YouSaid · the spoken record

Manu Kumar

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24
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2020-03-23
most recent
2020-03-23
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1
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  1. “You can really rely on them to become an expert in your business. And with Pilot, you can say goodbye to exporting CSV files and emailing attachments to a bookkeeper. You can never get a hold of. Get your company's books in order today and get your time back. Check them out today at pilot.com forward slash 20VC. As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you a fantastic episode on Friday.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Against your peers, and they gave me this incredible sneeview of it, and my reaction was bleep me. I know so many founders who are desperate to compare their products to competitors. And that's what Pando has done. They've analyzed more than a thousand software products and created benchmarks for startups, scale-ups and enterprises across five different categories. It's all presented with some pretty slick visualizations, and you should check it out today at Pendo.io slash product dash benchmarks. That's pendo.io slash product dash benchmarks. And finally, creating great products is why you start companies not to track financial statements or make cash flow spreadsheets. However, now we have pilot and pilot for bookkeeping gives you back the freedom to focus on your business and your product. Every month your dedicated account manager will send you an accurate detailed financial report and pilot does a cruel basis bookkeeping in QuickBooks online. So you're never locked into a proprietary platform. Plus you'll work with the same person each month.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Absolutely love Manu and what he's built with K9 is just incredible. If you'd like to see more from Mani, you can find him on Twitter at Manu Kumar. Likewise, I'd love to see you behind the scenes on Instagram at H stabbings 1996 with 2Bs. However, before we leave you today, I wanted to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of sixteen million dollars in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out hello sign.com forward slash 20 VC to join the thousands of companies and founders, including me, who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. It really is a must. And speaking of amazing products there with Hellosign, the team over at Pando, the product cloud company, just launched a free product performance benchmarks microsite where you can see how your product status up”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Last few months. The best thing I think that's happened is really, as you pointed out, a lot of operators are turning into investors. And I think that's a good thing for the ecosystem. And then the final one, what's the most recent publicly announced investment money? And why did you say yes and get so excited? The most recent publicly announced investment is a company called Vircona, workona.com. And Vircona's thesis is that today as knowledge workers, we spend most of our time working inside a web browser. And all the organizational tools that exist on the desktop for helping you organize and manage work, we are not taking advantage of those anymore. So what Workona is doing is they're literally building the missing desktop for the cloud. And I use their product every day. Mani, as you know, I absolutely love our relationship. I've so enjoyed this chat. Thank you so much.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “You'd known at the start of your time founding canine. The answer to that is nothing. I fundamentally believe that it is important to learn all the time. And if you know too much, that can actually be a deterrent for you doing something. And so being naive when you're starting something is often a good thing because otherwise you wouldn't take the same steps that you did. So I wouldn't go back and change anything. I think you learn things at the right time because your mind is open to absorbing those lessons at that time. And yeah, I wouldn't change anything. What's the best and the worst thing to have happened to Vancha in the last five years? Well, the worst is probably easier to describe. And I think that is the mega funding round, the hundreds of millions of dollars coming into companies in the late stage. I think in a lot of cases those lead to unhealthy companies. And we've seen examples of that.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Give this example to others, but I'm not sure how well I follow it myself. If you assume that you have $100 and you will never get another dollar again, you're probably going to be really careful about how you spend. But when we think about time, we don't think about it with the same perspective. We all have a limited amount of time, and I hope we all live to a hundred years. But just kind of thinking about how to manage time is the toughest part. The best part about being a founder and an investor at the same time is just the cross-functional learning that happens from one direction to the other and the ability to apply lessons from one side to the other. I can go to a portfolio company and see what they're doing and learn something over there that I can bring back and actually apply in my own company. And vice versa, I can actually take the learnings from recruiting as an example and use that to help shape the advice I give to a portfolio company as well. What do you know now that you wish?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “I do not want to manipulate people. That's not what I'm about. And so I never read that book. And I would just say that that's a terrible title for the book, but that the book is full of all kinds of amazing good stuff. Who is the best ball member that you've sat on a board with and what made them so special? That's a tough question. And I actually spent some time thinking about this. And I would say I think different board members add value in different ways. And there's no board member who I would say is perfect. And that's the reason why you have a board because you need different opinions in order to actually make those judgments. So I'm going to cop out of that one and say that the diversity actually helps and I'm not going to pick a single person. Well, at least you know now after investing and founding companies, you have a career in politics with that question. Tell me, what's the single toughest and best thing about founding and investing simultaneously? The toughest thing is simply time. It is very difficult to manage time. I often”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “And if you're a young founder getting somebody else who has founded a company a few years ago that is much bigger than where you are today, just being able to access that person and their advice in critical situations is hugely valuable for the early stage company. So I think it's actually valuable for the early stage companies to have other founders as investors and to have that perspective accessible to them. So I'm supportive of this. I'm hugely supportive too. I totally agree. Nanny, you know the drill. I love the quick fire around and I want to move into it. So it's 60 seconds per statement. Are you ready to rock and roll? Sure. Okay, so my new year's resolution was to do more reading. What's the favorite book and why? I'm actually going to pick a classic and we were just talking about this book on Monday at our K9 Founders Dinner. It's How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. And that's a book that was recommended to me and I never read it for the longest time because I thought”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “But you actually get to experience the new stack, right? Like what are you using for payroll? What are you using for insurance? What are you using for communication? As a CEO, I get to actually experience all of that. And that actually opens up my eyes in terms of like, oh, these are areas where there are unsolved problems and it would be interesting to actually have new companies that could come in and actually solve these problems. So I think the combination of being an operator and an investor can be very, very complementary and helpful in terms of even thinking about which companies you invest in. Do you agree with founders actively angel investing? And what I mean by that is, you know, a lot of high growth companies today have had founders where they've sold some secondaries and they're actively investing maybe doing five to ten deals a year even. Do you agree with that having had this experience and perspective? I do. I think founders helping founders is incredibly powerful.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “I think that's the wiser, we believe, the wiser approach. It's interesting, kind of, we said about also the check sizes notching up there. And I spoke to Michael Kim, a mutual fan of both of ours before the show, and he said about founders now skipping preseed altogether. And his question was, how do you avoid adverse selection with founders who agrees to a preseed financing versus founders who don't do preseed and go straight to a larger round at a higher valuation? How do you think about that adverse selection?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Totally with you in terms of that really kind of mutual request and desire. I am interested in terms of the portfolio again. Like we chose and we very much believe in a very concentrated strategy too. We always said can 20 to 25. We got a lot of LPs say that's uncomfortable from a diversification perspective. We feel a lot more comfortable with our 35 to 40 company portfolio funds. Did you get a lot of pushback on diversification when you presented the portfolio construction?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Have you witnessed what every other investor, I think, is feeling the pain of, which is increased initial check sizes and decreased ownership? Has that been something that you've witnessed too even at the preced”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “You said they're about doing three to four new investments a year. And I'm sorry, this is off schedule, but I'm too intrigued. Being kind of the solo GP that you are, with three to four on a traditional fundraising kind of life cycle, that'd be 12 investments per fund. How do you think about portfolio construction today with canine and with the dollars rose that you have AUM?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Yeah, no, I do agree. And I hadn't actually thought about it as the kind of training wheels or education ground for newer partners. That's a super interesting perspective. I'm also interested because you said about the time-to-value money there in terms of the fastest and the money that comes first for those founders. The thing that really troubles me, Manu, honestly, is the compressed fundraising timelines today with such excess capital. How do you think about the compression of fundraising timelines today for you investing?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Can I ask, do you think that their presence in the earlier stages of financing is here to stay or do you think it's actually just emblematic of an increase in terms of later stage investing pushing them further down the funnel and also just a kind of increased desire to create value and generate returns at the earliest and most price beneficial points today?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “I do agree. And I think they can tend to concentrate in a lot of respects. The other element is also we've seen large multi-stage funds move into seed and pre-seed. Now, this is definitely one that gets my blood boiling in certain cases. Samuel Shaw said on the show that founders are voting with their feet in taking multi-stage money at seed. As I said, you've got a front row seat for this. Would you agree with this statement?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “We all have indeed in later stages changed so dramatically. I think in the earlier stages you mentioned the excess capital there in the later stages, but in the earlier stages we've seen also just a number of different entrants. And one of them is the rise of operator funds and scouts. It seems that everyone's a scout these days. But I do have to ask, how do you think about and analyze the evolution and rise of operator funds and scout programs really moving into that preced and seed stage?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “Totally. And I mean, you have done such an incredible job with that, with canine. And as we said before, you are the OG for precede, having coined it in your AGM deck in 2013. But the landscape, it's honestly, it's moved so much over the last seven years, as you know. So I guess with a front row seat to this and having coin preced, which I think you should definitely get royalties from, by the way, what have been the biggest and most significant changes in the early stage market over the last seven years, do you think?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “You're basically like, my God, this guy's got so old in the last few years. It has been a few episodes for sure. But I do want to start, say, Manny, as you know, setting a little bit of context. And for anyone that maybe didn't listen to our first episode, when it was pretty much just my mother listening, tell me, how did you make your way into the world of venture and come to found K9?”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Money, what can I say? We did this first episode such a long time ago. Hopefully, I've got a little bit better at interviewing. It's an incredible few years for canine, but thank you so much for joining me once again today.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Get a hold of get your company's books in order today and get your time back. Check them out today at pilot.com forward slash 20 VC. However, that's quite enough from me. So as I said earlier, delighted to welcome back one of the OGs of seed financing, Manu Kumar, found at K9 Ventures.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “Compare their products to competitors. And that's what Pando has done. They've analyzed more than a thousand software products and created benchmarks for startups, scale-ups and enterprises across five different categories. It's all presented with some pretty slick visualizations and you should check it out today at Pendo.io slash product dash benchmarks. That's pendo.io slash product dash benchmarks. And finally creating great products is why you start companies not to track financial statements or make cash flow spreadsheets. However, now we have pilot and pilot for bookkeeping gives you back the freedom to focus on your business and your product. Every month your dedicated account manager will send you an accurate detailed financial report and pilot does a cruel basis bookkeeping in QuickBooks online. So you'll never lock into a proprietary platform. Plus you'll work with the same person each month so you can really rely on them to become an expert in your business and with pilot you can say goodbye to exporting CSV files and emailing attachments to a bookkeeper.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Suggestions today. I really do appreciate that. Before we move into the show today, though, I wanted to take a moment to mention Hello Sign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. Hello Sign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of 16 million dollars in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out hello sign.com forward slash 20 VC to join the thousands of companies and founders including me who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. It really is a must. And speaking of amazing products there with HelloSign, the team over at Pando, the product cloud company, just launched a free product performance benchmarks microsite where you can see how your product status up against your peers and they gave me this incredible sleep preview of it and my reaction was bleep me. I know so many founders who are desperate.”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “You are listening to the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stabbingson, with self isolation. There is more to see on Instagram, and so you can see all things behind the scenes there at H stabbing's nineteen ninety six with two B's, and I always love to see you there. But to the show today, and I'm so excited to welcome back to the show, one of the OGs of seed funding, Manu Kumar, found at K9 Ventures, one of the leading seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Check This Out, Carter, Lyft, Twilio, or Zero and Lucid Chart, to name a few incredible companies. And prior to K9, Manu was either the founder or co-founder of four companies, three of which with successful X's, and the fourth being the fantastic carter. Manu also has an incredible model with K9 where he not only invests in companies, but he also founds them and is currently the founder and CEO at Hi Hello. The company that allows you to network smarter, providing digital business cards designed to help you curate and grow your network. I do also have to say a huge thank you to Michael Kim at Sandana and Henry Wardock Carter for providing some fantastic”

    2020-03-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source