YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Lazerow

lines on the record: 44
first: 2021-08-02
most recent: 2021-08-02
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“So honored to be here in your first 3,000 guests. I try to be the first 3,000 guests of podcasts. You're a true legend in venture. And I really appreciate everything you do.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've now talked about this company a bunch, Leo Labs, which is our last one. We just announced at $65 million Series B funding. Velvet C led the round with Insight partners. We've made three investments as a fund into the company. My partner, John, was one of the early investors in the company as well. I mean, it's extra sweet because there aren't many more confident or nice people than Dan. You know, Dan separately, who is the founder, CEO? We made the investment because they've been executing. We think it'll be one of the most important companies in one of the largest emerging markets, which is low Earth orbit, which really is where the action is in commercial space. And they basically make the business of space possible. We're so excited to be a partner with them. Mike, I knew this one would be an openly expansive discussion. I can't thank you enough for putting up with my wayward questions. And I just so appreciate you coming on the show. No, I love the show.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, really, what matters is not what deals you miss. It's easy to sit back and look at all the success that your friends are having. What matters is what deals you do. And that drives how you spend your day. And most importantly, it drives the size of your returns. Whether another fund does better or worse doesn't matter. You just have to do the best that you can do. And don't sell too early.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I hinted at this earlier. It's just trust your gut. At least for me, my gut is always right. Trust it. Tune into it. Believe it. You know, there's something about like intuition and experiencing all these things, that that first reaction is the right reaction. Every other reaction is typically bad. Now, if your gut has gotten you in trouble, like, ah, shouldn't listen to my gut. It really is awful. Then don't listen to it. But most people, the gut is really where the truth lies.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biggest lie is I know the answer. What I found was the day we made money or the day most people make money is the date people think they know all the answers. Everyone around you thinks you know the answers and more dangerously it's the day you start to think you know all the answers just because you made money doesn't mean you're an expert in anything, let alone everything. It usually means you worked hard and got a little lucky. You know, be careful not to think that you know all the answers.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My favorite book by far is not even close is Victor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. It was a book I've read many times. I've given it away to many of your listeners. You know, it captures Victor's years as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during World War II. And it's really about the most important part of being human, which is identifying your purpose, identifying something that gives you purpose no matter how miserable the circumstances are, something to feel positive about, something to immerse yourself into. And it's just been an inspiration for me. I don't have any right here at my desk in New York City next to my desk. I have just a stack of these. And when I think someone needs it, I send it to them.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we're registered investment advisors. So we don't talk that much about the structure, but we have funds which we invest out of. And all of our partners, including us, often want more allocation in certain deals. So it's very easy to spin up other entities to do more of a single purpose investment. We just believe in meeting entrepreneurs wherever they are. We're multi-stage. And if we can help with larger check, we'll do it, but we're not interested in just kind of putting together massive, they're only four partners right now. We're not interested in putting together massive funds that would be hard for us to deploy right now.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All about. It's all about like, oh, you're raising another round. We're putting in more, right? Like, we put $15 million more into Leo Labs because he's doing such a great job creating the data service that makes sure that satellites don't crash into like nuts and bolts. And so it's like he invited us in because we'd been so helpful, right? I'm not selling Leo Labs maybe ever, right?”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my biggest misses were really as a personal investor, you know, sitting in a hotel room in 2011 with Kevin Sistram and Travis from Uber and, you know, having the opportunity, but not raising my hand and saying like, hey, I'd love to invest, right? I think my biggest mistakes as a venture investor has involved selling too early. And so when you're investing your own money, you know, you kind of want to recycle capital. And I look at some of the deals in which we took money off the table. It's like, oh, that was a mistake, you know. I was concentrated in Salesforce stock. I sold some of that. I have companies that I ceded that I took money off the teeth. One of them, you know, Braze is going public. I help get that company going. And Miles Kleeger was one of my top partners at Buddy Media, incredible company, right? And so what I've learned, which I wish I knew at the beginning of Venture, is just hold on and keep investing in the great ones. And that's what Velvet sees.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Parek, one of my idols in the investing world who is also on our board. And we co led it together. And so we keep our funds relatively small. We have iconic business builders, our investors in LPs. There's plenty of money to go around. More and more LPs are saying that venture actually is an asset class. And let's shift more dollars to it. And so it's not like for us, it's about the super rare company, which I talked about. We cut back our allocation significantly in order to make room for Mark Benny off and a bunch of our friends who wanted to be investors, right? So it's how it gets back to their first comment, how you operate is so much more important. No one cares that I've led all these rounds and that we made all this money. They care that we're like going to be with them during good times, during bad times, and we're going to be who we are. That's all we can do.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that was one of my big fears. And so the way we've gotten around it is being who we are, which by nature is collaborative. We don't have sharp elbows for the long term and not any deal. There's not one deal which we're going to go to the mat and say, we need the whole allocation. We need this, this, this. As soon as we start talking about like we need, we're done. Like it's not about us. It's about the entrepreneur. Most of the terms are pretty standard these days. So we don't even have to negotiate that many terms. And so I just look at what we to date and if I look at a company that I helped seed way back when Scopely, you know, he didn't have to open up allocation for Velvet C and a few rounds ago. We got a really big allocation because we've, I think, been helpful. I look at Sutra, which is a startup in the fitness space. And that's one I collaborated with Jeff Richards on, right? I look at Leo Labs that I just spoke about. I sent it to Devin.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Money on the investments, and I was pre IPO, and all these companies, including like Facebook and Tumblr and what like, can I do it for a living? And so as we come out of like our first fund and we've been able to invest in 15 companies, the most important thing to me is we've product market fit. We are people who at least 15 entrepreneurs have said, I really want you, and many of which wanted us to lead. And there's no better honor that we could get of getting a yes from an entrepreneur. You said it early on. It is so competitive. And so we can just be who we are. I can't show up and say we have a 40-year track record and blah, blah, blah. We can say, hey, we're husband, wife is what we do is what we believe. Here's our track record. Love to work with you. Here's every entrepreneur we've worked with. Go call them.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I didn't have a ton of insecurities when we were investing out of our own balance sheet. We did about 60 deals with our own money. We never raise outside capital. And so when we decided to partner with Gim Petronis and do Velvet Centures, you start asking yourself questions like, okay, I've gotten 250,000 to a million dollars of like personal allocation for all these deals. Can we get 10 million? Can we get 20? Can we get 50 million, which is the largest deal that we've done? Are we kind of like acute addition to the cap table or are we like a strategic investor? Because we want to work at the highest levels of venture with the best co-investors, the best entrepreneurs. I had all these other insecurities that I hadn't felt since I started really UWIR at Northwestern. You know, I think everyone, no matter what they've done, has this kind of imposter syndrome. And so although I'm friends with all these PCs and I've made all this.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Your investors who are not on the board. It's natural as a human being to feel that way. And so sometimes there are issues that they don't come to me. And I don't want them to. I'm on super rare NFT art marketplace. I'm on the board. John Crane has a great relationship with Cass. And Cass has helped on hiring and structure and processes. I look at Dan separately over at Leo Labs, who has worked with CAS to find a general counsel and a CFO and help do the deck for the series B and then we made the intro to InSight that led with us $65 million series B for the lower Earth orbit company. Those are relationships that maybe it's not a board level thing, but having this person who is empathetic, who has been in their seat picking up some of their work and just helping them, like it's not easy for first time entrepreneurs to find world-class CFOs.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Any relationship that's worthwhile is just communication. It's over communicating. I feel like as the entrepreneur who now is an investor, it's up to me to share expectations. And my expectations is keep me posted, be real. Good news, bad news. What can I help with, which is like which are issues that are important? I don't want to run the business, but if you get an offer from a company to buy you, who else are we going to talk to? And I can help set up those conversations, right? If you're going to raise money, I can start making introductions a year before to great investors. A lot of the people who we've spoken to just sharing the expectations that I want to be a partner, I don't want to be your boss. Now, I have the benefit of having cast on my side. And CAS is the best CEO whisper I've ever met because she doesn't take board seats for the most part. And there is a dynamic as an entrepreneur that your board investors, you feel that they have more weight than.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Communicate clearly, communicate regularly, communicate the wins, communicate all of the shit sandwiches that are going on. There's not one company that doesn't have just”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, most of them did because I think after the first meeting, they were scared. Because the good investors look at entrepreneurs as their customers. If they didn't, I probably would have been like, dude, not cool. Or, I mean, it wouldn't have been Karen Klein. She like reads everything and we'll call you and be so great about her discussion.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a directionally correct way, no one on my team knows is going to know what's going on. And so creating, and I learned this more from, I think, you know, Mark Benioff with his V2 mom and how he, you know, a lot of people said, you know, Salesforce has a lot of off sites. But Mark really drove home the idea that there are only eight to ten things we're going to do as a company. Each one's going to have an owner. Each of the owners is going to have metrics and obstacles associated potential obstacles. And so the board meeting for me was kind of my way to communicate to the board. This is what's going on. I'm not going to present to you. And I would like drop stuff in the letters as Jeff Pride told you that I would ask about, like totally random stuff, right? The no way that they would know personal stuff about me and I would ask someone in the board meeting just to see if they read it because there's nothing worse than an investor shows up to a board meeting like unprepared in my mind.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, board meetings for the investor, I don't think, are as important as the entrepreneur. And so for the board meeting, I treat it as a way for me. It was a forcing function to step away for a second. Usually I did this on the weekend and I would, all of my direct reports would provide me their information. So financials and marketing plan. And a lot of it I had, but I was, you know, I wanted them to present to me as if I was the board of like, you know, what are you focused on and what are the key metrics, all that stuff. I would then take it in, synthesize it, and then put together, you know, it was usually much longer than two or three pages. I mean, it was usually 10 pages, you know, sometimes longer than that. And my belief is that if I can't clearly articulate where the company is, where it's going, and the resources that we need to get there, no one in the organization is going to know it. And so if I can't convince myself that what we're doing is right, it's definitely not right. And even if it is right, if we're just kind of meandering.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Means something is messed up. And all I can say to other investors is the most important thing is to listen. I go into board meetings saying I'm going to say very little, but what I say I would like to count. And so it's really, you know, listening to what's going on. And in the cases where I am on the board, because I'm so different than just the typical investor board member, I actually will have a conversation with the founder before the board meeting. And I'll do a deep dive like, hey, let's talk about what's going on and I'll help you figure out how to structure the meeting. There's nothing worse than showing up to a meeting and they're just regurgitating information could have read beforehand.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I don't think the board membership matters to the fund. So we don't say we need a board seat. We don't say that we don't need it. And so if an entrepreneur invites us on the board and we think we can contribute, we'll be on the board. And so I'm on some boards right now, but I don't look at startup boards. And when I say startups, really pre-IPO as anything other than the sounding board and the guidance that the entrepreneur needs to push forward. Now there's a comp committee. There's certain things that are just a nuts and bolts you have to do, the audit committee, but those are kind of like working groups in the company. Venture, if there's a decision that you have to make at a venture company that everyone isn't on the same page, it's usually an issue, right? You know, ventures kind of binary. These things go or they don't. And if you're really looking at financial engineering and your control provisions and all this stuff as your downside protection and you're actually going to activate it, it usually”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Personalities, and we just went at it, and then we all hugged at the end and moved on. And so kids, I can't say I have experience as parents. This is our first time, right? Your kids, the default position is you're wrong. Founders, the default positions may be right. Founders respect you. Your kids are like, you're embarrassing me. You're goofy. You make weird sounds. I don't want you to see my friends, right?”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So it's much easier with founders. And the reason I say that is we have experience doing what they did. We can share our ideas. If they listen great, if they don't, great, right? We don't want to run the companies. We love entrepreneurs. If the entrepreneur isn't happy, if they're not feeling supported, if they're not comfortable, they're never going to succeed. And so we do not have a heavy hand. And the second that we come in with guardrails, with any sort of parental type heavy hand, it kills the relationship. I didn't like it when entrepreneurs, when investors tried it with us. Having said that, I love robust conversation, disagreement. Our board meetings were combination at Buddy Media and WWE and Hugfest. Yeah, we had strong opinions on our board. We had Eric Hippo and Ian Sigalo from Greycroft and Jeff Richards and Karen Klein. These are big brains, big”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's hard. I didn't grow up in New York. But we think that if we model the behaviors that we think are important, that's the only way to learn. There's nothing we can say to them. We can't say be a good person. We can't say to them, you know, any of these traits that we would love to give to them, self-awareness and compassion and empathy, you can't talk about them. You just have to show it to them. Part of that is being there for them. And I used to say every night before my kids go to bed, and I still do if they're around, you know, love you, always be here for you and everything will be okay, right? Like kids want to be supported. They want to have guardrails up and they want to learn like what does it mean to have a meaningful life, to be a good person. I think the only way to do that is to model it. Unfortunately, if you model it on the other side of not doing those things, that's where you see a lot of kids spiral out of control. But it's hard for kids these days with, you know, social media, always on external validation, a little more difficult than what.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trading and in this decentralized world. And I think what we realize is the money provided a few things, security, peace of mind, health insurance for us. As I said, had the heart issues and the ability to have experiences that have really changed our life, whether it's through philanthropy or taking the kids to Africa or other places, that's really all that matters. We don't buy stuff.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Money was never the reason I started the companies. So when I was at Northwestern in 1993, you do not start an internet company because you want to make money. There are 13 million people on the internet. There are no viable business models, even though you see them coming. You have no examples of huge companies that have emerged. I mean, this is like pre mosaic browser, right? I think what it represented for me is the money became my ticket to freedom. So I didn't have to go be a reporter at the Delaware State News, which is where one of the internships I had. I didn't have to go get a job in finance or anything else. This became my way of not getting a job. And what became not getting a job all of a sudden I was the most experienced person in the room because if there's no internet, no one's an expert in the internet. So all of a sudden you have these 22, 23, 24 year olds who had lived in the internet in the same way that you have these crypto rich entrepreneurs who have just grown up.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I love painting. I got a studio. I was a little burned out traveling the world. Frankly, Salesforce is an incredible company. I was working probably harder at Salesforce than I was at Buddy Media when I was working really hard at Buddy Media, traveling all over the world and Dream Force and it's always on. So when I left, I just wanted to take a little time. And what I realized is that hobbies are things that you love, but you're not able to do that. And so I found myself just getting frustrated trying to be an artist and gravitating back to what I love, which is entrepreneurs and tech. And very soon we started ramping up our investing activities and took a little time to understand that it's just what we do. So what we do is venture. And it's a part of who we are. It's our friend group. It's our support group. It's our love. And we feel so lucky to be able to do it for a living. I mean, the fact that we get to learn about new companies.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's trust, and we're all in. So there is no difference between work and life. Cass is Cass, Mike is Mike. I tried to retire after leaving Salesforce. I did an awful job at it. And this is what we do. We build businesses. We invest. We feel very fortunate to do it. And so when we have a disagreement, we're not passive aggressive. We're aggressive aggressive. We work through it and we get to a better place. And after you do something with someone for 20, we've been married 22 years almost and we've been together for 25 years, you learn how to take care of the me, take care of the we personally end that business. And we've just been very fortunate. Having said that, it's not always been easy as all of our board members and anyone who's worked with us knows like any co-founders have disagreements, but we think we are incredibly lucky having what we have. And we've built just amazing not only success.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When we have, you know, we have three kids and three dogs, and we've done all these companies, and now this fund, we know how to make decisions, we know have disagreements, and we know how to, you know, go to bed, not upset with each other, which is key.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, Cass is a special person. And so she's intuitive, she's empathetic, she's compassionate, and she has an ability to sense things which I can't. And so we have a partnership that I think is the greatest founder partnership that I could ever have, which is we do exactly different things on a much more like sales external for our companies, raise money, product. And she's much more internally focused. And so although we're partners, we don't overlap. we have complete trust. And when you start a company with the co-founder, usually you're not married to them. You know, there have been great results from married co-founders. You basically are getting married. I mean, you're spending more time with your co-founder than you are with your spouse. And any two thinking people who are smart and thoughtful are going to have disagreements and how you work through those disagreements, how you emerge stronger is really important.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we like. I have to first convince myself that I like the deal. Cass has to convince herself if it's her deal. You then have to convince everyone else. And so that process helps us weed out deals that maybe we shouldn't do. Now we're an early firm. It's an extension of how Cass and I always operated. But we don't think that there's CAS deals or mic deals or John deals or Matthew deals. They're velvet-see venture deals. And we're all in when we do an investment, all of us.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of Leading We were like, I don't know the answer. Well, the biggest gift of my professional life has been Cass, my partner. We have a very healthy, and when I say healthy to some people, it may seem aggressive, but a very healthy process debate stuff. What's the process? Well, the process is I come with a thousand ideas. I love entrepreneurs. Everything's great. And she was the operator. She was the one who made the trains run on time and built the culture and really focused on how do we build the organization. And so it's a combination of in order to win, you need a great vision of where the world's going and the ability to execute to get there faster. And so you need both. If it's a bad vision and you're executing the wrong thing, it's not going to work. If it's a great vision with no execution, it's not going to work. And so as we look at investments, we are a firm that is unanimous. They're four partners. And so it's a family firm. Cass and me, John, Gian Petroni, and Matthew Gian Petrone. We're all in with deep.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is the next two weeks you try to talk yourself out of that gut reaction. So you say, oh, like this isn't feeling great, this pitch or this person or whatever it is. And then you start justifying why they're great and why you're wrong, right? And so I think kind of winners have a few characteristics. One of them is they can build networks and teams and get people on board with their mission. So, you know, Michael Jordan, credible basketball player. He didn't win until he started really putting the other the team. I don't think there's anyone better in sports than.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, cereal entrepreneurs produce great results. And the reason is you learn so much in the success or the failure. And so sometimes when you lose, you've done all that you can, but market turns against you for whatever reason it didn't work out. That's the easiest way. And I just feel it myself. The first company was really hard at Northwestern. Second one was easier. Third one was easier. They're all hard, but you stop making some of the big mistakes. And it's easier to raise money. The only way a company goes out of business is they raise money. Show me a failed product and 20 million in the bank. They still have a shot. Show me a successful product that can't raise money. And they'll go out of business. And so I think it gets back to one of something it's hard for me to do, but I have to continue to do it. Your gut reaction is usually right about people. And so that first gut reaction that you have is so critical.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“These businesses, no matter what the company is, you need to have people around the table. And so I look at the companies that really have hit it out of the park with Velvet C, and it's Walter Driver, it's Scopely and Yoni at ETO and Dan Separily at Leo Labs. Those are people who have built networks around the company that support them, support the company. And so we always look at kind of who are the co-investors, where employees work before joining the company, who is in the year of the founders. And when we do a late stage investment, like we've done with some of the companies I just mentioned, we look at as we're a welcome addition to the party. We're not party crushers. And so my two questions, every entrepreneur, what are your top three areas of focus? What do you need to do this year to win? And number two is how can I help? And those are my two questions.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the early home runs, you know, both investing out of our own balance sheet and now Velvet Sea Ventures really boil down to three things that I think we all know where we forget often. One team, obviously it's always about the people. Does a team have a track record of winning? Is the team the right team to tackle the problem they are addressing? You know, winners win. And I see it again and again. Winners figure it out. And so it starts with that because even though we're entrepreneurs, we don't want to run the company. We want to support the company we want to be called when there are big issues that the founder wants to work through. But, you know, they're the ones who are building the business. Second one is market. It's hard to change pilots midflight. It's even harder to change the market you're operating in. Basically, will the market be large enough to support several massive growth companies? I've never seen a large company emerge in a tiny market. And so the market is so critical. And then the third is just networks matter. It takes a village to grow.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To me, how they made me feel during good times and bad, how seriously they took my asks. And so being a great investor is part therapy. It's part advisor. I find that many of the entrepreneurs know the right answer. They just need someone to talk to. And so when I look at what we're doing at Velvet Sea Ventures, I don't judge Velvet Sea by the total assets we have under management, even though we're happy with what we have. I care much more about how we show up, how successful we are at transferring some of our experience, our reputation to the entrepreneurs, especially early stage. So we can produce outsized results for everyone, including the entrepreneur. There's nothing better than seeing an entrepreneur come into wealth that will change generations of their family. It's really an awesome feeling as an investor.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think what I meant is that money in today's market is fungible. You can get it anywhere. Experience and reputation are not. So in venture, if you look at the great returns, experience and reputation drive results for the funds and entrepreneurs want to work with experienced and great investors with great track records and great reputations. And so as a serial entrepreneur and now investor, I've had the benefit of knowing so many great investors. And I felt what it's like to work with the most respected investors. And so when I sit here today, it's hard for me to tell you all the specific things, Roger Ehrenberg, Karen Klein, Howard Lindsin, Ian Sigalow, Jeff Richards, Jules Maltz, many others did to help me as investors in Buddy Media. I really don't remember what they did. However, I can tell you without thinking how they interacted with me, how they showed up to meetings, how intently they listened.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Question I've been working on tech startups since 1993, 1994, so I'm coming up on 30 years. And it's hard to understand cycles without either living through them or working in crypto for three months. You understand kind of ups and downs. And so on Friday, what was it, April 14th, I'll never forget this date, 2000, the Nasdaq, which is where all the tech companies were fell 9%.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Time. I shouldn't have been there. I should have been dead if it weren't for great doctors. And timing, I would have been dead. And so I came out of it saying, what's the worst thing that could happen? I'm alive. That's really all that matters.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're really going back far. You're going back to embryonic, Mike. I was born with a congenital heart defect. I had what's called a ventricular septal defect, a hole in between the two ventricles. Luckily closed up when I was born and I was asymptomatic for much of my life. When I was 19, they decided they needed to go in to fix it. And when they went in, they solved that my valve needed replacing and basically my heart needed to be rebuilt in many ways. And so I had two open heart surgeries within eight days of each other. After the first one, my aortic valve burst. I had zero blood pressure and I had two hours to get into the operating room and get it fixed. And really, I emerge out of that process when I was 19, you know, before my junior year at Northwestern, it pretty changed person. Before that, I was kind of stressed out. I stressed about the little stuff. Afterward, I was fearless. I felt like I was playing in over.”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different than anything we've done before. It feels like every other business we've started. So we've pitched investors, we've successfully raised money, we have created a product that seems to be well received by our customers, the entrepreneur. And so although investing seems different, and I would never compare it to how difficult it is to growing a tech startup, Cass and I at least feel like we're using many of the same muscles that we built starting companies”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Series B these days. And then I went on to start golf.com with Cass, my wife, my partner, my best friend. We sold that to Time Warner and moved to New York. And ultimately in New York, we started Buddy Media, which purchased by Salesforce about six years after we started. And I spent close to four years learning from the best team in software at the time and today, you know, for what it's worth. And so the transition to investors started really around 2010. We're fortunate to have amazing entrepreneurs as close friends. We started investing in their companies, many of them became big companies. And so fast forward, we've done 75 deals and Velvet Sea Ventures is the vehicle in which we are transforming all of what we have accomplished as entrepreneurs, as investors into what we believe is a scalable business that we're going to do for the rest of our life. And although the product is”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Answers timing. I found myself at Medill, Northwestern's Journalism School in 1993. This was the eve of the collapse of classified ads, which were the lifeblood of newspapers. And at the same time, I was fortunate enough to land internships at several newspapers, Fort Lauderdale Sun Sentinel, roll call. And around the same time, the commercial internet, so Netscape and Yahoo and all these companies took off. And I was immediately enthralled by this new thing called the Internet. And it was obvious to me at the time that the future of ad-based media was not that bright. And it was even more obvious after my internships that I wasn't the greatest journalist. So I just focus on the internet. I started a company at Northwestern called University Wire. We ultimately merged it with a company called Student Advantage and went public in 1999. So it's one of those Robbie Stevens deals, 60 million on 300 valuation, basically like a”
2021-08-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Mike Lazerow on Why How You Operate As a VC Is More Important Than Who You Are and What You Have Done, Why Boards Are More Important for the Entrepreneur than Investor & How The Best Entrepreneurs Prep Their Boards & Extract Value From Them · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source