YouSaid · the spoken record

Logan Bartlett

lines on the record: 59
first: 2022-08-29
most recent: 2022-08-29
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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

“Of tell, I think swimmers in general are kind of crazy to begin with that they put their head down for hours a day and don't talk to anyone and just put one arm in front of the other while you kick. There's a level of discipline that that requires. And I use that as an example of just how discipline and thoughtful he is in the tireless nature by which he works. And so it was a big market, a great founding team. And honestly, I think that there's not going to be a ton of venture-backed competition going into this space. And so I think they have the right to win and the right to earn a lot of these customers trust and ultimately turn this into a really big vertical market a la viva a la service titan a la procore and a bunch of those other successful ones that we've seen in the public markets so really exciting opportunity that yeah we're really fortunate to work with”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A 2D MD was the most recent investment that I said yes to. The seed slash series A was done by Eric Vishria from Benchmark. I did what was called the Series A was more like a series B. What got me most excited about it was it was in this underserved market that had an opportunity that the founders recognized to bring tech and specifically CRM and targeting. So they operate within the medical device space. And so what they're building is something akin to Zoom info plus Salesforce for med devices. And these founders had that unique insight that this actually maybe wasn't a big enough market as a standalone of any one of those two, but combined together, if you could bring these two things to market, then it actually could be a really big interesting opportunity. So they had that insight. And then the founders are just so tireless and thoughtful in their approach of building product and recruiting and building this company. The CEO, Mike, was a swimmer and you can just”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be something that we didn't have written out in the investment memo before. We have to know the entirety of the potential risks to the extent we can on the way in and do all the work so that we understand that so that we're at least not surprised by things when they ultimately do hit bumps along the way.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I haven't yet. Now we've been in a eight-year bull run since I've been investing. I was on a board of a company that had to do a full recap. I thought about this. I give the founder a lot of credit because actually after the recap, he was able to turn it into a really successful outcome for all the people that participated in the recap. The thesis that was wrong at the point of the original investment was ultimately, it was a little too beholden to trends associated with Google, Facebook, Amazon, some of these big players. And you dance with elephants and there's a real risk that you get stepped on. I wonder at the point of investment if that was actually one of the real internalized probabilities that could happen or if that was something that snuck up on the investment team over time. What I'll always tell our team internally is I really don't care if something goes wrong in an individual investment, but it can't.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And bring them to a part of the market that I just view as such a black box and such an art and to know that they're people like that like him out there that really have these set of core principles that they operate with that lead to the investments. I just think is really impressive for me to see.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The one that I just have infinite amounts of respect for is Zach Weinberg and Nat Turner and what they do over at operators. It's their own money. They're very long oriented and they have such a pragmatism by which they approach investing and the types of people that they want to work with. Whenever I talk to them about a potential opportunity, it's not just something about a big market size or something about someone else investing. It's usually something very specific about the individual entrepreneur and something very specific about their insight. Zach had a great insight that I've kind of internalized is that the best founders can tell a very high level story about their business, but also can drill down very deep into all the nitty gritty specifics about their opportunity, about their company, all of that. And I think that type of insight I just get out of him all the time. And it really amazes me that he's able to take some very specific insights.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From all the different tension plans, but all the different foreign sovereign wealth entities out there that you haven't seen some of these people have to close up shop and say, hey, we're just going to manage our own money going forward. But I keep waiting for that to happen. I think it's bound to happen at some point here.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the crossover firms that are most in trouble are the ones that got into the market hot and heavy over the last two years and didn't necessarily have the history of delivering outsized returns over a long period of time at their existing shop. And so I think that there's a few that you can think of that people spun out and maybe started new funds or went really, really big over the course of the last two years and brought in a whole bunch of new LPs. And I think anyone that either doesn't have their existing track record of the last whatever 10 years attached to the name of their existing firm or anyone that scaled well beyond what they had in the prior five years, in the last two years, I think anyone that fits that bill is probably going to have a little bit of a reckoning here right now. I'm surprised, honestly, we haven't seen more firms move to the family office model. I think it's kind of a function of how much money exists in the ecosystem right now.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I were to say pure crossover fund, I really admired what the folks at Kotu have done in terms of building their brand and awareness at the late stage growth market. I think that they've done a lot of amazing stuff. I think impure growth, I just have infinite amounts of respect for Sequoia's growth fund, the folks over at Meritech and the guys over at Iconic. All those groups do a really good job picking.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just managing the market that we're in today and trying to figure out where the best investment opportunities exist and what valuations ultimately are going to be worth in the end state and making sure we're picking correct between the difference between the A businesses and the A plus companies. That requires a level of discipline. It requires a level of ability to win. It requires a level of patience in making sure that we're holding the bar really high and willing to say no to stuff. And so that in this market right now where things have ground fairly to a halt at least the stages we play in and series B and C, it just requires a lot of patience and a lot of willingness to not have FOMO, not feel like we're missing out on opportunities. And instead, we're going to wait for the great ones to come across our desk.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It needs to be a core competency of what you're going to do, and ultimately, it's kind of taking a shortcut because you don't think it matters. But if you're going to build an important company, it is going to matter. And so you should only really do stuff that you think are going to be needle movers for you. And I just think PR can be one of them.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And say, oh, sorry, it didn't really work out. And there's no iterative cycle or relationship development that's been built at all in that funnel. Even if it doesn't work, you're much better in-housing it than throwing it over to someone else and having them give probably not their best performance and trying to get you placement.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's one of those things that you just need to in house. Ultimately, every industry is going to be bespoke in terms of your ability to get out there, get reach, get message, and paying a PR firm to go about doing it. One, they're going to have a whole bunch of clients that they're horse trading on who goes where. And two, over time, it's going to benefit you much more to build these longstanding relationships with the reporters that are on your beat and give you an opportunity to tell your story yourself early on. And you know what? probably is going to mean that people don't really care initially when you're telling your story, but at least you're going about figuring out one, who the people are that care about your industry, two, what message even kind of resonates, and it gives you a much quicker iterative feedback loop where I see oftentimes early stage founders think about the PR side of things and they just dump it over the line and give it to the PR agency. The PR agency goes out, runs around, does a bunch of stuff, they don't really have visibility into, then they come back.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But you can't get all three. And so it just ends up being a very limited pool of people that go into it that are talented.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because if you cared about marketing and you were really good, you would go into consumer because the budgets are much bigger and you get an opportunity to be much more creative and come up with things like Super Bowl advertising and all that. So if you were really good about marketing in general, you would pick consumer. If you really care about B2B, you'd probably go into sales or product because oftentimes that has much more budget or influence within these organizations. And so what you're left with would be marketing is typically people that fell into it from some way, shape, or form. And then there's three different buckets, typically a B2B marketers. There's sometimes brand marketing or PR. There's product marketing. And then there's demand gen. And ultimately, not all of those things are going to be exactly what you need as a company. And so not only are you getting picked over for all the quality people, but then it's also often down selected to specific skill sets that aren't totally transferable. And so you end up just having to pick one of three.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there's some value to be had in the crypto ecosystem. I don't think it's to the tune of $25 billion or whatever was put out last year from the venture ecosystem. I think there's a handful of use cases. I don't know what number that exactly adds up to. Speculation and gambling seems to be a decent enough use case you throw in NFTs and I think there's some value there. And then some of this cross currency border exchange related stuff. I think there's some utility there. I don't think that's nearly commiserate with the amount of money that's gone into the ecosystem. And so I think we're going to see a lot of zeros pop out of the vintages of these crypto funds that we've seen recently.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I absolutely love Team of Rivals about Abraham Lincoln and how he assembled his cabin. I think there's a lot of applicability to really successful CEOs I've worked with and their ability to have a bunch of different conflicting personalities, styles, opinions, and ultimately synthesize down what is the most insightful decision for in Lincoln's case, the presidency and the CEOs I've worked with, the business. And so I learned a lot from that book.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think he has the right level of empathy and passion. And he knows the inside out details of the companies he works with. He knows the right altitude to talk to the different entrepreneurs. And you just know he genuinely cares. So he's willing to spend as much time as you want as an entrepreneur with you on all the problems that you have. He's willing to roll up his sleeves and be helpful. But he's also not only going to be a pushover and not only going to be your friend, he's going to push back when he thinks you're wrong and he's going to help you learn from all the things that he's seen in his career as an operator or his career as an investor. I think just his ability to synthesize all that stuff down and speak to people at the right level with the right tone is just unlike anything I've really seen before. I've learned a ton from him and wish I could spend as much time as possible kind of learning from the style that he takes to operating with these companies.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The most fun I have regularly on a board right now is with Crossbeam, mostly because I just really like the people around the table. Bob Moore, the CEO, is fantastic. Matt Turk is a very good.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The business going forward for their employees, for other investors with someone else at the helm, then I hope to be able to use that soft diplomacy to get it done. I'm sure there'll be a date in which I will need to use my board power to vote against a CEO. I'm thankful that it hasn't happened yet, and I certainly don't hope to find myself in that situation anytime soon.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, my role as a board member necessarily to hire and fire the CEO exclusively. I think that that's certainly an element and can be a part of the job. But if ever you're going to the votes that are, hey, do you have the power to get something done with regard to removing the CEO? Something else is broken down along the way and the journey and the relationship you built with the founder and the rest of the board. Brad has done this a lot longer than I have. I'm sure he's been a lot more of these situations in which this has been totally necessary on behalf of either existing investors. I view my role as earning the right to be a trusted confidant to the CEO and the executive team. I very much view all those words as important, earning the right to be a confidant. If part of that ultimately involves helping the individual to see that there might be a better path for”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Job. I think founders are sort of the lifeblood of what we get to do, replacing founders. I just don't view as an ethical thing that I want to be a part of. But if there are ways of soft diplomacy, of convincing founders that maybe that's the right path through enough data points and conversation. So that's the tact I hope I'll be able to take.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have yet to have that specific conversation with a founder. In the case that I'm thinking about, there was a board member who ended up leading the charge on that conversation. Ultimately, I think the opportunity passed by anyway. And so it was kind of neither here nor there in this specific situation. Inevitably, if I'm afforded the luxury of doing this for a long enough time, I'm sure that's a conversation I'm going to have to have. And that's kind of where it comes down to trust in building relationships with the founders that you work with. I found that people that at least I like working with are very pragmatic and understanding of themselves that if I'm seeing it, there's probably a path to them also seeing it as well. I never want to be the one that's in their replacing the CEO if they also don't agree that there might be an opportunity for a better person to step in. I just don't view that as something that's a core part of the”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, it's typically been some window of opportunity was missed to execute on the business that I felt like the company could have been. I guess it's one specific instance where this occurred. It felt like it could have been a really, really, really big opportunity, but because of some execution decisions along the way, it didn't ultimately prove out.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Execute on it. That's really informed a handful of investments I've made. If you feel like it's inevitable, get on board because the details can be figured out along the road.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the future, do you think something is inevitably going to happen? And in this case, the cost of compute and the need for performance was just so apparent that Redshift wasn't going to be able to meet that need, that there was going to be someone else that ended up coming in and doing it. If we had looked at the founding team and the infrastructure they built, I think we would have looked past the individual customer feedback, a data point here, a data point there that said, hey, this is still not quite ready for prime time. And instead focused further downfield and said, we think in the long term, this is all going to work out and made the decision to invest. And so that's informed a handful of investments for me if something just feels like an inevitability and you might be a little early on the tech or on the market. We're talking months or maybe years, not decades, then it's worth just getting on board if you think the company is going to be the one to.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think at the growth stage have at times gotten hung up around the individual machinations of the market at that moment in time rather than looking far off in the future and just saying yes or no, do we think this will happen? And yes or no, will this be the company to do it? While we were fortunate enough to be an investor in Snowflake at Redpoint, I remember back at Battery looking at the opportunity and just thinking the customer calls at the time were kind of raw about the business and how well the cloud was actually working. Amazon and Redshift seemed like such a formidable competitor who ever wanted to compete with Amazon on their home turf, which was AWS and what we thought was Redshift and EC2 at the time. Like, why would you make that investment? That seems like something that you're jumping into shark-filled waters. What I learned from that is, one, if you look far enough.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Multiple on dollars. I mean, obviously, it's easier to own 10, 15, 20% plus of a business and have those returns end up generating the 3% to 5x with 10x plus upside. But we've been fortunate enough to be involved in companies like Stripe and Twilio and Snowflake and a bunch of others that have been just really far hit home runs. And so when those ultimately happen, they can far out exceed the ability of owning 12% of any individual company. So we really focus on the outcomes more than the percentages at our stage. I know our early stage team spends more time thinking about ownership”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the very far end of the distribution scale, I tend to think about just making the best risk adjusted return that you potentially can, sort of like playing blackjack, and you can see the dealer's hands on the other side. And while you can split tens when the dealer's showing a six potentially and that could work out for you, or you could end up holding and staying where you are, and that could work out for you. Sometimes you make the right decision based on the information you have with the wrong outcomes. Sometimes you make the wrong decision and get the right outcome. One of the best investments in my career was an investment in a company called Braze, and they were called Appway at the time. I remember really haggling with them. It was like 18 months of haggling with them on and off over price about whether or not we would pay 90 posts, 100 post, 110 post.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it can be dangerous. At the end of the day, there's only a single outcome. Annie Dukes in her book, Thinking and Beths calls it resulting when you end up looking back based on the result and having that inform the decision. In terms of the probability waiting, I think that there is no certainty by which I can make decisions. I don't know for other people. But ultimately, I sort of view that there's a spectrum of potential outcomes that can exist in some world in the future. Ultimately, there is only going to be one of those outcomes that ends up being the actual one. At the end of the day, you have to take in all these disparate inputs and think through what the likely outcome can potentially be. And sometimes you're wrong in it far outseeds the outcome that you actually thought was most likely. And so therefore, were you wrong in your probability waiting? Or was it an outsized outcome that actually ended up occurring that existed?”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because of public markets had changed what things were worth. I think the good news, or at least what allows me to sleep at night, is while I wish that I invested at today's prices last year, there isn't a single investment that I wish I had back. That keeps me optimistic that maybe the 10x plus upside case that we underwrote too, if things go right, maybe now that's 5x, 6x, 7x on some of these investments, but they still have that outsized tail opportunity that they should be great important companies for us if we picked correctly. Inevitably, there's going to be price pressure and returns are going to compress, but pretty proud of the portfolio composition that was built out last year for us, even if some level of price sensitivity was lost.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I didn't. I only know. How did you do that, Harry? I'm sorry. You're really showing your age here. No, listen, anyone that invested last year lost some level of price sensitivity. I for sure changed the underwriting framework by which we were evaluating companies, not in terms of what we thought they could be. Our simple underwriting framework for growth at Redpoint is 3 to 5x with 10x plus upside. And we really want to be investing in things that we think can be important longstanding public businesses. By that definition, we kept the framework the exact same as we always had. Now, when you're underwriting to a three to five x with 10x plus upside and things are trading at 30, 40, 50 times in the public markets, inevitably there's going to be some level of price sensitivity that adjusts right to the new state of the public markets. In that regard, for sure, like we didn't have the same price sensitivity that we had had a year, two years before, most”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Say, hey, this is worth exactly what we thought it was worth six months ago. That just doesn't make sense to me. The construct by which you write down these investments or how to think about the holding value of these investments and how you go about communicating, how you're adjusting these things, I think just doing broad-based write-downs of late stage companies, I think ultimately there's probably some nuance in there. I will tell you in talking to this LP yesterday, they said they saw Q2 was the big reckoning for people taking it down. But even then, there were still a handful of people that didn't. And so they're expecting it to kind of flow through to the end of the year. But even still, I mean, is that actually an accurate reflection of what the market's worth? It's hard to say. These are very illiquid private valuations until these things are in the public markets or until they trade hands. It's really hard to put the price to any of this stuff. And so just having a discipline structure of how you're doing it, I think is more important than taking down the marks themselves.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Incentivized to say, hey, can you please keep your marks where they are, a fund to fund, for example, because that helps us go raise our money and we don't really need you subjectively and artificially writing down your marks just based on your own analysis today. We would prefer you not do that. Some other people might be overexposed to venture because these marks are at a high level right now and their public books come down and their private books still sitting high. And so they're saying, hey, can you take this down or take a little bit of pressure out of this system because we still want to be re-upping with managers and we can't if our target was 12% venture and now we're 18 venture or whatever it is. And so it is some level of delusion if you actually believe that all of these companies are worth what they were worth six months ago. And you're saying that with a straight face to your limited partners, then I think you're losing trust, right? 100%. I don't think you can be a prudent manager and look every person in the eye.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was having a conversation with an LP yesterday about this interestingly. It's a function of stage initially. What is a series A worth in today's environment versus what it was six months ago or nine months ago? And you could argue based on performance, it should be written up potentially, right? If the company's 15x in the last 18 months, then you could say, hey, should we write this up altogether? At the later stages, I do think there's a handful of these businesses that if you're holding at the last round price, you're probably being a little superficial in your analysis of like what that business would be worth today in the public markets. It is an important part of the flywheel, though, of how you go about this and not just with discretion, broad-based kind of writing down across the portfolio, 15%. Or if you're going to do that being very, very transparent and upfront with your limited partners about how you're doing this. Now, some people are going to be very”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is how much accumulating benefit exists between the before the at sign and the after the at sign on the email address? And I just want to make sure that both of them mean something and that both of them mean more every day than it did before. And so Logan.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's idealistic to try to do both at once. Inevitably, you're going to be pulled in one direction or the other. And you can look at where people kind of pick one quick test of where people pick orientation of individuals versus the firm is like, where do blogs reside, right? Do blogs reside on someone's own substack or someone's own domain, or do they reside on the firm's website or the firm's medium or the firm's substack? And there's definitely gray areas that exist between the two, but ultimately I think there are some firms that have done a really good job of elevating the brand of individuals along with the brand of the firm. I think Andreessen's done a great job of this. Now, Andreessen crypto you don't think of as the same way of Andreessen Enterprise. You don't think Chris Dixon or Martine Casado or David George in the same way that you do Mark Andreessen or Ben Horowitz or Jeff Jordan? Maybe that's an exception to them or the way I think about it.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thing to necessarily carry the day, but we do need the sum of our parts to be greater than who we're competing with. That's where we really focus is to make sure we have a suite of services or a suite of personalities or a suite of domain expertise that makes us rise above the noise and makes us win that individual hand-to-hand fight. And we're not always going to beat you or Lockheed or Buckley. We're not always going to beat Sequoia or Founders Fund or Andreessen, but we need to win our fair share of the great opportunities that exist out there. And so that's what I wake up every day kind of thinking about.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“As much capital as they possibly can, that firm's out there. And so I think all of these different forces, like if you're looking for any one thing out of a potential investor, there's going to be a firm or a person that services that. What does that mean for us? Well, I think it means that each individual at Redpoint has to stand for something and be known in some way, shape, or form for what it is that they do to help rise above the noise. And then I think we need the sum of the parts of Redpoint to be greater than any of the individual coming together so that the brand actually stands for something. And when people think about it, Redpoint actually means something to them beyond any individual, the accumulation of the individuals, the accumulation of the brand, the accumulation of the companies we've been involved with actually stands for something because that's the only way we can cut through the noise of all the specialization that exists out there. And it's not going to work every single time for every single entrepreneur. We don't need any one individual.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I think it's all. I think the venture capital world that we live in today is more can we were in the generation of broadcast television, right? Where there were only a handful of channels, the TV you were making was what was most broadly appealing to as many people as possible. And so you made happy days and I love Lucy and all that stuff. Then we moved to the cable news era where there was some level of personalization. There might have been ESPN or Fox News or CNBC or MSNBC or MTV. There was some level of personalization, but it wasn't super personalized to each individual. And now in this era of streaming wars or TikTok or whatever you want to call it, everything's hyper personalized every individual entrepreneur. And so if you want an early stage fintech-only fund to support you, QED is out there or rivets out there. If you want the preeminent brand that exists with the biggest access to capital and all of that, that firm's out there. If you want the firm that's going to leave you alone and give you”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But then also looking to pick who they want to work with. And investors are also looking for who they want to invest in, what ideas they believe in, but also earning the right to invest in those opportunities. And so there was this tension that I think is healthy in the ecosystem for a very long time. It was 100% on the side of the investors where the power existed. The last two years, I think it moved all the way to the entrepreneurs. Now we're back to a little bit of an equilibrium. But you've seen a lot of people retire in the last five years. A lot of very famous investors retire. I don't blame them at all because the game on the field is definitely changed and it's far more competitive than it was in their day. And you're chasing around people trying to earn the opportunity to invest. And when you came of age, when people showed up at your door and gave you a month to respond, I think it's probably pretty jarring to be chasing around founders or sending DMs or begging for intros. And so I think there was a group that got very rich, very fat and very”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The laziness occurred because Venture has been a pretty cottage asset class for the last 30 years. And it's been institutionalized more in the last five than it had in the previous 25. And so what you saw were a bunch of people that were SaaS investors, or maybe they were early to fintech, or maybe they got lucky with one consumer company that hit it big. And they confused the fooled by randomness of being at the right place in the right time with them actually being good investors. And I think we saw a whole vintage of people that sort of fit this bill. They came of age in 2005 through 2015. And founders came to them and founders pitched them in a meaningful way and founders begged them for capital to support their business and their ideas. And there wasn't this tension that existed between buying and selling that I think is healthy in the ecosystem in general where entrepreneurs are looking for both capital.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you have to hold a really high bar there. At the end of the day, our only constrained resource oftentimes is time. If you're going to be treating the small investment like it's a big one, then you could be really upside down in terms of if that business doesn't work, how much you invested just from a time cycle standpoint into that company.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've seen some folks do it really well. I think Sequoia has always done a good job of this. I think Founders Fund has done a good job of this. The people that do it well don't view the initial investment as a call option on later investment opportunities. They instead view it as, hey, we've made this investment and we're going to treat it like it's a full investment, like we're on the board, whether or not we are. We're going to give it the full support.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get into a business at 50 post and you really think it's going to be an important company, it's going to be a great investment whether or not you put in more at 55 or 70 post as well. So I would be doing that with some pragmatism associated with fun construct and absolute valuation blended cost all that stuff.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a function of stage. And so, to some extent, if at the later stages you have to be very beholden to what public markets ultimately are going to be willing to pay. And we saw a dislocation that existed at the later stage versus the public markets that occurred over the course of the last couple years. And it certainly has existed in a meaningful way in the last six months where we're still seeing businesses get done at 200 times, 300 times ARR when the public markets were saying like at best you could trade at 20 times forward revenue or something. At the later stages, you need to be careful there because ultimately that's where liquidity is going to come from in some of these high flyers. At the earlier stages, I think if you had businesses that are working and it's a low enough absolute valuation and you need to think through what your blended cost is going to be and what your portfolio concentration makes sense. But I actually think it is a great time to be doubling down into the winners or just providing them more runway because ultimately if you”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of what valuations are worth. And so I think that leads to just a much more efficient fundraising process and ability not to say, hey, this person's at 500 posts and this person's at 200 posts, how do we even make a decision? But instead actually pick the partner that you want to work with. And usually these people are going to be within some bound that hopefully you're able to get everyone to kind of march in line and pick the person you think is actually going to be most helpful to you as a founder.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your time. Some people are actively investing, but they're actively investing at 50% below what you think you're worth. And then there are some people that are saying, hey, the market was this a month ago. In my mind, it's still this today. And so I think what happened over the last couple months is you were just seeing while the market could have been higher from a price standpoint, you were seeing a lot of founders kind of get jerked around with regard to valuation, with regard to whether or not people were actually actively investing. And so my only advice and potentially holding off, and I agree with you, if you don't have the luxury to go raise, having capital as a prerequisite for success at all. And so I would go raise if you need it. If you're afforded a little bit more of a time horizon to wait, I've encouraged most of the founders that I work with maybe wait till after Labor Day, maybe wait till sometime a little bit later in the fall. I think we're starting to get to back to the point that one's willing to make investments. Everyone is within some zone.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, right now is particularly weird, and I think it's most weird for those Series B folks where to your point, see Series A, it's mostly business as usual. Maybe it's a little higher at the earlier stages. Maybe it's a little lower at the Series A stages. But in those two buckets, I think it's game on and ultimately people are investing. Series B is kind of the weird one. Series C maybe to a lesser extent, where there aren't a ton of data points out there in the market for what these businesses are worth. And so there aren't a lot of comps. There aren't a lot of people that are actively making the market for these potential investment opportunities. While I think that if you go out right now to raise or if you went out two months ago to raise, you might ultimately get a far higher price than you would two months from now. Ultimately, the market was kind of reeling in such a way that there's people that are doing a bunch of different things. Some people are saying they're actively investing, but they're not, you know, they're kind of wasting your time.”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two billion dollar valuation. Now we're going to invest $20 million into 10 companies. And so take that same $20 million and invest it across the board. So that's squeezing the earlier stage groups more and more. And I assume as you're seeing, it's pushing down into the seed pre-seed part of the house because ultimately there are a finite number of these opportunities. I think at the earlier stages, people can really talk themselves into the difference of four post versus six posts versus 12 post really isn't going to matter. just put this money to work and if it works we'll be able to put in far more capital later on while it might be a hundred percent difference in price between 4 million and eight million posts you're not seeing the level of financial rigor and analysis that you probably would at the later stage which to your point probably leads to some inflation that's actually occurring at the earlier stages”
2022-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Is Now Really the Best Time to Be Investing? WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? Why VCs Have Gotten Lazy Over the Last 2 Years? Investing Lessons from Hitting with Braze and Missing with Snowflake with Logan Bartlett, Managing Director @ Re · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source