YouSaid · the spoken record

Mark Goldberg

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83
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2024-10-25
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2024-10-25
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  1. “It's a total pleasure. Like I said from the beginning, congratulations again on your fun. Thank you for having me on the show. And thank you again.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Nobody has ever asked me that. That is such an interesting question. My gut reaction is to say the opposite, which is that the wealth level correlates with a lack of hustle and therefore, but that's actually not in practice what I've seen. I think there is a correlation less about the money and more about the people who are so good at this job that it's not actually, the money is the afterthought. They love the job and they love doing this. And I don't know if it's the, I don't give a shit anymore because I have so much money that I actually, I'm not sure it's that. I think there is to get to that level, there's such a love of the craft and of doing this job that they're probably pretty good at it.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Hard building something from scratch. Here we are before this interview. I was trying to figure out how to get my microphone and lighting set up at a big fund. There would have been a whole team helping me do that. It's both the fun part. It's also hard. And that's, I think, what makes it fun”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “A team of hitters, it's an independent thinkers, they're going to have tremendous returns and founders love working with them. So that's an obvious choice for me, though there are some other great funds as well, including IBP. At the Series A, I think Excel Ventures continues to just do really interesting, innovative work, very independent, very strong crew between Dan Voss, Steve, a bunch of the other folks there, Ahmed. And it seems there's so many good interesting seed funds right now. I'd have a hard time giving you one off the cuff of my head.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “They're a constrained font size for growth, and they're just doing some really interesting work. So I'm a huge fan of kind of the strategy and the people”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “So, you can't forever. You can when you have a clean slate from day one. So, you don't have it forever, but I have it now. I feel like I'm running with a jetpack on my back right now. It is a tremendous feeling. And it's probably what you felt for your fun one before you'd made an investment. I mean, that's the level of energy and kind of the juxtaposition from caring a very heavy board load and portfolio load and going to that. So you're right. It's not infinitely scalable, but it's very exciting right now.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “Really thinking about how I spend time and reorienting it 100% towards playing offense is a new skill for me right now after having been at a large”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Change the groupthink. I think it's bad for founders, and I saw a great meme go around yesterday of, you know, a cheetah, an airplane, a rocket ship, and then the speed at which venture gossip moves between associates. And that resonated with me. I wish there was a little bit more independent thinking in the industry.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “The person I learned the most from has been Mike Volpe, just a tremendous mentor to me at Index Ventures. And somebody I continue to call regularly for advice as I'm kind of navigating our new fund in next chapter.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “So, funny enough, we had some LPs say exactly the same advice, which was one of our more surprising moments from our fundraise, where some of the LP said, It's that important that you're in some of these brand deals to be able to establish yourselves and don't be afraid to lean into that. We had LP say exactly the opposite to you, but it was interesting that even the LP community was their positive externalities from being in these winners. And you should be willing to kind of compromise to do that.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Having some sense of perspective. But listen, I think one of the advantages of being a new fund is taking a lot of risk. I think we are going to try a bunch of things that don't work. And I'm totally comfortable. I'm excited for that. Like we should be doing all sorts of things and seeing how do we push the innovation in this industry. And I think that's going to create a better founder experience, even when we get it wrong.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Listen, if it's the right company, that's incredible. I would have a hard time sleeping at night with that sort of concentration. But I think that”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “I can't remember what legally we have as the concentration limit, but certainly we don't want more than 10% of the fund in a single company.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Check size. It kind of goes back to my sense of you have to be in the winners. And I think that when we feel like we are in a winner, I'm willing to move up on check size to be a part of those companies.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Is such a good point because you can be wrong and right at a multi stage fund. When you're doing what we're doing at chemistry, you get one bite at the apple. And that is, that's actually, for what it's worth, that's a new muscle for me. But it's also really empowering and it's one of the reasons I'm having so much fun right now because it focuses you in a way that I had not done before where the danger of the optionality of being able to do every stage at every time is you have to keep so many doors open. There is something that focuses the mind by saying this is the stage we're doing and this is the stage we are not doing and therefore kind of giving yourself the kind of the test of conviction of where you are and then being able to kind of adapt and change the operations around that.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “My answer to that question has changed by fundraising myself. There were a lot of times where it was easier as a VC just to say something polite to not give people the real feedback. And having been on the other side of a fundraise and now felt the other direction, I think it's really helped me understand how useless that is. And the importance of giving strong constructive feedback”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “You mentioned at the beginning, listen, it's, I know how well they're doing, but I just have a hard time seeing, I've just heard the pitch so many times there's a lot of activity that I don't think is going to go anywhere there.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “What I would say is Matt Harris is probably the smartest and best fintech investor out there. I mean, you know, Ribbit's obviously incredible as well. But Matt Harris, I think, you know, has kind of set the direction of FinTech for a very long time. But what I would argue is like that knowledge can be counterproductive as well. If you know too much, because the crazy ideas are crazy, right? Like you can outthink yourself from any good series A by overthink, I've done it myself. I've seen other people do it. And I think knowing too much can actually be dangerous.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Okay, so it's funny we just looked at a recruiting software company coming. So I'm just laughing about that. But what I would say is one of the dangers of experience and having done this for almost a decade now is shutting your brain off for a category that didn't work in the past. So I have a little bit of an allergic reaction when you say that. Not because I disagree with you in any of those specifics, but in this sense of a trap that people fall into. And this happened in FinTech. You look at the evolution of FinTech. So in FinTech, the most knowledgeable people were a bunch of the East Coast funds that knew that had spent two decades inside of financial institutions and knew the market way better than the West Coast funds. And they outsmarted themselves from every money-making deal in the category, the really, really big ones. And the West Coast funds that had the naivety to lean in, I think, still did really, really well.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Me, it's a very obvious answer. I would go all in on it. That would include lending as well. It gives me heartburn, but at the early stage of the stage, I'm investing at, the stage that's core to chemistry, finding great people at this stage, they're going to iterate into something that's interesting. And again, please take the other side of it. You know, even in my partnership, you would hear Ethan's much more markets focused than I am. But for me, great founders, figure out way to create market. I mean, if you look at, you know, I was very fortunate to see some amazing companies from Index from the early days, whether it was a Figma, whether it was a whiz, whether it was a data dog, companies that have been able to build TAM by just increasing the surface area of their products. That's the lesson I draw from some of those businesses that I've seen from the early days.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Think lending businesses are very, very, very challenging. And if you look at the way that I've been comfortable investing in fintech, it's mostly been through the infrastructure that supports the growth of digital finance.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “I think nobody has really cracked the product velocity that Revolute has. I mean, Revolute's product velocity is just unparalleled in really any market at this point, including Newbank. And you could argue the US is a harder market to differentiate on features, but Revolut has had a superpower. And they just move so quickly in terms of the breadth of products they're able to offer its customers. I don't think anybody's been able to match that in the US. That said, I think a lot of people get consumer finance wrong in the US and say, just because nobody has built a revolutionized business means that it's not going to happen. Actually, the last time I was on your show, I think I predicted $100 billion Neobank coming out of somewhere. And I think we're a lot closer. I think Revolution's the closest we're going to see to that.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “I really love that business from a fintech perspective. It was one where I would love to have been a part of the early stage rounds. And kudos to the folks that figure that out earlier than I did”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “So we are a single trigger model, which means that any one of the three of us can make a decision on an investment and go with it. Now, the biggest mistake that I have seen from my own personal experience and from other funds is when you try to make consensus decisions at the early stage, I think you end up with consensus funds. And I think it's the errors of omissions at the early stage where one person or two people have super strong conviction and an idea that end up being the outliers. If you think about the outliers, you're going to get, you know, when you open the aperture, when you've got kind of the decision framework that I just described, you're going to get both. You're going to get deals that don't do as well, but I think you're also going to solve for the extremes that do very well. And that was the model that we landed on.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “That I think that just calling yourself a.ai company is no longer attacking the same premium onto your business as it would have a year and a half ago. And the people that were the same campaign of founders that were a.xyz during the crypto boom that have migrated to.ai for the AI boom are starting to recognize that they actually need a sustainable business. And that's what they're going to be evaluated on. Now, that doesn't mean that there aren't rounds happening at the red hot center of the AI infrastructure ecosystem. But I do think they're starting you're starting to see some pullback and some proportionality brought back into the other side of the market.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “So, I think we're already seeing the oxygen in this bubble start to get sucked out. Now, obviously, there are exceptions. There's still some extremely unreasonable deals happening within AI. But I think what's starting to happen”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Go to 15s Yeah. I mean, I think it at least changes the tone of the conversation from one of this is a zero-sum game where the valuation as a reflection of my self-worth and kind of a scoreboard win. So one of let's put this into the perspective of a long-term journey. So I think it's a really interesting framing you're giving to founders of let's think about this in a different way.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “The momentum you lose when a fund, when the employees know that the valuation isn't realistic, I think really hurts the morale and hurts the ability of the company to kind of do its best work. So I think really deliberate founders.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “Well, I think we're already seeing some of the oxygen being sucked out of those companies. I think, you know, as you talk about your frustration with founders choosing to kind of raise at terms that feel unreasonable, I think we're seeing the other side of that, which is many companies wish that they take in a more graduated approach to their fundraising. Because the momentum, the cultural momentum, and I've got some companies that have been very thoughtful in this and deliberate in this effort.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “It's a very, what I would say is I don't think those funds will do very well. I mean, the vintage is going to be very, very challenged. Will it be a 1x? I don't know. I think it'll be better than a 1x. Maybe they're going to be tough funds.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “I was very fortunate to join the venture industry at the end of 2015, early 2016. And I'm very grateful to have been at a fund that did really well in those vintages and was able to get some liquidity. So I'm fortunate that I've seen that.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “No, I'm not. First off, I think products will evolve to create liquidity for those late stage private companies that give liquidity options to early stage investors. So I think the market will evolve. So just because companies are staying private longer doesn't mean I think the liquidity duration will be as long as it is today. I think we'll see innovation in that area. So there'll be more secondary opportunities for early stage. I mean, my belief is the capital markets will create new products to solve for that. I do think that you need to have a long-term outlook in this industry. And even when I started fundraising, I thought the duration of a fund was 10 years. And I was surprised to learn that many of the LPs said we rarely see closed funds before 15 years. Just you have to have kind of the stomach to be in this for a long time.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “Yeah, I think both can be true. I think there can both be a shakeout that is already happening in terms of the amount of dollars. And I think there can be a turnover between an old garden and a new guard. And I think you and some other funds I respect represent that next chapter and what a new guard. But I think there's a moment. And I don't think that moment existed three years ago, five years ago, even 10 years ago, and I think it's happening now.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Some of the folks that I respect immensely are the Excel Venture team, Dan Levine, Vosnatharajan, some of the folks that I would describe as similar age to the three of us. They're, you know, that are doing a tremendous job in the ecosystem. There are some funds that I would consider new guard funds a little bit in front of us. I think Saragua has done a tremendous job with conviction. Jack Galtman doing amazing things with alt capital. It's probably the most dynamic moment in 20 years in venture where you have these legacy institutions that are dealing with generational change, you know, huge portfolios.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “In office every day is a really important tenet of how we think about building. You know, we're a new team. We're a startup, right? Like we need to be shoulder to shoulder.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  36. “We are doing it, but I'll give you some of the color around it. So I came in with more perspective that we need to be extremely streamlined, you know, having a GP only group is going to be an advantage in terms of the ecosystem. I think Ethan and Christina had a much stronger feeling that working with a junior team is going to add an element and dynamic element in terms of different ages, different networks that's really going to complement the GPs. What all of us were aligned in not wanting to recreate was the hierarchy and institution and bureaucracy of a really large organization. So what we netted out to is just a very small junior team. We're going to have two folks. We've hired one so far who's fantastic and already making a massive impact on the fund. But that was something we really needed to unpack and try to think about the pros and cons.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  37. “Well, this wasn't the most recent disagreement, but a really substantive disagreement was about whether or not to build a junior team at chemistry.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  38. “So we had a few groups that told us this is going to be a six month process. You know, there's no way to accelerate it. And after the meeting, we're kind of done in two weeks. And we loved that kind of speed to conviction. And that meant a lot. Some of those early conviction checks where we weren't sure exactly how long the fundraise would take and having a few people say like, we believe so much in what you're doing. We're going to make exceptions to do this quickly and to get behind you.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  39. “One of the best pieces of advice we got was build a diverse set of LPs and not in terms of the institutions you just described, Fund to Fund, Family Office, Endowments, and Foundations, but people that think differently and think independently. And that's why I think we ended up with such an interesting mix of people that we almost didn't want people to correlate with one another. And I think it would have been very easy to do. And for people that go this route, where there's a lot of correlation between, hey, these are all alumni of the same institution. And so they're going to group things together. We wanted to avoid that. And I think we're very fortunate we were able to.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  40. “The terrible ones were more misalignment, I would say, where we would get into a meeting and someone would ask us to pitch venture capital as an asset class. We had one or two of those where it was like, why is this asset class still worth investing in? That was more, again, an alignment challenge where if you're starting from that question, we're probably not in the right conversation. And we did have a few of those.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  41. “We did have some funny stories from the fundraise itself. And at one point, I remember Christina was having what I thought was her best fundraising meeting. She's just, you know, really doing a nice job with her talking points. And I look over and she's laughing and having fun. I look over and it's nine o'clock in the morning. And instead of a seltzer water, we're borrowing somebody's off he does. She had grabbed a white claw instead. And so she's drinking her second white claw thinking that she's drinking seltzer water. And, you know, we had a few things like that where you just kind of have to laugh in hindsight. And we had to tell her afterwards, you know, we didn't want to stop the train at that point, but we had to tell her she wasn't drinking, you know, something that was selt or water.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  42. “We did. Yeah. And we got some great. I mean, again, back to the parallels of being a good LP is very similar. The funds that we most liked working with, whether or not they invested or not, were clear, direct, communicative, gave real feedback. It's a good lesson for me. It's a good lesson for anyone on the GP side. And again, why I would encourage anybody to go through a fundraise like we did. You know, when we tell our friends, what are the best LPs? It wasn't the ones that necessarily all said yes to our fund. It was the ones that were great to work with. And they were great to work with for the reasons. They gave great feedback. They were very sophisticated on their perspective in the market, whether or not we aligned with that vision, you know, that was what made a great LP. And I think ultimately what makes it great GP.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  43. “Well, you know, it's an interesting parallel to why we say no as GPs and again to the empathy point. I think a lot of the reasons people gave as a no were not the actual reasons, but the biggest reason we heard was the three of you haven't worked together. And there's a lot of team risk in a new fund at this size with three people. And to their credit, there is risk. I feel very comfortable with that risk. You know, in the same way that a VC might say it's too early for our fund, you never really know what people are thinking”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  44. “We were fortunate and that we were pretty well oversubscribed. So it ended up being more than 20 S's. And I think we could have raised a fund significantly larger than the one we raised. That said, we got a lot of no's as well. I mean, part of the LP community and understanding is what are they interested in? And if we walked into a meeting and they said our belief in the asset class is that venture is no longer a good return or the only way to play venture is to be in five legacy brands. We probably had done a poor job vetting that meeting and there were a handful of those that we did not have success with.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  45. “Yeah, now we divided and conquered. And the other thing is we tried to vet those meetings by first screening for the appetite for a first fund. There was, I think, a lot of interest in a shiny object to say, you know, I want to go meet this team. And we tried to weed that out by saying, you know, what are some first time funds you've done if you haven't done anything in the last two years, you're probably not going to be excited about doing things. So we did a lot of pre-screening, but we actually got to probably 100 meetings.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  46. “We did many, many tests throughout the relationship and the founding story of the three of us. The Tokyo test was not on there.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  47. “Is a very good question, and I think that we met everybody in person. Now, because we're in San Francisco, a lot of people were coming through for different LP events. So there was a lot of kind of the community moving through, but we hustled too. We spent a lot of time on planes. And we, I mean, we were out there. It was a quick fundraise, but we were out there hustling very hard. There were some, by the way, it's a great way to get to know your co-founders better. We're an equal partnership. All three of us were telling our story. It's kind of like a group interview. And poor Christina and Ethan, who had to suffer through me telling the same jokes and anecdotes over and over and over, sometimes eight, ten times a day.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  48. “As we know, it didn't hurt your ability to do something incredible with your own fundraising. And in some ways, I hope to give you perspective when a founder is sweating in front of you, you have that empathy. And that's a lot of what I felt, this sense of, you know, oh, okay, this is a really helpful reminder of what it takes to really put yourself in the shoes of a founder.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  49. “I mean, so many things. First off, I feel like every VC should have to fundraise just to be table stakes of the VC. And in some ways, I think my order of operation was wrong where I invested for almost a decade before becoming a founder. I wish though it would have been difficult to have done in the opposite direction. But some of the learnings. So first off, there is so much empathy from having to pitch. For a decade, I heard, you know, I sat on one side of the table and heard the pitches. And to be forced to feel the pressure of stepping into a room with everybody's eyes on you and you need to deliver is something everybody should do in some regular interval to kind of balance the equilibrium of power. And I think, I don't know if you felt the same way, Harry, when you were fundraising, but for me, I felt tremendous empathy for that. And I'll just give you an example. When you're pitching somebody, this is one of many meetings to them. And this is the most important meeting of your day. I mean, for me, there were a handful of meetings like that.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  50. “Wanted to keep enough diversity in the fund where we didn't get anybody kind of much over 10. That was kind of where we adhered to. So we wanted about 20 LPs and that's pretty close to where we landed.”

    2024-10-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Truth About Multi-Stage Firms; Why Portfolio Services are for VCs not Founders | Why Politics is Rife & Decision-Making is Broken in Large VCs | Why Reserves are Bad for Founders & How Boutique Firms Will Win with Mark Goldberg @ Chemistry · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source