YouSaid · the spoken record

Dayna Grayson

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35
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2019-04-08
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2019-04-08
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1
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podcast

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  1. “It's really funny. I have several favorites. I can't pick just one just like if you were to ask me which one is my favorite portfolio company. I can't say just one. I love working with all of them. However, you know, the things I said before about board members who seek alignment, who seek the best ways to support the CEO, who are certainly present, who are prepared. And I don't mean just being prepared by reading the materials, but actually just being deep in the space, even if it's not a space, let's say, that you continue to invest in over time, but you continue to follow it because you have to be engaged for that company. Ironically, two of my favorite board members are ones that I don't officially sit on the board with because in one case, Josh Koppelman, I'm on the board of the company, and he comes to the board meeting because they've invested and have invested along. We would love for him to be on the board and he practically is. At every board meeting but has elected not to take an official board seat, but he feels like a board member and he's just hugely helpful.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “About it at the seed level that you were just saying, but as companies mature more and more and eventually have a huge investor base, the market overall is a signal, so you have to be very cognizant of it. But I think we put too much stock in that word and not trying to get to the ultimate truth of what's going on inside companies. So I try to recognize in my own activities what could be a signal that perhaps is being misread and always try to go meet the entrepreneur regardless of what I think the signals are in the market.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Yes, that's a great example of signaling, but I think you have to be up front if one of your CEOs really wants to take money from a multi-stage venture fund in the very, very early seed stages, you have to ask why. What is it that they want to accomplish? Is it that they just are wanting to make a ton of seed bets and they don't really follow on with those? In which case, that's, again, the truth and not a signal. And so you should get that out of them. But the other case might be, who knows, it could be something that they're really actively trying to build a company with and they, or that they really have a strong relationship with that founder and that they want to make an exception. My point is that there are varying cases and if it's a legitimate reason and they are really value added investor, that should, you know, you should absolutely want to take money from them at any stage. But that's just one example of signaling. There's tons of other examples of pacing. And the market does read signals. Certainly, you know, we talked about.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “You know, I hate the word signaling. I think if we could change that word about signaling and just try to get to truth in everything we do, you know, there's so much said about, well, if you do this and you meet with this venture investor later in the process, they're going to thank you. Already met with other venture investors. Or if you, there's a thousand other examples.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Hearing, and that's sort of where overprescribing came from. And I thought it was just fascinating in terms of understanding how different movements and different markets, frankly, get created. And in this case, it's obviously become a huge epidemic that we now are faced with dealing with.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “You know, I mentioned before I was an English literature minor in college, so I have a lot of favorite books. And I will say I don't read that many business books, not because they're not valuable, but I really prefer to read biographies or stories of how companies were formed. For that reason, I love books like Buffett about Warren Buffett and his biography. But right now, the most recent, or I should say over the past couple years, the book that really stands out for me is a book called Dope Sick. And DopeSick is about the opioid crisis in the United States and how that crept up over the past 20 years in plain sight for all of us to see and how it was really a systematic failure. There were aggressive sales tactics being used by drug companies. I'm sure individual companies thought they were overachieving and doing really well. There were also different sort of practices that doctors were being trained in, like that Hain is really the fifth vital sign and you need to be constantly treating pain as much as you're”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Really make the best decision possible. But if you lay a bunch of conflicting opinions on the table, it can be very, very difficult for them.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “You know, I would say many people have also said this to listen, to show up, to give advice, but not make decisions. I would say some of the other nuanced things that you should do would be to really strive to be in sync with your other board members. And if you see conflicts, even very, very subtle at the board level, meaning one person using your example from before doesn't think ACV is as important as TCV. Who knows what the other metric is, or doesn't think development at this pace is as useful as marketing getting a hub ahead there. That can be very hard for a CEO to put those opinions together if you just lay them out on the table. I think it's incumbent on board members to really recognize when there are just little bits of conflict on the board, little bits of differences in opinion. I won't even say conflict. And we should be proactively trying to help the CEO resolve those and get alignment. Because again, you want to empower that person to”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I would say to me when I said we're there as a board to serve the CEO, I call that sort of one and the same as serving the company because the CEO is the ultimate leader of the company. Yes, you could say hierarchically, I guess the CEO works for the board, but the CEO is guiding the board and their management team on the critical decisions. They have to take so much advice, both from their management team and the board, and really steer us back to what is the most important decision to make. Now, we all have informed decisions and we all can advise the CEO and we should be advising the CEO. But as long as that person is in place, we're there to kind of help them hone their decisions but empower them to make the ultimate decision.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Nor should they be there operationally on a day to day basis, but they should be adding that strategic advice that is really needed at the company at different points in time. And I would highlight that it's at different points in time. People often point to recruiting as the most valuable thing investors can help with. That is correct. And especially when you really need to find that VP marketing or a new VP engineering or a CTO, you need that yesterday and anything you can do to accelerate that process is very important. But I would also say there are things like simply financial planning for the next year after you've raised another big round, understanding what”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “It's really a full service mentality in that you have your board member, you have the partner that invested in the company, but then you have the associates that I've mentioned that are really helping the company on financial modeling or frankly whatever they want over time. You're also expected as a larger fund and you should be expected as a larger fund to help on recruiting and business development, operational excellence if you're a SaaS company really understanding the model and the metrics if you're a consumer company understanding similarly the CAC and the LTV and how to really structure your company over time. And I think it's incumbent and it will be more and more incumbent on these funds and perhaps the size requirement will come down even a smaller funds. You really should be expected to be more full service. If you think about it as entrepreneurs, you're selling sometimes 20 plus percent to any single investor or one single investor. And they're like a co-founder in your company. You don't want them there operationally.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “You know, I think the venture market has matured a lot in the past 10 years. If the internet start up, if the startup in general has matured over the past 20 years since the internet bubble or the internet advent first started in the late 90s, the venture world has matured over the past 10 years. We've seen the rise of the seed fund. I credit Josh Koppelman and first round Capital for really starting that movement. And that's gone from 20 to 50 to $100 million size funds. And then we've also seen the advent of the larger funds, such as NEA. And I think what you've really seen is more of an institutional approach in both categories. At the seed fund level, the funds are often much more general. They're about getting your company started, providing that startup advice to the founder. Many of these seed funds have internal resources that they're really feeding back to the entrepreneur about how to get product market fit, how to raise your next round. And then at the large fund size, when you're going in and helping the company,”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “More. And again, we'll be on the same side of the table with the entrepreneur, so we just don't want you to get too far out ahead of yourself and ahead of the pricing of the next round. And that's something we can all make together. But if it's a competitive process, an entrepreneur really wants a certain valuation and the market usually clears at a certain price and we kind of wait to see where that happens. Now, if you're investing in say a unicorn type valuation, price matters a lot more. It should be more clear at that stage whether this is going to be a unicorn being a billion dollar valuation, whether this is going to be a $50 billion company one day or if that's what they're aiming for or if this is more in the three to five times a billion dollars. But at a minimum, you really have to dig into the financials. And for us, really be sure at a minimum it could be to three to five times that valuation from there.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “You know, many people have said this on your show that price doesn't matter. That is right and wrong, depending on the stage, in my opinion, of the investment. I subscribe completely to the mentality that price does not matter at the Series A. At the Series A level, we as venture investors, anyone with more than a $25 or $50 million fund, should be looking for these outsized exits. They should be looking for category leaders one day, category creators, market creators, things that can be 100 times multiples on their initial investment. So it really doesn't matter if you pay 20 or 30 or 40 or more sub, let's say, 100 million or so, I don't think it matters. But with that, entrepreneurs also have to keep their expectations in check depending on what they have, depending on how quickly they're growing. This should all lead to their thinking about not this round, but what is the price of the next round? Because the next round, the price is going to matter.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Stage company, there's more diligence to do, but not a lot. And then it's just about building rapport with the entrepreneur and making sure he or she wants to work with us and we have a deal that could work.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “There are two streams, right? There's one in working with the entrepreneur to make sure he or she understands that you're moving this forward quickly and you're very serious about investing in their company. In that regard, I try to be upfront and open about the things that I still need to do, whether it's merely scheduling them for a partner meeting, which sometimes at NEA could take a couple of weeks and slotting them into the calendar, or whether it's doing additional research and uncovering, we'll use your example again, more about the ACV that they're modeling or planning to have in their business, I'll be very open with them, but very encouraging along the way that I'm very interested in this business and we're just trying to shore these things up. Then internally, I will do just that. I will grab the four or five or six people here at NEA who have an opinion or have expertise in that space, sit down with them and talk to them about the investment. I'll also run the diligence work with an associate, especially if it's more of a series A plus series B.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Investors, we've passed a lot of opportunities over time that have ended up becoming big, successful companies. So things play out in different ways than we assess them. And we recognize that's a possibility. But I think you owe it to the entrepreneur to give them some detail of what led your decision.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “You know, I try to be as upfront and honest and succinct as quickly as I can about the feedback Enie has a large portfolio. If we have something competitive in the space, I will tell them that very quickly. Sometimes I will not realize that until later in the process because we won't realize another company is actually going in this direction until we bring it up at a partners meeting and another partner will say, oh, did you know this company is actually doing this over in their skunk works area? In which case it might be a surprise later in the process. But in terms of really fundamental reasons why I decided not to invest in the company, especially if I've taken two or three meetings, I usually try to share that back with the entrepreneur and I hope they appreciate that even if they disagree. So it's a lot better than saying I just don't want to invest in the business if you say I learned these three things just like you said before. It's the TAM, it's the ACV, and then recognizing that you could be wrong. We often are as a...”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “You know, I think that is an investor's role on the board. If you're an investor and you've taken a board seat and the next stage of the company is to go raise capital, you absolutely want to have an open discussion with your founder and your CEO about who the best people would be to raise capital from. But as a board member, you're giving advice. You're not making the decision. You're not setting the course. And you're listening to your CEO based on what he or she also wants to do if they've said, you know, I think what you're really saying is you want to find this type of fund and this type of space who could help me in this area. Hey, I've met this guy over here and he or she seems great. Why don't we also talk to them, then your board member and your slasher investor should be very open to that too. So it should be a collaborative process, but I do find that CEOs often want my advice on that or my help on intros because we see a lot of investors across all the boards that we work on and all the companies we're invested in.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “To get to know the right investors for their business over time when they don't need the money. That's different than the advice of always be fundraising. It's more about relationship building and taking the time to run into the right people at the right time, taking the time to talk to their entrepreneurs casually. You're not reference checking, but they haven't said they want to invest in your business. So it would be strange to go reference check them. But to really hone in on who is the right firm, who is the right partner, who's the right set of people to help me build my business over time? And if you know that, and then you are in that lucky situation as an entrepreneur that you can get your round done quickly, hopefully the stars align with the investor you want and the time period you want. And I can't argue with that.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “I think that's absolutely true. There's always a healthy debate about whether there's too much money in the industry or too many companies looking for funding. I don't know which it is, but I do know that the best companies often can control the market and the pace for getting their company funded. They will have their pick of many investors who definitely want to work with them. So if I were an entrepreneur knowing that it's on them, it's their market, they can set the pace, they can pick their investors, I would absolutely encourage them not to rush that process. And I don't know anyone who would disagree with me on the entrepreneur side. That said, they definitely want to spend as little time fundraising and as much time as they can in building their business. And that's also the right approach. You know, my advice to entrepreneurs, and again, we are on the same side of the table as them once we've invested in the company, we go out to market with them. They're out front, but we're investors in the company, and we see that process too.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Based on the experts around the table, the investors inside NEA who are prone to know something about that space. So if it's a robotics company, we'll grab five or six partners and general partners who could really help us make the best decision about that investment. And that's for the final sort of partner presentation.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “So we have a lot of associates and principals that are affirmed that are very smart on their individual spaces that they cover. They're also very scrappy. So I love the word scrappy. I love the word resourcefulness. It's the two things that I really try to embody in my own work. So I will often bring someone along fairly quickly to start employing some of the scrappy, resourceful tactics, whether it's to go research a certain space really quickly or frankly to find ways to further endear ourselves to the entrepreneur if it's a very competitive situation or frankly just something we really want to do. In terms of the team as a whole, you know, it's probably the most common question I get from entrepreneurs being that NEA is such a big firm with $3 billion in size, 50 investing professionals across healthcare and tech. And so when you're just going to make a tech investment, do all 20 or so have to be aligned? The answer is no, but we don't also try to get those full 20 people to be aligned. We break up into smaller teams.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Right. Well, the first thing I would do would be to feed that back to the entrepreneur, especially if it's someone hunting around for an idea, you know their overall vision is great, but they need to tackle a little bit to find out.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Know, I have a ton of respect for this approach, and I try to really hone my knowledge, hone what I'm looking for, and be able to recognize what's great in an entrepreneur so that I can do this myself. And that is making a decision based on my intuition in that first meeting. And often it's in the first 10 minutes or 15 minutes of that first meeting. I've seen some of the greatest investors do just that, meet with an entrepreneur within the first 15 minutes, they're either excited or they're not. If they're excited, they're investing. Scott Sandell at NEA is a great example of that. It's very much his style.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I think there's merit to both approaches. I think really the best entrepreneurs are out to solve a huge problem, let's say in the market, and they might be starting with a core small technology, and there might be a lot of distance between those two things, how they're going to solve the problem and where the technology is today. But if that founder is really focused on, I'm going to change the world in this way, I'm going to solve this massive problem. And here are the one or two or three other founders who are going to join me in this journey. That's kind of the most inspiring thing I look for. It's not about I've got this little thing and I've got huge product market fit today. Yes, you need to accomplish that over, you know, the early days of the company's life, but you don't have to have it on day one. I'm much more interested to hear what have you been doing in terms of testing and learning, how quickly are you tacking and changing, who are you inspiring to follow you? Who has joined you? Those are the most important things. Vision, inspiring other people to join you.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Entrepreneurs should be quite up front, and often that time that would go something like, hey, I've been doing a lot of research and I've dated these three people in the past and I've been looking for something in this area because it's how I think the future will play out. That's not really an approach to dating that I would employ. I have been out of the dating world for quite some time.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “You know, I like to understand the history. I don't know if it builds rapport, first of all. You'd have to ask the entrepreneur on the other side, but for me personally, I love to hear from the entrepreneur of how they started the idea, how they came up with the idea, what led them to become an expert in this field. And an expert in the field does not mean that you came right out of industry and that you were doing this type of development in robotics, let's say. It could be as simple as you experience the problem or you witness the problem in your last job or in your personal life, and that's what's created the idea of starting the company today. Often people are calling this storytelling. Frankly, I also just like to tell the entrepreneur why I'm interested in their space, one saying that I really do not like inventure and an entrepreneurship is the idea that raising capital is like dating or investing in entrepreneurs is like dating. That's quite silly if you think about it.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I would say if you're just starting out in venture, and even if you're not, definitely take as many meetings as you can to really understand what great looks like, not in terms of the idea and the business necessarily, but in terms of the people. If you take these meetings early on, frankly, you may not end up investing in those entrepreneurs. You'll have a year or two after that to see how the businesses played out. And you'll see, was my hunch initially correct about whether this was a great entrepreneur or not? Even if the business didn't turn out well, you can still assess whether that entrepreneur was on to the right threads and onto the right ideas. And that type of personal data refinement on your judgment is very helpful early in your career.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Sure. You know, I think there's this idea in Venture, at least from the outside, and oftentimes with new entrepreneurs, that somehow we're sitting back and waiting for ideas to come to us. Actually, I spend the majority of my time proactively researching spaces, researching sectors, and getting to know networks of people. So early in my venture career, someone gave me the advice that I should get to know all the director levels and the VP level people inside companies that I know and respect well, because one day they will be the company creators of the future. And that served me really well, even if you don't end up investing or even if those people don't end up starting a company, you get to know them and those networks are really what you need to be doing early in early in your career. Secondly, the way I do evaluate deals is often through warm introductions. Warm introductions from people that I really work with and that I know well. So entrepreneurs of my companies. So I'd say probably half the meetings I take are kind of opportunities.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Software world. First of all, it's the miniaturization of robotics and how these products are actually delivered to a shop floor with miniaturization becomes commoditization. You can buy a 3D printer in the case of FormLabs for $3,000 that otherwise would have cost you almost $100,000.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Yes, short answer is no. I do not think we're seeing the end of the journalist investor. I do have quite a portfolio in the industrial manufacturing space today, but I also have a number of consumer investments as well as software investments. And I think for anyone who plans to be in venture or has been inventure for many years, spaces do evolve specialties to evolve. And first and foremost, we're investing, I'm investing in people in the actual entrepreneur. And that's frankly what then has led me into the industrial space, pulling a thread of a different entrepreneurial trend and people connected to each other and I discover one entrepreneur through the other. And then I see the space evolve. And that's given me the exposure to industrial that I have today. But I don't think generalist is dying at all. So no worries for you there. I think what is interesting about the industrial space, however, a couple of trends that I've recognized are happening in the manufacturing world that also happened in frankly the SAS.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “I ended up meeting more people in the venture capital world. Blackbot had been backed by Hellman and Friedman and JMI Equity, not early stage venture capitalists, but definitely growth equity investors. And so I had some insight into that through that process. And as I graduated from HBS, I landed at a firm called Northbridge Venture Partners with quite a few people that I still know and really respect and work with today. I was there for about five or six years, and after that time, I met NEA. I took some time to get to know them over a year or so and ended up joining here in 2012. And that's my story.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “There day to day reprioritizing product priorities, trying to ship product, trying to get things out the door. Sometimes you lose the overall context of where the company is going because you're making very micro, minute literal decisions about how the product needs to work over what time frame. But when I pour through that, it just was hugely eye-opening and it connected me to, again, why this all mattered, what we were doing, why we were doing what we were doing over what time frame. And I thought as I read this, I need to do something different. I want to be closer to that decision making. I had never taken a finance class in college. I was an engineering major, as I mentioned, but I also minored in English literature. So finance accounting was nowhere in my curriculum. And so I applied to Harvard Business School. And lo and behold, was accepted and ended up going there. And that's where I learned more about company management. Not that it was a huge course in that, but it definitely gave me more perspective. While I was at HBS,”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Sure. Well, I might start all the way back to my product development days prior to when I got into VC to begin with. I started my career after college in product development and design. In college I had majored in engineering and so went right into new product development inside a consulting firm. I was there for just a little while before the dot com crash of the early two thousands. Then picked my head up and said, what am I doing with my life? I somehow found my way to a company called Blackboard that was a software company somehow growing quite well despite the market downturn. And I was there for just a few years doing design and all the while the company was growing and lo and behold they filed for an IPO just 2003, 2004 time frame. And I remember sitting at my desk and reading the S1 that they filed to go public and understanding the company for the first time on a whole new level, you know, in product development, in product design.”

    2019-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA Partner, Dayna Grayson on Sourcing, Picking, Winning, Gut vs Data in Investment Decision-Making & The Evolution of Entrepreneurial Expectations of Venture · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source