YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric Liaw

lines on the record: 45
first: 2022-04-08
most recent: 2022-04-08
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Thanks, Harry. This has been a lot of fun and glad we're able to do it, and I really am honored you would have me on your show.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most recent one, probably the Series C1 at Ivan. So maybe it's not the newest one, but put in multiples in that last round of what we put initially. Why? The team has done really well in terms of the execution. The numbers are all going the right direction. But back to what we've talked about a lot on this chat, the market opportunity is bigger than what we thought it was. And when you see situations like that, you get really excited and you end up investing more and kind of rolling with it.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wish I had more of them, but maybe I'll share a short story on this sort of grinding. We made an investment in a company called the Player's Tribune. It's a great mission, great product. What I did get to do was spend some time with Derek Cheeter, and I asked him how he wound up in Tampa because he's from Michigan. And he didn't know he was going to make it, but he moved down there at 18 because he turned pro right out of high school. He went there because the Yankees training facility was down there. And he said, I want to get work in, but I also wanted to make sure that the front office knew that I was putting the work in because if they were ever on the fence about trading me or cutting me, they would at least know in the back of their minds this kid has put in the work. I think for an 18-year-old to have the mentality was really incredible. I think one of the reasons he's a successful as he is. But it sort of reaffirmed like, you know, that's the thing you can control. You can control how hard you work.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think about it this way. IVP was founded 42 years ago, and our founder Red Dennis is into his 90s, and he's with us, but I have not spent as much time with him as others who've been with the firm longer. But the point I'm trying to make is that we who are leaders of the firm today are stewards of an organization, and I think my responsibility is going to sound tacky, but I truly believe it. My responsibility is to make sure that it's in a better place when I ultimately leave than it was when I got here. And that's a lot to live up to. And the good news is we have a team, and I don't bear that responsibility solely, but I have part of it.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you're right. I say that as I'm participating. You know, I think there's a little bit of that. I mean, I think it's great to celebrate success. And I think there is more of that in this industry than other competitive ones. Like it feels like, and maybe this is the same example the echo chamber, but like Carl Icon shorting something because Bill Ackman bought it kind of stuff. Like you don't really see that happening in the venture business. I think there is more collective, you know, we can try and all help build things because it's a little bit more, it's a different mentality. I like that. But I think that, hey, did you hear so-and-so did this seed? And then that becomes the A, and then everyone's like, oh, you're so smart. It's lost some of the sincerity. And that's too bad.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, in the same vein of there are only 24 hours in a day, it's helped me think about how to get the most out of those 24 hours and sometimes is more in the sense less work then means a little more sleep means you actually are more productive and efficient the next day. And seeing that quantified has been really, really fun for me.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thanks to Woop. I think last night I decided not to have a second cocktail Because I knew what the effect would be this morning You on”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Favorite hard, most recent one that stuck with me no rules, rules. Because culture is important. I think particularly in my role as one of the leaders of our firm, it's a different responsibility than when I was earlier in my career and I was just focusing on making investments. And culture enables organizations to survive and thrive across different individual people that come through. It is something I'm not as good at and want to get better at, sort of helping develop, manage that.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's an old poster, and I think Nike probably popularized it, and it stuck with me as a kid as it related to sports. The saying was somewhere out there someone is practicing. And when you meet on the field of play, he will beat you because they're practicing and you're not. So the point is they're grinding and you're not. So I'm absolutely paranoid about that. That stuck with me as a good poster.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My insecurity is that probably what you were saying, someone else is going to come along and outwork me or do something better than I'm doing, and I have to figure out how to get better, and hopefully I can keep doing that.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I pretty much just don't leave his room, and then he has no choice. I'm still bigger than him. He does try and push me sometimes. Like, Daddy, you're busy.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I'm like, on the one hand, it's cool because he's growing. You can see him apply the framework. On the other hand, it's like, ooh, I just turned him down a lot. And it sort of left him feeling sad at moments in time. And so it goes back to like higher prioritized.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Funny, but also kind of like a knife to the heart and a twist is now there'll be times when I want to go play with him, and he's engaged playing with his things or doing whatever he wants. He doesn't really want around. He goes, he goes, No, Daddy, you're busy. You're busy. So he's telling me to go away. But he learned when he wasn't allowed to come play with me when he wanted to.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it'll go back to prioritizing. So you tend to find this is now talking more of maybe life than venture, but you'd probably find when you have kids by sort of nature of 24 hours a day and want to get sleep and all that, prior don't see as many of your friends as you used to. Kind of a bummer, but you sort of, there's like I said, a sort of forcing function and there's a new priority in your life and that's your kids. I think it's a beautiful thing. And I'm with you. Like grinding is all I have too. And it goes back to that, like, I can't control whether people I'm competing against or smarter than me, more charming, but I can control how hard I work. I value that and you would still have that too. You just choose more thoughtful and just sort of deploy that. And I'll tell you, you know, it's somewhat sobering too. Like my youngest, he was four now. And so, and he's a boy, and my two older ones are girls, 10 and 8. When we were sort of in virtual preschool was complete rubbish, frankly, little kid. But, you know, I'm sitting here staring in front of a laptop and he wants to come in and, you know, he would get scooted away. Thank my wife because we're trying to get work done. And she would say, no, daddy's busy. Daddy's busy. And what sort of was a bit of like...”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Market goes up or down, but I can control trying to meet with the best companies and being the best partner I can be to the companies we've already invested in.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, it definitely helped me focus on the things that are important because you now have this part of your life that you want to spend a lot more time on and have a responsibility to spend more time on. Sort of as a nice forcing function to winnow away things that are less important, which I think is great. I think the other thing actually that really taught me about the investing is you can try and control all the things you can control, but there are going to be a lot of things that are outside of your control, and you just have to deal with it. And I think you learn that pretty early on when you have, for example, a newborn, because you can do everything you think you're supposed to be doing, whether it's feeding or diaper changing or burping, and your baby is still going to cry. And, you know, I think if you're used to having a lot of control to now have no control over this tiny little human being at any time of day is really humbling. But I think all you can do is try and do the best that you can with that. And eventually you realize that's also true, you know, in your professional life. So many things you can control. I can't control whether the stock.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Flattering first, so I appreciate it. Thanks, Will. I'll go back to self awareness point. There's no way as a board member investor, I will know more about what's going on inside of a company than the CEO. If I do, there's a major problem, but I shouldn't, and I will know a lot less. If I'm sort of sitting there trying to have strong opinions on every piece of information, A is probably going to be wrong, and B, it means, again, back that trust question, not trusting the right person. And so I'm trying to focus on things that can be sort of deterministic to the outcome of a project, of an investment initiative, of a year's planning, and let's focus on making sure that we stress test that so that we have the best chance of success. I don't know how to say how to do it, but it's a guiding principle of sort of the focus on the things that I think can be really needle moving. It's not going to be needle moving if you're drop-down menu is six items or five. It's not going to be needle moving if you use a radio button or something else. But what does that actually lead you to do? That'll be more needle moving. We should talk about that.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Talk about that. We may not necessarily go down that path, but at least let's talk about how we avoid that, if that makes sense.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there's an arc earlier in my career. By definition, you have less experience, and so opinions that I offered were probably triple grounded in some data that the company was providing because I wanted to make sure if I was going to say something, it was on more than just we should do this because my gut says so. I don't mean to be dismissive, but you're 26 as an investor and only in an upcycle. You may not have a fully developed gut. And there was, I think, was it enabling saying then I also sort of thought about it is better to remain silent and have people think you are a fool than to speak and remove all doubt. So I wanted to make sure I called my shot wisely. I would say that certainly I've been doing this a little longer. I've seen things go well. I've seen things go poorly. And partnering in that sort of guiding but not overstepping is sharing some of those experiences. And so I still certainly try to be grounded in data when I come to conclusions that I offer for discussion. But I can now sort of link some items like if this happens, this happens, this happens, we may wind up in a bad spot.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think first you ask yourself that question, then I think you might start asking others around the table whether you still have that, whether they have that same perspective. And ultimately, if the consensus view ends up being that a CEO has lost the confidence of the board, then I think the board has a responsibility to make a tough decision. The CEO serves at the pleasure of, for the shareholders, and the board is actually supposed to be the ones looking out for the shareholders. So let's make sure that we have the order of operations correct.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it starts with having a little bit of, if I'm allowed to say so, self awareness. So I've never run a company, I probably wouldn't be very good at it. So I try and break the decision or the areas where I'm opining into. If there are things that are specific management decisions more operational, I'll probably be less heavy on those. But I think if there are things that are bigger picture topics, things that may have longer-term ramifications, I'm much more happy to express opinions. And I would also say that the nature of what we do as significant minority investors versus buyout firms that control the entire story. And there, if someone says jump, questions how high, here I think we are more constructive and one of several voices in a given situation. I hope the board would agree is that let's give our CEO our best thinking. The CEO may agree with some, all or none of it, but at least we're giving options and material for consideration. And then you have to go back to, well, you don't trust your CEO to make the decision.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think, like many other situations in life, whether it's business or sports competition forces you to improve your own game and your own skills and your own attributes. So that's a good thing. And that's Darwinism, I guess, at its finest. I would say that we're trying to be more thoughtful and spend time getting to know company.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Felt like, oh, you know, it's price sensitive. That feels really high. It was a 20x multiple that was really high at the time. Completely, completely the wrong mistake, wrong move.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it actually goes back to a lot of the same points we were talking about. Biggest regret in my career was not investing in Datadog a lot earlier than when we ultimately did. We love the company. It was probably nine or $11 million in revenue at the time. This is probably the 2014 time frame, and they raised a series B. Stupid, stupid, stupid, price sensitivity. I mean, ultimately, price delta was about 5% on something that went from 200 million to 50 or 60 billion. Insanely stupid on my part. But I would say that the thing that we really like, and I'd say he's continued to impress, is Olivier, the CEO and co-founder, and we spent time with his team as well, with Alexei, his other co-founder, Ahmed as Chief Product Officer. They started with a very beautiful and simple product, and now it's still serving a whole bunch of customers. Now they've got four key products and they're expanding them. But that was sort of that to your point, like underestimated the TAM because they were really serving small customers at the time.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's the thing that's been lost with all this pandemic speaking of travel. I mean, your calendar, I'm sure, is back to back to back, and you're just sort of on one video conference, the next one. And it's all about what are you actually doing and what can you do for me and maybe what can I do for you? There isn't any attempt to try and get to know someone anymore over Zoom. I mean, your time is perceived to be too valuable, right? You're not going to sit there. We all tried this at the beginning of the pandemic. Let's try and do a Zoom happy hour and we're all going to sit there with our favorite beverage. And it was like a good attempt, but it's not the same.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got to make sure to turn off all my devices. So that is a really good question. How early will we go? We look for some evidence of product market fit. We're not good at picking science projects. Some things take a lot longer than you would expect. I'd say ARVR is an example. I think on the other hand, we'll look at some markets and machine learning and artificial intelligence are really interesting. Everyone would love to have their own version of Jarvis, but we've found ways to invest in companies like Grammarly that actually are providing AI in a very functional and specific use case. They end up doing really, really well. So we are looking for evidence of product market fit, some traction to find some way. Situations where companies are looking for a partner that brings capital, time horizon, perspective, relationships, all those things, it's meant to be more and to use a word, relationship than transactional. That's what we'll invest in. We are able to invest more over time, which we do.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I feel like you're in our Monday partner meetings because those are questions we ask ourselves all the time. You got to plan or a bug.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll give you an example specifically. I mean, we made our first investment in a company also in Helsinki, Finland called Ivan. Our first investment was $16 million in size in their Series B. They've now gone on to raise a C and a C1. Now we have over $100 million invested. It continued to do really well, exceed expectations, and so we've continued to invest more capital.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there are a lot of sayings in the venture business. A lot of them have some truth to them. I think there is some truth to the loss ratio point and the risk taking point. So I think the way I think about maybe working that into our investment practice is with greater uncertainty, maybe start a little smaller in terms of dollar exposure. If something does completely go off the rails, you haven't put a huge hole in the ground. It's maybe just a small hole in the ground. And then as things continue to work, you can invest more capital over time. And this is not by any means rocket science in terms of that approach, but I think that's how we're sort of thinking about managing loss ratios relative to the upside.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, boy, I really struggle with that too. That's probably at least for the stage investing that I spend most of my time on the hardest question. Again, not being a seed investor. At that point, it seems like a more binary outcome. It works or doesn't. A lot of them aren't going to work, but when it works, it works, it really, really works. We're investing. Things are sort of working, but they can still lose momentum before they escape velocity, if you will. So that's one way to get it wrong. And the other way to sort of get it wrong after making the investment, you know, they grow, but they don't ever get to be sort of this transformational household name company. And then valuation is important because it might be the difference between getting your money back or making three times, which isn't the worst thing. Now, on the other hand, when you do stretch, it does give you the opportunity to make more investments, which then gives you the chance to potentially be in something that surprises you massively to the upside. And so trying to figure that out with a high degree of precision is difficult.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely. And that's the thing that I still struggle with and my biggest mistakes, which I'm sure we'll talk about because you talk about that with everybody. But I'd say on you iPad, maybe the, I'm dating myself a little bit, but this was in the blog post you wrote about on when we made our investment, but there's this classic Mike Judge movie office space, which early Jennifer Anniston was in it. And if you just think about the number of TPS reports that people are making in some way, shape, or form, we're like, yeah, there's a pretty big market here on that one.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think there's definitely some pause there. Not that the multiples are irrelevant, it certainly is relevant, but I think rather than evaluation multiple that we're talking about, I think then the real question you have to ask is TAM and ultimate size of the business. If something's $5 or $10 million, but you really have conviction, it can become three, four, five hundred million in revenue, then the $600 to a billion entry price is still fine.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so some of those assumptions may get me sort of get ratcheted downward a little bit. And then I think that will, of course, then happen at the seed. But the countervailing point is that there has been a very large amount of money raised for the private asset class in general. I think it's largely appropriate given the opportunity facing tech companies around the world. So it's really exciting. But I do think you'll see a little bit of behavior change, not just in the pricing, but I think what we're also seeing now is you have a little more time. processes are taking longer, companies and investors are taking a little bit more time, which is probably a healthy pendulum swing.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think growth will be hit the hardest because they're the universe of alternatives, particularly for some of the largest investors, is private company A at multiple X or public company B at multiple Y. And the difference is that multiple Y just went down by thirty or forty percent. So I think that's a very obvious choice for a potential investor to look at. And that's why I think you're seeing some of the retrenchment in sort of the latest rounds. And I think the other part of that is some of these companies in these PragPo rounds, like I said, while they were able to list last year, the price performances has been down. So I think some of the investor types were very used to being able to buy and sell stock on a daily basis are sitting there thinking, why am I paying a higher multiple for something that's further away from liquidity? And even when it does get public, I could be locked up for six months and have that capital not be able to be used for a different investment opportunity. So I think you're already seeing pressure there. I think that does eventually move down because, you know, the series A and B investor wants to know that at some point there'll be a higher valuation in a later stage private or public realm.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably Apple to a degree as well. The bar is really high to try and even get something done because you know that the FTC and the DOJ and your European counterparts are just looking to pick you apart and think that's put a chill on it. Now, I think Salesforce is probably going to be quiet for a little bit as they digest Slack. But I'm surprised, you know, in Adobe, a workday, et cetera, aren't more active.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think last year was a record year in terms of volume. I do think that obviously if you look back on it, some of the performance is mixed. And so I think that's kind of put a little bit of a pause on the sort of new issue market. I think there will still obviously be new listings and direct listings and probably not as many specs. That's a different topic. I do think you'll still have some activity, but not like last year. The M&A market has kind of surprised me a little bit. I thought you would see more of it because absent the last three months, a lot of the public company evaluations that also grown significantly thus empowering potential buyers with a currency. I expect maybe a little bit more M&A this year than last year because last year there wasn't that much of it. I think the probably the bigger challenge is for a lot of the biggest megacap tech companies, fear of regulation and regulatory authority intervention is probably causing a lot of them to say this is probably not worth our time, right? It's kind of a funny world where Microsoft is now the one that's allowed to buy things and not considered the antitrust sort of monopolist type of business. But I honestly think that if you're Facebook or Google Amazon,”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Going to invest, but it's a wonderful experience. We then spend the next two days on site meeting with this senior team. They actually had some customers in town that we sort of spoke to. He liked us enough that he invited us to go to their first ever European sales kickoff, which was in Barcelona. So we thought we were coming back home to the States, and then we asked our colleagues in Palo Alto or Menlo Park to figure out how to get us from Bucharest to Barcelona on a moment's notice. We jumped on an airline called WizAir, which you probably know since you're over there. It's a low-cost budget provider, pink logo, very memorable, but we flew from Bucharest to Barcelona on Mom's Notice, spent two more days there, and then flew home. But that was also great because we spent more time with the team, saw how they were presenting the product out to the field, and ultimately made the investment. Took advantage of laundry service. I'll tell you that, did not expect to be there for a week, but it was a lot of fun.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a bit of a whirlwind. Probably would have been summer of 18. We were really spending time on a company called UiPath, which was based in Romania. And we were trying our darndest to get the CEO, Daniel Dinis, to meet with us. And that's sort of an access example. I mean, they were not really a well-kept. They were not really secret. Everyone knew that they were doing really, really well. And so Daniel was working his butt off. I think spending more time in the air than on the ground. But he was actually at home in Bucharest. And so on a Thursday, we got word that he would meet with us, but we had to come that weekend. And so we left, and I say we because I went with a friend and former colleague of mine, Alex Lim, we went to Bucharest. We had dinner schedules for Sunday. I wanted to spend at least some of my weekend with my family, so I took a flight through DC, which was delayed. I missed a connection, and I did get another one. Thought I'd have like half a day to meet to sort of relax and adjust the time zone, and I'd never been to Bucharest before. We get there two hours before dinner, have a wonderful dinner with Daniel, still not sure that we're actually”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he probably should have. You could have given a lot of gems out his Christmas presents over the years. It was great meeting them, but we still know where they're making investments. So taking this restaurant, I look at the menu. They have Stew Bear on the menu. I have never had bear on a menu before, and I've eaten some interesting things. I was being kind of a little bit of a smarty pants, so I asked the server, I said, hey, look, I'm just kind of a dumb American. I've never had bear before. What is the proper time of year to harvest a bear? Do you want to go after the bear late fall when the bear is fat, getting ready for hibernation? Do you want to get the bear in the spring after the bear's come back out? Because now it's a lot leaner. She knows I'm being the smart ass, so she looks at me, dead panda goes, no. The best time to hunt a bear is when he's sleeping. Which I thought was pretty good. So that was a really fun experience. And I think a little more recently, that was an experience that sort of was the only person that went over there. So it was fun being in a country I hadn't really spent much time in on my own. Perhaps more recently,”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a dubious distinction. Maybe I'll give you two because I think they were both a lot of fun. We were looking at Supercell, Helsinki, Finland, late. December of 2012, we had some meetings. They had actually launched their first really successful games in summer of 2012. And so we're kind of climbing the charts. We met them in California. The CEO Ilcho was here visiting, and then the holidays passed, and we were very strongly concerned making the investment.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Earlier in seed stages, I think there's probably more picking going on. I think that those stages companies need Capital or else they're likely to die. Capital is more like a necessity. I think you should get much, much later sort of companies that are perhaps about to go public. They're no longer secrets or hidden secrets. And so then it's access because that point there's usually, at least prior to the last three months or so, a lot more demand for the opportunity to invest than there actually is space in around. I think there's a spectrum on which the two ends of the scale maybe start to shift. Okay, so when we get to that slightly later stage, not in the early, early stages, I heard that there's no amount of miles that you won't travel. Apparently you literally topp the leaderboard for like, you know, airline points. Very strategic of you to choose. My question is, what's your favorite hustle story of traveling to win a deal? What happened? How did it go down? Take me there.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was about 11 years ago now came in, and the best decision I ever made was to join the firm. Best professional decision. I'll be very careful to specify that. Best professional decision, you know, 11 years later here I am. Man, good clarification there. If your wife listens to this, says there's obviously a personal best decision, which is very different. May we add. Totally agree with you. Listen, in terms of it being the best decision, what a year last year was for you, six companies you were involved with IPOing. I mean, that's astounding. But it led me to think, given the hit rate you've had, do you think venture is more a game of picking or access? Really good question, and I will try to give a truthful answer that doesn't sound like a hedge. I think”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That for two years, then to a venture capital firm called TCV. And actually, one of the most important things I learned about the venture business when I was at Morgan Stanley was a different sort of stages. It's kind of a monolith when you're on the outside, when you start getting closer to it, you realize that there are different stages, different firms, different styles. And so I went to TCV as a later stage firm, was there for about seven and a half years, and then joined IVP.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Respect to software development engineering, and I sort of said, oh man, if I'm competing with that person for a job, I'm really going to be broke. I got to find different ways to sort of make my way through life. There's this idea of being involved with technology, but also potentially finding a way to be in ecosystem from maybe more of a business perspective. And so from there, I graduated. I went to Morgan Stanley for a couple years, knew I didn't want to be a career investment banker, but thought it was a great place to sort of learn a little bit about business.”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Came from a background where I And I remember very vividly the first exposure I had to venture capital was a packed auditorium. John Door came on Shirt was untucked, then his shoelace Untied, the energy and the belief Amazon was going to change the world was totally infectious. Turns out he was right. I don't think that the timeframe was quite the same, and I don't know that anyone would have predicted they'd become what they've become from just selling books, but that sort of got me a little bit curious as to what his role was in all that. I also recognize that many classmates at Stanford who were incredibly intelligent and incredibly”
2022-04-08 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source