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

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“So we are Series A investors largely at Canaan Partners. So the strategy at the firm is to invest at that Series A Where there may have been seed money put in the company, there may not have been. And when we do that Series A, we've raised somewhat large funds. So the most recent fund that we've raised is $800 million. A financial perspective, in order to return multiples on that $800 million, ownership is everything. We need to be partners with the CEO, and we need to probably take between 80 to 100 percent of that series A round. So we tend not to syndicate at the early stages. And then we'll syndicate thereafter. So some of the companies that we've invested in, that I've invested in, at Venkabam on the consumer side, which recently sold Last year sold, which is a mobile gaming company”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The way decided that gosh, I actually like this consumer stuff too. And made a couple of bets there, and I've been very fortunate to have some successes there.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I was because I was coming from Quest, my main for probably 10 years thereafter, my main focus at Canaan was and has been and is infrastructure software. So I tend to focus on data center stuff. Mainly software, some hardware, but everything that makes the back end systems work. So storage, security, Business intelligence, all the virtualization, everything that's boring. That's where I focused on. And then along the way.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I didn't want to do it myself because I didn't have that risk. Loving appetite To use somewhat of an economic term, I wasn't risk loving enough to put To use a poke return to be all in on one idea.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I found myself very intellectually curious about how these companies that I was seeing and interfacing with on a daily basis were started. So, from many standpoints, I was looking at how exciting it was to build a company. I was seeing it internally at Quest, but I was also looking at these founders that I was working with in my business development role and looking at their psychological makeup. What made these people take so much of a financial, personal, professional risk in starting this company That could easily die within a couple of years from now. And there was something really thrilling about that. There was something really thrilling about seeing somebody's core nugget of idea. And watching that blossom over time. And frankly, that's what drew me.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But again, my main role was interfacing with venture backed startups. So the transition of venture was fairly easy thereafter And then again, I found myself at Canaan Partners in March of 2000 being really excited about the industry and excited about the job, but knowing very, very little.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“For a company of that size. That was not a lot. And I was incredibly lucky, fortunate, whatever you want to call it, to be given that amount of responsibility at such a young age with such little knowledge of the industry”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I headed up business development there. Right. And again, for a 28 year old woman, I was one of four female VPs in the company.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And jokingly, internally, we used to say it's ride the lie because we were putting all this stuff in the ground and we couldn't.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Despite his political leanings Is an incredibly successful man It was an incredibly controversial company. It grew tremendously, and they gave a 28-year-old woman who knew nothing about telecommunications, a real shot to do something. So I headed up business development for them. In a couple of years, we grew from a thousand to 15,000 people. And my role was to interface with the startups in Silicon Valley. So my main role was working with venture-backed companies, both on the network equipment side, data center side, and content side to help build out our network and build out the content that would help highlight how much bandwidth we were putting into the ground.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Probably how to answer a phone that was about as much as I knew about telecommunications, but I learned really fast. And the company at the time was really small. It was in Denver. And they gave my 28-year-old bud.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So, I have a PhD in economics. Wow. So I wanted to, again, be a professor. That was my main goal. After working at Boston Consulting Group in San Francisco during the bubble, I was looking around and saying, God, people are doing some amazing stuff. And I'm sitting here working on a pretty boring project for a utility company. So I said I wanted to be in tech. And I landed this job with Quest Communications. At that time was an upstart telecommunications company. I knew.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. All the statistics are declining. They're showing MIT people at MIT. Everywhere it's gone from 20s to 15s, the numbers. Harvard Business School, everything everywhere that these people would come out of. Tell me about why you decided to do that rather than go into operations. Your parents are both technical people. What did you take at Stanford?”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I And it slowly built up more and more over time, but were clearly in a position right now in the Venture University where there is a dearth of women at the senior ranks.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which were largely the female partners And telecommunications equipment, optical networking type folks. All of them were gone. And that was probably the first wave of women exiting the business.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When I joined, I joined in March of 2000. So it was by far the peak of the market at that time. You know, we're arguably at a new peak right now. I would argue that back then there were probably more women in senior ranks in venture firms than there are today. And it so happened that the folks that were ushered out of the business within a couple of years after the bubble bursting were folks that focused in a couple of areas. Consumer.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All right. I would do it for free. Right. Just love it. So, how did you get into venture capital? I mean, it's not like, first of all, no women at all, or practically no women. I'm trying to think of who was around, who you would pattern after.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My now husband. We went back to Boston for graduate school, came back to the Bay Area thereafter. I ended up working for BCG for a total.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My father was in nuclear engineering, and I was just surrounded by tech. My mom took me out to California, to Palo Alto one winter for her break, and I looked around and I was like, oh my God. I love it here. Right. Why am I in cold Boston I can be? Sure. At Stanford, just loving life. And so I made a commitment to myself that I was going to come out here. And that's what happened. So I went to Stanford for college.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My personal background? Yes, your personal background. So I grew up in Boston. My parents emigrated here from Egypt in the late 60s, had me, and my mom worked for a deck for 25 years at the National Equipment Corporation.”
2017-09-18 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Maha Ibrahim, general partner, Canaan · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT