YouSaid · the spoken record

Max Motschwiller

lines on the record: 33
first: 2018-06-25
most recent: 2018-06-25
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Thank you so much, Harry. Really appreciate it and really admired what you're doing, it's such a great asset for the ecosystem. So please do keep it up.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, most recent public investment that I led for us at Meritech is a company called Amplitude in the Product Analytics space. And so the basic thesis was we are in a data-driven world. And if you're not making data-driven decisions on really every dimension of your business, that someone is going to do better than you are. And so there are a lot of ways in which different parts of the organization use data, right? You look at the sales and marketing suite. There are a lot of tools like Marquetto, of course, a MailChimp that are allowing marketers to be more data-driven in doing their job. And amplitude is product that allows product development teams and the product org to do data-driven product development. And so our view is that product is becoming a lot more important in companies' business models. And so to give them those tools to make better data-driven decisions was the overarching thesis.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a ton of capital in the system, and access to capital is a great thing in some respects, but to use a Rob Ward term, he frames it, there's capital gluttony. When there's too much capital can lead to deprioritization and defocus because you think you have so much time and you'll end up wasting a lot of capital and not focusing in at times where the business needs to be really focused. And so using capital as a forcing function for discipline is something that we believe is really powerful, but with the amount of capital out there, I think a lot of companies are losing that advantage.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wow. It's a broad question, but the reality is people in consumer, if you oversimplify, care about two things, right? They care about growth and they care about engagement. And then ultimately, I think, hopefully early on, but potentially later on, you can layer a business model on top of that. So I think as we're looking at consumer businesses, it's certainly a proxy for all three of those things, growth, engagement, and then a business model, which we'll often look at something like ARPU, average revenue per user.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So maybe it's a bit self-serving, but it is the true answer. But it's my partner, Rob Ward. I think he's the best investor and board member I've ever worked with. I feel so blessed to just learn and be around him. And whenever I am, I'm copiously taking lots of notes. And what makes Rob so good is his ability to distill lots of information down to one key point. He does it like no one I've ever seen. And so he just gets to the core of an understanding.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The time in which I spent with my best friend growing up thinking about starting a company, it allowed me to explore creatively a lot of different ideas and none of the ideas came to manifested itself in starting something that was successful. But a lot of those underlying ideas, again, to what I alluded to became part of this list of stigmas that I thought were changing in society. And I think that list of stigmas has allowed me to make some of my best investments and without having spent that time of thinking about early stage companies, I wouldn't have been as successful on making growth stage investments.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Control distribution in a lot of ways. And then there are early stage startups who are at the mercy of these platforms to grow. And then at the mercy of these platforms to eventually think about competition, which is another area where they leverage this distribution to stifle some of the great opportunities that come along.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a yes and a no, taking the no first. I actually think if you have the right viral product, there are so many avenues for really, really powerful distribution. And you see that with some of these companies that spike to the top of the App Store and just have unheard of viral growth. And where those companies sometimes fall off is they actually don't have the engagement. And so then over time, they don't have sustainable businesses. But they certainly show this flash in the pan viral distribution. And I think that's available. The yes part of there is this lack of open distribution is that there are these core platforms that feel to have a monopoly on distribution, right? And Facebook, Google, Apple, and in some respects, Amazon, they are just so large and their user bases are so far reaching and engaged such that they do really feel like they can.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For the next big platform, and mobile has just gotten a little bit more mature and picked over with from an idea standpoint. But we're paying close attention to see what might be next.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that relative to other time periods, take when I joined Kleiner in 2012, this feels like a harder time to be investing in consumer and that there are fewer high quality and super high upside opportunities in consumer. And I think if you look at some of the data around that, you know, you look at the Series A funding times of the consumer deck of corns that are out there, the Ubers, the Lyfts, the Airbnbs, the snaps, the Pinterest, the Spotify's A's were all done pre-2012. And so it feels as though there has been just a gap in the amount of exciting consumer opportunities, not to say there are and there won't be, but I just think if you just look at it holistically, the overall quantity of high quality upside opportunities is lower than it was a couple years ago and naturally makes sense as people have spoken about this platform shift and way”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so explicitly we keep 20 to 25% of our fund captive for reserves, and that is definitely smaller than the average early stage venture firm. And because of what I mentioned before, we're just coming in at later stages such that there are fewer subsequent rounds and fewer dollars raised post our round and up until liquidity. And so we just don't have to reserve as much.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so to answer the question very directly, so we're in the process of raising our sixth fund. It'll be about $600 million. And our view is to have roughly 25 portfolio companies in that fund. So not hugely concentrated, but we think the right balance.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Their insiders are giving them a fair price. So I think the trend has been for the highest quality companies. They are looking to firms to get an offer from the insiders and then look to validate that with one or two or three firms. And then our goal is how do we get that call to be the one or two or three firms on the outside who look and then structurally how do we make sure that we are putting ourselves in a preferred position to be chosen? And on some of these larger rounds, as I mentioned, having a marginally smaller fund makes it easy to allow the likes of a light speed or general catalyst to work with us. And they're very aware of that. So they call us when they have a company that's doing well.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Those are the most recent examples exactly. And competing with those folks, I don't want to downplay it, they're really talented and it's hard. But the way in which we've been conscious of making sure that we still have a great spot in this ecosystem is one, we've kept our fund size relatively small. So in a world where the trend has been raise bigger and we've certainly had the option and opportunity to do that, we have said let's keep our fund size relatively similar to where it's been historically such that we can write some smaller checks that are still meaningful for our fund and it allows us to be very collaborative with insiders on subsequent rounds and these entrepreneurs the best highest quality entrepreneurs they want for the most part want an outside lead to come and price the round, right? If they don't take this to market at all they just have no sense for what market is. If all they do is listen to an offer from their insiders, they don't know.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you're hitting on a great point, and it's where we spend a lot of time thinking about how we strategize to position ourselves to be really successful in this hyper-competitive environment. And so I think there's the top down, which is the soft bank and the Sequoias and the mutual funds and some of these hedge funds with really large funds that are moving down market. And frankly, those players we see less of at our stage. And I think the line of demarcation is growth has really been bifurcated into two stages over the last five to seven years. And so traditionally, there was really one or two growth rounds and then companies would go public. But now that the time in which a company stays private has extended quite a bit, we look at the world and say there's late stage and then there's pre-IPO. And most of these larger players are playing in that pre-IPO space where we play less in. I think on this growth or late stage world,”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, as a later stage firm, we reserve fewer dollars for follow on investing and that the companies we're partnering with are closer to liquidity, so have fewer rounds before they go public. So I think that's a difference versus early stage firms. And then as it relates to being value add, you know, the companies that are raising future rounds that we're invested in and most of the companies we're invested in, they're working. So they usually have the vast, vast majority of the time have the option to raise additional capital from multiple people. And so usually we're taking our cues from the entrepreneur. And if they're saying, hey, we'd love for you to lean in and participate and be a larger player in the next round. We're super happy with that. On the flip side, if they say, hey, it's actually really helpful for you to pair back a little bit to get this new investor in at the table that we think is great for the business, then we'll do that as well. And so a lot of it for us is taking our cues from the”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So the two highest points of leverage that I find my entrepreneurs really love are one, finding them great people. And that oftentimes means great executives as they're building out that team and scaling quickly and finding executives that can take them to the next level and being really targeted in that approach, not just sending them a million names, but sending them super high quality people. And then the second area is customers. All businesses want to grow. And if you can directly impact the top line revenue of a business, that is tangible ROI that no one can argue with. And so I love finding my CEOs and companies customers.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, and it is something as a young partner I think you have to be very conscious and self-aware of. I mean, the reality is I want to be a Mary Meeker, a Douglone, a Mark Andreessen on these high profile companies, especially when I believe in them. And so the formula that works best, which gets back to what I was just talking about, is early conviction, right? Entrepreneurs want people who believe in their vision and have conviction around the same belief that they have. And if you can be the first person to go to that entrepreneur and instead of have them convince you, you go to them and you are already convinced and share that with them and offer new insights around why you've built your conviction, that resonates really well. And so again, I think this strategy around early conviction not only allows you to pick well, but it also is a formula to allow you to win, especially as a junior partner who doesn't.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Half of those companies I'll prioritize won't be interesting enough for some reason where I actually learn in prioritizing that company that I don't want to invest. But then I have six companies that I know I want to invest in and I've developed early conviction. And then my goal is, okay, can I convert one or two of those six companies? Because I only have to make one or two investments a year. So can I convert one or two of those six companies into investments for Meritech?”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's such a case by case choice for people, and it is the choice that I think you consciously need to make sure you're evaluating every year, every week, every day, because it's really how you spend your time. And so when I first started in the industry at Summit, I had very little background and very little data on being able to pattern match what made a great company. And so the advice I got was just talk to as many companies as possible. And eventually you'll feed enough data into your personal decision making engine such that you'll start developing a filter. And I think over time, at least in my evolution, I've moved from super high volume to very, very focused such that I am at a cadence now where every single month I pick a single company that is my priority. One company per month, and my view is, okay, that allows me to manufacture 12 shots on goal a year.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are certain people who you just consciously need to say, I am going to prioritize that person. And so I think early in the career, you naturally gravitate towards meeting as many people as possible. And I encourage young VCs to do that and just filling the top of the funnel of your network. But then where I think people get tripped up is they”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Out executing in the current state. And so when we come to and meet a company and they've executed well and we don't have a relative benchmark of what they said they were going to do, maybe they were predicting to do 3x that. And again, still doing well, but really missed their plan. It's a lot harder to assess the relative execution. Absolutely. I completely agree with you in terms of that early touch point and the benchmarking. Maybe we jump to stage though by focusing heavily on the picking because the finding we discussed, especially in the junior or more early stages of the careers, is fundamental. And I spoke to your partner Rob Ward before the show, who said about your incredible ability to develop your network early in your career. So I'd love to hear what advice you give with regards to developing that network early in career and maybe what you did well. Sure, I think it's a combination of two things. And one is being really intentional about how you develop your network. And so what I mean by that is”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Price. And when we see something that matches one of the stigmas that we have been thinking about for a while. If you were to assess the conviction building processor, you said it really kind of depends on that conviction building process. If you were to assess them, are there commonalities between the conviction building processes and those that you pull the trigger on? Absolutely. The earlier and more time we have naturally allows you to build more conviction. And so one of the easiest ways to build conviction over time is to see the company in the round before. And as a later stage firm, oftentimes we'll see and look at an A round or be introduced. And it's very clearly a round too early. But then they say, hey, our budget for next year and the year after looks like this. This is what we're going to go do. And then we are able to see how well they execute on that plan. And of course, the highest correlation to a business that will be a great return and will continue to execute is one that is”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On is affirm what is the process in which we build conviction and the times in which we are willing to stretch on price, I think we have developed and seen something unique in the business that others frankly either don't see, don't understand or undervaluing. And so to give you a tangible example, I think there are certain stigmas that we pay attention to on the consumer side. And these are underlying trends that we think are shifting in the world and actively shifting. And there might not be a company that is distinctly going after that certain stigma when you ask them. But by recognizing and having in the back of our mind that, hey, there is this underlying shift in society and values and philosophy, that this business is going to ride that tailwind in that wave. And so that is an area where we are usually willing to stretch.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Companies, and as Meritech, we'd want to be an investor in those companies. But where the picking really happens is around price, right? And so making an investment in one of these really high quality companies, often the brilliance of a growth investor is knowing where to really stretch and pay up on price. And when I say picking, that is really the element that I think is hard and unique. Can I ask, how do you think about knowing where to really stretch and pay up on price? And what does that stretch look like in the growth game? I often have CVCs on the show who look for the kind of hundred X's with 60 lines in the portfolio. What does that stretch look like and what does that attractive exit multiple look like in the growth world? Yeah, so one at any stage stretches on price and picks well. They develop unique conviction. And in this market, when things are so competitive and moving so quickly, a lot of what we focus”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That is probably the hardest skill to develop, and it leads to the most forgiveness. And even if you're not finding and seeing every one of the best companies or you're losing some companies, if you pick the right ones and you invest in the right ones, inevitably you're successful. Can I be contrarian and say in the growth world and in the world of Silicon Valley where kind of herb mentality exists and kind of sometimes obvious winners are obvious at certain stages, does that the winning far more important, especially as we go down the curve and really is picking as important, especially with the best founders having the ability to pick their partner not the other way around? I think you're tapping into something that's a really important nuance, especially in the growth investing world, which all of the companies that I am spending active time in that get far enough down our funnel where we're making a true and picking investment decision, all of those companies are super high quality.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is a broad question, and I think there are at different times in your career, at different firms and at different levels, I think firms are hiring someone to be, quote, a VC to add value potentially in different ways. And so the way I like to break out in a very simple formula of what a VC does, and it is relatively simple, is first they need to find companies, which is sourcing, then they need to be really good at picking companies, then they need to eventually win the companies once they know that they obviously want to be an investor. And then the last part is helping companies. And so I think early in one's career, certainly the dimension of winning matters less. And oftentimes associates are hired for their finding and sourcing ability. The reality is, I think, the most important skill, and probably sounds obvious for a venture capitalist is picking, right? Like picking solves, if you pick the right companies,”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, the lack of There are elements that I'm intrigued from the experience in the nine years now inventure, what would you say are the biggest missed elements for you? There are certainly elements that are missed, and I feel most disadvantaged from when an operator is going through specific challenges and they're mostly around people, right, where I haven't managed large organizations before. And so fully understanding the psychology of managing a really large organization when you've never done it is something that I certainly try to pick up secondhand, but having never managed a hundred-person organization, a lot of the questions our CEOs are working through are issues at that type of scale. And so you develop pattern matching and that you see it from company to company. And so you can anecdotally pull from those experiences. But there is an element of jealousy of wishing I had the ability to live parallel in multiple lives and have some of that experience. Oh, for sure.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think that is a fair overgeneralization. You do have some early stage folks who are less operationally focused, like Bill Gurley. You have one of our partners, Craig Sherman, on our side, who was a career operator and then started doing growth and has been amazingly successful. And so, again, I do think there are certain pieces that are indispensable, right? Being able to have experience versus secondhand experience from a board level, what it's like to solve certain problems and being able to see around the corners and understanding truly how difficult an operational problem may be is an advantage in some respects. The flip side to that is you might understand that there's a problem that's so hard to solve. It was so hard for you to solve that then you don't believe that this entrepreneur will solve it and it might lead you to”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think that there are awesome investors who have, of course, operating experience, and it's certainly been proved that there are great investors who don't have operating experience. I think we all come and approach problems in making decisions with the biases of our past experiences. And I think that operating can color people's experiences in certainly positive ways and helping them make better decisions. But there are also instances where it can actually be a detractor. And so much of it, I think, is specific to that individual and probably also specific to the stage in which they are vesting at.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We, of course, view the world as we're looking at both. And so I'd say it's a combination of the two of those things. And the reality is on every specific type of company, certainly there's different, I think there are differences among sectors, that there's more art and science depending on the situation. And Meritech, I think, is great in being able to straddle both when necessary.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, really great question. And I think the firms are very different and view the world differently and both have tremendous positives to them. So at Summit, you really learn the science of investing. And what I mean by that is analytically driven price was very important. Numbers were key. Hard work and hustle could really be a differentiator inventure. And then I'd contrast that with Kleiner felt like you were learning the art of investing, thought more intellectually about why a company was working or why it was growing versus just being as formulaic and staring at numbers. And so I think the marriage of both those two is what makes a venture capitalist great. There's no right or wrong way to do it. And I'm fortunate to have learned from the best on both those dimensions.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, bit of a unique path. So the answer is not intentionally and completely luckily. I graduated undergrad two thousand nine and grew up on the East Coast, interned at Lehman Brothers two weeks after my internship was over. Lehman didn't exist. And the way I ended up in VC was I applied for every job on our career services site and favored those where I didn't know the company's name because I felt that they'd at least care enough about me and was small enough that I'd be able to have impact. And frankly, the thought of going back and living with my mom and my dad wasn't an option. And the only person who gave me a job out of undergrad in 2008 was a firm called Summit Partners. And I am so forever grateful. They are a late stage growth investor and private equity investor. And that's how I got my started into the industry.”
2018-06-25 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The 4 Key Skills All VCs Need To Be Successful, How To Build, Maintain and Scale Your Network in VC and What is The Process Through Which VCs Build Conviction in Opportunities with Max Motschwiller, General Partner @ Meritech Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source