YouSaid · the spoken record

Avlok Kohli

lines on the record
37
first
2020-12-21
most recent
2020-12-21
sittings or episodes
1
sources
podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

  1. “Oh, that's easy. Definitely settle. It's at settle.co. Alec, the founder, was the head of credit at a firm, and he and his founding team built a betterbill.com and it found extreme product market fit. E-commerce companies instantly pay for their inventory without hitting their cash flow. Love the founder, love the company. I think they're going to be great.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Takeaway the importance of building a product that delivers extreme value to customers and constantly, constantly thinking about that. Yeah, that's the biggest takeaway.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Meditations, I have a tendency to get consumed by work, which takes me out of the present, and the book taught me a few concepts and frameworks to stay in the present.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's very similar to how Apple works when you own the full stack. You can do a lot more because you can modify different parts of the stack, create something new. And so that's how we think of ourselves. And so today our stack includes the LPs, the fund managers, and all of the services needed. And tomorrow we're actually going to add startups to that as well.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “The way to think about angelists is we're going to be the largest financial platform inventure. And today our customers are fund managers and LPs who invest in funds. And tomorrow we're also going to be including the startups because what's happening is we're essentially the financial platform that's allowing LPs to invest into funds and then funds invest into companies and we can actually provide all of the different products and services needed for LPs and fund managers and startups for startups ultimately to get all of the financing they need to grow. And so that's how we view our role in the ecosystem. It's not going to just end at fund managers and LPs. It's also going to include startup. The only reason we're in the fund administration business is because we believe that we needed to own the full stack. When you own the full stack, you can actually do things like rolling funds. Rolling funds would not be possible if we'd outsourced that part of the stack to someone else.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Absolutely. And we're actually seeing a couple of funds scale pretty quickly. And we expect that we're going to see something like that in the next couple of years. And there really is no limit to the amount of capital that you can close into a rolling fund. And really, it's going to come down to question of what the fund manager's strategy is. So we do see some rolling funds wanting to cap the amount of capital that they are collecting per quarter because they want to participate in venture rounds. They don't want to lead venture rounds because when you participate, you're playing a positive sum game. When you lead, you're playing a zero-sum game. So it's really a question of what is the fund manager's strategy. But there really is no limit to how large a rolling fund can be. And we're actually seeing some rolling fund scale extremely quickly and we do expect us to have the equivalent of a billion dollar fund very, very soon under a rolling fund structure.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Out to the LPs, but that's really the best way to think about it your minimum term is really the term for which your capital is going to be pulled out of and as distributions come in you can pull from those.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah. So the way to think about it is as an LP, when you go to invest in a rolling fund, think of it as you have your own fund that's there that the GP or the fund manager is just pulling from to make the investments. And your fund, if you're investing for a year, let's say or two years, think of it as it's your pool of capital that is being invested from for the one year or the two years and that now is any distributions are coming in. There's a liquidity event from a startup. It is coming into that pool of capital. And then based on whatever the terms are, either get your distribution from that pool of capital that's calculated across the investments made in that pool of capital for that time. And so that's the best way to think about it is each LP has their own fund that the fund manager is pulling from. Now, we think that we can do a much better job explaining how this works for LPs, and we're actually going to be launching a section on our website explaining exactly how distributions work for LPs and how to think about the minimum term and when the capital will come and flow back.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “LPs into the fund, and their pitch is if you want exposure to my investments, here is the vehicle through which I'm going to be investing into companies and it's going to be a rolling fund.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Short answer is yes. We're already starting to see this, and it really is a question of which institutions are actively investing in venture and which ones sporadically invest in venture. So the ones that actively invest in venture, we'll already see them committing to rolling funds. And that's already happening. The ones that aren't investing as much into venture into traditional funds, for them, it's a new structure, and for them, they will go through the normal diligence process, which sometimes can take months to a year in order to go through that process. We are seeing institutions investing in rolling funds, and the less the institution invests in venture overall, the more time it takes them to understand the new structure. And we're actually working with a lot of them right now in order to walk them through the structure itself. But we are seeing institutions already invest in rolling funds because ultimately the leverage comes from the GP, right? The GP is raising a rolling fund, and they're the ones bringing in the”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “This all together. You don't need to go through closed door networks anymore. You can just tweet it out, and your network actually comes to you. And so those are the characteristics that are driving more and more people to rolling funds versus traditional funds. The other frame that actually is useful is rolling funds are what a venture fund would have just looked like in an age of software. When traditional funds were built, they were built in an age when the assumption was people would be doing all of the back office accounting, legal, and all of that. Well, in an age of software where you have everything automated, you can actually add a lot more bells and whistles to a venture fund structure. And that's really what a rolling fund is. You can actually create a traditional fund structure out of a rolling fund by adding constraints and parameters, and you can simulate a traditional fund. But most people choose not to do that. They love the flexibility of it.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “In the game, and understand the companies they're investing in, understand how they think, and then they can go to increase their investment. And we actually see this all the time. We've seen LPs double their investment after a couple of quarters because they're like, wow, this fund manager is great. They're investing in companies that are doing extremely well. I want to give them more of my capital. So it's very flexible. It flexes up very, very nicely. The other big piece, of course, is the 506C general solicitation nature of it, where with one tweet, you can have the entire network come to you. I was actually just talking to a rolling fund manager the other day who'd actually tweeted out that, hey, they're looking to meet more LPs for the rolling fund and they had the founder CEO of a very large company reach out to them through a DM on Twitter. He wouldn't even figure to even reach out to this person. And even if you wanted to go reach out to this person, you have to then sit down, look at your network, maybe look at your LinkedIn and go, who do I know here, here, here. What we've done is compress.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Find another LP to invest that LP that comes in in that second quarter doesn't get exposure to any of the investments in that first quarter, which is different than a traditional fund. I'm actually an LP in many traditional funds where they've made a bunch of investments and they're still raising, portfolio has been marked up. And I'm like, hey, what's going on? Like the new LPs actually have an information advantage and they're able to invest into a better deal. With a rolling fund, we've taken care of all of that. Also, what we're seeing with the rolling fund is an LP can come in and really get to know the manager. They don't need to commit for the full year or the two years if they don't want to. They can start with one quarter, understand the manager, get to build a relationship, and then they can increase their commitment. So just like you can accept new LPs into a rolling fund at any time, you can also accept an increasing amount of capital from your existing LPs. And for the LP, they can actually get to know the fund manager over time through real skin.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “When most LPs invest in rolling funds, they actually do invest in for a minimum of a year or two years. And the framing of the capital is coming in every quarter and it being similar to a capital call is correct. Capital does come in every single quarter and then the rolling fund manager can go invest that in that quarter. And the carry itself is actually calculated across your minimum term. So if you commit it for a year, it's calculated across a year. If you committed for two years, it's calculated across two years. Now, the piece that actually makes a rolling fund different than a traditional fund is that the rolling fund can continue to accept new capital and it can continue to accept new capital from new LPs while being fair to all of your prior LPs. So if you start off in Q1, let's say I'm doing rolling fund and I come to you and I say, hey, would you love to invest? And you're like, great, yes, you invest for a year. Now I invest after the first quarter, I roll into the second and I go.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “What I look to do is I look to go earlier rather than later. I don't have as much of a, I can't really flex at the later stages because I'm not part of a large firm. I'm a solo capitalist. I invest through my rolling fund. But what I can do and where I can be extremely helpful is actually even earlier when a founder is just starting to think of an idea and they're just starting to think about putting together a team. And that's where I play. So that's what we're actually seeing investors do when they actually hit competition is they just change what stage they end up playing at.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, it's a great question. One, it's amazing for founders, right? Having more VCs to choose from and select from is just great for founders. Now for VCs, what happens you now have to go earlier? And if you are investing at seed, you'd want to find a way to invest at preseed. And you want to find ways to meet founders when they're much earlier in their process. So the way it's going to impact competition is that anyone that used to play at seed but really is a series A firm is going to get squeezed upwards because what's happening now, rolling funds is actually taking the entire early stage market and solar capitalists is taking the entire early stage market would preseed and seed rounds. And so with respect to competition, it's really going to come down to do you go earlier or do you go later? Where as a fund are you really going to have your strength and you want to go play to your strength? And so I can give you an example with me personally.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “We said about kind of squeezed prorotas earlier. We're also seeing squeezes on initial checks just because the competition in some cases because of new rolling fund managers that have been enabled through the rolling funds program, but it just squeezes to exercises for a lot of us.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “World to start companies. And I believe we're in the early innings of a much larger Cambrian explosion of startups. And to match all of this new supply and by supply I mean all of these great founders, starting companies, we need more VCs in the market, not less. And so while we do see prices go up, the overall outcome is also much larger than people expected. And we're also seeing a flood of new founders enter the market. And so that's what we see at Angelist in terms of what's happening at the very early stages across the hundreds and hundreds of funds that we see. We're just seeing huge explosion of founders starting companies across the world. And we need to match that with more VCs entering the ecosystem, not less.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Rolling funds element, you know, it does change the ecosystem fundamentally. When we Impact is the early stage. One question well there's quite a few here actually packed in so I'll take them on by one. I'm concerned about how it impacts pricing with the explosion of capital that it brings in some cases no offense undisciplined mindsets around pricing like how do you think it impacts pricing? Yeah, it's a great question. And this is a story I've actually heard every single year I've been in tech. There are too many startup or too many funds, not enough startup. Yet every single year the rate of great companies has actually increased. And I really think there are two major things that people have underestimated, myself included. Software markets are much larger than anyone thought. The billion dollar companies are now ten billion dollar companies. And so what that means is the entry valuations can actually be much higher than before. And the other piece that's happening is at Silicon Valley is actually being uploaded into the cloud. And this means that more founders are now inspired across the world.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “They made the decision to invest, it looked risky. Of course, it's easy to say looking back, you want to write a larger check. But in that moment, it looks extremely risky. And it's interesting because I'm actually going through this right now. I'd written a check into a company at the seed stage and it is going IPO in Q1 of next year. And I'm sitting there and I'm like, I should have written a larger check. That's what I'm saying to myself. And I'm like, wait a second, at that moment in time, with that information, I thought the founder was great, but it was still risky. So it's interesting that when people look at it, you know, going backwards, the biggest lesson is I should have written a larger check, but it's so hard to predict what companies are actually going to do really, really well at precede and see. There are two sayings that are most common, I think, about very, very often is like in your winners, you will always have wanted that larger check. And then the other one is, you know, anyone that invests past your stage, they're growth investors. And anyone that invests before you, total gamblers, what are they doing? I love those too.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Would say if you have the choice and that's part of your strategy, I do believe that having a certain amount of ownership is important, but really it's a function of what is your strategy as a fund manager. I've seen folks write 25K checks, you know, return many, many times their fund because the company just does really, really well and I've seen folks look for certain ownership targets and then not do as well because in a way it also becomes adverse selection, right? Can you get into the best companies? Can you have the deal flow and the access into the best companies at the right time and put enough of a slug of capital and get enough of an ownership that those companies are really going to work? And that ends up becoming very, very hard to predict. And you actually see this in most investors who've had a big company in their portfolio. It's funny because you'll see them reflect on it. It's like people ask, what's your biggest lesson that you've learned? I should have written a larger check into that company. Well, if you actually go all the way back and you think about that moment where”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “From a personal preference, absolutely, in terms of if you're the first check and you have a certain ownership target and that's how you've built your fund and that's your strategy for the fund, absolutely. It's not right for a lot of other fund managers who actually just want to participate and they want to be a small part of a round, but if you're looking to take a larger ownership in a company on the first check, then absolutely. I actually have that dual strategy myself. I have a certain portion of my portfolio where I'll actually look for a certain number of percentage of ownership. And then I have another part of my portfolio where I'm okay participating in around and just being a small owner in that company. And really it's a function of how far along progress as a company and progress in terms of fundraising. It's not going to be practical for me to participate in a company that's already raised one or two rounds. Maybe it's like a precede and then a seed and I'm coming and participating for a small check. It's going to be much harder to hit that ownership target.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Strategy on purpose. They actually exactly want to focus on just the first checks. And then for pro rata, they can go ahead and have a opportunity fund or they can do it in an SPV. And so there isn't a one size fits all. And really, it's a question of what is right for you in terms of your investing strategy. And on the topic of pro rata, the one thing that I've observed, and this is more in my time at Angelist, is you can create a spreadsheet and this beautiful model of how pro rata and reserves and everything's going to work and luck this is, you know, this is what's going to make the fun. But in reality, when you really are trying to invest your pro rata into the companies that are becoming really great, the assumption that it is going to be available for you is false. I have been part of several rounds where I've seen how pro rata.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Do you think everyone should be a fund manager? I guess yeah, it's a great question. And some of this is actually taught over time. So when you're just investing and you just start off investing and you're investing smaller amounts, you don't really need to understand all of that right away. Meaning when you start off on day one, you don't fully need to have this idea of how do you actually construct the full portfolio. It's something that you actually learn very, very quickly as you start writing check one, check two, check three. And so part of this is just a learning curve that all investors have actually had to go through and they can actually adapt very, very quickly. The other piece is we as angelists, we are actually starting to educate rolling fund managers and some of them are established VCs and some of them are new to the industry and we're actually going through and educating them about how to think about portfolio construction, how to think about reserves, whether reserves is even the right strategy for you or not. We have some fund managers, some established fund managers actually who don't have reserve.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Divisive question, and it's Of venture investors that result from To them, and I speak about portfolio construction, reserve allocation, the benefits of diversification. But traditionally, Institutionally minded topics when it comes to kind of portfolio construction and Have it and don't have that Extent”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “And so this idea that I truly believe, an angelist truly believes, is that when you have more VCs in the ecosystem, you actually do get more innovation, which I know is against what most VCs think, but we're actually seeing it play out in our data that when you have more people writing checks, you actually end up getting more founders starting companies, especially founder-led and operate-led VCs. Anecdotally, I can definitely say that as I've increased increasing my check sizes, I've started to look at all my founder friends or people who could be founders and start working with them on new ideas and how they can go start something new. And so this idea of adding more VCs, which leads to more innovation, we see and we truly believe to be true.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Yeah, so printing presses enable knowledge to flow to the people. And before the printing press, people would seek knowledge through these closed networks. Now, with a book, anyone can be educated. Similarly, rolling funds enable capital to flow to more VCs who fund the tech innovation. And before rolling funds, managers would have to raise capital through closed networks. Now all you need is a tweet and a fund and the network just comes to you. And really, rolling funds are high resolution fundraising for VCs. With one tap, you can get an institutional grade venture fund. And how this leads to even more innovation is you get more VCs entering the industry because they don't need to go through all of these closed networks anymore. They can raise capital very, very quickly, start investing right away. And what that means is founders actually have more VCs that can raise from and their first check can come in much, much faster versus having to wait to go through a full process.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “That their opinion and perspectives were considered, and that with all of that, the right decision is made. It doesn't need to be, the right decision is a decision they agree with. It's just their opinions and perspectives just should be considered as we make the decision.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Yeah, the way I would think about it is what is the conviction level of the decision? Like how, if you have strong conviction on a certain view as a leader of where the world is going and you believe you've already solicited everyone's opinions, you've taken everyone's opinion into account and you still have landed on a particular particular view of the world or direction that goes against what most people think, that's okay. The important piece is that you are soliciting everyone's opinion so you're understanding all the different blind spots. And that is something that I actually take very seriously in my role is making sure I understand all of the blind spots. In fact, I consistently ask people to proactively let me know when I'm not seeing something because it's their job to let me know and provide, hey, look, you need to consider this or this or this. Now, after all of that has been considered and I still come down to a decision that most people disagree with, that's okay because what people really want to feel is that they've been heard.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Disagree and commit. And so that for me was a very pivotal moment in watching him lead square through a time where it wasn't quite that square was going through a tough time, but through a time where people were discontent about a decision that he was making to go lead another company. And that was really fascinating to watch how firm he was in his thinking and his principles and he stood his ground and he still did it and of course the rest is history. He's done an amazing job running both companies and Square is just a monster of a company of course as we can see you know the resiliency square had during the pandemic where half of their entire business actually arguably more was directly linked to small businesses being affected but then the way Ashap came about and became such a great hedge on the rest of the business it's just been fascinating to watch that would be my favorite Jack Dorsey story”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “God, there are many. The one that definitely stands out is when Jack took on the dual roles as CEO of Twitter and Square. And I was at Square when this happened, and for months there was discontent. People were worried about all sorts of silly things, like Squares Stock Bryce being linked to Twitter stock price. Remember one all hands where someone actually posted the Twitter stock price, Square Stock Price, and like, look, it's all linked. And, you know, definitely understandable why people would be discontent. And what stuck with me was Jack explaining the thought process and how we came about making that decision. And he was very understanding, yet firm. And my favorite line from him was, look, we don't always need to agree and not that's okay. And that really, really reaffirmed for me this idea that there will be many moments in a company where you're as a leader, you will be an island, and you will need to make a decision that you think is best, and you will expect your team to”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Your team be customers of your own product because when your team are customers of their own product, guess what? They don't need to talk to multiple people to figure out what people want. They can just go through all of the iterations in their mind and they can figure out all the pitfalls and really understand are they building something of value. And that's all that matters at the end of the day. You need to build something of value. The whole goal of a tech company is to consistently put out great products that your customers love. If you're not doing that, you're not a tech company. And so that has been something I've carried with me from Square Days as well as just watching the great companies execute really putting the customer first and really enabling their team and their employees to always put the customer first.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Yeah, the simplest thing you can do is always write as if you're building for a customer. And what I mean by that is we're backwards from what the customer really needs and what they want. And the best thing you can do is dog food the product as a customer. So the closer you can get to what a customer experiences day in and day out, the more visceral you understanding you would have, you're actually going to have about the customer. And different companies do different things. Amazon, of course, writes their product memos as PR releases where they work backwards from what the customer is going to want. And at Square, we used to have a framework called Jobs to be done framework that applied across all planning exercises, and that used to work extremely well. And so you have to find these different types of frameworks that you can apply inside the company that you institutionalize that the team can actually adopt and carry with them. Now, the best thing though is to actually have you.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Yeah, I would say the biggest learning was always keeping the customer in mind. And we did this across everything we did. And I mean everything, annual reporting to the public markets, all hands, planning sessions, the customer was always front and center. And it's too easy to get caught up in internal politics. And most people forget that a company ultimately is just a team of people that come together to serve their customers. It's nothing more, nothing less. And I would say that square across all of its businesses did an amazing job at emphasizing that again and again and again. And you also see it in the way that Jack talks about the customers of Square. So that really left an impression on me.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Have been busy since. We immediately spent out the venture business from Angelus Holdings and got to work. And in the first year as an independent company, launched several new products and of course the most popular of them all is a rolling funds.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Company Fastbyte, which was bought by Square in 2015. And I was there pre-IPO for two and a half years. And that experience really left a strong impression on me and a lot of the lessons I learned there I carry with me to this day. I wrapped up the acquisition of my last company January of 2019 and didn't join the acquiring company this time around and really took somewhat of a sabbatical. I've been operating pretty intensely for 10 years. And during that time, during the sabbatical in the Valle who'd been an investor in a bunch of my prior companies, asked me to consider stepping in as CEO to scale the venture business at Angelus. I was happily fun employed and never really saw myself working in the venture space. I'd start Angel investing, but I wasn't really steeped into venture and didn't really know much about it. But after a few months of digging into the business with Naval, I was hooked. Like Square, it had the characteristics of a large financial platform, and I officially accepted on July 14th, 2019, and I started the next day.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Yeah, so my journey into Startups was predictable, but into venture it wasn't. I grew up in different parts of the world. My early childhood was spent in the Middle East and India and high school and university was spent in Canada. I'm Indian by background and so the usual influences were doctor or engineer, but I get squeamish about blood, so engineering was an easy choice. I studied software engineering at the University of Waterloo and then moved to San Francisco on a whim in 2008. Unfortunately, I got here at the height of the financial crisis. I still remember Sequoia's infamous memo RIP Good Times, but been quite register for me at the time. I spent the first few years working across different companies as an engineer. Most of these companies achieved some level of success. One was bought by Stubhub, another is actually the world's largest doctors network doximity. It's doing really well. And then between 2011 and 2019, I started and sold multiple companies. The most notable one was an acquisition of a food delivery.”

    2020-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source