YouSaid · the spoken record

Gili Raanan

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2024-03-18
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2024-03-18
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  1. “Cyberstarts that easy, best investor in cybersecurity worldwide, the one go to place for entrepreneurs when they think about starting their next cybersecurity company. For Gilly I never make long term plans, as I told you. I wake up every day and I make sure that I have the drive and energy to go forward.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Many lessons from Dark I learned a lot from him. I think that Doug is not just fast thinker and someone who knows the business amazingly well. He simply cares about the founders and the companies he partners with. And many people are even intimidated by Doug and I know founders that are scared by Doug. Doug cares about the founders and investment and that I think that the combination of the knowing your business so well and caring about what you do makes him very special.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Whenever and up and will stand me that customers love what we do, every customer we spoke with like to get our product like to get her hands on a product. You probably misunderstood the customer. You probably didn't listen well in a conversation. That's impossible. That's a BS.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “write members at cyberstarts rarely go to industry events don't spend time mostly out of portfolio companies I probably spend two or three hours a week on non-portfolio matters so nearly all my time is spent on portfolio I don't spend time on fundraising I don't spend time with LPs I don't do LP gatherings we are 100% close to 100% focused on portfolio and very little documentation as little as possible”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “That's the misconception. I think that anyone who sells early has a reason for that. It's not an ecosystem trade. It's not an Israeli trait. If you have a terrific product selling amazing to a huge market and everything in the founder's relationship is amazing, why would you sell? I see more and more teams, repeat entrepreneurs, but also first-time entrepreneurs that are doing amazing job and eager to build sustainable companies.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “When I look at early stage companies, the common thread among all of them is once they start to sell software is that they don't have enough opportunities and they don't have enough pipeline. Previously I spent a lot of efforts within marketing around product marketing and not around demand generation. You asked me a year ago who would be the first hire at a marketing organization that would be product marketing. My mind changed. My answer today is demand. That can make a huge impact on a business early on.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Probably each one of us has a different number. I'm sure that there's a number that would make you not worry about it anymore. And probably my number and your number are different.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “The answer is rooted somewhere else. It's not around net worth, it's around terrific instincts, knowing your game, pattern matching, terrific network, and other elements. It definitely made my life more comfortable.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Typically, it's very easy for us to take Parata and we have lots of friends in the industry and they respect our partnership”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Sure, I'll explain it and you'll figure out immediately why I said we are simply in the seed business and that has changed. So it either starts we have two type of funds we are now investing out of Cyberstarts seed three. Our seed funds are sixty million dollars in size and we write first and last check to new teams. No foreign investments out of the seed funds. And then we have five hundred million dollars opportunity fund where we invest in follow on rounds in our own portfolio companies. We didn't transform our business. We didn't shift it to late stage or multistage investments. We are seed investors with a big wallet to invest in follow on rounds in our own companies where we do not set the price. We do not set the price out of the opportunity fund.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “An early stage investor, I think it's smart to look for liquidity opportunities and consider the context. The company, your fund, many other elements in your business.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Liquidity is part of my business. I like to say that eventually all my companies are for sale at the right price. I'm not a collector, I'm an investor.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “is definitely bad behavior attached to it, but this bad behavior attached to using tick tock or Facebook, and still, as far as I checked an hour ago, they're still up and running.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I'm always optimistic, Harry. I'm not worried. I'm optimistic. You know, the market is the market. If you can raise significant cash and build a business, you should do that. That's the right thing to do. Now, it's our responsibility as investors and board members, entrepreneurs, to really look at the way we spend money and have the systematic approach of building companies. That shouldn't change just because you have more cash in a bank.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “No, I think that once you start a bull run, definitely the 1% would have terrific life, but that would have impact on the rest of the pack. And if I look at my own portfolio at Cyberstarts, our companies are in the process of raising probably more than one and a half billions dollars in the next few weeks. The impact is not just for the one percent company. You see the impact across the whole bank.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “2021 is back, period, for the past four or five weeks, at least in private market. We are in a new bull run, valuations are high, skyrocketing.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Cash is very important. Building a large substantial company is a very expensive exercise. I didn't find unfortunately a cheap, inexpensive way to do it. It takes a lot of cash. It means that our companies need to raise a lot of money. It means that valuations should be high because no founder would like to get 50% dilution just to get the cash they need. We support that and we provide the platform to run fast, get faster to product market fit, which means that you create a repeatable sales machine earlier, you get to higher valuation earlier, and you are able to raise more money than the competition.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “for that individual to get conviction that they like to procure your software. And what's the right pricing for your solution for the pain point it solves? If you figure this out, you have a repeatable process that you can simply execute again and again successfully, you can raise a lot of money, put as many account executives and channels around that, and you've got a beautiful company. In my view, that's way more important than just sheer speed.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Not necessarily. You know, I think that cybersecurity is a market where being first to market is not necessarily an advantage. Sometimes it's better to be number two, number three to market, and come in with more knowledge, more context, and simply deliver a better product, and better product would not just make customers happier, it would attract better channels and would translate to faster sales velocity in go to market. Speed by itself is not bad, but that's not the most important thing. The most important thing is really figure out product market fit. Understand the pain point, who has that pain point, how do you explain that pain point to that individual, what's the right demo to convince them to take your product, technical evaluation, how do you run the most efficient technical evaluation?”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “To get to that point it takes about five million dollars. So it's not bad that you have $7 million a seed. It's not terrible.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Really depends on the domain. In most enterprise software companies, cybersecurity included, I found out that you need at least 5 or 6 million dollars just to get team, product build, a small go-to-market team to win few deals. That's what it typically takes to build an enterprise software company or cybersecurity software company in any early days. And that's typically what we do. If you look at the cyber starts pre-Sirius A company, if you like a sunrise graduate company, you'd see a terrific team that solves a huge pain point as validated by dozens of US companies with technology that works in production where few of those customers already paid few hundred thousand dollars for the solution. And that's the point we go in.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Potentially, but I really don't know, cause most of our deals at the seed stage look the same. We don't try to twist the arm and get one or two points more for the sake of making a little bit more. Maybe the answer is yes, we haven't tested it.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I think there's a lot of tools in that. And the best companies, if you look at it, were insailing expensive. It's like almost part of their DNA to be expensive companies. Luckily we invested seed, even expensive seed is not that expensive if you are building a multibillion dollar business invaluation. But I agree that most investors' mistakes were not to invest in the right company because they thought it's too expensive. By the way, it goes both ways. When I speak who is entrepreneurs, I always tell them the cyberstarts money is the most expensive money you can buy for your equity, because it's a dip. They buy cash and they pay with equity. And we are the most expensive cash they can buy. So the price trap is not just for the investor, it's also for the entrepreneur. Would they pick the best investor for them paying a higher price in the equity?”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Lots of appreciation for that. I appreciate people and organizations that learn, that adapt, that prepare themselves, that's all fine. My business is different. I'm a seed investor. I have to come in for a process with new team completely unprepared. Have my mind not be poisoned by any thought about what they can build and what they can go after. It's slightly different profession and slightly different mindset.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Of all, if I knew why I would fix it and I'll become great at it. Even if I know why it's probably the wrong answer, the wrong answer I have in my mind, it has to be an organic process. It's very hard to create real connection that would last for a decade plus if you're thinking about a long-term business, it simply works better when it's organic.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “The right teams and go after important companies. Those are the things we do very well at Cyberstarts. What we are not doing well, coming up with ideas, running theses on markets. You ask me what I think about AI security. I spent only thirty years plus in cybersecurity and what do I know about it? But we are not good at matchmaking between founders. That's something that I see other investors do and that's a miracle to me. How do you do that?”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “It always goes back to the team if it wasn't cleared so far. I'm a big believer in human element here. So you think about the team and you think about the team, what I missed about the team. And I tried to analyze that and learn from that and at least not repeat my mistakes. It's fine that I'll make new mistakes, but it's stupid to make the same mistake again and again. So I try to learn and move move forward. And it's also a business where you have to focus on the things that do work because so many things are fucked up, so many things do not work well. And so you simply have to focus on the things that work well and then do more of them. If you successfully able to focus and repeat the things that you are doing well and do a little bit less of the”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Don't tell myself anything. I just feel the energy that I think is something we spoke about. The moment I don't have the energy yet, the moment I don't have the drive, the moment I have to talk to myself and convince myself that I need to recover, that's the point I should retire. But when I simply stand up and walk just because I'm stupid, that's a good sign that I should stay in the game.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “and probably more than most people on earth. Each time I'm getting into a new sunrise process with a new team, I have to prepare myself mentally. It's super hard.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Well, it gets easier to raise money and record talent and fundraising for Cyberstarts is a plan. I think the last SID fund took me like 90 seconds to raise the fund. Nine WhatsApp messages and it was done. But the sun raise process itself and the companies journey themselves, that doesn't get easier. That's as hard as it was in a first sunrise. It's an eagle destroying process. You die like a dozen times during the process. It's so difficult. You get all the reasons people are not going to buy your product, all the reasons people are not going to like you. All the reasons people are going to pass on you. And that's hard, really hard. I've done it by now between cyberstarts and sequoia thirty-five times.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “First of all, one thing I learned at Sekoa is that we are always as good as our next investment. So who knows? But if you look at the current cyberstarts portfolio, we are at 21 companies, four are still running Sunrise, so who knows, but out of the 17 who went through Sunrise and raised Sirius A, seven are unicorns One is a decarone and three got acquired. So I think the heat rate for sunrise is pretty good.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “And then we would ask them, how would you price it and why it's so high, why it's so low? What's the right channel? And how would you technically evaluate that type of solution? Even before we have written the first line of code, we don't have a product, but we ask you how would you evaluate that product? How would you run a POV for that product? Essentially, we ask all the tough questions in the first few months for the venture, and then that allows our companies to accelerate. If you look at companies like Wiz, Island, Fireblock, Snow Name, Sierra, Avalo, all those companies, they managed to get to significant Thanks to that process, because you simply get a better functioning and streamlined businesses by asking all those hard questions.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “I don't babysit founders. I'm not in a meetings, but we do follow up on each conversation. We have a system where we rate those meetings together with the founders and we would meet weekly to discuss what we've learned and how we should go forward with a process. The Sunra's process is an amazing process. It's a super hard experience to go through because unlike the traditional first year experience, you take all the hypothetical objections. You might face as accompanying an next three or four years and bring it to present. So you ask all the tough questions yourself. If a potential customer says I like your solution, you'd respond with why wouldn't you buy it from Palo Alto Networks? Why wouldn't you buy it from Whiz? Why do you need us?”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “It typically run about 60 to 70 conversations like that in the first three months since inception. And then we come back and have a second set of 60 to 70 conversations with our solution thesis. So the first batch of conversations is all about the pain point. That helps us figure out what's the one big pain point we like to go after and build an important company. We come up with a solution thesis. And then we come back to those potential customers and tell them, hey, we listen to you. This is the concept for solving that one big pain point you told us about. What do you think about it? And if they like it, we'll go build it and then come back to them in three or four months and ask them to try it out and then they become our first customers.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Your giving them a hundred million dollars, so whenever I give you a hundred million dollars, you listen. And they share with us that thing, that guarantees we are not going to face a market timing issue. That's something they are going to spend money and budget now. And that for cyberstarts companies solves the whole market timing issue.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “Fortune 500 companies chief information security officers. Those are the customers of most of the company's cyberstarts investing. And you tell them, hey, here's a new team. You don't ask them what's your biggest pain point or what's your biggest need'cause again, you'll get so many BS answers it's not even funny. We ask them, hey, this is a new cyberstart team that is going to spend about a hundred million dollars in the next three years on engineering alone to solve one pain point. That's the average for a cyberstarts company and we like to give you those hundred million dollars to solve one pain point for your organization. What would that be? What's the one pain point you like us to solve for you? And that makes customers focus and listen to you because you change the equation of power. You are not asking them for any favor. You are making them a favor.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “First of all, when I make the investment decision at the seed stage, I don't think about markets and I don't think about market timing and I don't think about all of that. I make a very simple decision. Do we like to partner with those individuals? Do we like to be their partners? The way at cyber starts we deal with market timing question, which is super important, is by running our sunrise process. And the sunrise is almost like a counterintuitive process for most entrepreneurs. Because instead of going and chasing your ideas and dealing with prospects, objections and really getting to engagements and closing deals, you do just the opposite. You go and talk to a significant number of representative customers.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “So let's build a data platform for cybersecurity. And Avalo seems like a terrific company in the making. You don't have to be an expert to really build amazing companies.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “Microsoft product Adalon became a cloud security company now did Asaf know anything about cloud and cloud security in twenty twelve I guarantee you not. You know it took them two iterations Adalon was a first iteration, sold that business to Microsoft eventually and then started wheeze and now wheeze is a ten billion dollar business you don't have to be an expert to the field to really innovate in that field Different example is another company called Afalor. It's a small CRSH stage company and the two founders Ranan and Fir, they came to me and they never dealt with cybersecurity. They've built data products and they were part of a company that was sold to Salesforce for eight hundred million dollars and we decided that they are the data experts and cyberstarts knows cybersecurity.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “don't really care I don't really care I care about their enthusiasm I care about their energy level when they think about it and I've done both when I met the wisdom in the previous company in Adelon it was twenty twelve they came to me with an idea of securing Microsoft business applications I thought it a terrible idea but I invested in a team and then we went to do a product market fit process which is called Sandra's and we asked potential customers is that a real pain point? You know after few conversations it was clear that the pain point is in the cloud and securing cloud applications is so much more important or perceived to be important by those customers than protecting the on-premise.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Personally, I went through a real tragedy and my real pain. My daughter died five years ago. That was a real tragedy that changed my life. Now people know that and I talk about it. Sometimes it's brought up in conversations. That memory, that experience, and others, I think that people understand I'm not coming to the meeting with I'm the strong fleshy VC who's going to abuse you. I really like to get to know you.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “And it's not about investing. I meet people when their company doesn't exist, when there is no company. It's all about partnership. It's almost like picking another co founder for their team if we are not open and transparent with each other, then we won't be able to be terrific partners.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Always a challenge how to create that level of intimacy and comfort. That's one of the reasons Cyberstarts we don't have offices and I take meetings in my backyard which is conveniently located fifty minutes ride from Tel Aviv in a suburb it's very quiet it's very different than any VC office in the world I see it in a converted shipping container where I took off all the walls and put glasses so you're sitting in middle of my garden it's very peaceful it's quiet I typically don't dress up in fleshy clothes for meetings everything is tuned down I tell them about my own journey and my own difficulties and my own failures as entrepreneur and individual and typically I get to connect with them.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “The best Java developer in their company and I listened to that patiently and then I asked them one simple question hey I listened to your story it's amazing you've done so well it sounds like everything was easy for you you have been that brilliant kid brilliant student brilliant officer straight a student what has been difficult for you and they think for a while and typically their first answer is at college at the first year I got B minus in physics then I said that's not really hardship so I'm looking for the individual whose parents went through ugly divorces I'm looking for the individual who lived in a closet for a while I'm looking for the individual who was a socially isolated child I'm looking for people who went through real difficulty in life Anne became successful.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “I listened to the live story and I tried to understand the why they did why they do, why they move from station A to station B in their life. I'm looking for early signs of them being unique or simply excellent in something and it doesn't have to be tech. The other thing I'm looking at is whether they've gone through real life difficulty. Have they gone through something that's really difficult and managed to be successful although they face that difficulty? In many cases I meet brilliant people, amazing top notch individuals and they tell me how brilliant you know students they were and amazing officers in the intelligence forces”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “Okay idea mediocre idea I'll help them improve it. If they don't have an idea at all what to do, that's even better. I'll work with them. We leverage the entire Cyberstarts platform to really help them pick a significant pain point they can go after and build unimportant company and we've done it multiple times successfully.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “That's not my experience, my experience that many times those young individuals they make horrible assumptions on the market or on go to market, and that's not the right measurement to pick the best teams. As time went by I became more and more purist in my approach to the point where I started cyberstarts in twenty eighteen I decided that I would not even ask them about market or technology or product, you know, so I meet with a team, a new team, which I don't know, and we spent an hour speaking about their childhood and their mother, and not about products of technology. That's enough to pick amazing teams. My assumption is that if they have a terrific idea, that would be a nice bonus, or if they have an”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “So why would they spend calories on something that's so temporal in the life of the venture while I could spend time on the most stable element in venture, which is the team? You know, the team would change, but it would not change as dramatically as the market and technology. When you meet a young team, young for me now is embarrassingly old age, but when you meet folks that are twenty five, twenty seven, twenty eight years old, they've done two, three jobs in the market. They haven't been senior executives in any business. To really expect them to come up with brilliant market analysis and justify why they are getting into a five billion dollar market. I think that setting the bar way too high.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “Yeah, that type of thinking changing me considerably since the early days for me as a venture capitalist because in the early days I was looking at markets and total addressable market tom and technology and differentiators and I simply realized that all of that is bullshit. It's not important at all. You know, when I meet a team of entrepreneurs, whatever they tell me, even if they tell me the truth, often they don't. But even if they tell me the truth about the market they want to go after and the technology they've built in eight weeks.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “I respectfully disagree. I was spending time with Asaf till one AM this morning and I was giving him crap about something. The moment you're happy with where you are, that's the moment you stop to lose. The moment you start to believe that you are you know a lot and you are experienced and you're simply amazing in what you do, that's the moment you start to make mistakes. Questioning yourselves and beating up yourselves for anything that you could do better and chasing real greatness, I think that's the only way to stay on top of the game. And the moment I'll be happy with Wiz goes public in a year, in two years, in three years, and it's 50 billion dollars business, the fastest growing company ever created, if I'm happy about it, I should retire.”

    2024-03-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: 19 Company Portfolio: 1 Decacorn, 7 Unicorns, 4 Acquisitions; One of the Best Seed Investors of All Time on How to Pick Generational Defining Founders, Why Nothing but the Founder Matters & Why the Best Investors are Never Happy w/ Gili Raanan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source