YouSaid · the spoken record

Cem Sertoglu

lines on the record: 89
first: 2024-11-20
most recent: 2024-11-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I'm surprised founders don't ask us about data around our follow-ons at the seed stage, early stages, when I mentioned that founders are buying care by investors, that's actually a very good indicator of care”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm hoping, you know, with the existential threats that our world and humanity faces, solutions that are compatible with capitalism or how resources get allocated will also emerge. However, in the short term, technology has been a very strong accelerator of the trend.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Technology has been a factor in concentrating resources in the hands of very few. And I think that is causing a lot of problems right now. And I think it's going to get worse before it gets better”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very rarely we've seen a few, but usually they're in very difficult situations. So I doubt there will be any good outcomes coming from those dirty terms.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the founder, I think the most important thing is probability of success. Is this round that I'm closing? Is this gonna impact my potential of getting where I want to get to? As a percentage, will it make up for the dilution I'm suffering? So if I'm giving up 20% in this round, after this is assigned, am I 20% more likely to get to that vision? If the answer is yes, then they should sign.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Founders usually underestimate the leverage they have on their cap table. They negotiate things for very obscure situations, etc. Experienced founders know that it's their company. They will have a lot of flexibility around managing things when it happens, when the opportunity comes down the road. I always find myself smiling when we're negotiating a very sort of obscure one-off, far-fetched scenario where I just know in my actual portfolio, I know how much weight the founder carries. And it's their company, you know, it's kind of funny.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He thought I was well rounded, and he's been an inspiration and a source of learning for me through his writing online as I developed into an investor. I also have a lot of respect for USV and Benchmark in how they've kept their discipline around what they think they do better than anyone else. And I think the results show. So those are the two firms I would name.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fred Wilson was the first person to tell me that he thought I might make a good venture investor. This is back in 2005 when I just sold my company.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe that most people believe wrongly that an early stage investment is a trade. You're buying something for a price. I believe it's a contract for long-term alignment to build a great company.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everything that touches software today is AI. There is no software company that doesn't utilize machine learning and artificial intelligence in some way to do their job better. So, of course, every investment we've made out of Fund three, the last five investments are all in one way or another AI companies. Now, are we investing into hundreds of millions of dollars rounds of foundational models? We're not. We're not in that.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree, is it more difficult than it's ever been? I'm not sure. I think in these kind of in-between cycles situations, I think things get a bit more murky. That's why it's important to have clear strategy. It's like, what's the game you're playing? What do you think your edge is there? Are you sticking to that game? I think that delivers. That gives me confidence”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends on how you played it. I don't think you get an automatic pass. I think the question that will get asked would be, what did you say you would do? Did you do what you said? If there is a performance issue, can it be attributed to the markets? Or was it other factors that led to it? If it's pure vintage related, I think it's not a coincidence that funds get benchmarked based on vintage.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If it's a sustaining trend, I am, I suspect it's not. I think markets are cyclical. I think exuberance will come back. We've started the rates, change direction recently. We'll see what the FTC governance will look like post-election. So I think those are cyclical. I think it'll come back great companies are defined by sustainability that they're not dependent on the mood of the markets. The outcomes are very dependent on the vintage. I think a very humbling fact is the biggest predictor of our fund's performance is its vintage, you know, irrespective of how do we...”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Depends on the follow on investment. I think it's different when you've written a half a million dollar check and you're writing another half a million dollar check early on in a journey, whereas you're really doubling down with a 10 million UI path late check.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In that case, we had written a follow on check where I think about that follow-on check that we maybe didn't have enough data to evaluate that follow-on check. So that could have been a smaller loss learning there. That was an early investment of ours in our first fund. So I think we were still somewhat novice around fund management and fund investing as opposed to personal investing. So the learning is around maybe diligencing a follow-on investment more thoroughly.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About six million in a company that was faced with some regulatory, it was an HR business that faced some regulatory issues around it. Laws changed that made their vision very difficult to execute and they ended up liquidating.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I do, maybe because I was an angel investor before, or maybe I'm human. I know I shouldn't be thinking about downside protection, but it enters the thought process. It enters the equation. I think it's overrated. As I mentioned before, our fields, our investments are not real investments the way you go by Apple shares on the stock market. They are long-term contracts around a vision. Ultimately, it doesn't really move the needle that much whether you have a liquidation preference that can lock in some asymmetric returns if things go bad. Many times we've seen those type of structures get renegotiated at the point of liquidity because it just serves one right purpose or another. We've never really seen downside protection measures make a big difference in any outcome.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In fund one out of 15 investments, only three of them did not return capital for us. Now six companies are still alive, but we expect to make money from all six of them. So they will not be lossing. So we will have made a positive return on 12 out of 15 investments in Fund 1. Now, when I think about it, some of those returns were capped returns, probably lower risk investments than we should have made, even though they returned us capital. They cost us two higher risk, higher return opportunities we should have probably backed. That was a learning for us from Fun One.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Hindsight, we should have participated in that $3 billion round by Sequoia. We post IPO, we did some block trades that felt as if we were playing in a market that were not naturally suited for. So maybe the divestment strategy post IPO would have been a bit different.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd love for them to change. I think a 10-year life for a C and A focused fund is too short. This is evidenced by the fact that almost I don't know a single early stage VC fund that was liquid by year 10. But it's also probably a healthy pressure and friction to put on a GP team so that they're actually thinking about liquidity as they approach that 10-year mark, even though there's perhaps understanding implicitly around the table with all the investors that it'll probably not be fully liquid by the end of fund life.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In our opinion, tech sector moves too fast for your edge to remain, it decays, your whatever insight or asymmetric information you have until the point of the IPO starts to decay. If you're still on the board, if you're still an insider in the company, then your ability to manage that position is diminished, right? I mean, then you're essentially like a founder long term and our funds have a very specific lifetime. So even if I wanted to hang on to my stake, it would only post IPO. It would only for a few years be for a year, for a few years, because then we have to divest anyway, because structurally.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a very personal question, a personal decision. You're absolutely right. But for us, I understand that my team wants to work for a firm that one day they will inherit. And I want this to be bigger than me, that this is around for decades, if not longer. And when I look at the best, most inspirational venture firms out there, I see that the ones that have done the best are the ones who were able to create that institutionalization and that doesn't happen with your family office.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Post IPO, we executed a divestment structure that was faster than that. Of course, we didn't want to impact the price of the shares. But as, you know, once the stock is public, we felt that we have lost our entire edge in trying to manage that investment, I think as early stage investors, our job is to then leave that decision to our LPs. We were able to distribute in kind to our LPs who preferred to receive shares as opposed to cash.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We ended up, I think our high watermark ownership was 18 in the company, and we entered the IPO slightly below 10%. So we sold about, I mean, I can't remember the dilution effect on that, but we were still the largest shareholder going into the IPO in the company. We had also realized already, I think three, four times the fund at that point.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's an analysis at the time of what our holding of that company looks like at the time, and we try to just triangulate to the price we may be able to sell at. I mean, our secondaries were all at a premium to the primary round. So each round was so”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was an internal question for us at that billion dollar valuation. We ended up deciding to write that $10 million. And that turned out to be the right decision. But it was not a fast decision for us. Then when Sequoia led the $3 billion next round, we set it out. We did not participate. And then when the $7 billion valuation series C happened, then we started to carefully divest. So start to, I mean, again, this had been such a big win for us in terms of returns. Our prudent investor responsibility to our LPs would be to then try to start to realize some of these gains.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The trajectory, the trajectory, and the fact that there were a few things in place. One, we saw what happened in Japan. Japan was a very important early market for UiPath, and the Japanese uptake was very, very fast. So we could see that when the market conditions are right, back office clerical work in Japan is hard to fill by enterprises there because of the demographic reasons. But we could see if one market behaves like that, we could see this in other markets as well. So the revenue trajectory at Kabi, I believe, I believe UiPath went from a million to 100 million ARR in 21 months at the time. That was, I think, the fastest ever for a company to have grown that fast. So we could see early signs of this trajectory.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's actually, I mean, this is the way we ended up continuing to invest into what looked like a very strong performer in our hands. That's why we raised the size of fund we raise.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The numbers, the traction numbers, essentially all of a sudden the proof was there out there for everyone to see. In that case, everybody got it. It clicked, lots of interest, everybody wanted a piece of the company. Excel came in and led the A round. We joined. And yeah, they raised at that $80 million valuation. And then about a year and a half later or two years later, Rich Wong at Excel Growth came and led the B round at a billion dollar valuation.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we did one in the seed round, two and a half in the bridge round, and then we put in $3 million at the A round. We introduced them to Excel.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. So we then do the, we agree on a convertible structure. I think ultimately it converted at something in the 60 million dollar range because A was 80, I believe. But we did the convertible. We then regretted the price. But of course, I mean, from that point, when the numbers start to show, then the picture changed 180 degrees.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feedback was okay, keep us posted, not enough traction for us to care at the moment. And this is coming from. A very large number of firms.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's a learning from there. Like when the numbers are pointed in the right direction, double down, do the price round. We felt that feedback from the market was so poor that nobody else was interested.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was, yes, it was headed in the right direction. The numbers were not exceptional, but we could see how the clients were getting value out of the product. It was certainly headed in the right direction. That's what our reserves are for. Our reserves are for those companies that will be misunderstood by the market or overlooked by the market because they don't fit into the mold. And we were able to write that check with conviction.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most you can invest out of a $150 million fund is $15, $20 million, and we know that it costs more than that to build a global software company. And again, this looked so off the beaten path for London-based or New York-based growth fund to come and invest into. We thought we may have to support the company. In fact, probably about a year later, year and a half later, we ended up then showing the company to about 40 firms. Everybody passed. Every single European VC has passed on UiPath at least once. So we had to bridge the company by ourselves. I mean, not by ourselves. Our co-investors came in.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess although, I mean, it's not the same business. I mean, he started out as more of a solutions provider and then ended up finding the product idea along the way and building a product.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He was raising 1.5 million. Initially, we thought we should do the full one and a half million. I mean, it's a $150 million fund we would have been able to write that check. But then we thought, this is a big enough vision that this company at the time he was struggling to raise. We showed the company to, I think at that first seed round, we showed it 14 funds to co-invest with us. Credo ultimately came in with a half a million check. We led with a million dollars. And then SeedCamp joined us with a hundred thousand dollar check. So it was 1.6 million raised. I believe it was just south of 7 million pre. So that was the initial round. This is a company doing about half a million in revenues.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In these regards that I talked about, yes. Now, what we were worried about when we first met him, and we spent a lot of time with him, we met him in 2014, we ultimately wrote the first check in 2015. So we had six to nine months that we were able to spend with him and the team. One concern we had was he a go-to-market leader, our Eastern European rooted founders are not polished. His English wasn't fluent. He was not a great narrative storyteller at the time. Can he be the sales leader here? We introduced him to a few early hires or potential co-founders to kind of join him with very senior responsibility in the company.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Feature he would need to add, and how long that would take, and what would that solve at what customer or what new customer would that then allow him to sign? So very pragmatic, very iteration focused, very technical, very hands-on. And he also wowed us on how he saw what he was building to be so applicable in so many diverse situations. And he came and convinced us that at one point every single company in the world could be his customer.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So Daniel had been building a company called Deskover, I think, since 2005 or 2006. It was a more of a consulting firm that was doing custom automation and different sort of back office applications for different workflows for various clients. We met him in Bucharest, I think the company was 12 people when we met him. And he struck us as having being at the right place where here's a founder who was deeply immersed in the problems that his clients were facing. Very technical, had a very strong vision on the immediate problem he wanted to solve. He didn't start out with painting ultimate picture of what UiPath would look like 10 years out as a large global enterprise software company, but he was very keenly focused on what is the next”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes on price, ultimately, we have to underwrite to a certain level of return. I always feel that there are venture investors out there with a very much lower cost of capital than us. So somebody will come and underwrite the same opportunity to a lower outcome in those cases, our offer ends up being not high enough. So we've lost on price. Sometimes we've lost on ownership, desired ownership where we find the existing investors would not let a new lead investor get to the level of ownership that they would like to get. Those have been some cases.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We go to our track record and show them that there was not a single case where any of our portfolio companies were impacted by those risks. When things happen to our portfolio companies, they're the same bad things that can happen to a Silicon Valley-based company.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think venture capital has made the mistake of following private equity in terms of LP allocation categorization. And in private equity, regional investment strategy ultimately is exposed to the regional macro dynamics, whereas in venture capital, because the outcomes are typically global outcomes, you may be hunting in a region with certain macro dynamics, but the outcomes are never impacted by the macro. My portfolio is a global portfolio. My outcomes are American outcomes, you know, London Stock Exchange outcomes, you know, acquisitions by global tech companies. They're not outcomes that are subject to the turbulence of whatever country that found their team may be coming from.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's too exotic for most traditional allocators to VC funds. So RLP base is very diverse, but it's not concentrated in large North American institutions.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, and if an LP can't see that, shame on them. I think that's inexcusable to hold a young emerging manager to that hurdle. I mean, without my first fund outcome, I wouldn't be able to put the large GP commitment in Fund.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's close to 10% of a $250 million fund. We were very proud of this saying that look, you know, this shows our confidence in what we're doing and it gets us aligned with our LPs. A very experienced LP challenged me on that and said, wait a minute, I don't like that. What I'm allocating to your fund is the highest return but the highest risk part of my portfolio. I don't want your team nervous because you personally have a lot of money in this fund. I want you to take very, very high risk investments as long as the return is there. Will this high GP commitment make you nervous, make you more risk averse? I thought that was a brilliant challenge, brilliant question. So I think it plays out on both sides.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it should help with that risk equation. We think a lot about GP commitment size. We have a very high GP commitment in the fund.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How long things take, and I'm saying this as a very fortunate VC that the big performer in our first fund matured very rapidly. But things take long.”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's our job to be uncomfortable because we're writing very high risk checks that should lead to high return. So about the high risk always feels uncomfortable. So I think it's normal to feel uncomfortable”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. I think one difficulty in analyzing our track record and mistakes is the round parameters have become quite fungible. What's called a precede, what's called a seed, what's called an A are a bit all over the place. Sure. I mean, last week was an announcement of a seed round, a hundred million dollar seed round at a billion dollar valuation. So that's not really a seed. That's a unique case. That's something else. But it's not a seed round. Do you agree?”
2024-11-20 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Turning $16.5M into $2.1BN; Lessons from the Greatest Venture Investment in European History: UiPath | Why VC is Not Being Commoditised | Why Price Does Not Matter | Lessons on Loss Ratio, Selling and Signalling with Cem Sertoglu · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source