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David Cohen

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2019-02-11
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2019-02-11
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  1. “Totally my pleasure and good luck with the fund and thanks for doing this. It's a resource for all of us. We really appreciate it.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Sure, so that would probably be order mark, which came out of our accelerator program here in Boulder, actually. It's a Los Angeles-based company that is infrastructure for ordering food online. You know, there are so many systems out there that help us order food, but if you're a restaurateur, you got to deal with all of them to be in the market. So I love what the business was. I love infrastructure. I've been a big investor in that type of business where it's really infrastructure for something that I think is a huge trend. And of course, you just sort of love the founders and you love the hustle and you want to work with people. So it had all those characteristics.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I can skip a night of sleep and function okay. Yeah, this helps me a lot with international travel. I can't skip two. If I go to skip that second one, I'm a total zombie, but I can skip one and function. So, you know, when I travel internationally, it helps me a lot because I'm really fine when I land and I don't feel like I need much sleep one day. Again, I can't do that two times in a week or something, but I can do it pretty well and sort of helps me a lot when I travel.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Vest Day is being on the 20 minute BC. That's a good one. That's a good one. Maybe not the best. It's up there. I love nothing more than being in, whether it's a board meeting or just a one-on-one meeting with an entrepreneur and having impact, right? And seeing eyes light up like, yes, that's the right answer. And it's funny because it's usually not that I thought of something brilliant. It's that I was talking about different options and it sort of self-solves and the entrepreneur figures out. So that's always the best when you have real impact as investor and it affects so many others. And I don't know, the worst days are, you know, the ones of big PR crisis, you know, something's going on in a portfolio company or it's just something's not working. You have to shut a company down. It's no fun. And unfortunately, we all find this out in this business, but at some point in your fund, you'll have a company that just doesn't work and you'll look up and you say, wow, we lost $3 million there. And that never feels good.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I believe that angel investing, seed investing is a completely different thing than venture capital. I don't think it's part of venture capital. I think that it's a different type of asset, which has different needs and requirements and has a different performance characteristic. People lump in seed investing in angel investing with venture, and it's just fundamentally different. And I think the world is starting to figure that out.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “I start at the bottom and I go to the top. I always struggle to figure out why people struggle so much with their email and they have 10,000 messages. But I do all the things that we talk about. I use to-do list. I get to inbox zero at least every couple of days. And, you know, my secret weapon is I have an amazing assistant who helps triage some of the email. And I'm a huge user of labels and rules inside Gmail.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I guess I'd go to, I think a lot of us get these big things that happen to us when we're relatively young. And I just remember being introduced to the idea of entrepreneurship. And I was in my father's office and doing data entry on payroll systems for restaurants and just sort of realizing, wow, all these people are employed because of what my dad is doing and the work that he's doing for clients. He actually cares about them and just seeing how he sort of put others first really affected how I thought about life and entrepreneurship. So I just remember that.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “It makes you think differently about what you buy as a consumer and what you spend as who you are is sort of the big takeaway and philanthropic strategy, how much is enough, all of those kind of issues”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Get the soul of money. I don't remember the author, a terrific book that changed the way that I think about money and how I use it and how it impacts others.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I think foundational sort of challenges probably would name two. One is capital formation. I mean, look, to get to the scale that we're at, you just sort of always try to figure out where's the capital going to come from to be at the scale that we're at, right? We're investing $50,000, $75 million a year just in the accelerator level plus a fall on capital. It's a lot of capital, and it takes time for that capital to return. So, you know, I think”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Partners and investors that we've been able to create value for, but I think structurally I might have done a few things differently if I really understood the scale it would be at today.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, well, I have a generally negative reaction to sort of looking back and saying what would I do differently, but I guess I'll do it in this case. I don't think you should look back. I think you should always look forward. But, you know, look, if we recognize the scalability of the model that we created, I think we probably would have tried to have more capital formation and a more consistent way early on. We today have sort of unified capital structure at TechStars where it's just tech stars. We have capital and we put it in the accelerator level at high velocity and then follow on. And then positioning to the market that we're more like a normal venture fund with seed and series a follow-on probably would have been a little bit different way to build the business. We sort of eventually figured it out and got there, but I think that would have allowed us to capture more of the value we were creating early on. And ultimately, again, I don't like to look back. I love where the value has gone to our limit.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I agree with Jeff at the seed stage. I mean, I think when we're sort of small investors, we have a bucket of reserves and we just think about that as a big bucket, right? And we try to manage that as our companies mature. We don't think about it as on individual companies and our scale. It doesn't make any sense to do that. But again, with the larger investments where we're reserving more one-to-one, I think it's a process of looking at those investments every three or six months and looking at the conditions, right? What is this company likely to need? Which ones do we have the most sort of belief in and you want to hold your reserves for the companies that match sort of where you think the value is over time”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Reserve one to one. So for every dollar we put in, we keep a dollar in reserve. And then we over time sort of reallocate that as needed and think about our reserves as a strategic part of what we do.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah, well, as you know, Harry, we're a little different. You know, we're not your typical VC fund that has a highly concentrated portfolio of 20 or so investments. We're investing in about 500 companies a year at this point across these 50 accelerators that you mentioned. And of course, that is a different type of asset than the classic venture asset or sort of Series A positions that are concentrated. So for those investments, we think of that as just a consistent performing asset, which sets up the opportunity to follow on. 80% of our accelerator companies are going to raise around from somewhere. We're in much fewer of them, right? And we're generally co-investment capital. So we're following along with the market, keeping our ownership, maybe increasing a little bit. When we make a big investment, which we do, we go all the way through sort of Series A and B as well. Usually we're the second biggest check and round. But when we do make a larger investment, we actually”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Depends on the stage of the company and the other assets the company has, but I think at the seed stage, I would look for a minimum of 18 months today. I prefer two years, actually, to sort of seed in series A investing. I think if you're raising for a year, you know, you're back out there in six months and that's not what we want you do and as investors want you building the business.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Yeah, my stats are only at 98%. But it's somewhere in that zone. They often are bridges to nowhere. And so I always try to think of it as if I was funding this company in isolation and I was doing this today and there's no other capital around the table, which is sort of how I'm closing with this type of note, you know, what were the terms be that I would want that are reasonable. So I do think as an investor, you have to be wary of these things. And it's much better to participate in the full round that really gives the company the next year or two at least a runway rather than a few months because often those go the wrong way.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Yeah, well, it's usually well, it's going to happen. And so that's why I don't want to signal price with a note. I'll say, okay, great. Well, since it's going to happen, let's just say that in 12 months, if it hasn't happened, that the cap will be 10 million. Does that work for you? And this is where you really find out what's going on because the natural answer should be, of course, you know, I'm very confident we're going to raise this round at 50 and there's no signal there on the price at 10 because it's only if it doesn't happen. And I have plenty of time to make it happen. So you would expect them to give you a quick yes. If they say, well, you know, how about 40 or no, I really want to go with Uncapped, then you're actually reading something in them, which is they don't actually have the confidence that they're saying they have. And you could do this with things like acquisition, bridges to acquisition. I see the same dynamics. So when you're getting a story from the entrepreneurs about what's going to happen, try to find ways to make the terms match that story and the eventuality that that story may not happen.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “The story, David, what did you mean by this terms matching the story specifically maybe in relation to the notes? Yeah, the dynamic that's out there is obviously notes, convertible debt, safe notes, things like that are being used a lot more frequently. And the challenge is that they're often described as a bridge, right? A bridge to somewhere, which hopefully is not a bridge to nowhere. They're trying to get to that next round, but they need a little more time to do it, a little more progress in the business. And often, the story comes in if you're an investor.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Think made them so special? There's so many, but just to pick a couple. I mean, I mentioned Byron from Best Emer, just really deep knowledge about software as a service and willingness to teach others. And then, yeah, guys at Foundry, obviously, you know, Jason and Bradfeld, Jason Mendelson, just terrific high EQ people. So this is a big part of it. It's not just the business acumen, but it's the interpersonal relationships. And they're just so strong with those and helping CEOs navigate challenging situations of PR crisiship and sort of how to talk to the team about it and just being there for them. I learned so much from the guys at Foundry on that one. For sure. No, they're incredible. And startup boards is one of my favorite books. But I do want to move one layer deeper. From the founders themselves to the deals that they bring kind of a dominant theme that I'm seeing definitely a lot more of today is the rising quantity of notes, but then also the valuations on the notes themselves. We chatted before and you said about the terms match.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “What are you bringing to the table that the other board members aren't and really try to take a role, take a job, be active, and say, I want to actually go and do that and help you with that? So if we need to source a new executive, I'm going to own that. I'm going to go do it. That's what's really helpful. And then, you know, recognize what you do and don't know. I think as you develop your career, you'll become expert in some things and you'll be constantly learning about others. And so the worst form of board member is someone with confidently held misinformation where they believe this is the case and this is how this works. But actually it's high confidence but low accuracy. So health where you know how to help and own things I think is the advice I give New Board members generally. Someone advised me to go today. It's absolutely fine to be confident in your beliefs Harry as long as your beliefs are 100% right okay thanks for that one that's great I do have to ask kind of subsequently as I said many boards many board members you've worked with this is a favorite of mine to ask who's the best board member you've worked with and what”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Is the strategic value? And there should be healthy debate and conversation between people. So back to Sengre case, right? Byron as an example and Ethan as partner there, incredible masters of software as a service, right? And really understood dynamics and how to grow the business and very good taking companies public. So I was learning a lot about those things from them. But when it came to the product or the strategy, I think it's having those healthy debates and being willing to challenge each other in public, in the room there with the staff and with the CEO is very healthy. once in a while as i said the beauty of the show being to gain advice and wisdom from people like you tell me what would you advise me having just assumed my first board seat what would that kind of core words of advice be to me looking to grow and develop as a board member my core advice area would be don't screw it up now just be yourself look to help and recognize the unique value that you bring”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Work together to help make the company better. So positive dynamic between the people who have the right motivations, the right incentives, who all view it as we're here to support the CEO until we don't. When we don't, we need to make a change and then we need to support that new person. You said that about being on the same grid board for seven years with kind of the changes that everything happened on the board that does often happen. I'm intrigued because you yourself will change over the seven years with the wisdom and knowledge that you pick up. How have you seen your style of being a board member change over the many years now that you've been in VC and been a board member? I'll tell you, Harry, when I was first in board meetings and learning how to do that and what I was doing, I was a big listener, right? I would really try to listen and understand and speak less often, which I know CEOs generally appreciate, by the way. If you're a person who says few things, but those things are impactful, that's probably the best dynamic from their perspective. And so that's what I always try to do. And then I sort of evolved and realized that really the value of these board meetings.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “We have aboard, what's the key to a highly efficient and successful board in your eyes, having sat on so many successful ones? Yeah, well, I think back to some of the ones that have done better, Singrid, probably an easy example is they're in the news again, you know, with Twilio, but I served on that board for seven or eight years. And I think the dynamic in building the board really thoughtfully was the key. So, you know, we work for the CEO. There were multiple, you know, I was on the board through three different CEOs in that company and managing those transitions. But when that CEO had the full support of the board, we worked for that CEO. And that's how we thought about it. We all had a job. We were there to be a resource to that person. We were not there to tell them what to do or control them. We were there to support them. We also had a good offline set of relationships. So it was easy to call up Byron from Bessemer or Orion foundry group and have offline conversations about what was going on and how we were going to”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Feel is the right time for companies to establish a board. There's a lot of debate. Yesterday, I think that companies need to put it in as soon as possible. And I think entrepreneurs have this tendency to think of the board as this overlord controlling things and they can fire me and all that, but that's not necessarily the case, right? So even a company that's just a few people and just getting started maybe with a small seed round, I think it's very, very additive to have a board. Now, that board doesn't have to have control necessarily. I don't think that has to be the dynamics. So you could appoint board members at your own pleasure, right? that work because you want them there and maybe you're giving them some equity or whatever but they're people that are independently thinking about the business they're not living in it every day and why would you not want to have really smart experienced people around the table so i think too many companies wait too long and i would really do that as soon as possible even in very early seed stage company no i couldn't agree more i always think that inherent structure that brings is so beneficial but from your experience kind of moving past that and going to now”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “About that balance. Are there any leading indicators to suggest either direction? I would just separate the two and I'd say if you don't believe in that optimistic vision in future, then why are you investing? I mean, that's just the ante to the game. You have to believe in that. But I think at the same time, as you move towards that goal, right, that purpose, that long-term vision, having people that can inject some realism, we're probably not going to triple revenue in three months and we're probably not going to do it more profitably than we're doing it today is helpful because you can overspend, you can oversource as you move towards this vision. But I would separate the two and say don't do it if you're not a believer in that vision and a huge optimist about it. Totally. I mean, one of the environments that we kind of discuss there as being a case where it's necessary is the board itself, which is one of my nerdy passions, probably one of the many reasons I'm still single, David. But tech stars have, by its many founders across stages, and often it's kind of at the earliest stages. So when do you...”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Yeah, I think it's super key. We were actually just debriefing on a situation that happened where we felt like we didn't have a pessimist in the room and it went wrong. And what I mean by this is not just having a naysayer or someone that says, no, I don't like that because those people are easy to find, but it's trusted advisors who are a key part of your team that have a real seat at the table, have real respect. So it might be your general counsel, your chief financial officer, those are often people that can be pessimists in the room, or a board member that just isn't always gung-ho about everything, but is very thoughtful in the company. And this is important because you want balance, right? Entrepreneurs, they're very optimistic. Investors tend to be optimistic too. You know, we wouldn't do this job unless we were unreasonably optimistic about good things that could happen. And so not just having an ACER, but having someone”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “I think you have to measure the response based on what's actually going on. So without getting into specifics of a particular situation, sort of hard to know how you'd want to behave. But I think I've used phrases like it's let's just talk about it now if this is something that I need to know something about. And if they tell me now, it's not true. That didn't happen or that's not the case, then I tend to believe them because I sort of lead with trust. And if I find out later that that trust was violated, right, that's a challenge for our relationship. So I come back and I say, I asked you about that. And I feel like that was the moment when you could have said, yes, this is what happened and this is how I'm dealing about it, but you chose to backpedal or be defensive or deny. And that causes me to trust you less. So again, we all do things wrong. But if I can trust that we're going to be able to talk about that openly, especially in a board or investor context, or this works in personal life as well, then I think it's easy to rebuild almost no matter what the transgression was.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Investing, we're all going to make mistakes. And in that moment of integrity, just owning that mistake, talking about what you learn from it is really key versus down the line dealing with it a different way.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “So people do silly things, Harry, right? They make mistakes. Sometimes they lie, you know, cheat a little bit or whatever. And someone sometimes might be confronted with something. And I think there's this moment I call the moment of integrity where perhaps something's come to light or you're asked a direct question. And in that moment, that is the moment of integrity. It's the first time you're asked about it. Let's say you're on a board and you're confronting a CEO about something. What they say in that moment of integrity is how you can really tell how a person will behave and their value. And if they own up to it and say, yep, I made that mistake and here's what I learned and here's what I'm doing about it. That's one thing. But if they say, nope, that's not true and hide from it. And then it comes to light later through multiple conversations, maybe the third or fifth conversation or in some other way that actually, you know, yes, that is a thing that happened. You're dealing with someone that will actually cover it up and sort of dig the hole deeper. And I think my insight is that in entrepreneurship.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Sure. So a quick background is I've had one job interview in my entire life and I got that job and decided I never wanted to do that again. So I've been starting companies as an entrepreneur pretty much my whole life and had some luck and some success with some early companies sold two out of three and had one failure in there. But started an angel investing, built up a track record, and then really Tech Stars, I think of it as my fourth startup. So I'm just entrepreneur in here, stumbling through venture capital, I'm sort of 10, 11 years into TechSars at this point.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Here, huge pleasure to be back. And right after the big news came out of your new fund, congratulations. It's so exciting that you got that done.”

    2019-02-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source