YouSaid · the spoken record

John Fein

lines on the record: 22
first: 2019-10-07
most recent: 2019-10-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“This, I really can't wait for the exciting times ahead for you with Firebrand and the team. So thank you so much for joining me, Stage John. Thank you so much, Harry. And thank you for doing this. It's a tremendous resource for so many people”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably the most recent publicly announced investment was in a company called the Mint. And the mint is a hotel-style housekeeping service for multi-tenant buildings. And we have been tracking it for about a year before we invested. And so by the time we really engaged, they had, first of all, they had incredible traction. And what really was a complete reflection of the founder Kathleen Wilson, who was fantastic. They're based in Chicago, and they sell their services to multi-tenant buildings. And by the time we got some, they had already signed on a multitude of property managers, including two of the largest multi-tenant property managers in the US. Clearly, we're on to something. And so we were thrilled to invest and we have followed on since then. And it's one of our fastest growing companies in our portfolio now. So it's been absolutely fantastic.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is much more important to be helpful than to be right. In the beginning, I thought that, you know, I was nervous and I was insecure because I thought it was my job to have all the answers. And I thought it was my job to sound really smart and drop these like gems of knowledge on people. And it probably didn't take too long to realize that wasn't working and that it's much, much more important to be helpful. And rather than tell people things, just to ask the right questions, listen and learn, and then hopefully guide founders in the right direction. That is, Hilaris. I wish I had been there, one of the John Fine Knowledge bombs.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, there's this one saying that I've always loved since I heard it. It's a paraphrase, but the saying is, life is 10% what happens to me and 90% how I react to it. And some of the reasons I just love it so much is because, first of all, it's empowering because it sort of makes you think and step back and like, wait a minute, I don't have to react certain ways to certain things. I can react however I want. And what would be the best ways for me to react to this thing? Because society and sort of your own background and childhood sort of condition you to reacting certain ways to certain things. And it sort of has this, to me, the sort of inherent element to it of also challenging your own biases, which I think is hugely, hugely important. So I've always loved that saying.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get more women onto investment teams. I think it's pretty simple. It's not easy in some cases. But there's also more of the wonderful peer groups for women investors, mentor groups for women investors, having these mentors and role models for women coming into the industry is super important. It's desperately, desperately needed. We all know there's not nearly enough women in BC. You have to get more women on investment teams. And when we get more women on investment teams, more venture capital dollars will flow into female founders.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My current favorite book is called Reboot and it's by Jerry Colonna. And it's just a fantastic book. It's all about radical self-inquiry. So we're just talking about EQ. And a lot of it is about understanding sort of these self-defeating patterns that we sometimes fall into our habits. They were actually formed during childhood. And it's about understanding those, identifying them. Jerry has this wonderful phrase that he uses this question, which is, how have I been complicit in creating the conditions? I say I don't want. And it's not that everyone is responsible for the problems they have. It's what role have we played in sort of creating these conditions and how can you break out of them? The subtitle of the book is called Leadership and the Art of Growing Up. And it's not growing up like, hey, grow up, you know, this condescending thing. It's growing up as in growing out of these habits that have been ingrained in you for so many years. So it's a wonderful book for founders and for investors, anybody.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our founders, when they need us, then we're failing. And it's not going to be us having all the answers and claiming to be able to build their business or be this like hugely integral part of they couldn't do this without us. And if it wasn't for us, it would have failed. We're supporting character in this play. And our job is to bring whatever resources we can to the table to help them.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally agree. You know, I think there's a lot to be said for not pretending that you have it all figured out, where as an investor, you know your strengths, you know your weaknesses, you know how to say, I don't know, but we're going to get you the answer somehow. Someone else, we're going to bring someone else in to help. I just think it's usually important. I mean, let's face it, you know, like nobody has it all figured out. We're all works in progress. The learning is the most important part. We look for a learning mindset in the founders we invest in. And we have to have a learning mindset too. And so that's a lot of how we think about what our job is as far as how we help founders and also the relationship to founders is that we just try to be authentic. We're just sort of what you see as what you get. And if they like that and they're aligned with our approach, awesome. And if they're not, that's okay too. And maybe there's not going to be a long-term fit. But that's just how we operate. And because we know at the end of the day, our job is to help. And if we're not helping.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A journey. And then also the sort of the corollary to that is when those mistakes are made or when struggles occur and they share them with us. And that only happens with trust, that sharing part is we're not going to play the blame game. We're not going to point fingers. We're going to roll up our sleeves and we're going to solve these problems alongside the founders. And sometimes when you say these things to founders, especially early on in the relationship, you can physically see like the relief that they have. Their shoulders kind of relax and they think like, wow, this is”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We'll do is we'll typically go to them, we'll fly into their city, we'll spend several hours with follow questions that we've had from the previous phone calls or video calls we've had with them. And then we'll go out to dinner. And the dinner is the most important part to me because it kind of tends to let the guard down. The founder investor dynamic tends to fade into the background. And you just get to know each other as people. To me, that's the most valuable part of the process. And the most valuable part of building that foundation of trust because you can be just yourself. You can be vulnerable. You can talk about mistakes you've made, you know, whatever it is and really just get to know each other. And so that's the big way of how we put that foundation in place. And we're very deliberate about some of the things that we say during that process. So for example, one of the things we made very clear to founders, first of all, is we don't expect them to be perfect. We don't expect whether we invest in them or not, we don't expect any founder to be perfect. We expect them to make mistakes. We expect there to be ups and downs. This is going to be.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've been fortunate on a handful of occasions where we've already known the founders for years. And that's easy. That's an easy one to solve. There's already a relationship, there's already trust there. I would say for most of our investments, we don't know them super well. Or maybe we've been recently introduced to them. And as you mentioned in the past, it's sort of this compressed time period where all of a sudden you have to get to know each other. And in our minds, one of the most important parts of that is you can't completely build this amazing trusting relationship in four weeks, but you can put the foundation in place. And so through these touch points, I think paying close attention to each touch point that you have is super, super important. Paying attention to the details, how the founder reacts, how the founder, how they do what they say they're going to do, whether they say they're going to do, and also probably the most important part of our evaluation process is when we have a face-to-face meeting with the founders, because sometimes we only end up having one face-to-face meeting if they're not local to us.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We assume that we won't be able to. So we assume that the ownership we get with our first check is going to be it and that the best we're going to be able to do after that is to maintain that ownership over time. And we probably won't be able to forever as a relatively small seed fund eventually if the strides can continue to raise a C, a D, an E and onward, we're going to get diluted. But we don't assume that we can build ownership over time. Having said that, we will certainly take that opportunity, especially in that seed phase that Hunter talked about, that if we can increase ownership in one of those subsequent seed rounds or seed extensions, of course, you know, if the company is doing great, we jump on that opportunity and we've done that. And so that's how we think about it. We don't want to assume that we can build on ownership over time. But if we can, and it makes sense for us to do it, of course. We love doing that.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To either raise the next round, maybe you don't need to raise the next round. Maybe you can go some number of years, maybe even forever without raising another round. I have a great deal of respect for startups that don't necessarily conform to the seed, then it's a seed plus, and then it's an A and it's an A plus and a B and a C and so on, if they have a great sustainable business and they're generating plenty of revenue, maybe they can think of fundraising a little bit differently than the convention.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I used to suggest 18, and now we say 24, and it's mainly just because of the uncertainty that's out there with the economy right now. And it's just better safe than sorry. I think 24 is a safe number, but also I think it's important while you can't necessarily predict all of the rounds that you're going to raise, nor should you, I do think it's important to figure fundraising strategy sort of as a chess match and that you're thinking two to three moves ahead. And so that ties back to not necessarily taking very, very highest valuation you could get because you want to leave yourself room. Same thing goes for runway. You want to make sure you have enough runway to get to the next stage. And if you think you need to raise another one, two, three rounds, however much it is, making sure that at least you're planful about it and making sure obviously that you have enough cash in the bank and more than anything, it's not optimizing for your round. It's optimizing for your milestones. It's all about what milestones are you going to achieve with this capital to make it even possible.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is not going to last forever. Everything's cyclical. I've worked through two recessions so far. And it's going to come back down. So the main thing is you want to build a sustainable business, a high growth business where you have room to get to that next plateau and achieve your milestones.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a lot of capital and valuations are higher, and that does make it more challenging for us. I mean, certainly our target valuation has changed, like I'm sure everybody has in the past three years. But, you know, we also try to counsel founders to not overextend early on. I think everyone, not everyone, but I think a lot of founders are right from the get-go or just going for the highest possible valuation at the earliest possible round. And as you very well know, Harry, I've already talked about this a little bit on your show with other investors. that can back founders into a corner. And it gets you, you don't want founders to back themselves into a situation where they have to execute perfectly because nobody does. And in order to get to the next required valuation for their next round. And so that's sort of how we think about the capital that's in the system and the resulting higher valuations that have happened. It's been a trend. You can't fight it, but you know what? That trend is not going to last forever. This boom economy.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just said, hey, look, I work for this huge corporation now, but I work for five startups before. I have to get back into the startup world. I knew Brad had ties to Kansas City. And so I asked him, you know, who should I meet? And he threw out some great names. And that's how I started my network in Kansas City. And I just started meeting, going person to person and building up my network. And one thing led to another. And someone that I met at the Coffin Foundation reached back out to Brad and to.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Building something tangible. And when we're done, this thing was shipping at 100,000 prescriptions a day. And so it felt hugely entrepreneurial. That was the best part of it. It was exciting. We had tight deadlines. We had to move fast. But we had this nice big budget behind it. It was like having a startup having raised a mega round and you had blitz scale, basically. That's what we were doing. And in the middle of that project, our company was acquired by United Health Group. And just by the nature of becoming part of this massive organization that is united, it kind of stopped feeling entrepreneurial. started feeling very bureaucratic and I don't function very well in those environments. And so it took me two more sort of multi-year, multi-billion dollar projects that I ran for United to realize I really have to get back to startups. So I just started showing up to startup events in the Kansas City community while I was still working for United and just through the networking that I did. And the funny part was before I started showing up, I didn't know Brad Feld. I only knew about him online, but I hosted a message to him.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, okay, so much for the normal job. But again, I was lucky, you know, it was just the situation I seemed to have fallen into. And so I started to travel to Kansas City from San Diego every week. I got to pick my own project team. And sure enough, and I'd never been to Kansas City before, never been to the Midwest. And so I walked into this building for the first time in 2005. And sure enough, it was a shell of a $300,000 square foot building. So we did. We built that from this shell to an incredible mail order pharmacy operation. And at the time, I think it was the third largest of its kind in the world. And it was a pretty big deal. It was a great experience to build a large scale operation after having done five startups. I'd never done anything on that scale before. And so we did after four years. We had about 1,500 employees generating about $2 billion a year revenue. And it was part of it, the back end system was an actual pharmacy system. It was like a manufacturing line for prescriptions was part of the facility. That was actually the most fun part for me because we were.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the time, we're sort of at the forefront of the mail order pharmacy business, sending prescriptions through the mail. And I didn't know it at the time. I thought this was going to be like a normal, relatively low-key job, not some crazy startup. And within a couple of weeks of being hired, they handed me a $100 million budget and said, we need you to go spin up this operation in Kansas City from zero to $1,500 employees and about $2 billion a year in revenue. And right now it's a shell of a building and it needs to go live in nine months.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wasn't for me. And so I gravitated to the only thing I really knew at that time, which was computers and technology. And so I ended up moving to Southern California about a year after I graduated, which was one of the times in my career there was just fortunate because I got there soon before the internet boom and I joined my first startup in 97. And it was great because the startup had a big office in San Diego, which is where I was living. But they had headquarters in Silicon Valley. And so I also got a really good taste of what it was like to be in the valley during the internet boom, which was incredible. And I worked for a succession of five startups. During that time, from 97 to 2005, one of them I co-founded, so I have the whole founder experience as well. And after doing five startups back to back, our son had been born and I said, you know what? I just need to break from startups. I just need a normal job for a while just to take a breather. And so I got a job with a healthcare company called Prescription Solutions.”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is such a pleasure to have you on the show. I've heard so many great things from Brad at Foundry. So thank you so much for joining me, Stay John. Pleasure to be here, Harry. Big fan. That is very kind. And you know how to get my ego going. But I do want to start with a little bit on you. So tell me, how did you make your way into As I always call it the wonderful world adventure and come to Found Firebrand? Sure, my road to venture has been a winding one. I'm originally from a town right outside Boston, Massachusetts called Brookline. My dad worked for digital equipment corporation for years. Right from the time when I was about nine years old, I was on a computer, actually it wasn't a computer, it was a terminal, this Bax BMS terminal in our basement, which was weird at that time to be nine years old and to be on a computer. Really nobody did that. And so I always had a love of computers from a very early age, but I actually went to college for psychology. I got a degree in psychology. At the time, that's the field I thought I wanted to go into. I learned soon thereafter graduating that that just”
2019-10-07 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Ultimate Episode For Emerging Managers: How To Determine How Big A Fund To Raise, What Is The Right Closing Strategy With LPs & Why We Will Not See The Eradication of Pre-Seed with John Fein, Founder & Managing Partner @ Firebrand Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source