YouSaid · the spoken record

David Tisch

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2024-02-05
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2024-02-05
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  1. “I don't think it's luck, though. I think that's a misplaced work. If you don't see it, you can invest in it. And so I think the hard work as a seed investor is meeting with that opportunity set that has a chance to be those outlier companies 10, 15 years from the day you met them. And that is actually the skill.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “We're not building the companies, right? The hard work is being done outside of this podcast and outside of Twitter. The hard work is being done by founders, by their first 10 employees, by their ability to find customers and traction and users. It is so easy to sit here and put out as Terrence properly said content marketing to attract people to think that you are this magic maker of their success. I just don't buy that. Our job is to allow people that are outside of this room to go fulfill their dream. Some founder has a dream. They have an idea. They have conviction and they go out and they go have an N of One opportunity to go build the thing that they are building to a level that again is unrealistic if you are playing out the outcomes that are required for Ventor's scale. They go do that with blood, sweat, and tears.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “He did mostly seed investing and a lot of Series A investing. And if you look at the combination, Series A investing is quite different than seed investing. I think Roger is a outlier. Roger invested in an era when he had a thesis and he was able to find companies that fit his thesis with immense conviction and build incredibly deep positions in those companies and the returns prove themselves out. And he went off into the sunset to do Act two because he was so good at it. So I think there's aberrations, but I don't think if you look at pure seed investing, that there are people who are just mostly right”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Nobody's that great at this. I don't think there's a seed investor that you can find who has figured out how to be right 10 times more often than another seed investor.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “A hard job. Until there's a day when every company applies for your check and gives you plenty of time to get to know them, meet them, and then somebody tells you what the future is and what the outcome of those companies are. And you're like, oh, this is a good company because I know it's a good company. Then it becomes easy. Until then, this is a game of gut. It's a game of, as Terrence uses the word conviction, I struggle with the word conviction because I don't know what it looks like if I'm going to be wrong most of the time. It's like, is this human? Is this idea, is this market capable as a package of building something of unrealistic scale? Because when you talk about the outcomes in our business and when you talk about changing the world or funding something that will have this enormous behavioral and economic impact 10 years from now and then sitting here and be like, oh, I knew it. I saw it. I don't buy that. We're going to be wrong.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Is going to be reasonable. And your hope as a early stage manager is that you own the most at the cheapest valuation of the best companies. That's not in your control. And so I don't think it's on me to say, here are rules, here's our band of things we say yes and no to based upon these objective rules. It's not how we operate.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Ventures two different jobs there's the pre series B job and there's the post series B job and I don't think they have any relation to each other I think at pre-series B you are doing more art and at post series B, you're doing more math. There's maybe some nuance in certain companies where a series B or C looks like it's an early stage style risk and that might be a company being pulled forward and you saw a lot of that happen in the froth of sort of mid 20 to mid 22. But I think traditionally post series B is a different job. Does valuation matter at a portfolio level? Probably, right? If our blended entry point across our seed fund is $50 million, that's not great. If our blended entry point is $3 million, I don't think we had access to the best companies in that vintage. So I think there is some middle ground that says at a blended portfolio level, your entry.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And you should say yes. And if I go back in my career, in 2010 through 15, a 10 to 15 to $20 million seed valuation was egregious. Today, you take a 10 all day. If you play out the 2015 through 20 period, a 20 to 30 million dollar round was egregious. It was like totally off market or the top of the market. But today, that is an expensive but normalized price. And does that mean that the valuation, the returns compress? Only if the exits compress. If the exits find their way over time, not in this moment, not in this depressed public company SAS multiple market, but if you fund a generational company and the outcome is insane. Enormous, you should say yes to whatever that number is at this seed stage.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “And every time you pass because the price is too high, if that was the right company, that was the lowest price you could ever invest in that company.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Sure. So shifting away from the human emotional side of venture, which is actually, I think, the art of venture. The math adventure is you have to invest in the best companies. If you invest in the biggest, best companies, you will have great returns. If you are structurally adverse to funding things with really hard rules, you are limiting the opportunity set of accessing the best companies. If the best company is going to raise a $10 million on $100 million seed round and you say no, but that turns out to be the $100 billion opportunity, that was a mistake. If that $100 million seed round turns out to be a $200 million company, that was also a mistake to say yes. But the option of being the $100 billion outcome, you can't just fundamentally say no if you believe that's the one”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I don't think the $5 million seed round is a new product. I think there's a nuance. If that's first capital in or if there's a sub million, two million dollar round that happened before that, that's an interesting fact at a individual company level. Not every company takes that million to $2 million round. Some do, some start with a $5 million round. But the $5 million round has been around and existed for a long time. I don't think it's a new product. Again, more accessible to founders.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Because seed is random and seed is shifted, the word seed is shifted from a million to $3 million round to a $5 to $8 million round. If there is a precede or a starter round, if a founder is going to take initial capital, so call that sub $2 million, that part of the industry is so random. And the idea that that deal is exposed and widely available and competitive is unknown. Those things happen quickly, they happen a lot of the times with built-in networks. They happen a lot of the times with friends, with angels, with angels who actually aren't angels but are backed by funds that raise capital and distribute it to founders that look like angels, whatever that capital is, that just continues to be random. I don't think you can index seed and I don't think you can aggregate seed into a low margin product. If somebody could buy the seed market, that's a very different story.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Change in the market, and that's created more founder optionality to raising rounds and raising rounds quicker and getting in front of more firms in a tighter timeline. That change is real and impactful and has changed to Harry, your point, it has changed the way that multi-stage firms have an ability to access the seed market because they move faster. I think speed was an advantage before 2019 for early stage investors that has been equalized by all firms across the entire spectrum. And I think that's a huge permanent change that I haven't seen go back. And I think more than anything, that allows founders even more accessibility and optionality when they think about their rounds.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “The biggest fundamental change is really right before COVID, the shift to online and distributed venture firms is the accessibility of founders to a venture firm. So if you go before sort of 2010 through probably 18 or 19, getting a meeting with a top tier VC firm was hard. It took logistics. You probably had to fly to San Francisco. You probably had to go sit in parking lot and a waiting room do this weird like march down Sandhill Lane to like these very old stiff firms and it was a really tight funnel to get in front of them coming out of COVID the accessibility of the multistage firm is fundamentally different you can spin up a meeting you could spin up a partner meeting you could spin up an investment decision exponentially more agile way and I think that's a huge”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Emotional, psychological letdown. These are mostly people that have succeeded in everything they've done up until that point. And then their company fails. If you as the human investor aren't aligned with that journey on the down and on the other side aligned with the journey on the up, I don't think you're going to be in this business for very long.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Think our business a lot of the time gets summarized in a tweet, in a blog post, in a tech media article, or in a podcast as these very abstractable, objective values, data, stats, like summaries, tactics, all of this magical thought leadership gets projected out there as like, here's how to do the business. But at the end of the day, I think what Terence said is how we view it. This is a human business. We get to know people. We build relationships. Most of them fail, right? Most of the companies that we back fail by natural statistics. If you're in early stage preceded seed venture, most of the companies back will fail. And what comes with that failure is a human who had a dream whose company didn't work out. And that's an incredible.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Best is this what did they do? Name the things that they did for you. Favorite is I would work with them in a heartbeat because I like them and they are a friend. They are somebody that we go to when we want to talk to an investor without the sort of parent in the room. We want to be the friend in the room.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “They're working in, what they need in a given moment. So the idea that in that sales pitch, we're going to prove value, I think, is just not the way that we approach our business. What we want to do is build a reputation that when a founder asks another founder that we worked with before, they say we love Box Group. Box Group is our favorite investor. Not necessarily best favorite.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “You're building a decade long relationship with a founder if things go well. And the idea that in a week, a day, a month, however long that transactional sales pitch goes at the beginning of a round, that you're going to prove all of your value in that short, compressed, fake time frame versus this actual long relationship of ups and downs and needs and wants, I just think isn't the way to do this. And so how we've built our ferment box group is by being consistent. We've never changed who we are or how we invest. We want to build a relationship at the earliest stage and we're there to help founders. What does help look like? It's different every day for each founder. Every founder is going to want different things at a different point in the company's life cycle and the style and the personality of a founder is going to be different depending upon who they are, what their background is, what industry is.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “We don't try to compete. I think if we tried to compete, we would lose our ability to work well with others. And I don't think our value proposition is to say pick us instead of somebody. So back to your question, Harry, why should people pick us because they like us? And I think that at the end of the day, that is why people should work with investors. There is a value component to this, but I think all that value gets played out after you accept an investor, not before. And I think the idea that you're going to be able to sort of prove value ahead of the pitch, I think is a nice head fake that a lot of investors try to do, but I don't think is realistic.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “It is very much either or. And I think if you have a sharp elbow, people are going to be aware of that and come at you with sharper elbows”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Offer the same product. We are giving money and we are taking equity. What comes after that is obfuscated in a sales pitch. Pick me for all of these reasons. When you are”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “It's important to meet the best founders. So the first step is do you see them? Do you get to know who they are and what they're working on as early as you can in that journey, a relationship starts ideally well before the transactional portion of raising capital. I've been doing this a long time. I think repeat founders come to you if you've provided the level of relationship that they're looking for as they raise capital. So first off is the first time you work with somebody, did you do well enough by them for them to come back? I think that is a foundation of a long career adventure is building repeat relationships. I think for first time founders, you have to find them where they are and you have to get to know them in a style that meets them versus a product that I think can differentiate. I think at the end of the day, for the most part, all the”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “To rhyme it, we are a team of nine investors, seven are based in New York, two in San Francisco, and we've been working together for a long time.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “I'm not going to compete, so I will just. I'm David. I live in New York, and I collect toys. That's where we're at. David Tish, I run box group, which I've been doing for about 15 years. Before that, I started and ran Tech Stars in New York for a couple years, but left in 2012 to do box group full-time as of recently. We just closed our sixth fund, so it's a $212 million early stage fund. We do preseed seed investing. We're at a $500K to million dollar check. We're happy to be the second or third biggest check in around. We don't take board seats, believe in what we call collaborative seed investing. It's what we've been doing since the beginning of the fund, and we do so in conjunction with the whole ecosystem. So we come in peace and we work nicely with others. We also have a follow-on fund to go with that.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “No one expects the multi-stage fund to do all their Series A's if they bought enough in the seed. Signaling doesn't exist.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “If you invest in the biggest, best companies, you will have great returns. If the best company is going to raise a $10 million on $100 million seed round and you say no, but that turns out to be the $100 billion opportunity, that was a mistake.”

    2024-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Biggest Misconceptions & Hardest Truths About Seed Investing Today; Why The Best Founders Don't Need You, Why Uncapped SAFEs Are Good, Why Reserves Are Bad, Why Signalling is BS, Why Price Doesn't Matter with David Tisch & Terrence Rohan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source