YouSaid · the spoken record

Gili Raanan

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62
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2024-03-18
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2024-03-18
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  1. “I think it's something I take with me to Cyberstarts today. It's endless hunger. You're never you're never satisfied. You could pick Google, you could run the biggest IPO the day you run a meeting and ask yourself how can I do better? You're never happy. So maybe it's not a lazy investor. Maybe it's the investor that's never happy.”

    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. “The venture business is a service business. You provide services. And it's very hard to tell if service provider A is significantly better than service provider B, because what you sell is cash. But once you manage to create brand for yourself and Sequoi is probably the biggest brand in the venture business, you create an amazing cycle where the best entrepreneurs like to work for you or partner with you, the best executives like to work for your portfolio companies, all other investors like to invest in your portfolio companies, and the game becomes easier and faster and allows you to do great things just because of brand. Before brand I spent ten years working for the Israeli NSA and then in two small startup companies I've founded, I never worked for a terrific branding.”

    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. “Spent more than a decade with Sequoia and it's a terrific team, it's a terrific venture where I learn so much. For me, you know, I told you about my early days at that small town in Israel where playing football was the one thing that kept us alive. So becoming part of Sequoia for me was like playing for Manchester United. It's the same game, the same rules, the same eleven players chasing a ball, but it's a whole new level. The combination of quality, tradition and performance. If you look just for one element of that, if you look for quality, if you look for tradition, if you look for performance, there are many clubs that you can follow. But if you look for that unique combination, probably Manchester United is the team you like to play for. And I really felt I'm playing for them. I learned the power of brand”

    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. “I don't think this is wrong answer. It just depends what the goal of the interview, but typically I think that Mike like to get to know me better. And when I talk to entrepreneurs today, I like to understand them and that understanding would help me predict their behavior going forward. You gave the example of I like to make a lot of money. One of the questions I try to understand is are you after fame or fortune? And you can get to real greatness by chasing fame and you can get to real greatness by chasing fortune. But understanding what's driving you would help me better understand you, would help me better help you and become a better partner to you. You can have both and some people have both, but what's driving you? Typically you know the answer.”

    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. “Mike is a terrific, deep, thoughtful human being, and I still consider him a friend and try to speak with him as frequently as I can. The interview with him, I came in charging forward, eager to tell him about all my amazing accomplishments as an entrepreneur and techie. He was simply interested not in what did I do but why did I pick to do that? I had to slow down. I realized this is a different type of interview. I had to focus and talk about what drove me and what's my motivation. It was a very different interview and it taught me a lot about what's important when you like to get to know someone. You get to know someone not by looking at what the inventory of their doings of their accomplishments. You get to know someone when you understand why they pick to do that. much more about that person.”

    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. “Absolutely. I was not an unknown entity for Sequoya. I joined Sekoia in 2009, but Sekoi invested twelve years beforehand in my first venture. It was nineteen ninety seven, twenty-seven years old. That was my startup. And they invested in that business. It was a terrific team. Pierre Lamond from Sequoia was on a board and we were the first team to build a waf, a web application firewall. In the late nineties, that was a big thing. Eventually the business was acquired by IBM. relocated back to Israel was lucky enough for Sequoia to look for a new partner in Israel. I met a local team in Israel and then I got to meet Michael Moritz. He interviewed me and that was it. I was becoming part of the team.”

    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. “Well, I think that lazy is probably in a different context as a founder. I wouldn't say pick the lazy VC. I think that you pick early on at the seed stages. If I'm an entrepreneur and I like to build a large business, I would go after the style of company builders. And there are many terrific investors who are not company builders. They are simply terrific pickers. In every successful company, there was at least one board member that he or she are the first call for the CEO. And they're in the room whenever the big decisions, important decisions are being made. That's the type of investor you like to join you for the journey of building an important company.”

    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. “In a way, absolutely, I think that laziness in the ri combination is a wonderful trait. It makes you think about efficiency, it makes you think about not repeating tasks you don't like and focus on the things you really like and you're really good at and to find combination, you know, even forming a wonderful venture team is all about filling the gaps and making sure that the different elements are significantly better than any of them alone.”

    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. “I think that that characteristic of a smart and somehow lazy child was one of the driving forces behind my career because unlike young people today, I was introduced to my first computer. It was a Commodore 64 computer, if people still recall magnificent machine. And I had to choose it. I was not born with computers. When I faced that machine that I could tell it what to do and it would do it repeatedly without getting tired without complaining as a gifted and somehow lazy person, I really like the idea and that I think what attracted me to the whole tech scene 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

  10. “That's a wonderful question. I ask many of the entrepreneurs I meet for the first time and we talk about it later, but I grew up in a small town in Israel, probably fifteen miles away from Tel Aviv, but in that period of time Tel Aviv could be on the moon. It was so far away for me. My parents would probably tell you that I was a bright student that never prepared homework, and the teachers always complained that whenever they ask me to read my homework assignment, I would stand up very casually read out of my notebook the complete answer that I was supposed to make last night, and then when they approach my desk they'll figure out a notebook is empty, and I was just making it up.”

    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. “pleasure to be here i'm very excited to have a conversation and i'll be even more excited if we can get back to some skiing together”

    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. “One thing I learned at Sekoa is that we are always as good as our next investment. The moment you're happy with where you are, that's the moment you start to lose. Liquidity is part of my business. 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