YouSaid · the spoken record

David Hall

lines on the record: 88
first: 2018-12-20
most recent: 2018-12-20
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Yeah, so I think that the notion of the rise of the rest started as just an interesting slogan for how can we engage some of these communities and find great entrepreneurs, find great deal flow for our funds. But as we started to uncover what's going on in these communities, it grew to its own, it spawned its own sort of life and its own being. And it was really interesting to become part of these communities. And what it ended up being for us was a great way to meet and have authentic relationships with the people on the ground and a lot of these cities that were building the businesses and supporting the entrepreneurs. It's interesting. It's so great to meet the entrepreneurs.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Making this all work. And I love doing this at the seed stage. And one of the other benefits of our job is we get to see this stuff before it's really ready for mass consumption. We typically like to invest. Post product market fit, but before sort of mass adoption. And so it's really interesting to see sort of the reaction of the first handful of consumers and customers of some of these products. How do they react? How resonant is the product as it's starting to hit the market?”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You've got to start looking through and saying, all right, well, if this guy's able to get this technology and maybe find this scientist and maybe pull together this other expert, he's got a very credible shot.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The hardest thing about being a venture capitalist is to always avoid that initial gut reaction of that'll never work because that'll never work yourself to death in this business. And for me, the question always ends up being, well, how can that work? Imagine the possibilities. Imagine how can these ingredients be put together, flour, sugar, eggs, milk independently would all taste gross, but you put them together and you come out as a cake. How can you assemble these ingredients to be a cake as opposed to a mud pie, right? And I think that's one of the challenges we face every day is because nothing's ever going to work. And we're looking at ideas and a PowerPoint deck talking to founders with hopefully some high degree of domain expertise because it gives them the authority to talk about. Hydroponic farming and abandoned coal mines.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's how you deliver a better, higher quality product to a greater degree of people than while doing it in a way that lifts up a community that's been by almost by definition sort of impacted by the change in sort of the economy.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a little bit of everything. I'll give you an example. We were investors in a business called App Harvest. App Harvest is based in Pikeville, Kentucky. And what this business does, and it's so fascinating, the founder and entrepreneurs is just this really dynamic guy. And he's basically turning abandoned coal mines into hydroponic farms. Hydroponic greenhouses, and he's hiring former coal workers to come work these new farms on what used to be a coal mine. And so to me, that's the essence of ingenuity. Like how do you take abandoned awful coal mines and turn them into really high quality produce that by virtue of being in Pikeville, Kentucky is like less than a day from 90% of the United States.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We see food in agriculture as perfectly commingled, and we've got some longer plays in the ag tech business. And we also have a couple of food brands that we're also really excited about.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we're obviously geographically diverse because that's part of our mandate. But in that, we have lots of different industries. We have lots of different business models in, like we've talked about a little earlier, some are direct to consumers, some are business to business, and some will likely end up being pro-cyclical. Some will likely be counter-cyclical. And so I feel like as we take a step up and look broadly at our portfolio, we do have a range of really interesting business models and targets of the economy that are different. We've got some healthcare companies. We've got some retail or e-commerce companies. We've got a handful of food opportunities that we're pursuing. And so...”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know it's not we're gonna close the factory to generate profitability or we're gonna close the trade at a 20-30% IRR I'm gonna go hire 15 developers and two community managers and a CMO because we're trying to build something great and that to me you know we all know and cities and politicians are well aware of things like the tech multiplier where every technology job generates you know five to six general economy jobs so when they go out and hire five people that's you know another dentist that gets hired or another restaurant that needs to open or a coffee place that needs to open on the corner to help sort of accommodate all of that growth In some of these heartland areas that have been losing for the last couple of years”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It really, because the beauty of what we do is, you know, as an asset class, Venture largely creates jobs, right? When we're investing in a company, the first thing I always ask is, what are you going to do with the money? And almost always the first answer is we're going to hire.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We love to highlight we're not looking to steal share from New York or Boston the Valley. We're looking to grow the denominator and say if 75% of all venture capital went to three states last year, Massachusetts, New York, and California, 1% of venture capital goes to a place like Michigan. 1% goes to Georgia. There's a lot of smart people in those states. And if we can just not move California from 50 to 49% to lift Georgia from 1% to 2%, but just grow the denominator so that they make a pie bit.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bashers of the Valley. We appreciate Silicon Valley. They are the cathedral that every other city aims to be as it relates to sort of allocating capital and assessing risk for early stage entrepreneurs. And I tell, you know, a lot of the cities when we go on tour always ask us, what's one thing that they do in the valley better than what we do in Picasity? And the answer is always they accept failure and they accept risk so differently than 90% of the cities in the country because it's just woven into the ethos of Silicon Valley. Things fail. But out of that, like Phoenix's, you know, these great companies can emerge from entrepreneurs who've had massive failures.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so the way that we think about that, and we largely see opportunity through the lens of geography and that we think that if you're going to come out with the newest farm tech business, kind of hard to see how that's going to be a guy from Midtown Manhattan coming up with that, to say the least. Or a lady from Silicon Valley who's going to be able to come up with those ideas who's never spent time on the farm. And we think that there are lots of experts in places like Des Moines or St. Louis who know a bit about farming and agriculture. We think that there are lots of manufacturing experts who come out of places like Detroit and Ann Arbor who can help us build things as a country. And so we think that those types of opportunities are going to come perhaps outside of the valley and outside of New York. And let me be clear because it was one of the criticisms we get at our fund a lot is about bashing the valley. And we are definitely not.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Having great and open access to healthy, clean food options because we're still trying to make sure that we have a healthy population. And there are lots of businesses that are working really hard to farm to table is sort of the absolute.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, we're a traditional VC. You know, we want to put a dollar into the machine and get more than a dollar hopefully a five or a ten coming back out of the machine. But to me, the goal is also about building these great iconic companies that are tackling some of the toughest problems that we as a society are facing around healthcare and education, transportation, food security, and things like that. Because I think that those are going to be big winners for investors over the long security.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, I think we're seeing a lot of less competitive valuations. I think there's still froth in the market in every market. But we are finding by and large our buy-in prices are a lot better than some of our valley competitors and New York competitors are seeing in the standard. Series A or Series seed round that we would invest in.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Outside of the traditional coasts to see those companies really accelerate and have this explosive growth Because of the flows of capital have been so flattened. But I'm really, you know, to answer your question, I think that there are a handful of companies that are going to go to zero. That's just the nature of the beast. For me, it's all about protecting the middle and the upside and making sure that those companies that have a chance are introduced to the right customers and partners and executives for recruiting so that they can actually skyrocket onto some real successes.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, look, I think every venture capitalist underwrites a little bit differently. You know, we don't really talk about sort of how we think the ebbs and flows of the market will affect us. The goal, obviously, for us is to have as few zero returners as possible. And we think one of the benefits of our geographic focus outside of the coast actually benefits us. Because, again, the dollar goes longer and a little bit of the sort of Midwestern and southeastern and just the ethos of the people is I'm not going to let this fail. And we typically find companies that are farther along in their revenue cycle. So they've been a lot more de-risked than the proverbial napkin on a Silicon Valley coffee shop, right? And so we see that really interesting. We also think, look, on the upside and on the hockey stick side, we think that there's lots of opportunity.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're luckily for us. There's so many more calls that say, Hey, it's working really well, or we think we've got 80% of it figured out. And then the risk has been greatly reduced, but the opportunity is still huge to come up with the next social network. It's really risky when it's a little face app for Harvard University students. It's a lot less risky when Facebook is going from the United States into the world. And I think that that's where the public markets do really, really well at assessing risk. I think the private markets do really, really well at sort of evaluating and managing risk before the drug is cleared FDA approval.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the first thing is the appetite and ability to allocate risk. Whereas because of regulation, because of just the cost and visibility of being public, it's harder for companies to do that. But on the private side, we're able to see things before they're ready for prime time, where they're still very risky and can completely flame out. The risk of every round of investment that we do at Revolution and Rise of the Rest, we run the risk of the company calling us up one day saying, yeah, it didn't work. And as painful as that is.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are beyond privilege that those notable entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders, among the best of our era, have decided to join us on this mission. And we think that the things that they saw in us and sort of the implicit mission of what we were doing of democratizing this flow of capital was really important. But we also think that they're investors. These folks understand business and they understand that there's something going on in the heartland. There's something going on in the middle of America that either their personal portfolio didn't necessarily have enough allocation, but also a lot of these folks are front, you know, David Rubinstein, one of our LPs, is from Baltimore. You know, Bezos is from New Mexico. Their hometowns are these cities that have been left behind a lot of times. And of course, everybody wants to see their hometown flourish, and they want to see the return of jobs to a lot of these places where they haven't seen the economic...”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. And so, but in Madison or in Detroit, you've got a stickier employee, and we're seeing that those folks end up staying around longer, being more productive. They're able to get a backyard and start a family. I mean, I saw a deck one time where a... The question was asked what about recruiting? How hard is it to recruit? And the entrepreneur showed a slide of a birthday party. He says, it's easy for me to recruit because I can promise this. I can't promise a backyard birthday party in San Francisco or New York.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can find a lot of these folks anywhere, and I think you're starting to see the recruiting of them away from the hubs. One of the big challenges for developers particularly in the coastal hubs is there's such a high opportunity cost on their talent. If you have a bad quarter as a startup or miss a couple of your milestones, half of your development staff is looking for another job because they recognize that unless they work for Google.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I would, you know, that's a common issue we hear a lot. And I think that the real focus is for a lot of the early stage jobs, a lot of the junior folks, the entry-level jobs, they're coming right out of the university. So it's no different from leaving Morehouse and coming up to New York to work at Morgan Stanley. These folks graduate from Vanderbilt and then go work directly into one of the Nashville startups.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Definitely more affordable environment, but the jobs are now starting to happen. It's part of the flywheel that we're seeing, this flow of talent boomerang back home because that's where they want to be. And I think that the combination of those two factors with the flattening of the, you know, it's never been cheaper to start a business because of things like”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's so funny. I was on a call just the other day with a company that relocated from Boston to Wisconsin. And they were able to extend their burn by over six months just by re domiciling the company. So I think that there are a couple things. I think that obviously the cost of living differences are really different. And you can grow a company a lot farther on the same amount of funding. But I think you're also seeing the flow of talent. I think you're seeing people. Graduate from the University of Michigan or graduate from Georgia State or Georgia Tech and say, you know what, I don't necessarily feel like I want to go to these coastal hubs. I want to stay here. I want to become an entrepreneur. And it's easier because my network is here. It's a more livable, more affordable.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“started businesses in New Orleans focusing on education and education reform. So you see the legacy of the great industries of America and steel and manufacturing take place, but also you see the resurgence because of current situations in places like New Orleans that launched these burgeoning industries in things like education technology.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you walk away from is both how different cities take entrepreneurship differently and how they've had to deal with it differently, which is not undifferent from how or indifferent from how they've had to historically deal with economic ebbs and flows. I mean, one of the things that's really interesting to me is we see a lot of robotics in Pittsburgh, for example, because of the focus of Carnegie Mellon, but also the history of steel there, which kind of makes sense if you draw a narrow line between steel to robotics, right? You see a lot of advanced manufacturing in Detroit, which obviously makes a lot of sense. But interesting, you'll see some really interesting things like ed tech in New Orleans. Why? Because Katrina forced New Orleans to rethink their entire education system, and you saw a lot of teach for America alums coming there to be helpful, but then being entrepreneurial about how do they solve these problems. And these teach for America a lot.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Follow that with visiting, going out, and seeing that, talking to these companies and going and being in their physical spaces and meeting as many companies as possible in that venue. And then we end the day with a celebration. We do a pitch competition where the winner has historically received a $100,000 investment, but it's a way for the community to show the best of the future in a handful of ideas. How that's evolved over time, we've done it now in 38 different cities on seven different tours. So we've literally been from places like York, Pennsylvania down to New Orleans, which is near my hometown, and seen this play out in so many different cities. And it's...”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We kicked it off in Detroit and we start in the morning. We convene the leadership. I like to call it the suits and the t-shirts getting together for the first time. We'll bring the politicians, the mayors, the governors, the state and federal officers. We'll bring the heads of economic development, the university presidents or business school deans, we'll bring the tentpole companies, those big success companies that have kind of broken out and made a name for themselves, but will also bring the startups, the t-shirts, the guys who are guys and girls, guys and ladies who are cranking every day on building the next app or the next B2B SaaS business and bring them together to say what's going on in Detroit, in Nashville, in Pittsburgh, what's happening in this city, what industries are flaring up, what are you noticing about the flow of talent, the flow of capital, the flow of ideas into and even out of your city.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, sure. It actually stems from a very simple premise. We believe that great entrepreneurs can start great businesses anywhere. And for so long in our country's history, or at least in the recent history, in the digital history, digital era, that belief was epicentric to the coastal hubs of, as you said, San Francisco, New York, and Boston. And one of the things that we've been doing at Revolution in working with Steve, we started in 2014 these bus tours, which became themed Rise of the Rest bus tours.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I guess the way that I'd most likely consider it, think about it, is we really approach things from a brand building perspective. How do you build the brand so that it helps the consumer recognize that there's trust behind the brand, there's a simplicity, there's a real value add that's coming through the products that we're backing. I would also say that as we deploy capital and a lot of the deals that come to us are deals that are Are pretty focused on consumer stuff. We have a lot of B2B business to business investments as well, but a lot of the deals that we see just end up being really strong consumer brands.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, given sort of the AOL. DNA of our place, there's a lot of focus on social networking, social media, and general consumerism. How do we make the lives of consumers better, easier, faster, faster, cheaper by investing in a lot of products that sort of, where the consumer is the end user? So a lot of our investments throughout time have been either BDSC directly or B2B2C, where the end user, the business might not necessarily be generated from the consumer, but the end user was a consumer because just, you know, the AOL DNA is really pervasive about how do you make it easy for the average Joe to get online. That's exactly what AOL.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, you know, the revolution story and what Steve has built and others have built with revolution is really phenomenal. In the Washington, D.C. area, it's been its home. AOL grew up in the Dulles corridor, has been a phenomenal explosion of just capital ingenuity in that area and has helped spawn the grandchildren of AOL are now companies like Vox Media, which is run by Jim Bankoff, who was at AOL, or even living social, which was a huge company that was run by a former product manager at Revolution Health. So you're still seeing these spillover effects of that sort of huge entrepreneurial flashpoint with AOL.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's easy to talk about, but it's actually more visual. I was sitting there one day at the Washington Post, and it's the only place I've ever worked where sitting at your desk, reading the newspaper was called Product Research, right? And so I was reading an article about Steve Case and the firm that he'd just launched after leaving AOL Time Warner called Revolution. And it was going to build these big iconic businesses that were going to tackle really tough problems around healthcare and financial services. And it just was so exciting to me. I said, I've got to plot my way there. I did a little cyber stalking at the time, finding out where the revolution offices were. I did some LinkedIn searches to find who I knew there and ended up finding a woman that I went to business school with who was there a couple of free coffees for her and a glass of chardonnay and I found myself with an email introduction to one of the founders and that's how it started.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was reflecting on the train up here from Washington, how much of what I've been working on has been kind of cumulative. It's looking for these, how do you recognize disruption before it hits and then how do you manage through the disruption and how do you, and now from an investor's perspective, how do you manage that process sort of indirectly? Because we're not in the company every day, but we're advising these companies about disruption that's either coming or disruption that hopefully they're creating with their products and services that they're launching.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I figured I could always end up in one of those high paying coastal jobs, but for cutting my teeth, I needed to manage a business through disruption. And that to me was going to be such an interesting, how could I be the savior of the great gray lady of Washington at least? And managing...”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I went to the Washington Post. I actually interned at the Washington Post Company between my first and second years at Harvard Business School. And for me, it was a perfect place because where do newly minted MBAs want to go? They want to go to industries that are in crisis. And there was no greater crisis in the early 2000s than the print newspaper.”
2018-12-20 · Masters in Business · David Hall Discusses the State of Venture Capital (Podcast) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source