YouSaid · the spoken record

Aydin Senkut

lines on the record
63
first
2022-02-07
most recent
2022-02-07
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. “In all honesty, none of my professional roles, nothing I've ever lived in my life prepared me for what was to come. And for good thing, right? I mean, I just kind of learned to never say it can't be done or it's impossible because every time we said, no way, we somehow figured out a way to do it or at least get close. So his favorite saying was, if I ask you to go to the moon, you might end up in Alaska. But if I ask you to go to a different planet in the galaxy, you're going to go to Mars. If you don't shoot far enough, you just don't know how far you can go. And a lot of our limits are mental, self-made, and we just don't realize that. But on the other hand, let me tell you that my second job at Google when I took on the first international sales role, everything that I did, I feel like all my experience of living in four continents and doing a lot of different disciplines were really, really helpful because I represented Google in 40 countries and I was always the first person to get parachuted.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “First of all, let me be very intellectually honest with you, I don't think anything that I learned or could have learned aggregately could not even like prepare me for what I encountered at Google. I think it was probably the most formative experience because we never did anything as it was thought or it was done heretofore. Like Larry was very much an original. He was a crazy thinker. He had a very simple philosophy which was I'm going to ask you to do insane things and they are insane by default because if they're not insane, you're going to basically revert to status quo. And you're going to come up with incremental ideas. And the only way to not revert to status quo and not come up with something incremental is that I'm going to ask you something so insane that you're going to have to come up with something brand new and insane to do it. And if you don't try, you can't do it. So you have no choice but to do it. I'd like to say, oh my God, my MBA prepared me so well and all of that.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “This is going to be full circle. So here I am interviewing at Google and everybody is like a PhD in computer science or computer programmer. I don't even have a 1% chance keeping up with them, but then I look around and they look at me. I'm the only person who speaks languages and not just one, but five languages. And at the time, Google is only available in English. I'm like, how can a guy from Istanbul ever have a chance to join Google? And it was that perfect time where they're like, we need Google to be in more languages other than English. And everybody in the company was monolingual or weren't really language people. And then here I come in and how can I have an impact? And they're like, well, we need somebody to help us launch Google in first 11 non-English languages. And I respected them for being computer geniuses. And they look at me and like,”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “People don't realize this because look, nobody in history, nobody likes about the losers or the companies that get extinguished, but a lot of companies like Netscape, TiVo, like all this digital recording, all these are SGI technologies. And it's so funny that then permeated to other companies like Nvidia, so many of these companies have Silicon Graphics heritage. And it was amazing because I work with very smart people. And the reason why I'm mentioning it is I was in this software group where the engineering manager that I work with is a product manager ended up going to Google as employee number nine. And he was one of the smartest friends that I had like I really respected him. If it wasn't for that, I'm not really sure Google would have gotten on my roadmap. And then as soon as that happened, I had a few other offers. But as soon as I had my first interview at Google, it was clear to me that it was an insane company. It was the biggest risk and it was probably the smartest people I've ever met in my life. So all I could think was whatever it takes, I want to be in this team. I want to work with these people.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Absolutely. Well, that's another really crazy story because when I was in business school, the company that proactively wanted to interview me was Green Giant. And I took one trip to Minneapolis, I think it was like negative 25. And I'm like, God, I love you guys. I cannot be in this weather. I love people from Minneapolis. I'm just not made for this kind of weather and I don't want to be managing frozen burgers. And then I realized Silicon Graphics was coming to campus. I somehow made my way to the interview list. And the only reason why I'm mentioning it is, again, my career could have been totally different. I didn't get lucky joins Google and the rest is history, but I had three years at Silicon Graphics, which I think was an equally impressive company with amazing people, just had no contingency plan, had a really great thing going and thought it's never going to change and just got killed in record time by Windows. And I had to see a lot of close friends and a lot of great peers get laid off, even though they were very smart, they were very capable people.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Sent me up for that. So the only reason why I'm saying that is I feel like I got a very great early chance to have a crazy move that then set me up on a separate path to have very interesting experiences only when I was like 22 years old. And then I think it really helped me be one of the youngest students in the NBA program at Wharton. And then that helped me like with my first foray into Silicon Valley. Those early days had such a huge impact for me. Also, when you live in a place like Morocco and look, I mean, this is 92, right? There's like no internet, no computers, no iPhone. It's not an easy place to live. I don't speak Arabic and my French was very elementary trying to survive on your own. You have no family, no friends. The environment was not very friendly, to say the least, but you go through an experience like that. And I think it just prepared me for a lot of things that came on.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “As a result of these languages and the cultural heritage and learning, I was able to get a job at a Swiss pharmaceutical firm because I was fluent in German, I was fluent in English, and because I learned French, they're like, look, we're looking for an expat executive. And the role is in Morocco. So if you don't speak Arabic or French, there's no way you can do it. And one of the things that I'm really proud of, so my first job out of college, my dream was to work in the US, but at the time, 92 wasn't a good time to be looking for a job in the US. But the Swiss company said, look, we have a job for you, but it's going to involve you relocating to Morocco. I was scared out of my wits, but I thought that that was an insane experience. And they're like, we're going to make you the youngest expat in the history of the firm. I mean, this firm is Roche. You know, they own Genentech. They did a lot of big deals. So everybody is probably familiar with them. And I interned for them while I was in college, which probably.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Turkey has this interesting situation where the best high schools were back from 100 years, like foreign high schools, very difficult to get in. And by default, if you do get in, you need to take an SAT-like exam. I was like, I think in the top 100 people out of 50,000 in my age group, you have to learn languages. That's the default. I went to a German high school with German teachers, German curriculum, and I learned English from German books. My wife still makes fun of me, my Canadian wife, that I have this crazy accent. And it's not just Turkish, all these other languages mix in. And so basically you become multilingual by the time you finish high school. And even in college, I remember taking French because I had this incident where I mispronounce the French were badly in high school and they made fun of me. So I was determined to learn French as well. And so the only reason I'm mentioning that is it's so funny, like how you don't realize how these things play an important role in your life.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I daydream all the time about being an executive and also traveling around the world. My dream was to be a business executive version of Marco Polo. I always wanted to go around the world, meet people and learn cultures.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Absolutely, absolutely. So the most interesting thing now that I look back, I always make this joke. There were only two countries in the world that had 100% inflation, I think, 25 years in a row. One is Turkey, one is Brazil. As a result, if you look at all the finance and banking people, there are a lot of like Turks and Brazilians because we can do this math from when we're eight years old. Every night my dad is like, are we going to put our money in German marks or whatever? And so that was really cool. The second thing that was really cool is both my parents went to American high school and American university and they were religious about not only reading, but we were very lucky that at that time, late 70s, early 80s, we used to get every issue of time and fortune and business week. And I used to read those magazines. I didn't have patience for books. And I looked at these CEOs and I'm like, oh my God, that looks so cool. I want to be like one of those people one day.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “My mom was in HR, so she was an HR executive and then started recruiting firm, and that was very active across all of Europe in Israel. And then my dad did something in textiles, which if you look at the industries at the time, banking and textiles were probably two of the most advanced industries, so he did something in textiles.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Miden, great to see you. Great to see you, Ted. Thank you for having me. Why don't we start and go all the way back to your family and background and where this entrepreneurship bug first came into play? I am the son of two entrepreneurs, so I feel like maybe I had no choice but to become an entrepreneur by lineage. Both my mom and dad started companies and I watched them do it. And I think it inspired me. It was really cool. And my dad, obviously, but more importantly, my mom, because growing up in Turkey and Istanbul, you know, you don't have a lot of women entrepreneurs that start think solo. And she was also one of the most. Kind of businesses did they run”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Story to share and something to prove. That said, this field moves quickly so as the disclaimer goes, past accessibility is not a guarantee of future capacity. My guest on the sixth episode of Venture is Eating the Investment World is Eiden Senkit, the founder and managing partner of Felicis Ventures, a two billion dollar early stage venture firm that invests in founders building iconic companies that transcend geographic and industry boundaries. Its success has placed Iden on the Four's Midas list for the past eight years. Our conversation covers Iden's early exposure to entrepreneurship and international business, experience as the first international product manager at Google, and transition into Angel Investing and founding Felisis. We discuss his investment philosophy, proactive sourcing, and doing whatever it takes to join the CAP table and support founders. We close with Eiden's perspective on competition in the venture capital industry.”

    2022-02-07 · Capital Allocators · Aydin Senkut – Tenacious Sourcing and Founder Support at Felicis, Venture is Eating the Investment World 6 (Capital Allocators, EP.234) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source