YouSaid · the spoken record

Jules Maltz

lines on the record: 27
first: 2017-02-06
most recent: 2017-02-06
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Frustrating because I did two investments in 2016 and both of them are not announced and one's an incredibly exciting fintech company that's earlier staged and one is a later stage unicorn that I think is going to be a tremendous company. So I will one day announce those, but I can't. So I have to go back to 2015 and the last one I did in 2015 was Checker, which is automated background check, kind of API company. It's founded by at a Y Combinator and Daniel Yenis is the CEO. They work with all of the on-demand companies basically in the market and they help make faster decisions around background checking contractors or employees and the business has just grown incredibly fast, very efficiently, great metrics. It's got a great board with Rich Wong from Excel and Oli Rogani from Wai Combinator. And I was lucky enough to join the last round in a small way and super excited about that company long term.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, no, no. Because you always go to these parties, and then, especially with a lot of CEOs, and you want to find the CEOs who take one drink, they meet the right person in the room, get the business deal, and then they leave. The person who's the last call at the bar CEO, usually not good.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On you, and especially if you're not a good firm with a good brand as well. I think you can be incredibly successful as young person. You just have to play the game differently.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you're going to be great. The fact that you do this already is pretty amazing. I think what's interesting is a lot of people get intimidated. I mean, I still get intimidated by some of the big names and venture, and a lot of people think, well, how can I ever beat whoever it is, Peter Fenton or Scott Sendell or Vinod Kosla or Mike Moritz in an investment? I mean, these people are amazing. And they are. But I think thinking about as a young person, thinking about what are your comparative advantages that those people can't do. So those people are all busy. And I'm busy too. And as a 24-year-old, you may be able to go out at night until 11 o'clock with a CEO. You may be able to know people, actual engineers that are very hireable for that company. Whereas if someone's older, they may not be as plugged into great engineers. And so thinking about what you can deliver that other older people can't, I think is huge. And then you might, you may actually realize that there are things that you can do that put you in a position where someone can take a chance.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I really went to Stanford Business School and I really enjoyed classes from Andy Ratcliffe there, who was a partner at Benchmark.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know if I do. I love my children. I have a one and a three year old, and I spend all of my nonworking hours with them and my wife, and I try to run if I have any time left over.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes A big fiction fan, so I love F. Scott Fitzgerald and Hemingway and Old Man to see. And I just read all the light we cannot see, which is really awesome book about World War II and kind of a really cool story about a blind girl in Brittany. So I really like that book. It was fun. My favorite is always the last one, the last one I read.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's so everyone wants to do this horse versus jockey debate. Is the founder more important? Is the market more important? The answer is both. They're both really important. So I think I feel like people are trying to choose sides in a fight that doesn't need to be chosen. To be controversial and disagree a little bit with Warrior, provide the other side of the opinion. I've actually had two companies I've invested in, a company called Yaxon, a company called Tune, where the original investment thesis ended up actually not panning out as well. The market that they originally focused on in both those companies wasn't that large or they couldn't execute to the point where they would create a huge business or one that justified our investment. And what both founders did, and this is why I think I respect these two CEOs more than anyone, is that they didn't give up and they decided we're going to totally reinvent their businesses and basically birth new startups out of their existing startups. And you can't do that.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, desktop to mobile, or maybe they were doing online advertising, and they decided they needed to do television advertising because that's really what's going to drive the business. Offline advertising, whatever that is, or maybe it's a new product because the existing market and product going to peter out at some point. But the best companies are constantly thinking about what are the new products, what are the new marketing channels, what are the new initiatives that they can be doing to drive the business. And you just look at a company like Salesforce, which again, so much respect for. They're not just a CRM company. I mean, they've got clouds in every vertical that you can imagine in the enterprise and they're constantly building out new products, making smart acquisitions and BennyOff is ruthlessly focused on how does he make sure to plan for what's needed five or ten year from now.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think there's a lot of. So just to define kind of what an S curve is. So if you draw, think of a big S on a piece of paper, that's usually how companies grow. They find some marketing channel or some new product, and it usually is pretty slow. So you're at the bottom left of the S and you're kind of climbing up. And you have this rapid period of acceleration. And then over time, things don't always continue growing at those same rates. So things slow down. And the best companies that go through these S-curves, they often raise money right when they're kind of in the middle of the S when they're accelerating. And the companies that don't succeed are the ones that basically they just follow one S curve. So they follow the S. The things start slowing down in terms of their growth rate, and then they end up having a very disappointing outcome. The best businesses are actually thinking about even when they're going through that fastest S curve, they're thinking about what's the next S curve that I can build in the business, whether that's going from”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the thing that's so frustrating is it works for certain entrepreneurs, right? And especially, I'm not, I don't consider myself a VC with a big, I don't think a ton of people know me or I know I'm not the other kind of luminaries out there in venture. And so, but for some of those people, I mean, to go into some of these firms and wait for an hour and then finally get to meet so-and-so, that can sometimes work for entrepreneurs. And so I'm definitely not a VC who plays hard to get when I like a company. I tell them that and I'm there to be there and help. But there are other investors that those power trips can be really effective and it's just not me.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ecosystem that creates venture capital. And so really having empathy for entrepreneurs, and it's about, for me, it's about doing little things. It's like I'd rather go meet an entrepreneur at his or her than have him come here. Because I'm no more important than them. They're probably more important than me. They definitely are. So I should go meet them on their, you know, and that makes it easy for them.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The second thing is it's interesting venture is such a weird job because your job is to sit in these meetings where in a year maybe 200 companies will present to you and you'll only do one or two investments. And so you're saying no all the time you're seeing some companies that you invest and succeed and some companies fail. But like over time, I think it's really easy for you to slip into the perspective that you're the one making the decisions and like you are the center of power and the entrepreneurs worship at your feet and like your almighty VC. And I think and develop a bit of an ego. And I think the hardest thing or the thing that I've always really tried to remember, and I just care incredibly deeply about is, you know, we don't exist as venture investors without the entrepreneurs out there. And it's their work every day and often at nights and weekends that are actually funding this excess of the venture industry. And so even if we're saying no to 98% of them, it's that.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or 18, and using some of these social networking products or social products and really understanding that. And so that's something that I constantly struggle with.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it's interesting. I think there's two big challenges with kind of getting older in venture. The first is you just get farther away from the age of the CEOs, at least in the consumer space, and what the kind of teenagers are doing in terms of using the products. So, you know, I started in the industry at 24 and kind of in the early boom of social networking and YouTube. And I was right there using all the products. And I was like, I had a ton of free time. I was the same age as some of these CEOs and founders. I had a meeting a few months ago with a CEO and I'm 37, which I don't think is super old. But the CEO was 24. And he demoing his product and he goes, you know, people of your generation won't understand this. But let me show you this. And all of a sudden he goes, I go, your generation. Oh my God, I'm in a different generation. I pick him the young guy adventure. And what was most frustrating was he was right. And so the hardest thing is how do I tap into still kind of thinking young or thinking like who's in their 20s?”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I think it really, again, it comes back to trust because I've been in board meetings where there's like the angry VC in the room pounding the table about, you know, you have to do mobile or what's our or just says some ridiculous strat in this thing about what's our chatbot or AI strategy takes the board meeting in a totally wrong direction. And I never want to be that person. And if I am, I hope my CEOs tell me. So you can't, as a board member, go in there and say, you got to do this, you got to do this. But over time, you have to build trust where they actually start asking you the question. They start saying, hey, what are the things I should be thinking about now? Or, you know, or maybe you ask a probing question about how's the team developing? And you get them to sort of come to the conclusion that maybe they need to upgrade in a certain position. But it needs to be a two-way street. I think it's very, whenever you try to tell us a CEO, hey, you have to do this. The natural reaction is to get defensive and, hey, you don't know my business. You're coming in here once every two or three months. How do you know it better than I do? And the answer is we don't.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Can delegate and make tough decisions. And they're also thinking about what are the new products or new marketing initiatives that are going to help the business scale three or four years from now. I was so impressed by Facebook and Mark Zuckerberg at Facebook when the company went public on basically desktop revenues and the market massively changed to mobile and Facebook had done so much investing around mobile and their platform and in their technology and in their advertising that they made this incredible seamless transition to where revenues went from 10% mobile to 90% mobile in a matter of years and it's just to be thinking ahead about what how the market's going to change and what's needed internally basically I think saved and saved the company and created what's a monstrous business today so the best CEOs are always thinking ahead and planning for the future”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's really interesting. I mean, the hardest thing to do is when something's, these late stage companies that are raising $50 or $100 million of revenue of funding, the business is going incredibly well. I mean, the business is fantastic for a lot of these companies. There's a lot of momentum. And the hardest thing to do when you've got a lot of momentum is to change things, right? Because you don't want to mess it up. And even as a new investor, right, we don't want to mess anything up either. But what a lot of CEOs need to realize is that the challenges that you're going to face as a hundred person company are going to be quite different than the challenges you face as a 500 or a thousand person company. And so when you're 10x or 5 or 10x bigger in revenue or employees, you need to be actually managing the business in quite a different way. And so the best CEOs, even when things are going incredibly well, are constantly making upgrades and changes to their management team. They're looking for people, they're bringing in people who have done it before, who've managed companies at scale. They're going to CEO coaches and learning how to go from a leader to a manager to someone who actually can.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of your fundamental unit economics and really the strength of your actual numbers and near term business metrics do people value and how much is based on promise in the future? And in really hot markets, it's all about the magic leaps and Theranos and the future. And you see that not work out so well. And in other markets where things are more conservative, then it's like, I don't even want to look at next quarter. I just want to see what you did last quarter because I'm not going to believe anything you tell me in the future. We're not there now, but it kind of goes back and forth, the pendulum swings.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think what's most surprising to me and what's really changed in the last couple years, and it's kind of gone up and down, but we would see companies a few years ago with very poor unit economics, listening actually to the interview we did with Fred at Excel, and he talked a lot about Deliveroo and their unit economics. That's what really we want. We want things with really strong unit economics that at scale can be quite profitable businesses. I think in 2014 and 15 during kind of the unicorn boom that we were having, you were seeing things that were getting funded that had amazing revenue growth but fundamentally flawed unit economics. And so in some sense, you know, you were making a dollar revenue, but it was costing you $1.20 to get it. And there wasn't any way around that. But, you know, as a venture investor, you say, hey, this company went from 10 million to $100 million of revenue. I have to be in it. I think that was when the market got a little bit too ahead of itself. And so I really think that where the market kind of ebbs and flows is around just how much”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And strong growth rates. In the private market, it's a little different. I mean, you're seeing companies like Magic Leap with out of launched product raise billions of dollars. You're seeing companies that really are on promise and on the future. And I think what's most important in the private market is having a story about how your company can be not just worth billions of dollars, but actually generating billions of dollars of revenues and hundreds of millions of dollars of profits. Are you going after a large enough market? Do you have market leadership and do you have the team around you to help drive that? And really, do you have the near-term momentum? We're sort of, we love data, like more so than early stage firms. I think early stage firms like stories and teams and market size, you know, we really want data. And so we want to see a lot of graphs and charts showing data going up into the right very, very quickly, whether that's in users or revenue or new customers. And if all that's happening, I think you've got the ability to raise a later stage around from a number of firms.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think there are different questions. The public one is a little bit easier. And, you know, today the market, I mean, it's a very weak IPO market in 2016. We actually had, I think, only one or maybe no tech IPOs in the first half of the year. And then Twilio came out in July, I believe. And since then, it was pretty robust all the way up through the election. We actually think 2017 is going to be a very strong IPO market. And companies need to be generally over $100 million in revenue. They need to be growing over 30%. And they need to have, if not if they're not profitable, they need to have a very clear path to profitability within two to four quarters. And if they're checking all those boxes and they're willing to, the final thing is they're willing to accept the valuation the public markets are going to give them, which may be different than the unicorn valuation the private markets can give them. So if all those things are true, I think you're going to find some very attractive companies go public and I think it's going to be a really robust year. And so really looking for all those things, the over 100 million path to profitability.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think you just have to be, you can't hack it. I think if you're trying to hack it, it's going to come off as not genuine, right? So I don't think there's anything you can do to try to game the system or be different. I think you just have to be genuinely authentic in who you are. And so I really like spending face-to-face time with entrepreneurs. And so if I can, if a company's not based in the Bay Area and I can fly to meet them in New York or LA or Colorado or Utah or wherever they are, I want to spend time with them. I want to try to get them in a setting where it's not necessarily just about work. And so one of my favorite stories is, you know, I invested in Buddy Media with a CEO named Mike Lazaro, who's amazing. And I spent sort of every time I went to New York, I would visit Mike and I went to a company barbecue event they had. And I went to their office and had drinks and got to know Mike. And so these short meetings where I got a sense of who he was.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think some people, I think that's a little bit of an irrational worry. I mean, people, it's sort of like people that are worried about being too nice to the server at the restaurant before she or he gives either meal or does a service for you. But actually, if you start off nice and you start off giving free service, free help or free advice, it builds trust. And I think that's one of the hardest things in venture is, I mean, it's crazy if you think about it. These entrepreneurs have spent, they're spending their life doing only their company, right? And then they're going to get an investment from someone who's likely to join their board. They can't kick that person off for five or seven years and they only have, in some sense, weeks or maybe months at most to get to know that person. So it's almost like entering into a marriage where, you know, you only get to meet the person for a few weeks. So what's most important is how you build trust with that entrepreneur so that they feel comfortable about a very long lasting relationship with you. And that's the most important thing. And that actually is on both sides. I'm learning about the entrepreneur to make sure I'm.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are trying to find every week we're talking about what are the five or ten fastest growing later stage companies that we're incredibly excited about. And then we're thinking about ways to connect directly with the CEO, actually add value to the company before we invest, and then prove ourselves so that they'll select us among a very competitive set. So it's a much faster timeframe. We're often making decisions in a matter of days or even hours versus weeks or months. So it's one of those things where you're waiting around a lot and then you hurry up and you have this kind of rush process. But the best companies are that's how they fundraise.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the biggest trend, it was interesting when I got to both IVP in 2008 and even in 3i in 2004, venture historically has been very much a cottage or relationship industry. And so deal flow would often come to the later stage investors from great early stage firms and early stage firm would fund a series A or Series B, and then basically they'd go to their friends and say, hey, we need to raise a bit more money. And these later stage firms would do those investments. What changed is, you know, with the internet and just information being more readily available on how companies are doing, all of a sudden, as a later stage firm, you could actually figure out what are the best companies to go after. And so instead of waiting for your friend at an early stage VC firm to give you a call, why not just give a call to the CEO directly and tell them about your firm and why you can be helpful to them? And so the industry has become massively more proactive. And to us, that doesn't mean we don't have a farm of associates cold calling or looking at under every rock around the planet.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, well, you're going to be in it soon. So I was very kind of serendipitously on my way into Venture in 2004, and I had done a few years in investment banking at a firm called Robertson Stevens that actually is no longer around. And I'd really enjoyed technology. I've always loved technology even as a kid. But I wasn't, you know, I'm not an engineer. If I could go back and learn computer science, I think that would be my one of my biggest regrets. But I had more of an economics background in college and found my way into investment banking. And I got a phone call in 2003 from someone who knew me through another friend and said, I'm at a venture firm called, it was called 3I, actually based in London. And said, hey, you know, we have an opening for an associate and come in and interview. And it was actually probably the seven hardest interviews of my life. I got grilled by a bunch of the partners and came out the other side and got hired at 24 and been in the industry since.”
2017-02-06 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: What Does It Take To Gain A Late Stage Cheque Today? The Fundamental Mistakes CEOs Make In The Scaling Process & The Importance Of Building The Next S Curve For Founders with Jules Maltz, General Partner @ IVP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source