Brad Feld.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “But there's also a lot of people who come with that background. So there has to be something on top of that. And so in some scenarios, it could be your X factor could be the fact that you didn't do that. And it's like, wow, how did you get in this room without that? And that becomes an interesting conversation. That was kind of my path. And then there are other times where it's like, yeah, you know, doing that, you're never going to go wrong with that path. It's just that there's a lot of people that are also doing it.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I mean, I think regardless of my opinion, I think it's definitely, I'm an anomaly in the sense that I'm a proven disagreement with that, but I think that's the status quo. I think probably like 80% is just I'm making that number up, but something like that is kind of, that's the formula, right? But I think that if you talk to many kind of non-partner level VCs, a lot of them will say they somehow fell into it, but definitely there are some that did the banking consulting round. And I for sure came into it with a different kind of perspective, but also a different level of experience, right? Like I didn't do the two years at McKinsey or Bain or Goldman Sachs. So there are definitely some skill sets that I am weaker in than some of my counterparts because I didn't do that. But then there are some things that I'm stronger in because I also didn't do that. So I would say that formula definitely helps get you in the door.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Some big stuff, and I was lucky to kind of fall into being a part of that. I had no real ambition of being like, oh, I'm going to go to TechSars and I'm going to do the startup and then I'm going to go into VC. For me, I actually think I got into VC pretty early in my career. And I think my career will kind of go operating VC back and forth for kind of the whole duration of it. The one thing that I know for sure is just that I'm in love with the tech industry. And this is kind of the place that I will be a part of forever. But what side of the table I sit on is probably going to be back and forth for a long time.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “In spring of 2013, he basically was looking for somebody to join his team. And so that was how I ended up doing venture. And I will say the fact that we are a relatively new fund. We've been around since August of 2012. So coming up on three years, I joined in March of 2013. And so I was fortunate in that TX, my partner, definitely took a chance on me. And on the flip side, I was also taking a chance on him in the sense that it was a new fund. We have 60 million an allocation and it's a five-year fund. But so within that, this was literally six months in. He had made about, I think, eight or nine investments before I joined. And I was fortunate to kind of be a part of the evolution of that fund. So the caveat there is that, you know, I don't think a Kleiner Perkins would have hired me or like in Andreessen Horowitz at that point. But I was fortunate to build a really good relationship with somebody who I thought was really smart and strong and was going to do.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “100%. And so that was the big thing for me. And after TechSars, I actually became pretty close with a company out in Chicago called Built In Chicago, which is like an online community for the tech ecosystem. They had launched built-in Colorado and they were looking to launch built-in LA. And that is what brought me out to Los Angeles. And I was actually looking for a reason to come out here, to be honest. This was in 2012 when the ecosystem out here had just kind of really hit an inflection point where it was clear that this wasn't going away and there was a ton of growth and I wanted to be a part of it. It's closer to home for me. I'm kind of a West Coast kid just in general.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “The first time I felt like I was truly a part of a meritocracy where it was like, you know what? Nobody really cares how old or how young you are or what your background is, but if you're bringing good ideas to the table, you're presenting them well and you're working hard and you're doing a good job, like that gets rewarded. Absolutely.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Ended up getting that opportunity, and I moved to Chicago the following year for four months and did what is now Texas Chicago and was kind of on the operations team there. And so helped do everything from on one end of the spectrum, I would help the 10 companies that we had go through the class with things like financial modeling or market sizing or like being on the street doing street marketing and things like that. On the other end of the spectrum, I would plan our demo day and worked with the House of Blues to plan logistics and then would order lunch catering, right? So it was literally this hodgepodge of everything that you could imagine. And so long story short, the TechSars experience was definitely my first deep foray into this world. And I still credit that as being probably the most pivotal career opportunity that I had because it was the first time. And I'm sure you can relate to this.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “It was interesting. So it was about 150 emails, I would say probably 20 or 30 of them were very personalized where it was like, okay, I know this person's story. I did my research on them and I'll maybe throw in an anecdote or two in the subject line. And then the actual email itself was really, really short and standard and it was like, you know, this is who I am. This is my only relevant background. Do you have any opportunities for an undergrad this coming summer and I'll work for free? And it was well received. Probably got about 30 replies, led to about 10 interviews. And long story short, I built a relationship with a guy named Troy Hennikoff, who is managing director of Techstar Chicago. And at the time, it was called Accelerate Labs, and they were looking for somebody to kind of join their operations team for the subsequent summer and went through just the traditional interview process.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Literally none. Yeah, it was really lucky that I had some people take a chance on me off of a cold email. And so, you know,”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “To tech, right? Just because obviously New York has a thriving startup community and stuff like that. And so that was really where I first started thinking, okay, I want to get into this world. I had no foot in the door. And so I got really scrappy. I was back in school after my New York experience and I made a list of about 150 people that I wanted to work for. It was everything from incubators, accelerators, VCs, startups, kind of the whole community. And I cold enough.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Reasonable. And so the story kind of started from there. And I went to New York and I did a summer internship investment banking at a mid-tier bank out there. But it got exposure to the finance field and investment banking out in New York. And I joke that I got really good at knowing what I didn't want to do because that wasn't really the path for me either. But the good thing was in New York got a lot of exposure.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “It was. It was. So for me, the reason I transferred back to Arizona to begin with was because I wanted to double up in business and pre-med. I had this ambition of kind of going into the field of medicine, but still kind of owning surgery centers. I wanted to have a business side to whatever I did. I'd always kind of grown up starting small businesses here and there on the side and whatever. So I wanted to explore that side of things. After a couple years of pre-med was when I really realized I couldn't fathom starting my career as a surgeon when I was like in my mid to late 30s. I think part of it was just the ADD within me, I guess. But I really was just like, I was itching, right? And so realized that, you know, at the end of sophomore year and decided to just do finance and entrepreneurship. And so after spending 20 years telling your entire all your friends and family that you're going to be a plastic surgeon and then mixing that all at once, you got to do something else, right? You got to do something else that's.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “In biology and had no ambition of going to Silicon Valley. But I was at college at Santa Clara University and then actually ended up transferring back to Tucson, Arizona and went to the U of A where I did finance and entrepreneurship as a double major and spent a couple of years doing pre-med as a minor.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Yeah, absolutely. So I think I actually have a bit of a unique path to venture. I think a lot of people kind of fall slightly more traditional path. And I was fortunate or lucky enough to kind of stumble into this world a little haphazardly. But so the story around my background was, I think, I guess to start from the beginning, I spent the majority of my life thinking I was going to be a plastic surgeon. So I grew up in Arizona where there's a lot of entrepreneurs and a lot of small business, but tech didn't really fully exist, right? I mean, Tucson, Arizona, where I'm from, has a lot of business, like I said, and my parents are small business owners and stuff like that. So I'd always been entrepreneurial, but never really got into tech until later in life. And so the story for me was a path through a few different phases. Started college in the Bay Area, so the irony is that when I was in the Bay Area, I was pre-med.”

    2015-08-03 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 059: How To Approach VCs with Arteen Arabshahi, VC @ Karlin Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source