YouSaid · the spoken record

Lo Toney

lines on the record: 33
first: 2020-06-26
most recent: 2020-06-26
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I will say play versus led by an amazing CEO, Delane. It's a company based in Los Angeles that provides the infrastructure for high school esports, the ability to power their leagues and tournaments, and then be able to keep detailed stats that can be used for.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He understands the public markets, the IPO process. He's very disciplined in terms of being able to apply multiples. He's a spreadsheet genius. And he's able to give just advice on a myriad of topics that would be of the utmost importance for a VC, whether it be how to think about a potential merger acquisition, a partnership in negotiating economics that are favorable and fair for both sides, downstream financing, and even be able to give guidance on the ability to take a company public and what needs to be in place. I just think that that's just a very great set of experience and knowledge. And he's very personal. And so he's able to share all that knowledge without the hubris normally associated with someone that's achieved that level of success.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The person that I think about and did not sit on a board with him but got an opportunity to observe him in action, I would say Tyson Clark at GV. And I'm going to say why. And this is really interesting. I talked about the background in product management and operator and CEO being a nice background for early stage VC. And what I'm going to say about Tyson is Tyson came from corporate development at Oracle and he actually provides so much value to enterprise CEOs because he has good product sense because Oracle and corporate development one needs to be able to understand the strategic fit between different business units for a potential acquisition target. So he has good product sense and understand strategy. But then he also has a background at Morgan Stanley as well.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best piece of advice that I would give is get into the venture business as early as possible. It's going to take a minute to figure out whether or not you're good. And when you have some wins, that's helpful because you'll need to be able to negotiate for better economics in successor funds. And you want to be able to probably do it four or five funds. So the earlier you get in, the better. Going back to your point up, if you want to be a VC, just do it. If you can get a seat at the table.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The biggest challenge that I have is saying no to so many great GPs. We're in the business as LPs and GPs of saying no, and I see so many amazing GPs where, Harry, I just know they're going to go on and return great multiples to their investor base. But we have a very specific profile that we're looking for with regard to fund size, stage of entry, percent of deals led, reserves, portfolio construction, type of companies that are invested into. And so every GP is just not going to be a fit for us. So that's the hardest thing is having to say no to so many amazing people. We just hope that when we say no, it can be quick, productive, and be able to provide some assistance in other areas.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought about this a lot in the book that I always go back to is a throwback and it's called Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? And it's a book about Reginald Lewis, who was a lawyer turned LBO person way, way back in the 80s. And he bought Beatrice International, which is a diversified food holdings company. And it was the first billion dollar transaction done by an African American. So it talks a lot about his path, his journey. He unfortunately died prematurely of brain cancer. But it's an amazing book that not only has been inspirational to me, but it also covers a lot of the history around what was happening back in the GO-GO 80s with all the LBOs, Drexel Burnham, Lambert, Michael Milken writing the highly confident letters to be able to finance these transactions with high So it's an amazing, an amazing book.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Portfolio construction model, recognize that you need to get as much ownership on the front end as possible because you're not going to be able to buy up. Those are all the things that are most critical. And it means being able to source and get to the best deals, which is why we believe that is an advantage with our model given our network of GPs.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really make those bets and to really think about reserves to be able to get to a level of ownership where the reserve likely won't be enough to be able to cover pro rata, let alone buy up. I think it's spot on. So there are challenges with the model. It requires a lot of discipline and it requires the ability to be able to understand the elements that you've seen in the past and think exist in the future to be able to identify the best companies because in this market and this model, it's a power law model, right? I mean, so we know that the outliers pull the mean away from the median. And given that the last 20 years, I don't know, we've probably seen Seed Series A 23% annualized returns on the mean versus like 5.6% on the median, which by the way, you'd never incur this level of risk to just get 5.6%. So the ability to be disciplined, have the right.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So true that there's differing opinions on how aggressive the multistage, multi-billion and AUM folks are, but I completely agree. I think that the signaling risk has really is not maybe for a first-time entrepreneur they might care more. Second time entrepreneur, not so sure they care so much about signaling risk. And I agree that it is extremely difficult to get allocation because for funds of our size and a lot of the funds that we invest into, the math just doesn't work to be able to buy up ownership. Because even if Sequoia doesn't come in at the seed, they could just buy up ownership in the A and the B. We've seen that play out as well, which we are not set up to do at Plexo Capital. Our funds that we invest into as an LP are not set up to do. So I think you're right. I think it is really difficult. And the ability to be opportunistic and to.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For secondaries that are investments made directly into companies. We think that's a very interesting place to play, you know, especially right now. There may be some interesting opportunities. And we talked about investments in the management companies, the GP State. We're also looking at that model as well. We like the dynamics of, if correctly structured, being able to provide not only an investment to help the GP with working capital requirements and GP commit, but also the ability to offer our knowledge and introduction into our LP base and also the ability to offer some services as well to make the fundraising process and fund management more efficient. So we think about the entire capital staff, LP investing, investing directly into companies, secondaries on”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Color. I would hope that at one point, are it competitive advantage of the network that they bring to the table and the insights they have about certain markets and a way to look at certain entrepreneurs? One day that might go away. I don't know if it's going to happen anytime soon or not. But the fundamental model that we have of doing LP and Direct, we also want to move to other areas. And that would include opportunities to be able to reduce the time of returning capital by identifying GPs that may have LP capital accounts that they would like to open up for sale. So, you know, some LPs may need to for whatever reason, liquidate their position. If we like the GP and it's in between funds, we are looking in the future to do secondary opportunities to purchase other LP stakes and GPs that we like that are building franchises. We also are looking for opportunities.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not have been able to see for consideration to invest directly into. So for us, it's about the ability to be able to bring in some leverage and then being able to think about the model that an LP only capital allocator would make and then to be able to increase the potential for returns while kind of keeping some of that risk adjusted LP investing in as well. And I just would also add, Harry, that when I think about our model, even though fund one is focused on just doing LP investing and direct investing, our vision is to be a capital allocator across the entire stack of the ecosystem.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For us, it's really about leverage. We have the ability to be able to work with a phenomenal set of GPs that we believe are going to be the next generation franchises. We've been very fortunate to have a roster that includes folks like base 10, Kindred, Mac Ventures, ATO Ventures, Investo, Equal Ventures, Workbench, Bold Start. The list just goes on and on. And the ability to be able to have GPs that are building world-class franchises well respected and known in the entrepreneurial and venture community, looking at a bunch of deals and curating that down to their portfolio. I mean, that's a great screening process for us. It's extremely helpful. It will allow us to see deals that we likely.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think my takeaway is, and I'm sure that this is the case, I listened to enough to know that you're extremely analytical and data-driven. Someone needs to show me the data, right? And I'm not talking anything that's correlated. I'm talking about causal data that if you're not rich, that you can't be a successful BC. Because I don't think that data exists.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nest egg is for the GP. How much is the GP going to actually feel this one, two, three percent? Because you might have an individual and 3% is nothing to them. And so in actuality, the interests actually aren't aligned where for someone else, if you're talking about especially once you get to a fund two or fund three, all of a sudden, this GP's entire nest egg might be part of that GP commit. I had a good anecdote from one of our GPs and that GP female, she was talking to a retired VC and the VC was asking why her GP commit wasn't larger. She was looking at it 1% and she explained, look, I have not had significant liquidity events, but I'm comfortable going my two years and this is what I can do in terms of commit. And the retired VC said, well, Maybe you're not rich enough to be a VC.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm going to start by saying that at Flexo Capital, our thesis is around the fact that women and people of color have this non-traditional path into venture capital. It's something that we started at GV when I was there as a way to get access to additional deal flow. And it's something that has been used structurally and institutionalized at a firm like Foundry, Lyndell leads that portion, the LP investing, light speed does it, Comcast Ventures does it. And it is, I think, a great strategy. Now, going back to your question, when you think about the fund one for a lot of people, if it's a younger person and in particular a woman or a person of color, it's likely that they may not have that 3% GP commit. I think a better way to think about it is how much is the commit relative to the”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Much of economics. I'm okay with that. And so I'm a big proponent. And I think for emerging managers in particular, it helps take some of the financial pressure of having to go a couple years without salary while still being able to build infrastructure and potentially being able to help cover a portion of the GP commit as well. I'm a big fan of it.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Give you an LP commitment, but I want preferred economics. In other words, I want a reduction in management fee. I want a reduction in carry. I don't think that's the best approach for a GP because then that opens the Pandora's box for all LPs to look at that. I think it should be done separately. I think that it's okay if the stakeholder, if the investment comes from an entity that also then decides to do an LP investment, and I think often that's part of the negotiation process because I think it's a good signal. But I think those two should be separate. That way, what you're doing is you're actually, if it's focused on the management fee as the portion being delivered to the person making the entity making the investment. If you think about it, the management fee is the least aligned piece of the economics for the business. And the way that I think an LP should think about it is, hey, if the GP was to sell a stake of their company, as long as they're not giving up to”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of the total economics of cash flowing through management fee and carry. I think it's an excellent way for a GP to get some early working capital and then be able to make some investments into infrastructure if there was a goal of hiring a junior person, that can happen. Otherwise, everything comes out of the GP's pocket, right? So as a GP, if you're thinking about raising a fund one, we had already told GPs to plan on going two years without income. So you need to think about what your expenses are. That also feeds into the MVFS. But then also there's the ability to be able to take in investment. I think that's something that GP should look at. And I think LP should be open to it because if it's done separate from an LP commitment, right? Because there are oftentimes where an LP will say, well, I'll”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Make sense because usually these are structured as there's a valuation that's set on the company in the private equity world could be as high as maybe as 30% of AUM. And then that translates into a percentage ownership of the management company. In the world of private equity, typically the stakes given are 10 to 20 percent. And what the structure usually means is that the percentage directly applies to the management fee flowing through the management company, right? So if it's a 10% stake, the investor receives 10% of the management fee. And then it also can apply to the carry as well. So the carry generated on a fund, the stakeholder, the investor will receive a percentage of that. Sometimes it doesn't map one-to-one as it does for the management fee. Let's say the stake is 20% blended if it's both management fee and carry. It might end up being like”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the management company is structured correctly where the GP doesn't touch it and get taxes ordinary income, that investment can be used to cover a portion of the commitment for the GP. And then you might even have a situation where a GP wants to take in an investment so that they can open a new line of business, hire people in advance of doing a close to have management fee come in to cover that. And then lastly, you know, is just taking some money off the table. And so this is a practice that is for the most part well accepted by the LP community. And in our world of venture capital and micro BC in particular, for some reason, people are pretty diametrically opposed and have a vehement response when the topic is raised, either very pro or very con. I think there are a lot of benefits for a GP, especially a first-time fund for taking an investment. You want to make sure that”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Management company. So, what happens in the world of private equity is that often a firm will look to take an investment into their management company for a number of reasons. Typically, it's to help facilitate a transitional change within leadership. So the GPs that founded the firm might be exiting younger GPs are coming up within the firm. It helps to provide some liquidity for the GPs that are walking out the door. It also can be used in this world of ever increasing fund sizes where a GP has to commit, that commitment can range, but they typically have to commit some of their own capital to the fund 1 to 5% was probably the norm, one to two percent in the micro VC world, especially for a fund one. And that can get expensive over time. GPs might be asset rich and liquidity poor. So an investment.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, something that I'm glad we're covering. I spent a lot of time over the past year doing some deep analysis on GP stakes at the private equity level. And just for those that don't know, what we're discussing is the ability for an investor. It could be an LP or it could even be a separate entity that's not an LP that is looking to make an investment into the management company of a GP. So as people may know, there typically are three entities. There's the management company that actually receives the flows of cash, including the management fee. There's the LP, and that's set up for the vehicle that typically is a venture fund. And then there's the GP. And then the GP is what receives the performance and also presumably management fee from the management company. So everything, all the cash flows flow through.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Typically, a GP would not want that. I've actually seen a GP self impose that, which is a topic for another podcast. I don't understand why. So we'll do that. But I think that what I would recommend for GPs, if there is a threshold stated in the LPA that's required for the first close to go back to the LPs, and if the GP knows they're not going to be able to meet that, understand what the close is looking like, what the timing is looking like, and if there are LPs that are ready to close, I would talk to the anchor and see if there's any flexibility in that. Talk to the lawyers and see if it is possible to move to some rolling closes straight away as opposed to trying to wait. Because in this environment, it would be nice for a GP to demonstrate that they have”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Normally, before the crisis happened, that was my feedback, it's exactly what you said. It would be that if a GP has the ability to close with an LP, if an LP wants to give a GP money, take the money. That's always been my philosophy and approach. It runs contrarian to some other GPs that would say, no, you should only do a close if you have a significant amount to close. You know, some say up to 50%, but a third, 30% seems to be the line of demarcation for those that think there needs to be a significant amount closed. We should also point out that often if there's an anchor LP, they anchor themselves might actually negotiate into the limited partner agreement, the LPA, that a close cannot happen until a particular threshold relative to the target size has been met or absolute number. And that's a negotiation.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And what adjustments are going to be made and hopefully give that LP some comfort that the strategy will still be able to execute? And if it's a new relationship, there has to be probably more communication to be able to build that level of trust. If it's an LP from a prior fund, then hopefully there already is that level of trust. Otherwise, presumably the LP would not be investing. But I think, yes, your point is spot on. The risk reward profile changes. The LPs need to understand what adjustments to the model the GP is going to make. And then I think the GP needs to take that feedback from the LP seriously and try to find a good middle ground to make sure that everyone can be comfortable with the decisions that are being made.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's exactly spot on, Harry. The challenge that a GP will face is that they have sold a certain risk reward profile to the initial LPs that are now in that first close or whatever number of closes have happened prior to this crisis. And the model will now need to change if it is the case that the GP is not able to raise, which I think needs to be modeled out. And the first thing that needs to happen, and this is just general advice across the board for GPs at any stage, whether they've closed a fund or whether they're in the middle of fundraising, it is critical to have clear, crisp, transparent communication with the LPs. And the ability to be able to go back to the LPs and explain how the risk-reward profile might change given that the portfolio construction model might need to be revised in the event that there is a smaller raise. That needs to be communicated.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With regards to kind of the different profiles raising and how to think about raising today. Are managers that are in the middle of their raise? COVID has obviously hit all fundraising markets insanely hard. So for those in the middle of their raise today, how do you feel they'll be impacted on an immediate basis? Let's start there. I think there are a few things to think about. Number one is, is it a first-time fund or is it a fund too? The size of the fund, the area that the fund manager geographically is in, but also the areas of focus for their fund. And to answer your question, I think that GPs in the middle of fundraising, number one, need to understand that in this unprecedented time where people are now working from home, think about an extended timeline for fundraising. If the manager has successfully completed a first close, hopefully for a meaningful portion, I would say somewhere north of a third to a half, that's a pretty good position to be in. We have one manager in the market that”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That problem, what are the current solutions they're using? What could be a better solution? And then how would you distribute it and make money from it? And then being able to empathize a little bit with startup CEOs if the person across the table that's raising money knows that the VC has actually been in their shoes. I thought that was a pretty good model and approach. That said, I have met a lot of very smart and successful people that have just done it and have just immediately gone in. I think that it's a tough business and there is no one size fits all solution. I mean, yours was a much more mature and weighted answer. So I think I should probably adopt a little bit more nuance to mine, clearly. You shadow this incredible position of being both LP and GP. And you wrote this fantastic art along medium that I really love, especially given the very challenging and quite scary and unprecedented times that were in state.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Interesting, there was actually a gentleman that was a VC that was very successful and had retired and was an investor in a company that I co-founded. And I remember talking to him about BC. And that was his advice. He said, just go do it. And then I had these other folks telling me, well, get some operating experience. I don't think that there's any set path. Whenever I give someone feedback, I always tell them, when someone gives you feedback, think about the context that they're giving it to you. You could have two equally successful people and they could provide diametrically opposed views on the topic and they can both be right. It's just they come from different contexts. So my context was I thought that having a good understanding of product would be helpful at the early stage because the playbook for product management is very similar to early stage BC. The ability to understand a market and where an opportunity might exist because of a problem, how many of those people or enterprises have”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That you might know, Hamburg and Quist, Robertson Stevens, Tom Wisel, Alex Brown, those were the folks that were taking all the tech companies public because the larger firms typically wouldn't do them. That's where I thought I wanted my career to go until I started to hear all the great things that venture capitalists were doing. And I thought to myself, wow, investment banking is really on the back end of the process, whether it's taking a company public or executing an M&A transaction. on the front end. That seems to be a little bit more interesting to me. So I would talk to the VCs and ask them how I could get into the industry and the common feedback I heard was to have some operating experience if there was interest in the early stage. And if you can, go be a CEO. And I tried to model my path for venture that way. Product management, then managing a pretty big P&L and old.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great story that probably a lot of folks have when I was in grad school. I went to Cal for my MBA. When I was there, it was during a very exciting period in time. Netscape had gone public. The ability for Cal to tap into the entrepreneurial community as well as the venture community meant that we were able to have classes that were specific to venture capital and entrepreneurship. In fact, I did a joint program with the School of Engineering, management of technology, and also did the entrepreneurship program. And I was fortunate to be able to meet a lot of venture capitalists that came through and the eager beaver that I was, I would ask them about the industry and how I could get into it. Formally, I had wanted to go into investment banking and was enamored with firms.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thanks so much for having me, Harry. As I mentioned, this is one of my favorite podcasts to listen to. Typically, when I'm at the gym doing steady state cardio, but we'll find other opportunities to listen moving forward.”
2020-06-26 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source