YouSaid · the spoken record

Eric ver Ploeg

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28
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2015-09-09
most recent
2015-09-09
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1
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podcast

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  1. “That's a really good one. I think being open to serendipity, I think there's a really big advantage associated with focus and having a plan. And that is really useful for guiding your efforts as you get up and go to work every day. But there have been some great opportunities that have Become apparent to me, and I looked at it like, no, no, that's not in my specific plan. I'm not going to look at that. And that's probably a mistake.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Well, I've been away from Venture for a handful of years and I'm coming back to speed. So the last thing I did was in 2009 and it was guys that as my second and last angel investment I did, it was two guys that, three guys that I knew really well and liked a lot. And I thought they had a really defensible and good business model. given the stage they were at, they had real customer traction showing that the dogs were eating the dog food. Worked out”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “His stuff, he does real analysis and has real data. It's not just sort of fluffy opinions about what entrepreneurs should do or not do or look out for.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “and trust issues out of a transaction, all of a sudden, you know, what used to be totally ridiculous uneconomic size transactions, like things that are less than a dollar, become viable and possible.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I think the blockchain distributed authorization type of based businesses. A lot of people think of blockchain and they go, oh, that's Bitcoin. And I saw the Bitcoin price run up and then crash down. Therefore, that's a done sector. But I think that the distributed authorization can really reduce the inherent transaction costs and lack of trust in a lot of different types of transactions. If you look at why does it cost money to do stuff? Why don't you give that website 50 cents? It's not the 50 cents. It's like, I don't trust you to use my card or I don't want to deal with the friction and cost of me getting a card out or me going to PayPal. If you can take the cost and friction”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “They've raised a ton of money, and I look at them and I just don't understand where the defensibility comes from their business models and how they're not just going to bludgeon each other to death. But maybe there's some barrier that I've noticed.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Overhyped is always tricky because you say no to an area because you don't like the dynamics and then you haven't really done much research. But so I take my overhyped as with a huge grain of salt. I just don't understand all of these food meal delivery businesses.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Jim gets. He's got tremendous recent track record. I also know him personally and he's bright and super hardworking and aggressive. I mean, he deserves to be successful.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “So the lean startup by Eric Reese, I think that's just a great approach and methodology for thinking especially about a consumer-facing business. On the enterprise side, I would throw in Jeffrey Moore's classic Crossing the Chasm. It's just a great way to think about getting your first customers and leveraging them going forward”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “And then can those people help? I think you just have a larger fraction of people with money in the valley have money from being involved in entrepreneurial ventures. So they have relative experience. Whereas, you know, I grew up in Ohio, like the people who had money there generally got it from some other thing. And so, you know, yeah, they're rich and they're smart, probably hardworking and bright, but do they really know a ton about your business or the challenges of starting a tech-based startup? Probably not.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Well, I don't know that they prefer one way or the other. They do what is easiest and most effective and the best people they can find for helping their companies. So on the easiest and most convenient, it's just easier to have coffee with somebody who lives a half hour away from you than somebody who lives on many time zones away.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “There are two answers to that, the short and simple one is yes, in a way that you just couldn't get any other place because if I go to my local coffee shop, which I do every morning, I see venture guys in there, right? I mean, that's just, that's the business we're in. The same way that... If you're in the public of market analysis business, you better be in New York City if you're going to be in the United States or better be in London if you're in the UK. Because that's where all those people are. So I think there's a natural sort of... Economy of, there's probably some good word or term for this that I can't remember, but you get an advantage of being around all those people and speaking that language and knowing all those companies.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Access to people and talent who are just here and can give you good advice, and then it's access to capital. That, you know, if you've got an angel invest kind of money and then you need to get to the series A level, you're just much more likely to be able to get it if you're close to the sources of capital.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yes, I use their data for CV analysis, yes. You know, honestly, I had thought sort of a hypothesis of mine was that we would see increased geographic democratization over the last handful of years given better communication, lower friction in overhead in engaging remote resources and learning from blog posts and that I thought, hey, two guys in Cleveland should have near the same odds as two guys in the San Francisco Bay Area. But when I dug into the data, it shows otherwise. It's partly the culture of it's totally acceptable to be working on a startup that nobody's heard of. And, you know, people don't roll their eyes and say you're a loser. They all go, well, maybe, maybe this one is going to be great. And I think it's also.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Yeah. I mean, that really surprised me. To be clear, I appreciate that was done with California versus the rest of the world, but most of the stuff that happens in California is in the Bay Area.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Many people like to talk about how when Microsoft went public, it was a sub one billion dollar market cap company. And if you had allocation across all of high growth, early low valuation companies at the time that had happened and you had just met your rotable portion into Microsoft, that would have been responsible for a bunch of the growth that you would have seen in that pool of your assets. And so that's just not happening today. And they've got to figure out ways to get access to that.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “10 years ago, 15 years ago, those would all be public companies. And they're not today. And the impact that that has is like, first, those companies still need and want capital. So, you know, it's going to get provided by somebody. And second, if you're an endowment manager or a pension fund manager and you've got an allocation of X percent into small high growth equity that you used to do in the public markets, that just doesn't isn't there. Uber and Airbnb are the two poster children of companies that you can't get in early in the public markets because they're still a long way from being public companies.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Um... Well, I think that their involvement in late state private is Certainly dependent on the market. I wouldn't think so much that it was dependent on interest rates. I think it's much more dependent on sort of more fundamental changes in the venture ecosystem. So in the late stage, we see, I don't know, how many unicorns are there now? More than 100 unicorns in the venture world.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Should be at a point where you're saying, well, if I took more money I could grow faster, but if I can't get it, I can still grow at this slower speed and be cash flow positive. And in that case, that it's sort of like, you know, well, what will the market bear? And in a frothy environment like we have now, or at least we had until this last week, then”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “I think it depends on state by stage, right? I mean, you should look at your business model and what you need to get to risk reducing milestones or to get to revenue traction milestones. That's the sort of overarching advice. The second piece of advice really is stage dependent. And at the early stage, don't try to be outside the norms for valuation and amount. Otherwise, you're just going to have to explain too much. In the midst, after you've gotten something proven but you're not cash flow positive by any measure, you know the standard rule of thumb is something like 18 months worth of burn, right? That gives you enough time, generally speaking, to get something done and then have a little bit of runway to slippage and for fundraising after you've gotten something done. At the later stage, then it's like you”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Future because if an economic recession happens, then A, it will be a lot harder to access capital, and B, you know, it'll slow your growth, right? I mean, everyone will start to feel less excited about buying whatever your thing is. So, I mean, the way I think about a down round and worrying about it or being smart about the way one worries about a down round is in the nature of the terms of the financing that you're currently considering. And if you need to agree to a full ratchet to get the valuation that you were looking for, then I think either A, you should relax your valuation expectations and get better anti-dilution terms or not raise that round.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I think it depends on the stage, honestly. You know, if you're at the super early stage, most companies don't really have the luxury of raising a huge amount of money. They have really their sort of constrained by the market to, unless they have like some rock star who's started a billion dollar company before, they were constrained by what the world will do. In the later stages, if you can get that money and you can do it in a way where you don't have to agree to bad terms, then why wouldn't you take it if you can grow a little bit faster, you can insulate yourself a little bit better against if there's an economic recession that happens in the near future?”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “You know, take the number one poster child in Ventureville, right? Uber. I haven't seen their financials, but I've talked to their investors who have. And they say things like, you know, it's financials are like the early days of Google that it really is growing that stratospherically and it totally justifies the valuations that we're seeing.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “It is absolutely the case that a few hot companies are taken disproportionately large amount of capital. The second big funny is like, but it's always been like that. At least certainly from a quantitative perspective over the last handful of years that the Wilson-Sancina data goes back, but also my own personal experience going back a couple decades is it's always like that. And that's the nature of early stage venture is that 5% of those investments generate 95% of their returns. And so if you think you've identified a company who's part of the 5%, then you're going to plow a lot more capital into it. And if you've got a company that's starting to prove that they're part of that 5%, that's when the crazy auction atmosphere happens. And there's a ton of cash going towards it.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “The short answer is yes. The guys at Wilson Hansini published longitudinal qualitative data in their quarterly entrepreneurs report. And this is like just a super great information source because they have a very consistent methodology that they've used for many years. And the bit that you're referring to, I mean, I think there were three big takeaways. And the reason I wrote it was that people were saying exactly what you're like, which is like, oh, I just discovered that it's the case that there are few really hot companies who are taking these huge rounds of funding and having cash thrown at them. And then there are the rest of the world is like not doing so well in terms of fundraising. And the three things that in looking at that data is like, first is yes, that is absolutely the case.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “Sometimes I'm not sure that that's a standard operating rule for somebody to do from a board seat. There are instances where that's called for. By and large, I don't think that's the normal operating role of being sort of the support. I think in terms of an efficient business interaction, the role of the board member is a very, to be very rational and to be very specific about trying to get to the best outcomes. Sometimes, you know, like if something really bad has happened and sometimes bad stuff does happen that is personal in nature, well then yes, that's a time to be sort of the robot gloves off and be a lot more human. But most of the time, you know, it's not the job of the board to sort of... Be the crying towel. Certainly there are times to be the cheerleader But it's not that typical that the board is the crime tell.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “I think not just simply understanding the structure of what a board is. Your board is not your boss, right? And by the same token, becoming CEO of a young company is not sort of about unfettered open field running either. A board is an amalgamation of people who have a collective interest and have their own separate individual interests. And I don't know that there's a, I guess the most useful and valuable advice would be just to recognize the role of a board and what it is and not to treat it as a bumpy pudding of instead of having a single boss I have these five people as a boss.”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “you know smart opinionated people who have some control over your life but aren't speaking with one voice and so it's just its own separate skill and job to learn”

    2015-09-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 070: Do Investors in California Outperform The Rest of The World with Eric ver Ploeg @ Recursive Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source