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David Hornik

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26
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2015-01-18
most recent
2015-01-18
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1
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  1. “But I think that Apple has been focused on a very particular thing and they need to broaden how they think about the world.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I think that Google is in the best position to do it today. I think that Facebook is the one that's being the most. Aggressive and thoughtful about how to continue to capture the minds of people. I think that Amazon has done an amazing job of capturing the wallets of people. So it'll be very, and what's interesting is I left out Apple, which is currently the biggest of the bunch. Absolutely.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “You will see if there ever is one, but my sense is that there are a set of companies that are all basically creating the same business. I think that if you look at what Amazon is doing, what Google is doing, what Facebook is doing, they all are slowly but surely, and in many ways Apple, they're all slowly but surely morphing into the same company. They're all building social networks and search infrastructure and photo sharing and big data. So we'll see who among them is the winner, which among them is the winner.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “I am not a believer in skipping college. I think that it's one of the great places to meet amazing people and having an opportunity to find kindred spirits and amazing people in concentration is important.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “You know, the good news for Adam is it has been a bestseller. It's been an amazing success in the business books. And that's, I think, has been good news because I think the message is so important.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Perceived as a nice guy in a business where people are often cutthroat is that the conversation inevitably becomes, hey, David's a nice guy as opposed to David is super helpful or thoughtful or whatever, you know, other things that one might be as a business person. So this book is about is sort of debunking the myth that you can't be a successful person just because you're a nice person. And that being helpful and trying to be part of this ecosystem and pay it forward is actually good for business. And I just think that that is both important and true. And Adam Grant is a really smart professor and an amazing guy. And the book makes clear to you here are the ways in which being thoughtful and helpful. Being part of a broader ecosystem will help make you successful. And you're not a fool for giving people the benefit of the doubt.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “All of this opportunity for a potential partner to then work with other people. But the reality is, and that it's more complicated and the rest of the story is that Danny himself, after making this decision, sort of thought, maybe this isn't the best choice and maybe I'm missing out on some value that David could provide, et cetera. And ultimately decided to figure out a way to make it possible for me to invest as well. And since that time, we really have been working together in partnership to try and build a really big, interesting business. And Painter Mee is an amazing business. And Danny is an amazing CEO. So I'm lucky to have had the chance to work with him. I am grateful that he took the time to say, gee, you know what, maybe this wasn't the right outcome. And what's interesting is that Danny then said, you know, one of the things, one of the challenges of being”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Well, like I say, I mean, it's a little more complicated than that, and thankfully, one of the reasons I think Adam includes this particular story, and it's the story of my investment in a company called Pay Near Me and an investment in an amazing entrepreneur named Danny Shader. And the reason I think he liked the story is that the beginning of this story is sort of me reaching out and being a good guy. doing the right thing and trying to be as supportive and helpful as I can be to Danny as he goes to raise this round of financing. And Danny ultimately decides to take someone else's money. And so the presumed moral of the story is being the nice guy is stupid, right? That you're foolish to allow.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, I'm going to recommend a book that's completely shameless. And the reason it's shameless, if anyone listening to this podcast reads it, and you really should. It's a great book, is that the first chapter talks a reasonable bit about me. So again, totally shameless. But on the other hand, the book is called Give and Take. And it's by a professor named Adam Grant. And Adam was doing research about what are the characteristics of a successful business person.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “For a little bit, and then someone said to me, David, what's the point of this blog? Who is your audience? What are you trying to do with this? And which of course is incredibly important? One should never, you know, you need to always have some sort of target audience, whatever you're doing.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Yeah, now I haven't done anything terribly recently on Venture Blog, so I should probably do that. Maybe I'll do that this afternoon. But it was another interesting piece of advice where we wrote the blog.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “When we started it, First of all, VentureBlog was the very first venture capital blog, right? So there were no examples and people weren't thinking about it. And at the time, people thought the venture business was this black box.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “It's, you know, it's in the business world, there's a whole lot of incremental, there's lots and lots of advice one gets over time. I was early on and The venture business, and I was talking to our then CFO of the firm, and I made some comment. I said something like spending, you know, well, we'll spend four million dollars or whatever. And he said, David, you know what, you're not spending at you. You're investing it. And you have to understand the difference. This is not about you are not out shopping, right? A venture business is not about shopping. The venture business is about making good choices, investing in people and in opportunities, and then trying to work alongside them to build value. And oftentimes it's a mindset. It's a frame of reference that's so important. When I started my blog and shortly after, as you mentioned, Venture Blog and then this podcast I do.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “So, in order for my investors to make money, they give me $300 million. The first thing I have to do is return $300 million to them. And then I have to actually make some more. And it's very hard to do on a niche market. You really need to have markets that span billion dollars of available opportunity because in all likelihood you're going to get small fractions of those markets and it's incumbent upon you to then eke out your hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to build billions of dollars in company value.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “It really in my fund, it's really important because we are investing in any given fund, we're investing $300 or $400 million. And so in order for an investment in that size fund to be successful and meaningful, it has to actually have quite a big outcome, right? The most important and most valuable investments that we have made in the eBates or Zulilli or Splunk, we're all multi-billion dollar outcomes. The companies ended up worth billions, and when that's the case, then if you still own 15 or 20 or 25% of the company, then your returns are in the hundreds of millions of dollars, which, as I say, is important because you're investing hundreds of millions of dollars.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Or your spare room, and you have to say, well, actually, it doesn't reach any of those patterns, but it still may be transformative in some interesting way, et cetera. So I think that you learn to have a good sense of people and the sorts of people who are likely to drive companies forward and take the sorts of risks and work hard and do those things that are required of startups. And really being a startup founder is a hard business. You really have to spend a whole lot of time smashing through walls. And so first and foremost, you have to find people who you think are well suited for that or excited about that, will want to build giant businesses.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Well, hopefully, because otherwise this job is really tough. And actually, the reality is that this job is really tough. There are some indicators. When I joined the venture business, my partner Dave Marcourt said that the venture job is one of pattern matching, that it's understanding a bunch of business patterns and a bunch of patterns of the kinds of entrepreneurs who are likely successful. And then when you see the next business saying, oh, this one is like this entrepreneur or this business opportunity. And to a certain degree, that's true. And which makes it easier in some respects when you've been in the business for 15 years. But on the other hand, it doesn't really help when some new business model comes along, when suddenly the founders of Airbnb come in and say, we're going to let you rent out your cash.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Allow me to go negotiate contracts on behalf of my clients independent of their express oversight as to business deals, et cetera. So that certainly helped me go from being an attorney to being a venture capitalist. I think the same is true ultimately of young business people who have to understand that no they shouldn't be rogue and crazy and make decisions independent of the company and the management. On the other hand, great individuals in any given job exercise their own judgment. They behave in a way with some autonomy and good managers will give you, as they say, they'll give you more and more rope. And hopefully you'll manage to do well by the company while taking risks that That proved valuable.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I think it's a mindset to tell you the truth. One of the reasons why I wasn't terribly worried about that difference when I joined August Capital is that I sort of always did it anyway. Even when I was in a position where it wasn't my job to A, make decisions or act autonomously, a young attorney is not supposed to be an autonomous actor pretty much in any capacity. You're supposed to work for some other partner. You're supposed to work for your clients. You're supposed to do a set of things. And yet in my practice of law, I had clients who relied upon me and appreciated my opinion and I gave it. I had other.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “People asked of me, and they were thankful when I did. But I didn't have a whole lot of decision-making authority. Whereas when you're a principal, you make all of the decisions. It is your job to make decisions. And that's a very different world. It was a big shift to go from, hey, David, can you do the following things for me to gosh, I wonder what I want to do and who I want to do those things for me. Those are just miles apart. Not something you can't bridge, but it's definitely an interesting shift in thinking.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “But largely, lawyers are trained to be very conservative. The training is to find all of the problems that one might run into and to try and worry about those things and not say to yourself, what are the possibilities? What are the opportunities? And so by and large, I think that that's a really tricky mindset to try and engage and venture. The other thing that one of my partners said when I was joining the venture business, he said, you know, there are really two kinds of people out there. There are agents and there are principles. And agents are the folks like the lawyers who are doing what other people tell them to do. And I don't mean that in a pejorative sense. I believe a good lawyer and I was very happy to do what I was.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “But because we're surrounded here in Silicon Valley by the Googles and Yahoo's, eBay and Twitter and Facebook. They're all within 30 miles of the campus, then I think there's lots of positive role models. And so people get excited about the possibilities.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, at this point, I think that it is that there are lots of examples, right? I mean, and that has been true for a long time. Obviously, Hewlett and Packard were in and around Stanford when they started HP. And since then, there have been a string of companies that have been started by Stanford people, Yahoo and Google and others. And so when students are sitting in Stanford, it's a model that they look at and say, this is something one could reasonably do. Now, the reality is that, of course, it's completely unreasonable to start a startup. They're extraordinarily hard. It's extraordinarily unlikely they succeed. There are all sorts of reasons why one would never leave college with a bunch of dead and having worked really hard and then join a little company or worse yet start a little company.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Kind of like you, so good luck. And that was fine by me. I just had, I had no intention of failing. I figured it would be something that I could figure out. And I've been here at August Capital now for almost 15 years. So I've at least survived the first decade and a half. We'll see about the next.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, I'll tell you, I should have joined them, but foolishly I simply became their attorney, represented them in some acquisitions, et cetera, and started working with startups. And once I started working with startups, I realized that this was the most exciting thing I could imagine and was representing a bunch of interesting companies, in particular at the time, a company called EVITE, which started the online invitation world. And my now partners were investors in the company and got to know me. And after a while, they sort of said, hey, have you ever thought about the venture business? I think in large part because I was such a loudmouth in board meetings. And I said, oh yeah, that sounds great. I spent a lot of time interviewing with them before they decided that they'd let me join the firm. And they said at the time, G-Lawyers stink at this business and you will probably fail.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Yeah, it was not exactly a straight path. The closest I can say for the precursor to venture capital is that I grew up in a house that always had computers very early on. My father was one of the early computer scientists in the Boston area. But I was kind of a musician and ultimately a lawyer. I got a degree in computer music, a degree in criminology, and ended up in law school. I was a litigator for a while. But eventually in the late 90s, I ended up back in Silicon Valley where I had gone to college at Stanford. And in particular, I was out here because some of my classmates had started Yahoo.”

    2015-01-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 004: David Hornik on the Magic of Stanford and Startups · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source