YouSaid · the spoken record

Eurie Kim

lines on the record: 65
first: 2022-07-29
most recent: 2022-07-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Thank you so much, Katie. Really appreciate that. And it's a team effort over here, so it's been a lot of fun and hopefully a lot more great investments to be made.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Good communicator. So we appreciate so much the time that you spent on this. And I got a lot out of this in terms of your story, the investment ideas, what to look for in the consumer, how it's going to change, what the current environment's like, and why there's opportunity ahead. But the number one thing I take away from this is just that your skill here as a communicator, as having vision, the empathy that you have must make you not just a great investor, but also an incredible partner to these formidable founders that you're identifying. And I just think you will continue to have an amazing track record in partnering with these founders to solve some great problems for the world and for the consumer. So very grateful for your time here and hope we'll stay in touch.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as a mom of the four kids under seven, these. Of like the communication, the mediation, the patience, and how that can bring value to the way you manage your investing team, but also who you're investing in. Just it really resonates. And women, I think, can be greater communicators. That's why this podcast is going to be like A+, because we have two women.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Been in vulnerable sort of channel enables you to know where your founders are at sooner than the relationships where the founders might feel like they got to show up with just answers and not share as much of that vulnerability. And again, I believe that's offered me an ability to know what's going on sooner than later and then be able to help because if I find out earlier that you're having a co-founder spat and maybe you're going to break up, then I can help support you through that. Versus finding out later and having a big blowout. So again, it's not necessarily that there aren't male investors that have these perspectives or orientations, but I do feel that many of the female investors that I collaborate with, this is a more natural place to come from.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I'm sure you remember plenty of times where you were trying to say, okay, how do I negotiate with somebody who has like no logic here? And it's that ability to say, okay, where is the founder coming from? Where is my co-investor coming from? How can I understand like the gap that exists and how do we meet in the middle? And look, I mean, I play that role a lot in all of my boards. And some need it more than others because there's more of a varying set of viewpoints. But either way, I think it makes me a stronger investor. And then your question was ultimately, how does that benefit our LPs, which is when they ask us, markets are down, how is the portfolio? We go through and we're not trying to paint a rosy picture, but we've talked to every single founder in our portfolio. We've thought about their cash balances and all the analytics behind how much runway they have and what's the next milestone and who could be the next fundraise, you know, potential investor. And the reality is you're also having emotional connections to support your teens and that hopefully that open.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have later stage investors, early stage investors. Everybody has a different point of view. And the act of being able to Tend to have more often than not. And that goes for the conversations with founders to have tough conversations and not make it a power play. I win and I'm right. And so you're wrong, and you need to do what I say. Like, that's never going to work well. And we can end with another reference to motherhood, but my toddler doesn't respond so well when I tell her she's wrong and tell her what to do.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“More than I can count. You know, I'll point to my experience actually being the chairperson of the ORA board, which was an honor I didn't know I was signing up for, but when I led the Series B back in late 2019, the existing board asked me to take over the chair position. And I didn't really understand why at the moment, because I thought there's a lot of people who've been around this company certainly longer than I had because I was a new investor coming to the table. But what I realized in hindsight is it was actually my ability to communicate with a lot of different people. And that's not necessarily a female quality, but it's one in which I think women tend to be strong at. And where they came into play is there's so many, it's lost in translation in so many ways. We have a finished team, we have hardware team members, we have software team members.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What we need to do to change diversity. So, I want to start with the debt of gratitude to you for that because I think it's just so incredible to have the role models and that representation bias I really believe in. We focus on diversity here as a performance imperative. So we just talk to ourselves and our clients about the benefit of that healthy tension, a variant perspectives and how that can create advantages in the investment process. Woman control about $32 trillion roughly of consumer spending around the world. So I'm sure there's been instances when having that female perspective has been an advantage for your LPs. And I was just wondering if you could recall any experience where you feel like you had an advantage because of your unique perspective versus most people in the VC space.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I want to thank you for the time you've invested and just end with asking you a question about diversity, but hopefully not a boring diversity. Think what you're doing here, and just showing up and talking about this incredible business you've built and your ideas and your energy around investing and doing that will happen to also be a woman and a mother, I think is just really impactful for this industry.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What does that even look like? And, you know, again, memories are short these days, Katie. So I'm going to hope that it lasts longer than six months or 12 months that they remember what we did for them during the hard times. But I do feel like at least seeing these moments will help founders realize that it's not just a kind of a cautionary tale, but that these down markets do happen and they will happen in your company's lifetime, in your lifetime as a founder. And so, you know, you have to decide how risky do you want to make it.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Mean, I certainly hope so. We've been pitching that for a while, but it's difficult for a founder to take a lower price when someone else is really romancing with a lot of dollars and a high valuation. But we all know a lot of crossover investors came into the private markets over the last couple years. They had very high term sheets. They weren't trying to take board seats. They weren't going to bother founders and get mired in the details. And that felt great. That felt great for founders who wanted to just get the money and do their business. But now you realize that those people are very busy with their public portfolios and they really don't have the time nor the resources to support early stage private companies at these sort of critical junctures. And hopefully then founders will see, well, what firms and what partners were here during these hard times? Like who is showing up and who has support to offer?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe get to scale more quickly. I think that could be a pretty incredible setup for this vintage for venture. One follow-up question to you. Do you think that founders might get more selective about who they want in their cap table in terms of people that can really help them navigate through this difficult environment versus someone who's just offering them the highest valuation? How do you see that evolving?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Maybe not as high and exuberant as it was in the last 12 months, but not low. Because too many people need to do good deals. So if there's a good deal, you're not going to nitpick it and try to be cheap about it. So I think you're going to end up just seeing that perhaps a wave of companies that otherwise may not have gotten funding to start will struggle to get their A and their B unless they can really show that there's a business there. But if you do have a business, I think that we'll continue to see reasonable valuations. And I think it'll be exciting to see founders navigate through that because they'll probably raise less as a result to try to minimize their dilution. So then does that mean that they get tighter with what they do, more effective with what they do with those dollars? And so just as you noted, maybe that means smarter decisions and you're not spreading yourself too thin and expanding too fast. You're actually trying to get one thing right. And as a result, there's a better business being built. So we're excited about that.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that's a hard pill to swallow for founders who've had a run up on a significantly bull market for the past very many years. You know, I think that the whole generation of founders that we've got has still been bred and grown up in a bull market. And so I would say our pace has slown down a little bit, mainly because we've made a bunch of investments out of Fund Five last year. And naturally, you're going to take care of your existing companies first, make sure everyone's doing okay and understands how to adjust themselves in the new market landscape. But we're still open for business. And that's the takeaway is that a lot of funds are out there who have already raised their funds. They have a mandate to invest in new ideas. And so there's going to be new businesses coming to life. And there's probably more of a flight towards quality. So those quality deals that have real business models, experience teams, real vision, those will probably be priced.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think what you're seeing more of is actually rounds not quite getting done because nobody wants to price it Nobody wants to be a jerk and just give some lowball offer, but also nobody wants to be a fool. And even last round price, we've advised our teams, it's a reference point, but it's certainly not any indication of your current round price.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So valuations are definitely coming down. And I think I've never seen such a clear correlation of public market performance and super early stage valuations because typically you're so far from being an at-scale company that usually the earlier stage valuations are somewhat an art versus a science. There isn't revenue to have a multiple. So you're thinking more about ownership or how much capital is being raised or sort of what's happening with that capital. But anecdotally we would say that the valuations have come down precipitously, mainly because it's a reference point where later stage investors can point to public market stocks and say, hey, your comps or your market is down, as you said, anywhere between 20 and 60 or 70 percent. And so, you know, if you ever needed a reason to price something lower, you would use this as one.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just practically need to do as a society, but don't have abilities to do that in our day to day lives. Like there's a lot of things that we're excited to explore to see if the new behaviors are going to result in actually new ways of life.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Generation who's growing up and just starting to hit their adult years, you know, the beginnings of their earnings power post college. And I think that that continues to offer a wealth of opportunities, but might be more nuanced. I ended up writing something after the 12 or 15 months of COVID and just thinking about how our priorities have changed kind of going back to the top of the hour, your father passes away, someone has a health crisis, and just the stuff that you used to care about, you don't care about anymore. And it might be that it comes back because our memories are so handy in that way. And so you kind of move on. But there are some things, whether it's focus on health and wellness, that are now not nice to have, but they actually need to haves. And so, you know, opportunities like Aura Rang or, you know, a company like Calibrate, which is to support obesity management, or there's a company called Duos, which is also in sort of a how do you care for your aging parents? All the things that”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Navigating. It's not necessarily that we're shopping differently, but we're thinking differently, we're living differently. And so the opportunities to understand, well, if people fundamentally want to live their lives differently, what experiences, what products and services do we need to support that in coming to full fruition? And so we spend a lot of time trying to figure out where the consumer's at and who the consumer even is because the last 10 years was ultimately characterized by the rise of the millennial. So it was as much of a demographic but coincided with this like shift to social media and mobile usage. And so, you know, it morphed into a whole group of people that you could track throughout the 20s and 30s of their lives. And now, you know, largely millennials are having children and settling down. And so what does that look like for that generation? But then what does it look like for the Gen Z?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think we're still in a moment of great opportunity. Oftentimes when people reflect at opportunities in generations past, it really is a new distribution channel that creates the platform with which a whole new ecosystem can be built. So you might think of it as like just the iPhone, you know, and all the things that came out of mobile coming to life and becoming an integrated part of our consumer behavior. And so, you know, the nearest next platform is really Web3 in the metaverse. We'll see. We have to figure that out. And if that becomes a real thing or if it's kind of like a faux thing, but at least there's opportunity there. I think where we spend a lot of time thinking is where's the consumer at? That's always been the drumbeat or the heartbeat of Forerunner from the very beginning. And today coming out of COVID, coming out of civil unrest, there's so many things that were”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“On the other hand, a lot of incredible businesses, and you referenced this earlier, they were born in capital constrained moments, post-global financial crisis. So if we look back to 08, that was around the vintage for Airbnb, Uber, Square, many of them using the bootstrapping approach, which I've heard you refer to as the Lost Art. So are we in a crisis right now, or is this a moment of great opportunity? Where would you land on that question?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Love that, and I think it's so true just in our public market companies, just we are excited to see these companies use your word just experiment in the metaverse to hopefully not, you know, they learned from that disruption that happened as things moved online. I think the best ones have and to see them engage in experiments really interesting. Outside of the metaverse, though, back here in the real world, Are facing some really challenging issues, as you know, with contracting markets and economies. So on the one hand, the operating environment's just gotten substantially more challenging for the companies you're investing in and the ones I'm investing in.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Called Lolly. And it's just a chrome extension where as you're shopping, you can get cash back quote unquote, but you can get Bitcoin back. And it's the first super easy low friction wallet, crypto wallet. So as you're shopping, doing your normal thing instead of getting points or honey points or whatever other cashback systems you use, what if you just got it's going to be like one millionth of a Bitcoin, but you know, still it starts to add up over time. And then all of a sudden you realize you've got some Bitcoin. What do I do with it? And so that was the idea of a lower friction way to get people curious.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Consumers over here. And it could be novel. It could just be kind of a fun thing that is a curiosity, but that's not going to have the staying power. And so we're trying to figure out like who is the first group of mainstream customers that are going to move over here and why. Why is that happening? And we don't have an answer yet. It's going to be a body of work to come over the next decade, hopefully, Katie. But it's exciting. And what's cool to see is that everyone's open to it. We see retailers, brands that are incumbents being first to say, well, what is this? Can we get on top of it? Does our customer need this? And I think they've learned from the last wave that even if it ends up being that the answer is maybe no, at least to be open to asking the questions is a better way to go about it, to think about if there's a way to engage and what would that right way be. But we haven't figured out what's that kind of silver bullet of the first experience that gets you started. For example, we have an investment in company.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we're really trying to think it through because there's clearly something happening, but it's still very early. There are still very few customers who are actually engaging in the metaverse, whether you're thinking crypto currencies, whether you're thinking NFTs. There's a lot of different ways you can cut it, but Web3 in general. And with consumers, you need the experience to have less friction. So way back e-commerce 1.0 that you recall if payments wasn't solved, none of this would have happened. So you needed a PayPal to come to life to establish trust, to build the rails. eBay early days needed to figure out authenticity and what you buy is that actually what's going to arrive and all of these things are the same questions that the web3 ecosystem needs to solve is first what experiences here that's going to bring”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I wanted to pivot and talk just about digital really quickly. So you did a great job of explaining how 10 years ago some of the brick and mortar incumbents misunderstood the power of social media and digital connection. I wanted to ask you if you think the same thing might be happening today with the metaverse and digital goods specifically. Do you have a view on that?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Experiences and services because we talk a lot about what is the relationship that you build with consumers and the DTC, so to speak, acronym, was really about being able to connect directly. But after you've connected directly with me, if you just leave it at that, well, that's a waste. You already had me as a customer. What else can you do with me? Can you deliver me more value? We have a company called Curology from Fund 2, which was so novel and really innovative in the way that they were bringing telematology to life, dermatologists or woefully, there's just not enough of them, difficult to access, more expensive. And that teledermatology service was given through digital means. And then we can customize and really personalize acne medication at scale. So here you are getting a service plus a custom.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just being direct to consumer, which to your point was a business model, when you give the example of Aura, you're tapping into this healthy lifestyle preference, which is obviously on the rise, but I'm also taking from your comments that you're part of the experience of the actual consumer, like you're integrated into their life in some way. And so this really taps also into the preference for experiences over just things as well.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Can we integrate deeper into the sort of medical journey and work with trainers and physicians and insurance providers? But ultimately that is a direct-to-consumer brand. They have a direct relationship with us.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“As we all know, CACs are very high, and for a number of reasons, it's a cost of doing business versus alpha that you can have as a new brand. And so it's hard again. It may actually be easier to go back to retail and to work with big platforms who are looking for fresh brands and that pipeline of newness isn't happening anywhere else other than these sort of fresh modern direct-to-consumer companies that are coming to life. But I do feel like, you know, when we were investing in that theme, it was because it was the beginnings of the distribution channel advantage and the marketing advantage that social media enabled today when we think about new brands coming to life, it really is more of a how is this brand representative of an experience so it's not just a product but it's a service it's an ongoing relationship with customers and so when we think about that a dtc brand would be or a ring some people consider it consumer health but really it's a ring you buy a ring it's a biometric tracker and over time you have insights on your daily health your readiness scores your sleep quality over time”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so that was where new brands I came to life instead of having to get a bunch of inventory, start a bunch of stores, have relationships with, you know, Target or Nordstrom or other big retailers. Like that's hard to do. And so you can just spin up a website and start to market to consumers directly online. It was easier. There was low friction. And because as you mentioned, the costs were cheaper because it was so much newer. the brands were able to get a lot more traction, a lot more organic enthusiasm from their customer base. And the fact that they spoke differently to their consumers was what was really novel, that they were including the customers into the conversation, not just telling me what to wear and telling me what next season style should be. They were asking me or they were collaborating with the community. And that was also really different. And so now 10 years later, you've got all the ad platforms that are really saturated.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Such a good question. So, you know, again, 10 years ago, the opportunity that we saw was not necessarily one where it was about the brands specifically coming to market, but rather that there was a new distribution channel. And this was driven by Facebook and ultimately social media at large. So consumers were ever present online. They were not in stores as much as they were back in the 90s and early 2000s. And so people were hanging out and socializing online. And the traditional players were slow to move. They didn't think it was a real thing. They thought of e-commerce as sort of store number 10 or store number 100. And there was a small team over here, you know, off to the side working on it, but it wasn't a mental model that allowed for the traditional incumbent players to realize that the customer was actually not listening to them. They didn't have the connection anymore.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Helpful framework. I want to talk a little bit now about just kind of different ideas and where you have been invested and where you're looking to go. So Forerunners focused on evolving consumer behavior and consumer needs. And you were amongst the earliest investors focused on direct-to-consumer businesses. You named a couple already, but Bonabos, dollar shave club, Warby Parker away, Glacier, or some of the names that you guys have invested in early. And those companies haven't come that they themselves understood early the value of reaching consumers online, developing a relationship with them, building communities. When you invested with them, the world was different in the sense that advertising was cheaper in some of these categories were less competitive. Would you agree that direct-to-consumer has become more competitive now? Where are the opportunities now? And what's critical for these types of companies to succeed, the ones that have scaled or are looking to scale?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Podcasts, but I can turn the next hour and then grind with my product team and figure out step by step, like we don't have the time or the resources to do everything. So what is the two things that we have to do to get this right? And those are pretty disparate skill sets. So when you do find them in one person, it allows the team to get further with less at the beginning.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because if you just have vision, your head could be in the clouds and you might not be able to figure out how to put step by step by step together to get it done. And so those two things are hard to find in combination and certainly to find in a balanced combination. But the third thing that's a little bit maybe the foreigner secret sauce is this word magnetism. And that can mean different things to different people. Sometimes that's, again, outgoing, gregarious. Everybody loves you, popular. But another times it's, you know, who's going to be a magnet for great engineers and great talent? Who's going to be a magnet for the executives at the companies that ultimately are going to buy this software? And so being able to sort of assess whether or not somebody has that X factor does bring everything into more focus because that person's going to be able to flex into, I have to sell, I've got to get fundraising. I've got to do PR, you know, interviews. I've got to do.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you know what you're good at and you say, hey, like, this is what I'm going to lean in on, and this is where I'm going to build around me. That's really all you can ask of somebody. You know, they can only have so much. I remember distilling it down to three adjectives. There's a handful of years ago, but it still resonates today, which is. A great founder often shares commonalities with these three traits vision, because if you don't have vision, then why are you starting a company? So you have to dream something that people haven't seen before. Then there's discipline.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And also, the acknowledgement when something's starting that early, they're not going to have a management team that can specialize in every different area, right? So you're going to pick people at like every individual has strengths and weaknesses and you just need to be aware of what those are and how they plan on supplementing it to move forward.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That would make somebody successful at tackling this particular problem. And, you know, ultimately it's still a bet because it's so early. But then you get into business and whoever you've backed, you're just working with them. So whatever their weak areas might be, you're hoping to support supplementing them with other team members.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Series A or even Series B, so that we have some time to watch you execute and decide whether or not this angle into the market is the one we want to back. But we have to make those decisions on a case-by-case basis. From a, I guess, holistic perspective, when we're thinking about founders, we've often times been asked like, how do you pick founders? Everyone says, I only invest in great founders. No one's going around saying, I invest in mediocre founders. You know, who does that, right? But that looks different for each industry. You might say that a DTC brand would require somebody who's quite outwardly facing somebody who can act more as a mascot or the champion for a brand to really resonate with their consumers. Well, that's not terribly important if maybe you're building a SaaS business and you're selling into retailers and, you know, that kind of gravitas isn't what people want. They actually want someone who really understands the tech stack or really understands the buying process. And so we really do try to say, you know, what are the qualities?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exercise because you haven't seen these people operate yet together. Hopefully, they know each other. Hopefully they've been working on it together. But a lot of it is just trying to get a gut feel for, again, back to what we were talking about. Why is this team together working on this problem? Do they know anything different about this particular solution that they're trying to put in market than anybody else? You know, have they worked in industry before? And so now they have a network of potential customers that they can go to? Have they built these types of products before? And at foreigner, we're investing in all aspects of commerce. It's not just what people buy, which is physical products and brands, but it's where they buy, which is retail experiences, different distribution channels, and then how they buy. So the commerce enablement that powers all those different experiences. And so for each type of business model, there's a different set of criteria that you might be looking for on those very early stages. There are many times where we're like, hey, there's so many players right now. We need to wait.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So it depends on exactly what stage the company is at and what category it's in. But for example, at these earliest stages, really all there is is a founder or co-founders. Maybe there's a business plan. Maybe there's, if you're lucky, an MVP or some beta test that's out there that can start to put some structure to the ideas. And when we go in that early, it's because we thematically have assessed that the market that's being addressed actually has a problem or pain point that we believe that this strategy or we call it a wedge into the market is the smartest way in, the lowest friction, and that over time we think that there's more to build. But it's really an understanding of where the market opportunity is and that it's a meaningful enough need to be solved. And then what you're doing is you're trying to pick the right team. All of that is somewhat a nuance.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think that's so interesting because you are actually investing in other businesses. So it is probably reasonable to understand that you yourself are running a business. And we always say, and then cultures are very important to the companies you invest in, but they're also very important to successful investment outcomes. And so we always say here that we want to run a business that would want to invest in, right? So I love that observation. Two-thirds of the companies that you invest in roughly, I think I've read, you're the first investor, which is very fascinating to me as a public market investor where we're focused clearly on much later stage companies and especially owning those mature compounders. So apologies perhaps for this very basic question, but what are you looking for in these companies? How much is about people, product, TAM, how much are you thinking about with the economics look like at maturity? What does the world look like at your very early stage?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In and of itself. It's the business of investing and the business of building a financial platform. And so many people don't think about it that way. They think about it as, I want to raise the fund so I can invest and that my job is being an investor in these independent companies. Whereas the business of building a firm is a different job and one that the same person has to do many times and they're not terribly pleased once they realize half the time needs to be allocated to fundraising and investor relations and building network and helping to do BD for your companies. There's all these other jobs involved that surprise some people.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Capital funds really think about it as I want to invest, I want to raise money so that I can invest. And so that means I want to raise a fund. Great. Then what? Because that fund is allocated in two to three years max. So you need another fund. Okay, well, then I'm going to raise another fund. Okay, great. So then that's fund too. And then you realize now you have a portfolio. Are you going to hire somebody? Okay, maybe, yeah, I need somebody. You know, maybe I'll hire a head of operations or someone in finance. But many times it's cobbled together almost as they go versus Kirsten when she thought of Forerunner, it was a firm before it was anything. And as a result, she was thinking about what is the team that I want, what is the thesis that, you know, we want to build many decades of investing behind. And I think that's what ultimately led to the success of how we've been able to build our own business because having a venture capital firm is a business.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the context to that statement is really around how much the ecosystem has evolved. And back when Kirsten was, you know, really ideating this concept of forerunner, it wasn't normal to start a venture capital firm. There were the old guard traditional names that everybody knows. It's unclear how they started, but that was a game in town. And really, you either joined those or you didn't have a job, which is why it was such a kind of a closed circle. And, you know, we were sort of rogue doing this thing on the side, but since then over the last decade, seed funding as a whole kind of asset class really came to life, which brought in so many new voices, so many new perspectives, which is awesome. But I think that the benefit of now being in the industry for 10 years and building our own firm, I realized that many people who want to start venture.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Found your person, you have built this incredible partnership and firm. And one thing that I've heard you reflect on previously I was hoping you could explain here is that when people, others listening to this, did want to go into venture investing themselves, they should think about launching a firm, not a fund. Can you explain what you meant by that and why you think that's an important mental model for people that might want to be in this space?”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Recall feeling lonely all the time, wishing I had a partner, wishing I had somebody to share the victories with. I would call my mom after a great meeting and wishing I had somebody there working on it with me. That it's not going to be perfect all the time. And so looking back, it's probably my best venture investment yet forerunner.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was December 2011, and then sometime in January 2012, she called me and she said, Hey, let's catch up again. It was post holidays. And we went and grabbed breakfast at Jane Cafe on Union Street. And she shared that she had gotten her first term sheet for fund one, that she was really going to be building this firm in earnest. And what would it take for me to join her? And I had no idea there was a job to be had. Literally, I was thinking, seriously, this is a job. I can join you. It was 100% bet on Kirsten. I just wanted to work with her. I wanted to be part of her vision forward for all the things that we could invest in to support and be participants to this evolution of commerce. And, you know, I think back and I say, what made me take that chance? It was pretty much the entrepreneurial bug in me because when I reflect at my time thinking and starting Maven, my own company, I distinctly.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as with the way that Venture works, like you take calls like that and you say, yeah, absolutely, I want to hear what she's up to. And really, all we talked about, it was down at the ferry building in San Francisco. Oh, we talked about where all the interesting ideas that were happening, the way that the consumer was evolving, so much shifting online and through social media and what that might mean. It was really our shared vision for what was different and our enthusiasm for how many new ideas could come to life in this new world. And, you know, she shared that she was working on this investment thesis forerunner wasn't even fully a thing yet, you know, was sort of still in her head. And then I left that coffee thinking, wow, what a incredible person. You know, she has so much inspiration, aspiration, passion, all the things that I'm really drawn to. And I thought, well, if there's any way I can help her in the future, that would be amazing. And then I went back to my case meeting at Maine. And that was the end of it.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. So we were introduced by business school, a classmate of mine who was on a board with her. And she had been angel investing in many of the companies where I knew the founders, either they had worked at Bain or went to Wharton. It was the Warpie Parker guys, the birchbox team, Bonobos. Those happened to kind of all be bane threads. But there were so much overlap in our interest areas that our friend is also an investor said, you know, you guys should meet. Kirsten's running around doing all these deals working like a, you know, crazy lunatic and she needs somebody to join her. It wasn't even, there wasn't a job to be had when I had coffee with her. It was sort of an open, you should just meet and know each other. I think you'd like each other.”
2022-07-29 · Goldman Sachs Exchanges · Investing with Forerunner’s Eurie Kim · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT