YouSaid · the spoken record

Barry Schuler

lines on the record: 26
first: 2017-07-05
most recent: 2017-07-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Well, the most recent one, we did two toward the end of the year. One was Unity, and the second was Giffee. And Giffey, I had to get them to say yes. They actually weren't raising money. And one of the ways we like to operate is being a little preemptive. And we met with the team, loved with the convinced them they ought to raise a war chest. And we're very excited about that company.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think, you know, we process so much signal all the time, and much of that signal is telling us in the form of various voices, you should do this. If you want to be successful, you have to start a company or whatever. Whereas there is that voice deep within you. It's generally the one telling you, don't do that, that's bad. But I think that it comes down to your passion. And what she was saying is follow your passion. You have to not suppress your passion. And because we are in a business that is built on passion and people following their passions, you really have to learn to let that come through and not let the people who tell you it can't be done become self-preemptive. I can't do that. I can't succeed at that. And you have to suppress that and allow your passion to take the day.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's funny, I've had the privilege of working with amazing people over time from Steve Jobs, Ted Turner, Bob Pittman. You learn from everybody, but I'd have to say the person who had the most influence on me was a college professor in an art studio class. And a time when I was really struggling with right brain versus left brain, she taught me in how to turn my brain off and listen to my instincts and my heart. And I think that is something I go back to probably as corny as it sounds every day.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I love reading, and I have to say my favorite book maybe of the decade and maybe of all time was Sapiens, a brief history of humankind. I don't know if you've read it yet. It's Bayuval Harari, and it's spectacular. Everybody should read it.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think they go hand in hand. You have to live and breathe your vision, and that's what makes an entrepreneur successful. And you only give up when the pulse of your company and your big idea stops and it's two hours later.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it's funny. I've gotten a little obsession with AI lately, and you hear a lot of people talking about all the jobs that'll be replaced by AI and AI will be making investment decisions. And I don't view that as a threat. When machines start trading with each other, the markets will disappear because we need the uncertainty of humans to make those markets work. I think most people who are in our world don't understand that in the big picture of financial services VC is a very nichy investment. It's tiny. It barely registers as an asset allocation. Yet it is such a vital part of the world economy because it's where the innovation cycle starts. I think the existential threat to VC is one that's always been around. Too much money searching for too few good deals yields.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My impression is it's a very hard business. You know, I thought running big companies and growing companies was hard. It is really tough to be an excellent investor. It's always a brain teaser. It's hard to know who's the next Snapchat. If you were an early investor in Odeo, you couldn't possibly have been a fortune teller to know that that would become Twitter. There's just a lot of twists and turns and a puzzler all the time. But that's what makes it fun.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Price. You know, there are bankers who will come in and they will do the book and pitch the company and get the whole thing going. But more times than not when you're aggressively trying to sell a company that may have had slower growth or is a little bit distressed, you don't have a great outcome. It's very hard to force an MA.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, ultimately, our job on boards is to support the CEO, not to run the company. And we can help them arrive at conclusion. The thing about M&A is it is really hard to sell companies. You know, there's an old adage. Companies are bought, not sold. And what that means is the best M&As happen generally when a company already has a relationship with a big company. They're doing business together. That big company sees value in owning them and they will pursue that company and pay a good price for it. When a company starts to be in decline or they've kind of topped out on their growth and a board sits around and says, well, I think we should sell this. You can say that all you want. It doesn't mean you're going to be able to find a good buyer. Generally, those exercises actually don't work out very well in terms of ending up getting a good.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, in the old days, the momentum of the growth period of a stock happened in the public markets. They're happening in the private market. So to expect someone to have a huge multiple And have a huge multiple. Again, that is going to be the rarity. That's going to be your Facebook story. That's going to be the once a decade few that that happens to. And then, you know, the last group in that bulger are companies that run out of the capital they've raised. They've not gotten the traction in the marketplace that they had hoped to. They still have value and they're still important. And I would expect you'll see that smart acquirers will take a look at those companies and they'll be able to buy them at a discount to their last round and that'll be that.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Billion dollar or more valuations that are growing, they have capital, but they're not necessarily getting public. And so that bulge is growing. And my view was that bulge is not going to explode, but that it's going to be more like a steady stream, a release of pressure that is going to release itself in a variety of ways. Some of those companies will go on and have successful IPOs without an adjustment in valuation. And that's because they are kicking ass. They're probably profitable already and they fit well into market comps. Another group of those companies will successfully get public, but they're going to have a price adjustment. There's just no two ways about it. They will not be able to get out and expect another round of multiple. The fact is, as a sidebar here, Harry, is that”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's nice to see that it has actually calmed down, but you saw this drum beat in the press bubble, bubble, bubble. Everyone wants to go to the lowest common denominator of intelligence, which is bad pattern recognition and all these prices, all these unicorns, this must be just like the dot-com bubble was when it's nothing like the dot-com bubble. You were probably quite young. For those of us who lived through it, I was four. Exactly. You have to read the history. We are the history. And, you know, it wasn't the issue of there's a whole bunch of retail buyers. You had professional investors creating these valuations. Now, the bulge, what I affectionately call the bulge is, you know, you've got 200, 200 plus companies with.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Us, you know, the mighty Time Warner. And so there's a tendency to feel like there are winners and losers, a body of employees. We all know that the Silicon Valley culture, the startup culture is almost like a religion. And all of a sudden now you're asking people to change religions. And the people factor becomes very, very difficult to manage. Some companies do it very well, but they're in the minority.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thing about companies who are acquirers and those who are acquired, you know, some companies start an entrepreneur has an idea and they actually view themselves as I'm creating a feature of YouTube or Google or whatever and I want to build this up and get them to buy us. That's a hard strategy to execute. In general, big companies buy smaller companies for a few reasons. One is they want the talent. Two, they have technology that they either want or they feel threatened by. And so they seek to buy it. In almost every case, the cultural part of M&A can play out sort of like a conquest. You know, I live through what's considered to be the worst M&A deal in history, the AOL acquisition of Time Warner. And a lot of that was the culture of Time Warner is who the heck are these bits and bytes guys buying?”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, mostly that company. And there needs to be a rationalization, and the markets will do it. I think it has been happening. I don't think people understand when they talk about the lack of interest, the coolness of the IPO markets to the tech sector. It's because those investors are looking at those very, very high valuations and saying, well, I don't understand how I'm ever going to make any money on this deal because those valuations don't match up any multiple, any comparable in the public markets. So you'll see, I think, flat and down IPO rounds, maybe up to 50% of the companies that are out there. It's okay. Solar City is a good example of an IPO we had where it was a flat to down IPO round. Everyone ended up putting money in to get that company public and they did sensationally. So it's less.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Institutional investors that do seed capital, and then once those companies graduate to their institutional rounds, they've been a bit more de-risked and they're looking for higher valuations. And then you roll up through all the rounds and you see very pricey companies. Now, you know, people may listen to this and say, well, he's very self-serving. And the point is not so much. Companies being overvalued hurts everybody involved.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But we need to see not just five or ten companies getting public, we need to get back to 100, 200 a year, and they need to be healthy IPOs. I think the vision was, unlike the dot-com era, where you saw very high risk companies being exposed to the public markets and the collapse that created, the whole philosophy of venture growth was keep them private, grow them well, have solid, stable businesses, and then get public and they should perform better at public in the public markets. So I think we declare victory. Now, what it's going to take when that starts to happen, but I think what it's going to take is some meeting of the minds on pricing. I think, you know, companies are being overpriced right from the very beginning. I think we've seen a domino effect with the angel, with the non-invest.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's going to happen is do we see what we would consider to be more traditionally functional public market when it comes to these stocks? At some point, you know, look, the deals that we're involved with at DFJ growth are bigger than the classic IPOs of the late 90s or the early aughts. Oftentimes we're leading rounds that may be a hundred million dollar raises or more. You know, the classic IPO in the old days was 50 raising 50 million. So these companies are getting quite a bit of capital, but they can't stay private for a variety of reasons. I mean, investors need to get their exits and their return, their advantages to being a public company when you're ready. So we need to see them get out. Some of them, of course, will be acquired, which is a fine outcome as well. Generally, that's by public companies. And it's another way, you know, that you exit public.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talib engineered the IPOs. So basically when a company It's a balancing act between a price that will sell and again the calculus by the buyer Much they believe they'll be able to make, where's their multiple in the deal, how much money will come back to the company, in other words, how much they raise if they have to lower the price to attract the investors, they're not going to raise that much money. That will be You That Therefore, the trading is brisk, and you see the pop in the first day or two. If you're overvalued and they really kind of force the issue out, you can see probably They went out, overpriced, problems in the market. Performing well before they straightened it out. It's really hard for. Well, to recover. So, ideally, you The error is on behalf of”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a small market, and they look at a company that may have undermined in revenue and a valuation of maybe $2 billion, and they go, where's my money? How do I take this out and make my 2x over the next year or two? And so there's been a bit of a, I would call it a standoff between companies coming to rationality around their valuations and the market's willingness to take them out. Now, we've seen a couple of IPOs this year and we think they're performing reasonably well and hopefully the standoff will get broken and we'll see a vibrant.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's start with valuation. What we see is that there's been a lot of valuation inflation, that whole term unicorn, the U-word, popped up for these companies that are valued at billion or billions. And so when these companies come to the public markets, and it's important to note, at least in the US public markets, the amount of institutional investors who like to buy first day tech stocks has become very small. There's a handful of banks that take them out. We know who they all are. And there's about 70 instances.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building their products and team get out there, ramp their revenue to 100 million and beyond, and then go public as a much more stable, de-risked company. That experiment has not played out yet. We're just at the phase where I like to say the senior class is arriving. And really for the past couple of years, we've seen a cool reception from the public markets to the senior class and largely because there's been a mismatch between the things that the private markets, the VCs have been doing and what the public markets are interested in.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We're in the midst of an experiment that hasn't played out yet. We have not seen the final act. I do think that what growth set out to do, which was to keep companies private, give them the opportunity to scale as a private company without the impact of the market and what it does to your focus and your reporting. Let CEOs”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had the vineyard already, and those conversations led to a bigger conversation to start a new fund focusing on growth. This is back in 2005 where we saw an inefficiency in the marketplace. We felt companies were going to stay private longer. We thought they had to because of the markets. We saw that. Capital to help these companies grow to more scale. And that's how the first DFJ growth was born. And it's been a really fun time for the last 10 years to watch that category really explode as part of the VC ecosystem.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I did have an amazing ride as an entrepreneur and being part of the AOL Golden Age. And when I left in 2003, I did a little bit of, after I detoxed and spent some time getting my head back together, I started to do a little bit of angel investing, found that to be difficult and frustrating. It wasn't what I was doing. And then I got a call from John Fisher, who is the F in DFJ, and actually was on my board, invested in my company when they were little teeny fund back in the early 90s, invested in the company that I sold to AOL. And he said, so you're not going to sit around and do pottery and make wine, are you?”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back and I just want to congratulate you for very quickly building such a distinguished brand from talking to a bunch of boring VCs.”
2017-07-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How To Get Back To 200 Tech IPOs Per Year, Why We Are In A 'Bulge" Not A Bubble & The Impending Flat & Down Rounds To Come with Barry Schuler, Partner @ DFJ Growth · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source