YouSaid · the spoken record

John Vrionis

lines on the record: 31
first: 2019-12-09
most recent: 2019-12-09
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“We invested in a company called Shujinko based in Seattle, and they were the IT specialists at Starbucks that ported Starbucks from their own data centers to using AWS. And so they built a whole product and solution based on their experience around helping companies solve compliance, SOC2 compliance initially. And it's just a huge pain for everyone. So the authenticity of the founders and their experience, their knowledge about what to build. And then we had them in the academy, and we just found them to be wonderful entrepreneurs, curious, humble, thoughtful, like coachable. And so we just led the A round with Shujinko. And they've made great progress in a year. We just announced it.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it's back to our inertia thread. VCs have made money with firms that are comprised of teams with not much diversity, with LP bases that essentially not inspiring, at least in our opinion, in terms of healthcare and education and the arts. So we really want to raise the bar on those two things. But I think the most important thing is that founders deserve better. They deserve not advice or a VC who's playing a spray and prey strategy. They deserve someone to get in the foxhole with them, help them solve their most difficult things. That's the thing we want to raise the bar on in the industry.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Me if this resonates with you because the fundraising comment. I used to believe if I could introduce people, these founders write to an employee or a customer or give them some eureka. Oh, if you just do this, you'll unlock the key. You know what it is? Belief. Belief is the most important thing we can give these founders. Just the way your LPs believe in you, Harry. In the end of the day, it's a hard job. It's lonely. Just always, always believing in them that they will get to the right answer. They will make the right decision and you're there to support them. I wish I had known that from the beginning. And so apologies to the founders where I didn't know that. And I was pushing other things when I should have been better about just believing in them.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not failing my team and the founders. We've signed up to raise the bar on the industry and deliver on the mission. So, you know, there's a romantic notion of venture capital, I think, these days with shows like Silicon Valley. It's a grind here, right? You know this. So it's a show up, work hard, do what I set out to do for them.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Andy Rackcliffe. I had the pleasure of sitting on the NICERA participating in those board meetings. I couldn't have paid enough to learn. And the why is his whole style is to hold up the mirror to the founder, right? The board meetings are for them, Harry. Are they taking their head out of the everyday grind and looking up? Are we still taking the right hill? He would hold up the mirror and ask questions, do we have product market fit? He knew the answers were in the team. He wasn't there to tell them what to do. He was there to make sure that they were spending enough time focusing on the strategy, that they were always headed in the right direction. And his style, the way he did it, is just the best I've ever seen.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's do Okay, so I have two. I've been giving give and take away for years. Have you read it? Okay, so Adam teaches one of the sessions in our academy on culture and hiring. I think give and take is one of the most transformative books any founder or investor could read. And the second is shoe dog. It's the story of Nike. If you want to talk about authentic entrepreneurship, just dive into that book and how authentic Phil Knight was and his belief that what you put on your feet changes how you interact in the world. You know, the company almost failed 18 times, right? So it's an amazing journey. And I give it to everyone when they join unusual, both books, and I say, hey, look, this should sum up for you in a lot of ways, you know, what we're all about.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I don't know that being friends doesn't mean you can't be professional, right? You have a fiduciary duty as their partner. I often get a little frustrated when I see the VCs who are only friends in the sense that they're cheerleaders, right? What you signed up for is to be supportive and demanding because you want them to fulfill their potential and frankly do things they're not even maybe sure that they can do, but you want to see them succeed. That is at the heart of what you signed up to do. And sometimes that means pushing them and telling them things that are hard to hear. But that's the job. That's what you committed to doing. So you can be their friend, but sometimes being friends with someone means you tell them something that nobody else will tell them. But never cross the line of, hey, it's, you know, you have a professional duty and relationship with them. That one I would steer you away from if you feel like you ever are going away from that.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You had asked one of your guests about are you company first or founder first? One of the things that's like a tenant of unusual is we are founders first, right? And I think that the nuance is that doesn't mean we're not company first. It's not an either or. So look, Harry, you seem like a very genuine human being. It's very simple. Do unto others. Put yourself in their shoes. What would you want? How would you want them to treat you? If you do that from the very beginning, even if it's something as simple as like helping them find an office admin, really being empathetic to what they're going through, having a counseling session where you just listen to them kind of vent because it's a hard, hard thing you're doing, you got to build that goodwill early on. And you do that by just always putting them ahead of yourself and your fund, right? You think about their needs. If you do that, they will pick up on that. They will begin to trust you. I also think you said it early. Be vulnerable. Tell them about the things that are hard in your own life. You're not Superman. So be open with them about that. They'll be open with you.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Someone to actually get in and give them real help, company building help. The brand, and that can come later. So I totally don't buy it. I think that the really good founders, they know how hard it is and they have the humility and the desire to learn and get the help to get them from idea to product market fit. And then at product market fit, you've got all these multi-stage firms now here. They'll throw big money at you because they're private investors. They're not company builders. It's a very different thing. Yeah, so when Jodie and I first started unusual, he was a year into building harness, right? His second company. And even though, Harry, he's the kind of founder that you could walk down the streets in San Francisco and people try to take”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you asked that question, and Sembel's response was yes, but founders want brand, they want a global network, they raise the same amount of money or more for less dilution. That to me is the classic response from a VC who doesn't really understand what founders need. And I just, I'm sorry to say that in the sense that if you talk to Joti, right, he would tell you comically that when he needed the most help, which in the first couple of years, the VCs were hard to find. And then all of a sudden, when the thing was a rocket ship, he had everybody inviting him to things and offering him help. So founders in the first few years, they all struggle with the same things. Hiring your core team is hard. Getting your story straight and stop talking about what your product does and why it should matter in an empathetic way, it takes work. Selling those early customers and users, you don't come out of the womb knowing how to do this stuff. Most of these founders are product people. They're technologists. And they need to learn these other things. And so it's not the brand or the network that they need.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I listened to that episode. Great job and really interesting commentary. I personally think that the stage agnostic firms, as you pointed out, are buying optionality, that they're way too smart to give up those deals before what is their sweet spot now, which are these $15, $20, $25 million Series A's. They don't want to miss out on them. So they claim to be seed investors as well. But I don't think it's genuine. I don't think it's in the best interest of founders to take money from them at that stage. And so that's, you know, I guess we're similar and I disagree.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. My point is these things tend to be the same whether we realize it or not. So I don't think it's the first wave of anything. I think there's been focus in different areas. And when there's platform shifts like SaaS businesses or cloud, then that's when VCs make money. Because what it enables is startups move faster than the legacy incumbents to be disruptive. But they need something much greater than themselves to enable that movement. We jokingly call it a disruption in the force. So there will be multiple platform shifts ahead. what they will be necessarily, but the firms who focus on that, they will have an advantage if they move more quickly and they will therefore outperform in terms of returns.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I mean, I think VC is very cyclical, Harry. If you really go back to the late 60s and 70s when it started, there's some things that are consistently true, right? If you talk to VCs who worked in the 80s, they'll tell you there was way too much money chasing far too few good deals. Does that sound familiar, right?”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a fair point. I mean, I didn't know the data on the European investment. So I would suspect those companies look very much like the ones that they've done in the past, Zendesk or others, where there's clear product market fit and there's momentum and benchmark's a fantastic partner for those. They have a lot of experience working with companies like that. So not to dive too deeply specifically. Look, I think Sequoia is an anomaly. Operating a VC firm the way they have on a global basis, it's unbelievable. I think a lot of firms are trying to emulate that. And I'm not so sure others can pull it off. I don't know Founders Funds data. It sounds like you do. So maybe it's another case in point.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, those are great names, right? I mean, we model ourselves very much after benchmark, partly through Andy's influence. But I would push back on you, are they really generals? Do they go late state? Do you see them in multiple geographies? I think they've stuck to their knitting. They raised $400 million. They work with early stage founders. They're very selective in the types of companies. They're consistent. At one point, they tried some experiments. They retreated from those. I think they have stuck to their strategy when a lot of other people have diversified.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Multiple sectors, multiple stages, multiple geographies. They've literally diversified in all three dimensions. And they're telling the story that they think they can be best in class at all of those things. And back to your previous question, I just don't think it's possible. I think the stories are all justifications for who they are as animals, which is to be wealthy and take as little risk as possible. Because that's what they opted into in the first place.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So look at what's happened. In 2008, the Kaufman report came out, and it basically said to LPs, you should only be in the top decile of VC managers. It's a fantastic asset class, but only if you're in the elite. So what happened is most of the elite then pushed it. They raised as much money as they possibly could, which in hindsight shouldn't be a surprise. As a venture capitalist, what kind of animal do you have? I mean, really think about it. Entrepreneurs take all the risk in the sense that they have all their eggs in one basket. VCs are animals who have clearly chosen to take a portfolio approach. So their risk tolerance is less than a founder by having this basket. What you've now given them is a free ticket, right? Raises much money as you possibly can if you have a good track record. The fee base goes way up. So whether the funds do a great job of returns or not, the VCs are going to make plenty of money. So it shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. They push the limit. And so now they win either way. They've hedged. But now they're doing...”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So sub to our marathon first in human history, right, where he averaged four 33 miles. And it's insane, right? But imagine if he raced Usane Bolt in a hundred meter dash. My point is he's the best marathon runner in history. He's not the best 100 meter or 800 meter or 1,500 meter. To be best in class, to be truly the best you can be, you have to specialize. And it's not just sports. It's medicine. It's music. It's art, right? To do things very, very well, Harry, which is what venture capital and entrepreneurship is. It's such a competitive industry. It's the Olympics of business. You have to specialize. And so to ignore that, to pretend that's not the truth and to think that you can do multiple things world class, I just think it's arrogance. And so I find it ironic when the VCs”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know this is a question that's near and dear to my heart, and I think it stems even from my mediocre soccer experience where I was talking to someone yesterday and I was like, did you see this guy, Elliot Kipchoga, the Kenyan runner?”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, just frankly, to embrace the process, it's going to be a volume game, especially for an emerging manager, right? Jody and I were very fortunate in that I have an established track record. He obviously is the founder of App Dynamics. We could walk into meetings and point to, oh, he sold a company for almost $4 billion. And I have a few billion dollars of liquid returns. So we didn't look like most of the managers. You have to accentuate your strengths and get that out right away. Because just like when you hear founder pitches, those first few minutes are key. I would also say like pick your meetings wisely. Do these funds, whether they're fund of funds or endowments, do they have a history of backing emerging managers? Do they have an emerging manager program specifically set aside? Talk to other emerging managers and get a sense of who's pleasant to deal with and who's incredibly difficult, right? So that you're efficient with your time. And just be pragmatic about your story, right? You've got to continue to iterate. I mean, how many versions of your deck do you have here? 23. Yeah, exactly so. You have to keep learning.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, I don't know how much time you spent with him, Harry. He is an amazing, truly unique guy, right? He's already built $1 billion enterprise company, and there's likely to be another one very soon. And so it's been a joy to kind of go through the process with him. And we obviously come at it from very different angles. But I think it's a complementary set of experiences. But yes, some can, some not so can. Every meeting's been a little different, but look, you got to embrace the process. We've had it.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a lot of empathy for you, Harry. Yes. I mean, frankly, at Lightspeed, I didn't have much work to do. They have a team, a fantastic team, in fact, that does a tremendous job. I show up at the meetings. I'd go through the story. I'd talk about companies. I was particularly involved in. But it was a team effort, and then the money would just show up. So, you know, when we did unusual, you own all of that, right? So from the first meetings to creating them to the slide deck and the information and managing the whole thing, I mean, it's quite a process. So talk about empathy for founders. I think every VC should have to do it so that their empathy goes up. When you take four meetings in one day or five meetings in one day and you've said the same thing over and over again, you realize when the founders show up and they're doing their process, boy, you should show up for the meeting on time and you better lean into it and put your phone away and pay attention because this is hard.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh boy, Harry, I hope so. I mean, that's one of the things we really hope to change in the industry. But back to your last question, one of the challenges is VCs tend to stay with their existing relationships. So there often isn't a lot of room candidly for new LPs. You combine that with the fact that some of the LPs that we went to, some of the historically black colleges or foundations, they don't employ highly paid chief investment officers. So therefore, they don't have a staff that's very sophisticated when it comes to knowing which managers to get into and selecting them. Those who do have those sophisticated investment managers, they're very quick to move. They know who the managers are. They make it easy for the VCs. And so the VCs just stay with those relationships and keep moving forward. So we had to go and do a little extra work, a lot of work in some cases, to convince them these off-the-beaten path LPs to come work with unusual because we wanted to open the asset class and the best of it to schools and hospitals and foundations.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think it's definitely a major contributing factor. I mean, these funds are 10 years legally the minimum, the relationships, they're not to be disclosed. There's all kinds of legal molasses that keeps people from making these changes. But I also think it's just a cultural one, right? When organizations are working, when they're successful, it's very hard for them to embrace significant change. And so the combination of those two things, I think, makes it very hard for VC firms to make adjustments quickly, certainly significant once”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incredibly exciting times, but I want to start on the name really, because when we chatted before, you said to me you were passionate about raising the bar in the venture industry and some core areas. So I guess, where do you feel the bar needs to be raised, John? Well, part of my time in the industry, I've had a chance to reflect on it now, right? When you start something new, you get a blank canvas.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There, it was usually because I'd put in a ton of work and failure wasn't an option. So I think that's just guided me all along the way. My God, John, it's like speaking to a kindred spirit. I'm totally with you on the kind of outworking there. I do want to, before we dive into unusual, I do want to talk about just the time that Light Speed. You had an incredible tenure there. What were the biggest takeaways from your time with the partnership at Light Speed? And how do you think it impacted the investment mentality for you? I mean, it was a great 12 years in a lot of ways. I learned a lot of things, many of them good. We were a challenger when I started, you know, it was a small group sitting around one table. Now fast forward 2019. It's a global brand, you know, India, China, Israel, it does every stage of investing multiple sectors. So I'm proud of the work that we did while I was there. The job comes down to sourcing, selecting, earning founders trust and respect. And I learned all of that there. And a lot of hard work and hustle. I'm grateful for the time. And it's been an incredible journey seeing light speed scale. But I do want to move now to unusual. And the firm that you found.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, yeah. Well, then you've taken the best from it. I think that's taken me. I'm 44. It's taken me a long time to get there. I think as a teenager, I was pretty upset about it. And I did a lot of things to kind of channel that anger, some healthy, some not so healthy. Some of that was school and sports. But look, I learned from my mom that hard work, perseverance, just refusing to fail, you can actually really get to where you want to go. There's nothing overly special about me. My three daughters love telling me all the goofy things about me pretty much every day. But I learned that if I really put my mind to it and tried to outwork people at some level, I could overcome. And so I think I also learned, look to learn from other people who have been down the path ahead of you, had the humility to accept their advice and their perspective and be coachable. And then being competitive, right? In the end, it's so much of what you do is about the sacrifice that you're willing to give. And I saw that in her and every time I got to a place that I was proud to be.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first, I'm sorry to hear about your mom. I can appreciate Harry what you've lived through. It's a terrible disease and it affects families. So anyway, we can talk about that more some other time if you want. You know, I think it's one of the most shaping events of my life. So how has it affected? You asked about investing. Is that what you said?”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ended up acquiring. And along the way, I had met several VCs part of the process for that company. And Lightspeed, which was kind of a reincarnation of an older venture firm at the time, I was really drawn to them and their kind of challenger story at the time, this idea they wanted to go beat the brand name firms. And so they offered me a job. And I thought, you know, what's the downside? Reality is I'm going to go look for interesting companies. If it doesn't work out, I can always just go join one. So I joined in 2006 and I ended up staying 12 years before leaving in January of 2018 to start unusual with Joe T. Bonzo.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Science. I was fascinated with technology. And I ended up doing some work for a corporate VC. And this was during the dot-com boom and then the bust. And so I fell in love with this idea of working with tech companies. But to be honest with you, I felt a bit like an imposter. I just didn't have what I felt was the right level of judgment and knowledge about business. And I lacked some empathy as it related to startups and founders. So I actually spent the next five years trying to solve for those two things. I joined as startup as employee number five. I worked there for a couple years doing product and sales. And then I stumbled my way into Stanford Business School. And so my dad got MS when I was a kid and I sort of developed this habit of always seeking out coaches and teachers to help me. And Andy Ratcliffe, who was the benchmark founder, one of the four, he had just retired in 2004. And so he was teaching at Stanford. And he took a liking to me and he was really a student of venture capital. I was drawn to that. And so when I about to graduate from business school, I had been working on startup idea that VMware then.”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The thumbnail is I grew up in pretty rural Georgia. I went to Harvard because they take one person from Georgia every year and they needed a warm body for their soccer team. They got two birds, one stone. A few years after I graduated, I actually went and got”
2019-12-09 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Unusual Ventures' John Vrionis on Why We Need To Raise The Bar In Venture, Why Taking Multi-Stage Money At Seed Is Not In The Best Interest of Founders & Why To Be The Best, You Have To Specialise To Be The Best · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source