YouSaid · the spoken record

Brian Singerman

lines on the record: 62
first: 2019-04-02
most recent: 2019-04-02
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

“Just by talking about, I was thinking about maybe I'll do VP of engineering at one of his companies. And he was like, no, you need to come here now and was like so sure of that and just kind of pushed that through so quickly that like from a business perspective, that was pretty awesome. And so I'll always remember that.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Founders Fund 6, which is what we're currently investing out of, is like 1.4 something billion dollar fund. So people are always asking well, why is it important to do half a million dollar investments out of that? And it is, and I always say it is critical for us to be still doing seed investments out of this fund. And the reason it is critical is, first of all, they can have outsized returns, fine, but also founders know who their first money was, period. It's something that founders will always remember is like who their first money was. They will tell all their friends, like, hey, these guys were my first money. You go from there. There's a special place in a founder's heart for their first money. Therefore, it is critical that we be first money and do seed investing, not just for like, because we're nice or whatever, but for the future of our business, it is critical that we do that. So similarly, founders remember that, you know, I always remember who took chances on me. And so from a business perspective, again, I come back to I met Sean.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My grandmother loving me so much. I mean, my parents as well, but my grandmother recently passed and she was always just like so nice and loving to me. So I think it's like one of those things where you can't put a price on having loving family between my parents and especially, you know, and my grandparents. I was just so lucky that with having that family base and it's tough to put a price. And then you see when somebody doesn't have that and you're like, oh man, I wish I could level the playing field in that regard, but that is really difficult to do. So I don't know how something could be kinder than that from a personal relationship perspective, if that makes sense from a business, the kindest thing. I don't know. There's not like a lot of kindness in business. I do appreciate just like any founder remembers who their first investor is. And actually, let me give a little bit of a long-witted answer, but it's important.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mean business related or not business related? Because if it's not business related, this is just going to be something as.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That oh, I'm good at everything, then no, the business is a ruthless world. You're not good at everything. You're going to have people better than you at certain things. Why don't you focus on the things that you are best at and exploit those into winning? That's strategy game 101.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we do not have any rules about single founder, co founders, whatever. Again, very idiosyncratic, very company dependent. Sometimes a single founder is the only way a certain company can run. Elon is the founder of SpaceX. There's nobody else who could have founded that company. Is he perfect at this? No, he needs to, he has Gwen, right? Operating the company, she's awesome. He has a top tier CFO. He has a top-tier everything to kind of round that out. So no, no rules on that, but we are looking for the kinds of founders. And this gets back to like what my questions with founders are and covering their weaknesses. We do like it when founders, I mean, I know what my strengths and weaknesses are, and I'm very open about those. I know exactly what those are. I like it when a founder also knows that and they know that they need to then supplement it, whether it's with a co-founder or hiring a COO or whatever. We don't have any rules on that, but I like it when people know where their strengths mean. It makes it easier to play the strategy game when you know what your strengths and weaknesses are.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Open to it, it depends on. Anything, probably not out of our venture venture growth fund, but maybe we discussed things like that. But again, we want to focus on where our unfair advantages are. And our unfair advantages are going to come from. We know private companies and we know how to evaluate founders of private companies. My advantage is not going to come from spreadsheet analysis of credit. And this and that, but”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Versus with what I do with private companies, you absolutely can have an information edge. These are private companies. They can kind of choose who their investors are”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's another great question. And we have the ability to do that if we want. That being said, we are always looking for where is our edge. And public companies usually have a bunch of analysts at a bunch of firms covering them at least, or somebody's covering them with the same information that we have. So therefore, I'm not sure our edge is strong enough. It would have to be a pretty special case. And one special case, meaning like we just know the founder really, really, really, really well or something like that without any sort of inside information, but we just know the founder really, really well in order to be able to pull the trigger on something like that because your information edge on public companies is almost non-existent.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that is one of the things that I worry about, right? For instance, like we don't have anybody on the ground in China, so we don't do Chinese investments because we have no Edge there, we have no edge also. We don't see it, but we have no edge forming relationships with people on the ground in different places. Absolutely critical. Again, one of the things I'm going to ask you out to this interview is please send me anything that you see or you are that could be interesting for us. And to all of your listeners too, like Maybe go through you, but if there's anything, oh, I don't know. Deal flow is critically important”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally. So we are very, very, very much geography agnostic. It is critical to be. So that being said, there's Silicon Valley and everything is becoming more distributed, but it's not that it's becoming centralized in one other place other than Silicon Valley, right? So I'm still going to stay in Silicon Valley because people come through here. You get to talk to more people as a reactive VC, more people are going to come through my office based here. That being said, I don't believe that all the good companies will start here. It's just they all come here and there's no one other place to go that they are all starting. It's becoming more distributed in some ways.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. Sage agnostic, sector agnostic, absolutely geography agnostic as well. Now, we want to invest in only the top tier companies. That being said, we don't know exactly where they're going to come from. Like we spoke about rig up. Okay, that company is based in Texas. I think it's a phenomenal company. We've had great companies outside of the US before. We've had Spotify. We've had DeepMind Newbank in Brazil is one of our top performing companies, right? Very nervous of it.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is that hot enough? That's funny. Sometimes relationships can be strategic warfare, I guess. I don't know. I've got a one-year-old playing games with him and trying to get him not to cliff dive off the side of the bed is a pretty big challenge for me right now.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Want some interesting answers. We have somebody comes in and is like, well, I love Uber. I'm like, okay, well, why do you love Uber more than everybody else? Like, what is it about it that you love? It's still a fine answer, but what about it? Do you love more than everybody else loving Uber, right? Like, I want to know, we do like interesting differentiated thought. Again, it's critical to our success because we have people running their own strategies. I'm not looking for people who are going to be clones of myself. I don't think you can do that. I want people who are going to be able to play to their own strengths. I want to know that those strengths are interesting and different than mine.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not LPs at this point. It depends, right? Like, what I'm interviewing somebody for a junior position, again, this is very different than when we hired Keith. Very senior hire. When I'm hiring for somebody on the junior, I want to know that they're thinking and that they're thinking differently. Like my favorite question is a pretty standard one that you should have an answer to if you're going into any meeting, any interview at a venture firm, which is What's your favorite company and why, and what company do you love that other people don't and what company do you hate that other people love?”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, this has evolved over the years too. I mean, we've gotten, we're fortunate to have gotten to the point where Returns are good enough, so fundraising is important, and we takes up a bunch of time, but it's not the most challenging part of my job. And so we've gotten to the point where we're fortunate enough to have LPs that we like. So we like our LPs. So actually, I'm happy to, whenever they come into town, in fact, you probably passed an LP meeting with some of my partners were taking with some of our LPs right in the front room when you came in here. When they come into town, I'm totally happy to meet up with them and talk to them about our latest investments and why we love it or why we love the founders or current thoughts going on around here. So yeah, no, we actually have a very positive relationship with our LPs. They usually just come back for the next fund. Again, the returns are good. That's what actually drives that. That is the most important thing. But yeah, very positive relationship. And I'm always happy to talk to them.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, for if you're an adult wanting to get into esports and watch something that you can actually understand, Counter-Strike is a great one.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can totally understand it. You know what's happening, and you can understand it, whereas a lot of these other games you might be overwhelmed or have no idea, or you might not be overwhelmed, but it might be boring. Heartstone is not the most exciting esport to watch. I mean, my favorite to watch, and it's not close, is League of Legends, but I know what's going on. And once you know what's going on, that's like watching action-oriented chess with team fighting. It's like pretty awesome from a most strategic and a tactical level to watch that once you know what's going on. But Counter-Strike is so easy to consume”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like watching him I mean, I think the skill level involved in it. I like watching professionals play these games. I watch more esports than I watch anything else.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What's your moat? All these games are like, what are you really good at? And how do you exploit that to win? To me, that's the same thing with a company. What are you already really good at? How do you exploit that to win?”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. It was hugely obsessed and won a bunch of tournaments playing things like Settlers of Catan in 95, 96. That forms the whole investment thesis. It's just pure.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you have to have and the amount of hours put in to even learn that stuff Soul Caliber was nothing compared to the modern day gamers what they have to do, but still, yeah, I knew every”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to know all that. You have to know every move of every character to be at that level. I talk to a lot of our League of Legends players on our Cloud 9 League of Legends team. And there's something like 150 champions in League of Legends. And they know by sound, if they hear it on the map, every spell from every champion, no matter what it is. It's just like the amount of...”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got to play them for Google Shares, and that was fun and profitable. But yeah, I was definitely quite good at that game.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I played a lot of Mitsurugi. I used to like, I mean, I won a bunch of Soul Caliber tournaments and even at when I started at Google, it said I was maybe like seven to ten people a week were starting at Google. And they would say it would give you a little blurb about you and the blurb about me said, oh, was a former U.S. soul caliber champion. So of course these people at Google, this is in early 2004, were like, oh, we play soul caliber. You can't be that good. I'm like, well, yeah, I am that good. I will beat you. They're like, oh, you can't be there. Well, I don't play this for fun anymore. I would only play it for money. And they're like, well, we don't have any money. This is again pre-IPO Google. We don't have any money, but we do have these Google shares.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it was one of the last remaining awesome founder driven one of these, a lot of these teams in various different franchise leagues have been bought up by Dan Gilbert, the Cavaliers, or like the Houston Rockets or whatever, right? We love that this was one of the endemics, one of the awesome founders and OGs in the space. And it's just by far the most well-run esports organization we'd ever seen. And so I don't know what's going to happen within esports as a whole. I know that it is going to grow like crazy. I know that the average age of somebody who I see it like a league of legends game is 23, whereas the average age of a baseball fan, I think this one is 58. And so which would you rather bet on in terms of the and growing? So which would you rather bet on in terms of the future? I know where I would go with this, but no, we again same thing. We loved the founders. I love the macro, i.e. the market here.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, just on a personal level, if professional esports was a thing in 99, 2000, I would be there instead of here. Very different career. I mean, our specific esports investment is in a company called Cloud Nine, which is one of the big teams, or think of it like a holding company for a bunch of different teams across different games.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. There's that. But yeah, or defense. We have a large investment in Anduro, of course, right? And so just it's really anything. I'm not going to ever get tripped up into saying a sector that I like because I really don't have one.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love the purity of the process. There is no, I'm not, there's no way to even trip me up into saying a sector that I like. I can say sectors that I love personally, but like not necessarily from an investment perspective, we're kind of open to literally anything. I think, you know, our last few investments were in fintech, oil and gas, freight forwarding, and chemical engineering and esports.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We don't have any such thing as a Monday morning partner meeting. So we just kind of, it's like organic just meet us. Let's go from there. So I was like, hey, do you want to come to the holiday party tonight? Because a lot of us are going to be there and it'll be an easy way of doing this. So he had, of course, checked with his wife. One year anniversary, right? I don't think I don't know if my wife would have been as thrilled, but she said yes, and he came and that started that process, if everybody realizing just how special Brian Scott and Dan were for STEM centrics in a way we had never seen in a biotech company.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, the ones that aren't here comes don't actually aren't that relevant to venture capital because, again, it's not about the downside ones. It's about the winners. And so I met again through network. I met the founder of STEM Centrics one day for coffee. I'd seen a bunch of people know that we're interested in anything, so we're not just into tech. So totally open to investing in biotech companies, unlike a lot of firms. So if somebody from my network was like, here's an interesting one. So I met the founder for coffee not expecting much at all just because most founders in biotech are not necessarily what I'm looking for in a founder. This blew that away in spades. In fact, the day that I met Brian Slingerland for coffee on our first meeting, I was so blown away that night happened to be the holiday party at Peter Teal's house. It also happened to be his one-year anniversary with his wife. But I'm like, wow, we have to get going on this. And we don't have anything such as like.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Neither me nor Keith founded Founders Fund. Peter founded Founders Fund. And so all this stuff comes from the founding kind of attitudes and the founding attitude at Founders Fund is there's no right answer. There's no one right way to do venture capital. There's no one political belief that everybody has to have. There's no one, there's not one right way. We are a collection of individuals who we all think are pretty smart or we wouldn't work with each other. We are a collection of individuals that are self-starters that have our own strategies. And that comes from the founding of Founders Fund. It's like, no, there's not one right way to do this.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pretty rare of these days, but that's a great question. And that is, again, that's one of the three equally important categories. Like we need to, if we really want something, it's usually, we spent enough time with the founder. We kind of know we are and kind of where they are in things. So we typically won't lose it at that stage. But yeah, at the times that we do, we need to figure out why. Is there something with the brand? Is something that we did? Is it the specific person they were working with at the firm? Fortunately, it rarely happens, especially because we're not usually chasing the Hot deals, and so there's not a ton of competition”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, I love Kirsten Green because she has a specific thesis focus. I have no thesis focus, right? So the people that can pull off thesis driven investments are, I think, pretty awesome, right? Like I like the GGVs of the world because they can kind of figure, they figured out how to straddle the whole China-US thing. I have no idea what I'm doing in China, so it could never do that. So I love the kinds of investors that have different strategies in mind that seem to pull it off. But most of all, I value returns at the end of the day. And so you've got to have really strong returns. And we kind of all know where those are for me to respect the firm a huge amount. I'm not into hype. At the end of the day, there's a scoreboard. And to me, the scoreboard is not how many tweets you get retweeted, but it's what are your returns and your real returns.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I had probably a pretty terrible gut during the first few years of doing this. But to me, if you're doing gut driven not thesis and numbers driven, that's really the only way of doing this.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I definitely read all of the pro rata's term sheets of the world just to kind of get a sense of where the rest of the industry is going, whether it's to then be like, ah, everybody's doing that. We're not going to do that or wow, I'm wondering why I'm not seeing more like this. But it's all just, I mean, I talk to lots and lots and lots of people, spend time with lots of founders, spend time with lots of venture capitalists. I spend time with lots of people who could potentially give me deal flow. And from those meetings, I'm always trying to gather what's their sense of the world, you know, so we can kind of either know where to go or where not to go.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Strong view of the world, what if there's not a company doing that well yet? Then are you just sitting there kind of just waiting for that? And I'm not good at that. So to be a good reactive VC, I think you need to be a really good generalist. To be a good generalist means you're not going to be as in-depth on everything that you see because you need to be open to anything from oncology to space travel to social networks to stock exchanges to fintech, right? To health insurance. I mean, it just, it runs the gamut. And so I probably not enough industry specific other than I know if something seems hard.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sean Parker is actually my, in my opinion, one of the greatest proactive VCs of all time. He would stick his head up and say, oh, Facebook or Spotify. And that's because he had this like sense of what the world should look like and then went out and found the company. The problem with the proactive VC strategy is you have this.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great question and probably not as much as I should. You know, I try and be a really, really, really good generalist investor because I need to be open to anything that comes to the door. And as opposed to a proactive venture capitalist who kind of has this vision, has this vision of what the world looks like and then goes out and finds a company doing that? Like, for instance,”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could probably answer that question at this point. One of the things I found so attractive about that business is I think Eric is a top tier founder. And so if I think Eric is an A plus founder, here's what I love about that. Eric is an A plus founder. This is not the kind of company you see every day. In fact, I don't even know how many companies I've seen in my 13 year whatever career doing this, but it's something close to 20,000. And this is the only time I was ever pitched on a new stock exchange. So I love that if it's unique, run by a ridiculously good founder who is the right founder for this thing. And for a thing that could have tremendous upside. So Mo is it is highly regulatory sensitive. We are absolutely playing within all of the rules with the SEC and every other government organization that has a thing to say here. And so you need a founder who can navigate that properly. The market is.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For a company that we've invested in, I am much more comfortable going out to dinner with the founder and just talking strategy to the company than I am in a formal board meeting. I'm not your deep financial analysis board member or your governance board member or anything like that. And so I'm just as comfortable not having a board seat, just going out to dinner with the founder. I do like that part. That is probably my favorite part of what I do actually is once we've decided that this is an A plus founder, we want to make this investment, I love just hanging out with them. I'm totally happy if my time spent with a company is going out to dinner with a vendor. Hey, what are you thinking through? You want to strategize? I'm a gamer. So let's play that strategy through. Let's discuss that. Let's cut through the crap on that versus a formal board mini.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, there's again no one right answer here. One company may be a ridiculously expensive, another company that states might be ridiculously cheap. That being said, we are price sensitive because price determines upside. Here's the thing I don't care about ownership percentage. I think that that is the worst metric of venture capitalists can focus on. And I know a lot of firms do focus on it, but I've never understood that. I'd rather own 1% of Facebook than 20% of most other companies on the planet. I don't ever focus on stuff like that, but I do focus on price because that is where your upside comes from. And so I don't ever focus on any sort of other terms, any sort of downside protection terms. I don't care if I can get a better price. I mean, I've bought common stock at way cheaper than the preferred stock, and I'll do that all day if I can, if it gets me a way better price.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, no, no, it's all about do I think this is an A founder? Period. And an A plus founder knows how to own the weaknesses and knows how to account for them via some other way. Maybe they've got a team member who is really good at that kind of stuff. Maybe they've thought that through and have some other answer. Maybe they're thinking it through on the fly during our meeting, but I get to see how they think through things.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I'm pretty good at understanding what the strengths and weaknesses of a company are at this point. I kind of usually just blanket, give on good faith the thing, the parts that I can tell as strengths of the company. I don't even want to talk about. And then I kind of try and dig in on what I see as potential weaknesses. And based on how those interactions go, it's purely about how the interactions go. I'm not sitting here knowing the answer or knowing how it's going to turn out, but I do want to see how the interactions go when I talk about the weaknesses of a company with a founder.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, but it's mostly about the third one, which is get a good sense of the founding team. Do I think that they are A plus caliber founding teams?”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The deck stage is just the only reason I would look at that is the before an in-person meeting is to see if there's somebody on my team who would be better at taking a look at the company than me otherwise it's all about the in-person interaction I don't even I try and never do phone meetings at all anymore because you don't have that level of interactivity on the phone or video conference that you do in person and that's critical for my investment decisions”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Answer the true look answer, it's not hundreds people who say, Oh, I get hundreds of network connection emails. No, that's not that much. It's like it's not one either. So it's probably like five to ten a day of direct network. Hey, you should meet this company kind of things. And of that, I probably do. Most of them get either somebody else on my team is better suited for it or it's not right for us for whatever reason. So I probably do. I would say of those, I probably take five to ten a week. Of those, probably zero to one result in an investment”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I only do meetings from direct network connections at this point if I don't already know the founder. There's never going to be a response from a blind email to me. And because one of the key things that you need to be able to do as a founder is at least network. Network to one of my portfolio companies and have them intro you to me. If you hit a portfolio company founder intro you to me, you will always get that meeting. But that's what you kind of have to do. I have no idea how many blind emails come in because we kind of.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The first thing that you send to me, I will absolutely look at. If it's terrible, maybe I'll look at the next scene you send to me a little bit less. If it's awesome, maybe I'll look at it even more. But this is the case. You're always doing kind of a weighted graph on your network. But I absolutely want to give it a shot because you probably do see a lot of interesting stuff that I absolutely do not see in my bubble in Silicon Valley. And so it is critical to me that you feel totally welcome to send me stuff. And then I'll give you actual feedback on why I do or don't like it or why it might not be right for us”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly. But parts one, two, and three C, pick, get in, are equally as important. There's no one part more or less important than the other. So I think that, again, for me, the gut of picking, I think, has been honed and it's pretty good right now. So I'm not worried about my picking skills per se and getting in. I mean, that's a lot about brand. I think we're pretty good at that too. But do you see the right stuff? That is all about network. In fact, brand is kind of a negative there because then you're seeing a lot of noise. But I'm obsessed with keeping my network. For instance, one of the things I'm going to ask of you after this interview and reasons to do it is all like, hey, you know the kinds of stuff I'm looking for now or the kinds of founders, the kinds of crazy ideas, the kinds of, if you see anything, please send it to me. And that's critical. It's kind of, we are a very small team. So in order to source properly and see everything, we just have to have interesting, unique networks.”
2019-04-02 · Invest Like the Best · Brian Singerman – Investing in the Best Founders - [Invest Like the Best, EP.127] · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source