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Ciaran O'Leary

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23
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2016-03-16
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2016-03-16
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1
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  1. “Close to a couple, but nothing we're ready to announce yet. We're very, very enthused, but not ready to announce anything yet.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I'm not excited by any sector the most excited about economies being broken down into highly efficient atomic units versus inefficient big entities and that apply to every single sector.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “No, because the capital is global, highly mobile. The biggest cars in Europe are Google, Microsoft SAP. And I don't care. And now Chinese companies, Japanese companies, I think that that makes it less of a problem. So big companies will be, sorry, great companies will always be bought. I do think it's a problem, but it's not keeping me up at night.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “The road, I hate reading business books. I think they are nauseatingly predictable and they should be half a page instead of 200 pages. So you're not going to hear a business book from me. I like reading blog posts and summaries. But I think the road from a Cormack forces you to confront yourself with a really dark and deeply human and unsettling thought and environment. And when I read, I like to really get out there and not read about business.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Teams will be supportive, and what I will also say is that if you bring in a really good VP of engineering or a CTO, often the team will really like that because it will increase their skill set. And good developers like working with other good technical people. So it's often really liberating.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “team often it can be a little bit intimidating because everybody kind of feels like a little co-founder at the beginning and then all of a sudden you're building a hierarchy and all of a sudden there's people coming in atop and oh these people are earning three much as I'm as I'm earning and I think the best entrepreneur is very early on make it clear to the team that the organization is going to change over time and that's going to make it more valuable and the employees equity and their association with the firm is also going to get more valuable. And when we bring in a CTO and we pay them three times your salary and everything else, it's because this person who is older has more responsibility and we're going to get a return on investment on this person for your career and your equity. And this is why I need everybody to be supportive. But it's very common. But I think if you frame it that way, typically good.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “So I think there's two things. So hopefully your board is very encouraging in terms of you spending money on people that can help increase quality of the product, the company and grow the product and the company. And if you don't, then that's obviously a problem. The one thing that the board should hopefully protect you from and give you good guidance is on hiring the wrong people or sorry, the right people too early. Because sometimes you can bring in somebody who really only works well if they have 50 engineers supporting them, two VP engineerings below them, and they're going to fail in your environment. And they're going to be frustrated. You're going to be frustrated. So I think there is something to be said for a sophisticated conversation. But having said that, the board should always be leaning forward on spending on people.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “No, and so and I'll tell you why I'm not too sure how good we are, you know, calling shots on weather cycles, technology deployment waves are for real or not. And if the next wave is going to be the one to Dack. And I think as we see, so let's take Bitcoin and the blockchain, we don't know. There's a lot of frankly lame hindsight comments now. Well, I'm so glad I didn't invest in Bitcoin. That's silly. Because if something like that comes along with such a promising platform and protocol-like technology, you should be deploying capital in it. You should be backing entrepreneurs. Maybe you don't want to bet the farm on it, but you should probably be a part of that wave. And if it doesn't work out, fine, that's part of our job. And then let's look for the next one. So I personally don't try and call the shots on whether technological ways.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Yeah, you know, it's so hard. There's obviously lots of obvious things, you know, where you just build the wrong product or product quality or the team fell out or these kind of things where it gets a little bit more granular is the thing of, I think teams being brutally, brutally honest and brutally, brutally fast in figuring out how much customers and users really like their product and being very, very honest and tough with saying, no, this doesn't work next, next, next.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “We're not good at it anymore or we realize we're not being very good at transition, no problem will shut it down, no hard feelings, and somebody better will take our place.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Oh no, absolutely not. We want to earn the right to do that and not make assumptions. But what we don't want to do is build already from the first day, assume that with Blueyard, we have to leave some kind of lasting legacy and brand because that's where the majority VC firms fail. So we're happy to, and I forget what US Fund did this. It may have been the foundry group where they said, hey, you know, we're going to probably raise three or four fund generations, maybe one or two more or less or whatever. And then we're going to shut it down because we think succession is really hard. We're probably going to suck at it. And it's not going to be the foundry group. And so let's just assume that that's going to happen. And if it doesn't happen, great. And so we're taking a similar approach with Blue Yard where we're saying let's just be mentally prepared and open to have this be a firm that just exists for a certain period of time and assume”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Was liberating. Now, having said that, we're obviously going to have to see how we do our jobs and we do it well. And in a couple of years, look back if we made the correct choices. But we did model ourselves, say, of firms like, you know, the foundry group or USV or benchmark, which is kind of a small group of people that are equal and are missionary around doing something.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “In stars, but creating a venture firm that stands for something, that means something, means something to them, means something for the entrepreneurs. So that kind of made the second choice easy that we wanted it to be a thesis-driven firm. We wanted to kind of help entrepreneurs build on these fundamental forces we're seeing. And so it was clear that it was going to be thesis-driven. And then lastly, we had learned that keeping things simple and small and focused and free of politics is beneficial to how we can do our job and spend time with entrepreneurs. And so that made it very easy to say Blueyard is always going to be a small firm. Everybody's always going to be equal. We're only ever going to have one strategy and one fund. And we're only ever going to have one office. And we're always going to focus on early stage. We're never going to raise a growth fund. We're never going to go into different regions. And we're prepared to shut the yard down. So that's.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, so of course we live in the day and age where information is much more available and cheaper and also information on how you can build a good venture firm. What I would say is that good venture firms come in all kinds of sizes and shapes. So we just picked one model and that doesn't mean we don't think that other models can be successful. So I think the first thing that goes without saying like entrepreneurs building a company, the best entrepreneurs are really, really missionary and they're passionate around building something that they feel has to exist. And it isn't this thing where they have a whiteboard session and say, oh, look here in the top right, there's an economic opportunity to maybe build something here and we can earn some money with this. But it's typically, yeah. So I think the best VCs I'm into, they are also just as missionary around creating not just this one fund and investment.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “I think they should. Having said that, there are some very large funds that are successfully doing early stage and they have a dedicated strategy around it and they're thoughtful about it and they're aware of what it means for the entrepreneur to have a very large fund in early stages, but that does require thoughtfulness and transparency. And I think the better firms have that. And those that don't, I think the entrepreneurs just have to be very open about they have to do their own due diligence. I think that's something European entrepreneurs will have to learn a bit more is to do their own due diligence on venture firms.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Yeah, so it's true. It's a widely abused term, like so many things in our industry. I think for entrepreneurs, what is a good guide is always looking at the fund size. So you can say that you're in early stage firm or you focus on early stage, but if you've got this huge big fund, it will never be, it can never be a core part of your strategy and allocation and resources and these kind of things. So Blueyard is $120 million fund and we're focused on seed and A, you write tickets from a couple hundred K up to, say, five, six million maximum as a first ticket. So that puts us squarely in the early stage bucket. And I think, again, for entrepreneurs, the best way to figure out is just to ask VCs, well, you know, what percentage allocation of your fund goes to those kind of ticket sizes? And if that's the majority, then they're in early stage firm. And if not, they're not.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “So I think there's a couple of things going on. If you look at the current wave of big European companies or the wave of the last couple of years, take seven to ten years to build a big company. So these companies were founded seven to ten and even more years ago, if you look at some of the big names. And those were the days and age of kind of mobile consumer applications and e-commerce.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “It has to be accessible. You have to have a meaningful amount of control over it and it has to be available in some kind of application layer or insights layer. And so those are the three things we're after. We're going to keep an open mind, Jason and I were huge astronomy geeks and science fiction geeks. And so we think we've told a couple of people we're also going to try and do a couple of science fiction investments.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And there's three fundamental forces we think are happening in society and in economies, and we want to help entrepreneurs build companies around them. One of them is the decentralization of markets, so the reduction of the power of gatekeeping items, then allowing more people to transact the markets, allowing individuals to build up an economy on their own. And we think that that's going to increase and not decrease. The second thing is we're still at the very beginning of technology giving people superpowers. So democratizing capabilities through technology, we think is going to be very powerful. And the last one is companies that help to liberate data. So we all like talking about data and big data, but what does it actually mean to make data useful? You know, it has to be portable.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, so I hope we're kind of asking people to keep the congratulations for in a couple years if we hopefully manage to help some entrepreneurs because I can tell you that it's easy to, it's like entrepreneurs. You celebrate raising money, that's great. But after 30 seconds, you're, oh, wow, you know, look at that. Huge responsibility on our hands now. Blue Yard, it's a very small firm. It's, you know, Jason, myself, and then we have Chad as a venture partner who you know is a much more, A, he's a better saxophone player than we all are. And B, you know, he's a tech leader and he's a meaningful venture partner. And we wanted to create a firm that is very small and where entrepreneurs really only deal with the partners and where we can be very agile and quick and also where we can form the entire firm around a theme.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I bumped into a firm I was at before called Early Bird and they said, hey, you know, we're looking for some young people to join our team. And if you want to work with entrepreneurs or maybe an entrepreneur yourself, a good way to do that is to be at a VC firm and interact with lots of entrepreneurs. And I said, that's a horrible idea. I thought that A, venture capital, I thought misconception. I thought it was around being deeply technical, investing in patents and that kind of stuff. And then I also was very negative on the European and especially the German VC landscape and also the entrepreneurial landscape. Then, you know, one of the partners there, Rolf Matis, he kind of convinced me that things were changing and that was going to be a big opportunity. And so I joined them also more out of curiosity than was there for six years, opened the Berlin office for early bird, which was kind of a really defining thing for me.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Imply flying for an airline for your life. And so I decided to study business because I didn't know what else I wanted to do, wasn't sure I'd stick with it. I got stuck with it, started in investment banking and mergers and acquisitions more because it was the fashion back then. I wasn't really passionate about it. So I did that, I think, for two years. Then I joined the Carlisle Group and did sort of leverage buyouts. So really the exact opposite end of venture capital and realized though there after a short period that I was heading into this kind of finance direction and I didn't really like that. And so I left without a plan, started thinking about founding a company, had a couple projects, was helping some friends who were entrepreneurs in sort of general management and raising some money. And couldn't quite pin something down I wanted to do. And then in that process.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I think Fred Dastin of Excel said on your podcast here that he's the worst background possible to be a VC. And I'd like to correct him and say that, no, that's actually me. But over time, I actually learned that there is no good background to be a good VC. And if you look at the very best people in our industry who are a bit more advanced and have really helped sort of entrepreneurs build great companies, you can see that the range is very, very broad. So I think it depends more on your personality and your mental skill set and also being humble and understanding your role. So having said that, I actually wanted to become an airline pilot. I never thought I'd be doing this. I would have considered that quite a significant life failure would have told me when I was 18, I would be VC. But I didn't get comfortable with kind of the lifestyle that that was.”

    2016-03-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Three Fundamental Forces in Society with Ciaran O'Leary, Partner @ BlueYard · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source