YouSaid · the spoken record

Becki DeGraw

lines on the record: 25
first: 2025-08-28
most recent: 2025-08-28
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

“Go ahead, WSGR.com. And all of these episodes of startup basics. All right, this weekend startups.com slash basics. Thanks for listening and more from Becky to come.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So MA finds a way. It's just, you know, we figure out what the asset here is, but it does feel like maybe that's calmed down, chest pieces have, you know, moved around. But man, such an crazy time. And every time something weird happens, your attorneys are going to see a lot more than you do. And they're going to have a lot more experience. So that's why Becky's my attorney. And she's awesome. Thanks to her team at Wilson Cincinnati. As far as I'm concerned, best in the business.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, there's a very interesting thing that happens, I think, in Jurassic Park. He said, nature finds a way. I think it was the quote or something like that, where Know for our industry's not allowed to buy the companies, well, what is a company at its score? It's the people and the IP and there's a corporate structure, so life finds a way. That was the quote. Life finds a way.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He's like, I would get some things like this where people do want a key person, but this is an interesting one. It's a protective provision that is essentially trying to accomplish the same thing. Hey, you got us to invest. You lobbied us to invest at this sky-high valuation. We're doing it because of you. Is it reasonable that if you leave the company, we can get our money back somehow, or maybe the unused portion of the money or have the option to sell back shares before as the first money out? Because that's the key. You can't have non-competes in California, but people could have contractual rights to their shares in a company. Am I correct in understanding that?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then I had his coffee. He was like, What? I'm like, it's once a year. I just parachute. I mean, sometimes I do a second jump, you know, and then he's like, you're joking, right? I'm like, totally joking.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have this equivalent in other industries of the key person, used to be called Key Man. It's key person now. And the key person insurance was literal insurance if something happens to that person, God forbid, when I had to get K-Man insurance back in the day. They were like, do you scuba dive, fly in helicopters? And do you go to Burning Man? And I'm like, Well, I go to Burning Man, but I parachute in. Is that okay?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Four year dealing with their signing bonus. Was an interesting moment of time. These moments in time for talent wars, what did you think of that when you saw talent going for tens of millions, hundred billion dollar packages reportedly, or more, or these aquires where you leave the company behind, but we're taking the management and we're giving them a billion dollars in consideration, those kind of were weird too, yeah?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is there an upper bound where you think it kind of on a dollar basis that triggers regulators? Obviously, if it's in the same space, if it's DoorDash buying Uber buying DoorDash or DoorDash buying Lyft, you would say, okay, these things are kind of similar. Maybe that's good. Maybe that's bad. But is there a dollar amount where it seems people are like, it seems like the low single digit billions people seem willing to try and they seem to get through so.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Google's doing here is that Google's like, hey, you know, we should at least try because like, what is the stock buyback going to do? They need to make some bold bets and ideas. And this is a way to catch up or to find an edge. I really think also an IAC like company. And I don't know if you've seen this, but some of these SaaS companies, 10 million in revenue, 25 million in revenue, they become interesting to private equity firms who look at them and say, hmm, survey monkey, Zendesk when private, you know. I think some of them look at it and go, there's an opportunity here to take this private or quietly retool it, put it with some other assets. Are you seeing that kind of M&A occur and the take privates? And what does that tell you about the market?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's a real opportunity here for somebody to stand up to this machine that is blocking these M&A and say, you know, we're just going to go for it. We're going to buy five companies and we're going to try to get five through. And you may block two, but we're going to try to get three through. I think that's maybe what...”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A billion dollars for Adobe, right? They had a billion dollar breakup fee buying Figma, and then Figma comes out and is worth $50, $60, $70 billion. And Adobe got a penalty of a billion dollars because somebody in the EU, I think it was the UK, was the one who was actually the blocker there, said we can't have this happen. I was just wondering, you have offices, I guess, in Europe and the regulators there. They seem to have a finer sift that they're putting these deals through, no?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big companies like the Mac 7, I think, man, both administrations, the last one were super anti. This administration feels half anti, like just on this censorship space. But this is where politics actually matters when rubber hits the road for our community is LenaCon was blocking everything. And now I think they kind of have spooked the Mac 7. You don't see Amazon trying something big. Apple never did. Google used to. I'm just not seeing those big swings, but we did see DoorDash by two companies in Europe. We saw Uber by three companies make a couple of investments in startups. OpenAI bought two companies. Stripes bought a couple of companies. So maybe is my theory crazy that the mid-market might be where we'll see these single and doubles now?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hey, can we do a portfolio review? I want to know about these three companies and those three companies are typically the ones that are in disaster. And I tell my founders, you didn't break out, our reserve capitalists for the top 5% of performers if you were my LP, would you fund your company now or do you have to get new? You have to sell this story to a new set of investors. And that's where founders, I think, can have some sympathy and empathy for their venture partners and then venture partners certainly have a lot of empathy for their LPs. But this, I guess, this whiz acquisition. Canva is going to go out at some point, some secondary happening, you know, with the classics like the stripes and the SpaceX. But I feel like we might go into a renaissance of M&A by the mid-market.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You wonder, hey, why is it my VC participating in this round? They've got this billion dollars under management. Why would they give me another 10 million? Well, if you peel back the onion, you look at it, it used to be that LPs were like, hey, things are going great. I don't need to know the details. Let's have lunch, you know, whatever. Let me know when you launched your growth fund. Let me know when you launch your crypto fund. Remember those days?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Haven't had the WhatsApp. We haven't had the Instagram, the YouTube, all of these, you know, in the old days, a billion dollar, $10 billion acquisition, $20 billion was a big deal. That's a BFD. It's a big fricking deal because all of that rains down on the LPs who then, they're confidence in what they're doing and backing VCs and funds increases. So, hey, they'll take their full allocation in the next fund or they'll take double their allocation in the front or they'll add a fund to their portfolio of fund managers. What I saw when I went out to raise fund for my first three funds, I raised like, okay, this is easy. I felt like some very lucky early young NBA player who won a championship early. And then it's like, oh, I only existed during an up market. Now I actually have to do real work. I have to really explain this. And that's the level of pressure the VCs are under.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I now understand it innately. I understand it conceptually. Now I understand, I feel it in my bones, which is I'm good on fun one. I'm halfway there on fun two. Fun three, I got a lot of work to do. Fun four, we're still deploying. And the psychology of the VC side is so perplexing to founders, but yet so obvious if you're on this side of the table that you have a portfolio approach and that's distinctly different than a founder.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With the existing shares. If you came to me with that company, I'm not. A panic over the result anymore. And this is something I didn't actually, what's the word when you manifest something or you understand it innately?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Basically, you're done with the company. You have some modest idiot insurance that if they thread the needle, you might get half your money back or your money back. And this is where people who don't participate in a pay-to-play are essentially done with the company. They've written it off. They've written it off to a zero. And what complicates this is sometimes the fund you're in. And this is where understanding where you sit and where your fund sits, the performance of that fund sits with that investor. If you were in our first fund, which was 5x on paper, if you didn't sell your Robin Hood, it would be like an 8, 9, 10X fund. Although, you know, we distributed at 15. And I told people, don't sell. I never sold the share of myself personally and it's at 110. But interestingly with that fund, I now look at it differently now that it's in the black and we are now, okay, we're just trying to get to that, you know, four, five, six X if we can.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Zero to one. Wow. That is punitive. So it basically means. Hey, if you owned 10% of the company in that situation, you're going to own just a fraction of 1% now. Or something exactly correct. So you're now”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pay to play mechanism is hey, we had five angel investors, two seed funds, and two venture funds. You go to the nine people, you say, you own this percentage each, and let's say it's 10% on average each of these 10 players. We're going to raise 2 million. You're each on the hook for 200,000. Or if you don't participate, here's the medicine. What is the medicine in that sort of situation? Or what's the range? Or is there a standard medicine that they get asked to take? Okay, you owned 10%. You refuse to participate in this 2 million range. You won't even put 200K in. Therefore, your 10% is now worth what?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People gorged a bit, and now they've got to take the medicine, they've got to go on a diet. They got to slim down and trim down. And the structure, let's make a composite here of this story. Okay, we got this company. It's called Future AI. I hope that's not the name of an actual company, but Future AI, you know, it's going to change the world. And Future AI.Tech now has this kind of structure and they say, well, we need more money. We can't get that valuation. So our attorneys advised us to do a pay for play. Now they've got to go to all the existing investors and break this news to them. How do you advise them on how to do that and how to do it in a way that results in a good outcome for everybody or the best outcome possible in a difficult situation?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Times revenue, and maybe the market says your company's worth 30 or 20 times revenue, or maybe it's worth 10 times revenue because you're slow growth.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. And those companies had set records for their valuations. Many would argue they were given a little too much credit for work not yet accomplished. So if you're saying, hey, this company did 10 million this year. We project it's going to do 30 next year and 120 the year after. And the company goes from 10 to 15 to back down to 12 and then, you know, maybe has an up year now to 14. VCs are going to look at that company much differently. And then you have a bunch of legal terms. And these are protective provisions. ways for the last investors to make sure, hey, if I'm going to invest at a billion dollars and you really want that valuation a hundred times your top line revenue, I'll give it to you to win the deal, but there needs to be some structure. Let's talk about what the VCs did right there in creating the structure, but what that causes to happen in a boardroom where in the scenario I'm talking about, you got 100 times revenue, but you doubled revenue over four years and you had a hard time getting there. Okay, now you're at 50%.”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did the funds get so huge? I guess is question one when we look back at that moment in time. I have a lot of areas. I'm sure you have some facts. And then how does that change the game on the field today?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Week in startups.com basic, you can see Becky and I are doing this now for gosh, five years or so. Let's talk about the market because it's always good when you talk to your service providers and your partners, they see it across many clients and then there are many different divisions. So you might see a division that maybe wasn't getting a lot of attention. Patents all of a sudden get a lot of income or you might see IP lawyers all of a sudden get lit up and they stop working on Disney stuff and they start working on LLM stuff. So here we are. What do you think is happening in the market today as far as seed stage, Sirius A startups are concerned?”
2025-08-28 · This Week in Startups · Market Update and Trends w/ Becki DeGraw | Wilson Sonsini Startup Legal Basics · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source