YouSaid · the spoken record

Maha Ibrahim

lines on the record: 120
first: 2017-09-18
most recent: 2017-09-18
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

“This is social psychology, right? I am hiring people that look like me, and that is why most venture firms are predominantly white male or male”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think they want someone to be mean to sexist entrepreneurs that they're scared. I'm like a guard dog. Like I'm going to like, you better not sexually harass her Carol will find out kind of thing.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, is that reflection, but it's also that turtle thing, the defensive mechanism will be to meet with fewer female entrepreneurs. Unfortunately. I have got to, and other female GPs have got to. And we've all talked about this, which is good. We've got to make sure that we are hiring females at senior and junior levels in the investing world. Because those people are going to be the ones that invest in a more diverse spectrum. So, how do you make it so it's not diverse?”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I had a VC tell me a couple weeks ago after this Justin Colveck stuff came out. Again, he was one of the quote unquote good guys, right? We hate that.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I think it's more the more dangerous stuff is less. Obviously. You know what I mean? Those are very easy to write stories about, and then they're out, like kind of thing, or there's been like six or seven departures because of things like that”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I consider myself incredibly fortunate to have entered this business in a group that has allowed me to flourish. And I've taken a lot of responsibility, as have my other partners, both male and female, to make sure that my firm at least is as diverse as we can make it and is a reflection of the true entrepreneurial pool. We want to reflect what the entrepreneurial pool looks like so that everybody who walks in our door feels comfortable singing.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yes, right. We feel like we've reached a tipping point. But what collectively we hear regularly from entrepreneurs and we meet with a lot of female entrepreneurs because of the composition of our firm. They all have a bad story. To a person, I'll have a bad story”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I meet with female entrepreneurs all the time. And out of our eight general partners at Canaan, three are women. So we have a collective knowledge base in the firm that is frankly unlike other firms.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right. No, I get that. But I think one of the things I found striking, and I can dainty find striking, is every woman. Had a story, and every good man was surprised. That's, you know, and I'm saying, you know what I mean? Like, I had no idea. And the same thing was iterated with Uber. Justin Callback, with Dave McClure I'm so surprised. I had no idea, Kara. I'm like, why did you have no idea You know what I mean? It was really interesting”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was it's just that the problem was that other people looked at it like a national inquirer. Right. No, I get that, but I.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly So, while I was horrified, I was appreciative that he was saying it out loud. He also said that when they were going to hire females, they were going to do it at the junior ranks where they didn't have. So in a way the Ellen Powell situation or events were amazing, but the reaction to it was unfortunate. What it did do complemented by social media was allow vitriol to be communicated. And allow that voice to be amplified and magnified in so many ways. So, I have been heartened by how much support we have amongst ourselves as women in the venture community and how much will continue to grow because of that shared experience that we have.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I had to think about it like wow, maybe he's giving me a gift. Maybe he is opening up the door so that I can hear, really hear.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you know, it, I really wanted to hear his story because it's very rare that somebody actually comes out and says something like that. Right.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everyone stood back and everyone felt like they had to, my son is really into watching South Park right now and there's a kid in South Park named Token. Everyone felt like they had to hire the token. I was on a plane a year and a half ago to the east coast sitting next to a VC that I've known for years, and he said to me that he and other managing directors at firms don't want to hire women at senior ranks because they don't want an Ellen Powell-like situation. Yeah, we wrote a”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that, I think, made people question what her motives were in filing suit in the first place, which is why all this derogatory information about Her and her family came out at subsequent times. So that Ellen Pow Suit was a watershed moment. For venture capital and for diversity in venture capital, and not in a good way.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I read her article yesterday and was so moved by it. It took so much courage to do what she did years ago. And I've said this before, but what Ellen Powell did was basically putting a nuclear bomb on her career. It was such an incredibly risky move that she made, irrespective of what people think of the merits of her case. There's so few people who would stand up. And do that in her situation.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Sort of the focus has been on problems within the diversity and everything else. I'd love to get your, I often hate just saying, what does the woman think of it? But it's really an interesting, what is it like being in the venture capital? When you see all this stuff coming out, which is, I think, not a surprise to anybody, it's sort of the delayed reaction of the Ellen Powell case, it feels like.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yep, yep, and he's got nice muscles now, which is interesting. So let's not objectify Jeff Bezos, okay? Let's get into that actually objectification. That's a good thing. So there's also venture capital has really been”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And therein lies another overarching theme that we're seeing right now is those big companies, Amazon, Apple, Google. Because of the capital they have and because the public markets want them to continue innovating unlike their competitors like Walmart and Target”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Away from it. So that's an example. Hot now. I met with another venture capital yesterday. He's like, I'm either going to go into. AR or cybersecurity. It was so funny. Those are the two areas. I know. Like, what? Yeah. Like, but still, it's all right. I didn't mind. AR is a really interesting area in my mind. It's something I think Apple's going to be heavy into. Google's going to be heavy into. To me, that's the next hot space”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ton of areas. There are areas that frankly will fall on the table, and we're okay with it. So for us, for a number of years, security was one of those areas. We've just now started dabbling back in security. But we didn't see that exit environment for it. We didn't see differentiated products out there. We thought that it was a highly competitive market. And for a while, we just stayed away from it. So that's an example.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Amazon/slash. And we also have to look at our investments and say, we're not an index fund for venture. We're not going to cover.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly. That these So about 40% of what we do is healthcare and 60% is tech. I'm on the tech side. The answer is the same on both sides of the house, which is we have to take a thesis driven approach towards the future.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Even these companies that are going public right now are burning tremendous amounts of capital and getting rewarded for it.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and but hopefully, again, we're thinking about it in ways that are more manageable. I mean, our highest burn company is one that burns $3 million a month. We're cringing. And you're going to do it.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yet, and we're having to look at that and push it against our own notions of building a real business. Exactly, building a real business and being long-term investors and doing this intentionally and deliberately.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I believe that many of them will never make money. And to me, that's emblematic of what we were talking about earlier, which is this rush for alpha is causing these companies to not necessarily be long-term sustainable businesses, but it is that age-old thing of highlighting growth over everything else. And yeah, it is a concern. It's caused us internally to look at, to question how we're doing business. So as I said, we've been fortunate to have an incredible velocity of exits in my firm over the last three years, which has caused us to be able to raise this most recent fund so quickly and have the support of incredible limited partners. But as we look at that, we're saying, have we been taking enough risk? Are our companies, given the current environment that we're working with, are we not pushing our companies to grow fast enough?”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Lack of profitability. And the lack of convergence to profitability And I'm not just talking about blue apron. If you look at Over the last couple of years, exits both IPOs, both on the consumer side and the enterprise side, they have been, these companies have been burning tremendous amounts of capital. And you don't see a convergence of the top line and the bottom line And it's scary.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The IPO market is certainly rocky, although when I speak with bankers, they're expecting a rush in October and November of this year of offerings”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, the last three years, counter to that, the last three years from my firm have been incredibly productive. So we've had 30 exits in the last 16 years.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Shift in the market that caused all of these massive companies to grow. And to own it, to own new spaces like Uber and Airbnb, which I would argue at this point, the two of those companies should be looked at as public goods In addition to fabulous companies. But what we're waiting to see on the consumer investment side is what that next transitionary phase is going to be, what that massive new wave is going to be And it's not there yet, but that doesn't mean that in a year or two from now we won't see it.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To boot, you have companies like Cisco, HP, Symantec, EMC, etc., which for the exception of Cisco have had their own troubles and have not been acquisitive. So it is a difficult landscape. And again, there are pockets that we're finding, but I'm relatively bearish. The consumer side of the house, it is we've not seen several years ago we saw a bunch of it.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I'll talk about what we invest in, and then I'll talk about how that trickles down or trickles up to the venture community. We are in a non innovative, we're in a massive transitionary period in one segment of our investments, which is a negative. And then on the consumer side, we'll talk about that in a second. On the enterprise side, we have been open sourced to death. So, almost every part of the stack up to the app layer is getting open source, which is phenomenal for the developer. It's phenomenal for the cost structure of enterprises. It is a very difficult environment, though, in which to be an enterprise investor. And so there are pockets of investing within infrastructure software, but it is a difficult space right now.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you think that we're in a non-innovative period or a shift, and we'll talk about that next, where do you think we are in a It feels like we're still at the tail end of the old way of doing venture capital. And I want to talk about what the new way would be of doing it because it hasn't, I guess Andreessen Horatz was the last venture firm created in the old style, even though they were talking about being different. They're sort of the same. What do you imagine happening? And then we'll talk about it next.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. So that is our reaction to it, right? Our reaction is to be much more deliberate and intentional so that we can go after those ideas before those entrepreneurs. Actually, they are shopping their deals. But you're absolutely right. We're in an environment that is high valuation, highly competitive, et cetera. When I entered the business 17 years ago, you could survive as a generalist. I could easily invest in a consumer company over here and network equipment company over there, and no one would think anything of it. Today's world is much different as a VC, you've got to be a subject matter expert. You've got to go deep in areas because that's the only way of differentiating yourself.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We have got to maintain at Canaan. I can't control the industry. We've got to maintain discipline. We've got to be intentional about how we invest. And for us, we've reacted to the current environment by being very focused on franchise areas. So there's areas that we will focus on and we'll go deep and get to know all the executives, entrepreneurs, and develop theses around those areas so that if we're seeing a white space, we either will incubate a company or we'll find three or four entrepreneurs, bring them together and seed them with that idea. That's super thoughtful. And that's how we do it.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right? So they have nowhere to go. The public market is an all time high and they want to at least put some of their capital into risk capital. We are a beneficiary and one may say looking back on this a victim of that, although I can't say that venture capitalists are victims. We are willing recipients potentially. Yeah, we're a willing recipient of that.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so they do look at their jobs as selling money. That's not our job. All right. Our job is to return capital to our limited partners, hopefully in multiples. And we do that by investing in ideas that we think will become huge. And hopefully advising the company. But what is the most concerning right now and what we push on a lot at Canaan is kind of the opposite of that. What is most concerning right now is the flood of capital coming in. And I totally understand why, right? Investors, there's nowhere to go, pension funds, et cetera. They're seeking alpha.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I'd say that lasted up until 2005 or 2006, where to give context, we would look around and we'd say, God, that's a company that exited for $200 million. Woohoo! That mindset or that change because of the current environment is remarkable. And we're now looking at the last nine years of up and to the right. And we're also looking at a cast of characters in the venture industry that have a lot of them have only seen up and to the right. Right, exactly.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I joined the industry in 2000, there were years of the nuclear dead zone, right? Right, absolutely. It was just years of slogging and slogging and slogging through a really poor exit environment. Right.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I thought that was brilliant way to describe what the honest way to describe. It's honest. How do you look at the state of venture capital now? And then on our next segment, we're going to talk about sort of all the controversies and then the last segment we'll talk about what's hot. Sure. But what do you think the state is right now?”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Right, right. So let's talk a little bit about. So here you are doing this. I met with a lot of venture capitalists yesterday of all things. I've got a lot of what's going on in my mind. I was trying to get a sense of where the market is right now. And pretty much every person felt like it was just too flooded right now. There's too much money. Chasing very bad ideas now that it's really there's been sort of not a lack of innovation, a lack of ideas, a lack of where anything's going. And so I think everyone communicated that there's $200 million funds. There's too many this. And one person which I thought was funny said to me, you know, someone asked him what he did, or kid did, and he said, I sell money, which I thought was great, actually. Exactly what happened. I'm selling money to entrepreneurs.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that hat, I would open the floodgates. And that has happened. But in a much more positive way than I initially thought it would.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It is. And frankly, I stayed away from a lot of the consumer stuff for a while because I didn't want to be. Woman who is doing consumer stuff. Right. I knew that once I opened the door, I would get a floodgate of it.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we authenticate it. We describe it, we photograph it nicely, and then we sell it. And because we have sold millions of items at this point in time, we have a really good database and knowledge of what the price points are to sell at relatively high velocity.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, Real Reel is a luxury consignment company. So they consign goods that you would find in Sachs, Neeman Marcus, et cetera. We take them out of closets of anybody.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it is a collector. I mean, imagine that. It's taking me back those stories, right? I know. We're both not going to be old.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have a picture of a dog in my bedroom. I have the dog picture in my bathroom Because she gave me one a long time ago. It's like a collector signing. Yeah, it is a collector sign. I have an actual sock puppet.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Valley or somewhere like that, or over just over the bridge, and she was going to go public with pets. I'm like, this is not going to end well, Julie. And she's like, no, I swear. I'm like, no, I'm telling you, it was funny. Telling you, it was funny.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And we seated and led the Series A there. The real, real, is one of my companies, which is a luxury consignment company. Incredibly well.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT