YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Hippeau

lines on the record
27
first
2015-12-21
most recent
2015-12-21
sittings or episodes
1
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podcast

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  1. “So very popular, the timing is now. There's also an incredible variety of different drones now. We believe that drones are going to have the same popularity than video games and that people are going to want to race them. People are going to develop themselves as professional or semi-professional pilots, that it's a very visual because these drones that most of the drones of certain price carrier camera and you can stream that live and you can basically put yourself as if you were sitting on board the drone. And then we found an entrepreneur who has all the right background, the right characteristic, the right plan. So everything can click for us and we feel that that's going to be a very big business.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “May be one of the most recent that I think is public would be the drone racing league So we said yes, so let me go through our criteria. Fantastic idea. Drones are probably going to be one of the most popular items for holiday gifts this year. So to the point there's so many drones now that the FAA has to regulate them.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “No, look, as I mentioned, we work with all the top VCs when it comes time to finance for a Series A, Series B, our companies. And clearly Sequoia, Andreessen, benchmark, Greycroft, RRE, and General Callex. I mean, I could go on. All have super track records of their own attributes. Their own way of operating, all of them, all the top tier VCs are really great firms.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “No Yahu's knock came over and Yahoo probably needs to sell itself to people who can manage it better. But Yahoo has an enormous amount of assets, namely it's taken Alibaba, it's taken Yahoo Japan, and its own and operated website, which is still very, very large in decline, no question, but still draws, I don't know, 600 million monthly active users. And those could be monetized a lot better than they are at the moment. The company needs to basically sell itself.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Popular, and it's all high quality content, it's all original, and he does this on scale, and he does this both with kind of own and operated his own website and his own destination, as well as on major social platforms such as YouTube and Facebook and Snapchat. So this is not something that was built overnight. It was built over the years.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “We have to remember that BuzzFeed has been around for maybe eight years now or maybe next year will be this year. I'm not quite sure, seven or eight years. So it's not a flash in the pan phenomenon. Jordan Peretti, the founder and the CEO of BuzzFeed, has been a student of how content goes viral, how people share content, and why it goes viral, why it is shared. Way before it was fashionable and way before it was even technologically capable. We had some early experiments of that at Huffton Post, and then he decided that he wanted to form his own company and do this in a more dedicated fashion. So he has benefited from the fact that he's built an enormous amount of technology that allows him to then develop the kind of content that becomes the most important.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “No, they're not disappearing. They are growing. They're coming from TV for the most part these days. As TV has lost its audience, the advertisers are shifting major amounts of dollars onto digital. And obviously you have to have a video strategy as a media company. But those who have a well-established and popular video strategy are doing extremely well.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “No, I don't believe so. First of all, I don't think that long-form journalism ever had a large audience because it was expensive. It's always been expensive. You have to hire among the most experienced of journalists and you have to give them a lot of time to write a single story. So it's never been that extensive. And today, because of the sheer size of the audience being multiply than it was in the past, if you want to do long-form journalism as such as we do on Busfeed, and we did some at the Huffman post as well, by default, you're going to find a bigger audience for that journalism than was ever there in print. But it's never going to be the most popular form of journalism because it was never the most popular. But it's a worthwhile investment to make if you have made your investments in other forms of content first.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Shower you with too much data. You can always put the data in the appendix because ultimately it's not going to be about the data. Ultimately it's going to be about the aha of the idea and then matching that with the right team”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Companies. So we're looking for that right timing. There's no methodology for that. It's all about experience and just being in the flow, being in the marketplace. And so once that is established, then we really want to know who you are, who is the entrepreneur, and why do they believe that they can do this? What's in their background? What's in their DNA that will convince us that this is the right team to be matched with the right idea. And then, of course, they have to develop how they're going to build the product, how they're going to go to market. It's going to be, there's got to be a common sensical approach to developing this particular idea and this particular product. So the very best pictures to me are pitches that are relatively simple, go right to the point. Don't try to”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Oh boy, I mean, I've seen a ton of really, really great pitches. I mean, you know, a great pitch, I'm not sure that I want to single any of them out because I think that would be somewhat unfair. Here's what we're looking for, and obviously a pitch should be kind of adapted to that. I mean, what we look for first is the idea. Is it a big idea? Does it address a very large market? Does it have a very original? Is it something that you can only do today because the technology has now allowed you to do that? So it's all about the idea. Then I would say that the second thing that we look for is timing. Is it the right time for this company to be launched? Because if you invest too early, the market's not going to develop and you'll lose all your money. And if you invest too late, you're going to be investing in some sort of a mean.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “So seed is pretty broad. For instance, our first check is typically these days with our new fund is typically 750 million dollars. But you also have seed investors who write $100,000 check or $250,000 check. So it's a pretty broad segment. But generally speaking, I would characterize the ecosystem here in New York as being very collaborative. Everyone knows everybody. We co-invest. We've co-invested with everybody. Everyone's co-invested with us. We don't get too worked up if somebody else wants to take the lead as long as the terms are acceptable. We don't put our ego in front of our desire. To invest in the very best companies. And people by and large work well together and really like each other.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “It really depends on the sector. So if you're a SaaS business, being able to correctly size your market opportunities so that you go after the very largest customers in that particular market segment is invariably an exercise that every SaaS company has to go through. So that in a SaaS market, the company that captures the largest customers or the most important customers gets a major premium on its valuation. So it's not obvious for a startup sales business that that be the case because it's the most difficult step to sell to a Fortune 100 as a startup is way more difficult than to go sell to”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Because we're seed first investors, all of our companies are at the same point of development. They are all about to go to the market or all just in market. So a lot of things that they have to do, now depending on their self-regulators, obviously they have to do, are well-known steps. There's not a lot of mystery in what needs to be done for a company to develop itself for the first year, get its metrics to where it should be so that they can then raise a Series A with the top-tier VC firm, and we get very active with that as well.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “The second level is that each company is assigned to one partner and one of our associates. So we have a bespoke plan for every company with a to-do list that the company would like us to help them with. And it could be anywhere from introductions, help with branding, help with pricing, help with organizational structure. So anything that an inflection point in the early life of a company, we are here to help them and have seen pretty much any situation that you can possibly imagine. So we hopefully can cut through and get to the heart of the matter so that there's no time wasted. You have to remember that.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Well, we have two layers or two levels of support. The first one is we have a product, we have a technology platform. One of our team members is a full-time engineer. So we have a technology platform that we plug our companies into. And on that platform exists a number of services that are common to everybody. So recruiting database, marketing database, best vendors, best practices, a database with current information about Series A and Series B investors and what they're looking for. So we're continuously building a new products on that particular platform. And there's also a communications layer that's private to our portfolio companies so that our founders and CEOs can talk to each other, hopefully support each other directly. That's one level.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And that's by maintaining this simple but consistent focus, I think that's how we've been able to build on the brand. And then the second thing I would say is because we are operators and I have a lot of business experience, we have built a support advice system that I believe is very, very effective. We in fact do get consistently high marks on entrepreneurs as being among the most helpful of their investors. And that's a very, very big part of the brand because the promise of the brand is that we're going to help you get into business and then we're going to help you raise successfully raise a series A with top tier venture capitalists.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Well, I think in good part, it's been because we've had a very consistent and very simple strategy. And we've maintained that strategy over the five years that we've been in operations. We have not deviated from it and do not intend to. And that strategy is very, very basic. We are seed investors first and we're New York investors first. So our first investment is always at the seed level. We keep money in reserve so that we can follow on. And that's a very important component of our portfolio construction. And then we're New York investors first. So about 70% of our companies are in New York itself. So we want to invest in our own backyard.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Well, we actually run it as a startup, yes, very much so. Our first fund was very, very small. It was eight and a half million dollars. We really didn't have any $8.5 million doesn't give you much management fees. I don't even know that we had a first full-time employee in the first fund. I think we obviously had some in the second fund. And then we build our team over time, you know, making sure that what we were doing first was working, adding to the team in terms of culture, building the right kind of culture that we wanted. And so building on it, kind of careful ways. Yeah, we treat it very much like a startup. And here everyone does everything, you know, like a good startup should do.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “I dallied very much. We just closed on our fifth fund Yeah, thank you. So we have a lot cooking here. We are very excited about some of the investments that we're making. And I'm very, very satisfied with my work life. It would be shocking to me if I went back to being an operator.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Obviously, it depends on the entrepreneur, depends on who else is around the table. But I think if you feel very strongly about something, particularly something that is in your experience or an experience of being an investor in others, you know that they shouldn't be doing certain things. Because ultimately the founders and the CEO are the ultimate authority and the company will depend on their own ability to guide the company.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “It wasn't surprising because obviously that's the way the business works, but you do have to learn how to be somewhat more patient. You also have to remind yourself that you're a minority shareholder, you're not running the business. And while your advice hopefully will be well received, it's not always going to be followed.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Is probably the biggest difference is the time horizon. As a venture capitalist, you have to take the really, really long view because it takes time to invest a fund. It takes time to start reaping the benefits, let alone the profits of a fund. And then typically you want to return money first to your limited partners. So it'll be a good number of years before you start to see money coming back to you as a GP. So you can't do this for the short term. You have to do this for the long term. Most businesses, you have to run them for the long term. But depending on where they are in their maturity, you're not strategizing five, ten years ahead. You're strategizing one to three years ahead.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Well, let's talk about what's common or obviously what's common is that when you back a company, you're backing a business that's in formation. And having business experience and having the experience of growing a business and hiring people and strategizing on the business and all of these skills are really, really important when you invest. Obviously, you learn those skills as an operator. So going back and forth, which is not something that you would do too often, but going back and forth really hones in on those skills and helps out. And here at Lara Hippo Ventures, all of us have an operating background. And we find that to be pretty important in terms of the support and the advice and the help that we can give our companies. What's obviously what's different.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “And we started Yahoo Japan. And then I joined the board of Yahoo and stayed on for 15 years. But that was the beginning of a number of investments that Softbank did initially out of its corporate treasury because if Davis, being in the middle of the action in tech, we had all this deal flow. So companies like Yahoo and GeoCities and other US web and others were really kind of sourced, as it were, by the fact that we were in the middle of everything. And eventually, SoftBank started its own VC funds, and then we sold the business in the late 1990s, and I joined Softbank Capital as an investor and opened the New York office. So I've been investing in New York first with SoftBank and now with my own firm. Since about 2000”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Investment in Yahoo just kind of as the second institutional investor, I have to say Coyer, but before the IPO. And South Bank, Masayoshi-son of Softbank liked the idea so much that Softbank then ended up owning, as what we call, a third of Yahoo at the IPO.”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Okay, sure. So not to go too far back in the 1990s. I was the CEO of a company called Zip Davis, and we published all the big computer magazines. It's amazing how some of the younger entrepreneurs who I finance today don't remember PC magazine or computer shopper or PC Week. Anyway, all these were Zip Davis publications. We also had all the big trade shows like Condex and then a variety of different other services that exclusively serve the technology industry. So we saw ourselves as being in the tech business, not being in the media business. We sold that business to private equity firm and then the private equity firm sold it to Softbank of Japan. When Softbank bought Zip Davis, we as Zip Davis were about to make an”

    2015-12-21 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Running Lerer Hippeau Ventures Like A Startup with Eric Hippeau, Managing Partner @ Lerer Hippeau Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source