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Kevin Ryan

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2024-04-10
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2024-04-10
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  1. “The business we're in does not scale infinitely. We're not trying to accumulate assets. So I don't want to be a $2 billion fund. I want to continue doing what we're doing. We might go bigger in some areas like we have a deep tech practice. I would like that to get bigger over the next couple years. So next time we raise a fund, if we could, I might increase.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I mean, there's 15 people that have been convicted of crimes that work there. The National Security Advisor was convicted. So many people have been convicted in that administration and are serving time. There's many people in jail.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Oh, that's a whole nother conversation that we should talk about. But from a corruption point of view, with the benefit of hindsight, the Obama administration was extremely clean and the Biden administration has been extremely clean. I'm not saying that they all did everything right in their policies, but from a corruption point of view, I don't argue that either White House had a problem.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So, I don't agree. I don't think there's a single example in the cabinet of Biden after four years that you can point to where we could point and say, I think that's actual corruption.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “For me, the single thing I'm worried about, I'm actually the world from a safety and security point of view is actually okay. I'm obviously very biased on this. The single thing that I'm concerned about is Trump winning on multiple dimensions, giving away Ukraine Supreme Court justices, very, very, very poor execution of every aspect of government, a level of corruption that I think would follow. That's the single thing that worries me the most”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “The judgment of seeing many things work and not work is healthy. It makes you more decisive on just feeling like, you know, I'm just not feeling it. And trusting probably my gut feel a little bit more. If it just doesn't feel right, it doesn't feel right.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Well, look, it was my CTO, I was the CEO of DoubleClick and the CTO and I wanted to start, we had started companies together. We had started one or two that didn't work and then we started Mongo. But the intellectual and execution of Mongo came more from them than from me. They built the product. I benefited even more than I deserve to. Making the decision to get involved with the internet in 96, which I thought was going to do well, but I've had other thoughts over time that I thought were going to do well and they didn't. And that changed my life and my career.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “You know, move fast, yes, but if your product sucks, that's not good. So startups and business are a series of decisions and compromises that are situation specific. That's where judgment is important. And that's where I do think investors and good CEOs play the role.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Either way, it's between 50 50. I think Biden's going to win, but it's actually going to end up being out of our hands, either one of them has a huge health issue that could do it. If there is something happening from a geopolitical point of view that goes horribly wrong, that could change it. I think that the substance and the success of the economy at the end of the day, combined with the fact that the Democrats are winning every single election that is occurring across this country and outperforming since the Roe v. Wade decisions means that at the margin the Democrats are going to win.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Combination of the fiscal stimulus with the Biden administration has done, which doesn't get credit for combined with the Federal Reserve, has been remarkable management. I read the French press and they talk about bidenomics and how do we compete with it because it's so effective. And our French companies are setting up factories in the United States and creating jobs. I think it's been remarkable management between those two. There's not a single economist that thought this was going to happen.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “I thought there was maybe more of a recession. Other than that, my opinions don't change dramatically because I really have to have this 10-year perspective, as I was saying earlier. So it doesn't change day to day, my industry focus, things like that.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah. You know, you have to install that from day one and understand and treat them that way too. I was with friends of mine and they said, maybe I shouldn't have given my 18-year-old a $75,000 Porsche. And I'm like, yeah, of course you shouldn't. My kids don't have any of that. They graduate from college. They have to make it on their own. They hopefully go to good schools. You're installing that from day one.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “First of all, it's putting the time in and the commitment. I've been married for 32 years. It's friendship at the core and a common purpose of, you know, hopefully if you're doing it, raising kids. And we've been very lucky. I have three kids in our 20s. It's a big part of our lives. It's been amazing”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Move is New York City. San Francisco is still a great place and has history and many things going for it. So it's an amazing, incredible place. But I'm not seeing the tech talent in Miami and I don't think it's going to get there. I'm not seeing it in Chicago. Don't forget, 15 years ago, the number one internet company on the East Coast was AOL based in DC, the tech hub that New York City is? Not at all. They're super smart people from Harvard, Yale, Princeton MIT. They want to live in New York City.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “No, I think San Francisco absolutely has an advantage in AI. It stems from the fact that I just started a company in material science AI and the university that dominates that space is Berkeley. And so Berkeley and Stanford are stronger than Columbia and NYU. And they've had companies in Deep Town. So absolutely San Francisco has an advantage in that area. But we're seeing 10 companies a week starting in New York. They're starting all over this country. Many of the smartest people are doing AI and it will distribute more. What I was telling people when I'm traveling internationally and they used to ask me which cities are going to dominate in your country. It has nothing to do with tax policy, has nothing to do with anything. I say people who went to the top 20 universities in your country, where do they want to live? Where are they going to move? That's going to be your tech center. And guess what? That number one place, those places people want to.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “So Etsy is in the same category. Give you some context five years ago. There was not one publicly traded company in New York City startup that was worth more than $3 billion. Now we have two at 25 or 30, one in 10 more on the way. So these things take time. But yeah, I was just in the Google office. They have 15,000 people in New York City.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “You move to San Francisco, which we weren't willing to do today. Every one of those firms that turned me down for that reason has an office in New York City. So that's the trend line. So yeah, New York is killing it and will be the number one company clearly 15 years.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I can't remember that, you know, Deck and Wang had been in Boston. And so it was known as the Tech City. And when we went public, we couldn't even find a lawyer in New York City that had ever taken a company public. And I said this at the time, but if you had said, wait a second, Kevin, what do you think that if 25 years from now, is there a chance that there'll be more tech jobs in New York than in San Francisco and that we are now some quarters competing for the amount of money? You would have said, I'm sorry, that's impossible to imagine. And so Newark has grown faster than any other city. It still doesn't have as many big wins in San Francisco, but don't forget, the big wins are from 15 years ago. We talk about Mongo and Datadog. They started in 2007. So what we're trying to decide is right now are more and more smart people starting companies in New York. Absolutely. Are there five times as many venture capital firms? We hardly had any VC money. When I went out to raise money in Silicon Valley in 97, they said, we will not invest in you unless...”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “So, New York City has so outperformed the expectations people have already forgotten. So in 1996, the number one question I got running double click was, why aren't you in Boston? Boston is the tech sender. You're giving me your perplexed look because you can't even remember that.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “I love what I'm doing, and I can't think of anything else I'd rather do. So I'm going to do it as long as I can. And then eventually it'll end and I'll do something else. And that's exactly how I feel.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “So actually, surprisingly little. I don't focus it on that much. Five years ago, the only car I owned was a used minivan. I'm not that into stuff. I am into experiences, so great travel, things like that. I'm absolutely willing to spend money on. But no, I mean, it's been a long time for me that I haven't had to worry about money, but I also just don't spend money to spend money. And so I don't have any problem with it all. I have no concern about the relationship with money. Some people are so focused on money that once they made money, they didn't know what to do. For me, that changed nothing. I enjoy what I'm doing. When people ask me, sometimes I'm at a business school, they'll say, why are you still doing this? And my answer is, does anyone ask a really good NBA player who's 32 and who's made a ton of money? Why are you still playing basketball? Why don't you retire? Like no one would ask that question, right? Because he would say, yes, they do pay me a lot of money.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “So, one, if they've plateaued their growth, they're not worth 10 times revenue for a company that's not growing that much is not going to fly in today's market. That company's worth 200 if they're starting to be quite profitable. But that's normal. You should expect that out of every 100 companies that start 20, go out of business effort two years, a certain percentage get to 10, 20, 30 million, a smaller percentage get to 50, a smaller percentage get to 100. It just keeps funneling down. That's normal. Not every market is a trillion dollar market and not every product is going to get 30% of its market.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “That is wrong. If your company's growing at 60% and profitable, yes, you can always go poll it. But at the margin, it is not easy to take companies public. There's not a lot of appetite. Many, many companies that'd be very happy to be public, and they're not because they either can't do it. Somehow we just have not opened that up. For 15 years, I've wanted to solve this problem that we need a way for companies that are $100 million and growing at 20% to be able to go public. And that doesn't exist.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, I do worry about it, and there's nothing any of us can do about it. It makes no sense to me that you just can't take a company poll, even though your numbers are better than 70% of all publicly traded companies that are already public, and yet the banks and everyone will be like, yeah, yeah, you can't go public. There's no opening for that. It's just closed. It would be as if you're selling your apartment in New York City. And I was like, no, no, sorry. No apartments are going to be sold for the next two years.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yes. Look, the reason one should be concerned about venture today is that there's probably four times as much money in funds today as there was in 2017. And the question is, are there four times as many opportunities? And I don't think there are. I think it's shifted. There's more opportunities in AI, but frankly, far fewer opportunities in e-commerce and media, as we discussed. I think there's actually even fewer opportunities in straight enterprise software. Does Bank of America need new software products this year that they didn't buy last year? They've already purchased a lot. I think there's just a bubble of money. There's more money than the industry needs, as we've discussed later. They'll spread it out. And unlike in the hedge fund industry, our money doesn't leave very easily. It takes a long time. It's stick. Now, you'll see Tiger, which had a fund that was, whatever, 100, and now is now 50. So you'll see new funds being smaller, but that takes time to work through the system.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “I think you're being misled by the ten supposed hottest deals who get preempted. That's not where the industry is. The vast majority of things are not being preempted. They're going out. They're raising good rounds. They take a couple years to be really, really big. That's the meat of the industry.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “We don't see in the last 20 seed deals, they're not in there very often. They don't have the coverage of the $2 million checks and also a lot of entrepreneurs are very nervous about taking their money. On the West Coast, people just take their money regardless. But here's the risk. If a huge fund puts a million dollars”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Now, what is true is that when you are a late stage investor writing $50 million checks, that you are what we used to call private equity. You're competing on price. There's already an established board. You're not adding that much value. It's just a different world. It's changed so much. When Apple went public, when they went public, they raised $9 million in the IPO. So it's very different today. In the early stage business that Union Square Ventures does, that we do, you know, the first check-in, that's not a commodity business. You have huge wins. You have a bunch of losses. And by the way, I was on the board of Yale and on the board of the Yale Endowment. So we were the lead investor in many of the best firms. And as you know, in VC, there's a huge difference between returns that, let's say, a benchmark and a Greylock have and a 90% of the rest of the industry.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Nothing else matters. So, you know, you should be doing this business because you love doing and you find it exciting. You like helping entrepreneurs. You like coming up with new ideas, creating new categories. That's what's fun about it. And then if you do it well, you're probably financially in our business going to do very well. But I don't think about that day to day. And we don't talk about that internally. We talk about we are building companies. If we build good companies, everything will work out fine financially.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “No, the guilt I couldn't have. And I did sell all the shares I could at Dalthick in 2000. So I couldn't have, but still it's disappointing when you see 90% of the company you're focused on, the value evaporate. But my week every day, we have 130 companies. Something's going wrong somewhere in the portfolio. I can think of another company that I thought I had a $50 million position. And right now my guess is I'm going to end up getting very little or getting my money back. But on the other hand, there are big gains. That's the game we play.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Not about losing so much money that in 2000 I had probably a hundred million dollars worth of double hick stock on paper, which ended up being 10 million. We were a year away from going public at Gilt where Goldman Sachs said, Kevin, you've got about $165 million. We're feeling really good about this. And that ended up being $10 million. So things evaporated along the way. even if they were paper gains, but you think that they're going to exist. And so that happens.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “Team was good, we ran it well. That's not the normal thing we do. It was just a one off situation. It was a brand I knew based in New York and I knew David. So it made sense.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “So, both. It was a unique buying opportunity. No one would touch the company because COVID had just started and you couldn't meet to see who buys a company when you can't meet the management team. No one. Except that the CEO, David Siegel, who's incredible, worked for me at Double Click 20 years before. So I knew him. And he had been reaching out to me asking about the business in the six months before just as a mentor. And finally, he said, God, they're panicking. I don't know. I think they're going to shut it down or give it away. I said, wait a second. Why don't I buy it? So I got one or two other investors, bought it. But we also went from $130 people the day I bought it to 90 people a week later, which is the right amount. Today it has probably 80, when we sold it, had 82 people. And it went from a $20 million loss on 32 million in revenue when we worked owned it the year before to now we're making five or six million dollars in profits it's a great business so David did a great job”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “It was. I say to my CEOs if someone makes you an offer, you can't refuse, don't refuse it. Take it. Three years ago, I bought the company Meetup for 10 million because we work was getting rid of it and had panicked and COVID had just started. And I just sold it. It was announced in January, sold it for seven or eight times that amount because there was a buyer who wanted to buy it. And the company's making now a lot of money where it had lost $20 million the year before I.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Look, the biggest challenge in the last three years is that there is no liquidity. There are very few sales. But when you have an opportunity, you should take it. But again, that's company specific. Like we're never open to selling Mongo, no matter what, because we really thought we were building a $10 or $20 billion company. We had confidence. We had conviction. I sold business insider not because I wanted to, because we were doing $40 million in revenue and someone offered me $450 million for a media company. And so I said, yes.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “So we aren't that concentrated, so we continue to invest in our companies until probably 100 or 200 million dollar valuation. We generally don't put more than 10 million might go to 15 million in any one company. And sometimes we'll leave some money on the table and other people will take it. We want the highest return investments, and that's why we've had very good results. Because, you know, when our companies are worth a billion, we're just not investing them at that point. And sometimes that would have been a good idea, but sometimes it's not.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “The biggest miss is, if I knew now what I knew then, I would have been much more aggressive early on in starting more companies building up more of a team. Sometimes it takes five to seven years to know that things are going really well. If we had sat here, you know, six years ago, I'm an investor in this crazy company in Argentina and this company called Zola, which I started, but who knows what's going to work. Turns out a lot of these worked. And I would have actually doubled down that that was a golden age for the last decade.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “Oh, yeah. You know, we don't do any healthcare outside the United States because the U.S. healthcare market is both enormous and terrible, which is what you want when you're an entrepreneur.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “So, the non sexy areas, we just invested in a company that is creating software to manage the food, the meals in a hospital. So there's a thousand different people in the hospital staying overnight. One has a penalty, one is kosher. It's super complicated. You have to have a piece of software to manage that. There are very, very old systems. It's the sort of thing you and I would never think about. These entrepreneurs came in. They had created a much better product starting to close hospital deals. It's a huge sector. Hospitals pay $150,000 for this software. And we're like, that's a great good team, good market.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “But that's just another factor. You should factor in how much dilution you're going to take, what are the gross margins going to be, super capital intensive businesses are going to be worse investments than ones that take very little capital. On the other hand, if you do present to continue my example, a great founder in a big business in a very capital efficient industry, yes, that's actually worth more than the opposite.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “Here's the thing that I don't think about which is our ownership meaning if you were going to buy a piece of an apartment and you said I really want to own 10% of this apartment. Does that mean and you have a certain amount of money? That means you're just never going to buy a really good apartment because the price is higher. So if I see three startups that just started six months ago, one of them has an incredible team going after an incredible market. That company is worth more than the other ones. And if I put a million dollars in, I'm going to get less of that company. But that doesn't mean it's a worse investment. At the end of the day, you're just trying to figure out, is this going to work or not? You know, sometimes we're paying a big price and we're paying a big price because it's an incredible team, an incredible opportunity.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “Yeah. And then at that point, depending on the company, often we're able to raise money outside, but often we put in another million and buy ourselves another six months or nine months. Ideally, the product is out. Some companies are using it. You can sense that it works. You've got a sense for pricing. Now we're just going to debate how big an opportunity is it.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “It is because one, as I said earlier, the time you spend learning in industry gives you an advantage in investing. Secondly, you actually can't invest that much money in incubations. If you and I start a company tomorrow and we build a seven person team to build this, I mean, that's a million and a half dollars. And I don't have enough ideas. I wouldn't be able to come up with 30 ideas a year. So you've already done the work in a sector. You find out about incredible opportunities. You're seeing deal flow. I mean,”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “Roughly the team and CEO are probably going to get around 40 45% of the company. We will have the rest because we came up with the idea, put in the money, did all the work, and everyone gets paid from day one. So order of magnitude is going to be that.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “No, look, I've devoted my career to this sector. And so our returns have been extraordinary. Things have worked. There's nothing more fun in life than going after a new area, psychedelics being an example. Super interesting ahead of the curve, starting companies investing in companies, and then seeing it work. And I've done that for a long time and really, really enjoy it.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “I can think of one time where what we'll do sometimes is you're a bridge round and we'll say, you know, we just need six more months because we'll have launch, we'll have customers, things like that. We have more confidence in the market. And then sometimes there we were right and then sometimes there we were wrong.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “When we start a company, we don't bail out on the company, but we put a million and a half dollars in, we hire a CEO, if we've made the decision to go forward. Now then the market decides because nine months later they're going to go out to raise money. And I would say four out of five times they go out and successfully raise around and someone has an outside lead investor. And once in a while, the market's like, no, we hate your company. So that's what determines it.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “Look, that's just a judgment call because you're looking at very different ideas. Sometimes we do, we just did two or three months on a fintech idea and just didn't get conviction. And so we're not going to do it. But that's a judgment call at the end of the day. You just get to the point where you're like, I know this is going to work and I want to devote the next five years of my life to doing this. And sometimes you get it right and sometimes you don't.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “So it's bottoms up, but historically, last couple years, we're doing somewhere between six and eight companies a year, but we have multiple industry groups and multiple people. So at any one time, people here, one person can be working on one idea or one research project.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “So, one, in some cases, they've tried to do too many companies and just tried to crank it out. Second is a level of execution. You know, you've got to have money and expertise and credibility. That CEO comes in, is going to be sitting there thinking, yeah, I could maybe start my own company. One, I have to love this idea. Two, I have to feel like you've done a lot of research on our way up to speed. Three, I've got to feel like you're going to add value. And so hopefully some of these people are like, you know what? Kevin and the team have a lot of experience, have had a lot of success, can help me and increase the odds of my company working. The vast majority of companies that people start don't work, our hit ratio is much higher than your average entrepreneurs. And we give people plenty of equity so that they are incentive. But it's still not easy. I mean, we don't have 100% success rate.”

    2024-04-10 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Are the Best CEOs the Best Fundraisers, Are the Best Founders Insiders or Outsiders to a Problem, Why Ownership Should Not Be a Focus in VC & The Biggest Lessons Scaling MongoDB to $26BN Market Cap with Kevin Ryan, Founder @ AlleyCorp · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source