YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Smith

lines on the record: 49
first: 2021-09-23
most recent: 2021-09-23
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

“What I wish I'd internalized earlier, but then I now have is work with people you really like and get energy from and just enjoy working with every day. Life's too short not to have that. And I feel really lucky is everyone can now see through this conversation to get to do that with Mike today at Foot”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think for me these things aren't linear. Like, it's really hard to have a career that's up and to the right without some challenge, without some things that don't go right. And I think it's important that people understand early in their career that it's not linear, that it is a winding road, and really lean into the wind of the road and try to understand what you're going to learn from the windiness of it. I know that as long as you stay focused kind of on learning and just getting better every day that you'll probably end up on the other side and that the trend line will be up and to the right, but the actual data points, it's just not the way it works.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And for me, it was how important education and just raw learning is. My dad was the first in his family. He was the eighth kid of eight and the first to go to college. And he just really impressed upon us as kids that going to school and being excellent in school was the thing that would start us on our path of hopefully being successful. And so education was the most important lesson that I got.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“From my parents, what I've learned is that there's no substitute for hard work. I mean, both of them are still working incredibly hard and they've taught me that through their actions and not just their words.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've now made a bunch of investment mistakes in companies that I passed on that have turned into tens of billions of dollars in market cap. And those are really painful. The unfortunate reality of venture capital is you're going to continue to make those mistakes. And I'm going to continue to make those mistakes. That means that I'm actually seeing good enough stuff. But what I've reconciled in my head is it's really about the investments that you do make versus about the ones that you don't make. And that's what prevents me from having too much FOMO and too much regret in those mistakes.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, the biggest mistake was focusing on title and compensation and these more fleeting things in business versus learning and development. And am I just getting better at my job every day? And I think when I switched on to caring about development and by just getting better each day, my career actually went up and to the right at a much faster rate than when I was focused on when am I going to get promoted and how much money I was making.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think about these things all the time. I have to be exceptional. I'm fine with the burden of trying to continue to be exceptional as someone that comes from an underrepresented group. And Ken has had a tremendous influence in answering that question for me.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And for me, it's probably two mentors, one that's two decades old and one that's just in the last decade. Gentlemen by the name of Carter Cass, Carter's a professor at Northwestern at the business school there. And he's just been a tremendous resource for me on leadership, on family. He's an author. He's a Renaissance man. And I just really like his approach to learning. And he's just always been there for me. And then the second one is African-American longtime exec and advisor to venture firms and founders by the name of Ken Coleman. And I got to know Ken probably a decade ago. And Ken, you know, at the end of my first meeting with him, I asked him, how can I be helpful to him, probably realizing that some of his ilk, I can't really be that helpful to. But he said two things. One, be very successful and two, hire more people from underrepresented groups. And as an African-American man.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On this one, I'd have to say my parents their jobs brought us to the United States, and that led to me learning about entrepreneurship and venture capital. And so I don't think I can legitimately say that anyone had as big of an impact on my professional life and my personal life as them.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I promise you Mike and I are different in a lot of different ways, but I've been sports obsessed for my whole life, but especially this summer, I think, with restrictions easing up and spectators being back in these different sporting events and then following the stories of Euro 2020 and Grand Santis being back and the Olympics coming up, it's just a lot of fun this summer to follow a bunch of different sports. And so I am spending a lot of time on that”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love sports. I think there's a lot to learn from sports. The highs and lows that come with athletics, I think, is really good life lessons and leadership lessons. And then the second one is I'm really big into wine. For me, it's this idea that there's almost zero chance that you can be an expert in wine. I mean, even Master Psalms have, there's so many terroirs, there's so many years, there's so many different grapes. It's a lot to learn. And I appreciate that high hockey stick of learning that comes from trying to have a skill in understanding wine.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have to thank my friend Kanye Makubella at Kinder Adventures for helping me come up with that word because I've referred to these multi-stage and multi-sector firms as platform firms, but that doesn't feel like a great word to describe them. And in a conversation with him, he came up with agglomerator as a better word. And so that's what led to that post about the venture industry and naming those multistage and multi-sector phones as agglomerator phones.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly for me the initial impetus to just start writing was to try to give back in some way I've benefited from reading the writing of several venture capitalists over the past decade. And I honestly think it's a service that folks have done to help educate others and future generations. But then when I learned, when I actually started publishing on a more regular basis is just how much learning comes from writing for oneself and how much learning can come from getting feedback from others by putting it out there in the world. And so what I find now when I write a post is I learn so much after the post gets published from people who respond to the post, from people who comment on the post, from conversations that I end up having, and it refines my thinking on that idea that I”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you've seen across decades of the venture industry is that different pools of capital can go in and out of the venture market. There have been times where endowments have pulled out of the asset class because they face liquidity challenges and their own organizations have been heavily impacted by a financial crisis. And then there have been times where funder funds have been really difficult to raise capital for themselves and their own timelines have affected their commitment to the venture asset clause. And so what we learned from chatting with other managers and capital allocators is that there have been so many changes in different allocators approach to the venture asset class over the past several decades. We cannot predict the future and the best decision for us is to have capital from all these different pools.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not worse advice. I mean, I think people have strong points of view about pools of capital and who you raise capital from. There are certain pools of capital that say, oh, you should only raise from our pool of capital and others that say you should be differentiated and have a diverse set of capital. We were very steadfast in believing that it needed to be diverse in terms of where the capital was coming from and it shouldn't just be from one type of capital. We learned that quickly and stuck to our guns in terms of having it come from different pools of capital. And I think that'll be prove ourselves really smart over kind of decades of footwork.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Throughout one, we got a lot of advice to say we're doing a first close and we're doing it on this day and to drive everyone to do as quick of a first close as possible. Our approach ended up being a bit different where we said this is the fund that we want to raise and ideally we'd want to do it and be one and done on a close so that we can figure out what all the different puzzle pieces of LP construction look like and how to fit it all together in one close. And that's what we ended up doing. And I think it was partially because of the unique position that we ended up being in that did happen and we recognize a lot of firms need to drive towards just a first close to get into business. But I don't think it was the right advice for us. The key thing anytime anyone gives you advice is to figure out what advice is right for you and what advice may be right for others. In this case, the right advice for us was to drive to a one done close and to put the”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most of the LPs we did not meet in person during this process. And I think to Nikhil's point about timing being our friend in this, if you look back to call it March or April of 2020 when the pandemic was first rearing its rough head, I think it would have been really hard to raise as much capital as we did in two or three months. By the time we were out raising the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021, people were more used to meetings over Zoom. They were actually probably starting to commit capital to early stage fund managers that they weren't meeting in person. So there was a rhythm and sort of a muscle building that had already happened at the timing that we went out. But it's uncomfortable for us too. I mean, we want to have LPs around the table that will push us.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So there's a lot of luck involved, but there was a lot of intentionality in our approach in trying to structure the LP base with this different good diverse pools of capital. And we're really fortunate to be in the position we're in.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Level of performance is having people around the table that will push you to be world class that have seen world class, that understand what world-class firms look like. And that was an important characteristic for us to look for in the LPs that we selected. Another one was that people just that fundamentally believed in our approach and our core pillars and believed in us as people. And we were able to find that with the group of LPs that we selected and are fortunate enough to work with. And then the last one is just causes. I mean, you know, you're in this business. You're trying to make money for LPs. You're trying to support founders and you want to support their journey. But you also want, if you're going to make a lot of money, make it for people that you care about and are going to do great things with the capital that is distributed back to them. And we feel great about the group of LPs that we have in our base. They do support amazing causes and they are amazing.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We felt very fortunate to be in a position in early March of being call it 2x oversubscribed our target. And we went into the process to Nikhil's point, being very intentional about what we were looking for. We actually wanted diverse pools of capital as an example. So we wanted capital from obviously it'd be great to have capital from university endowments that have been in the asset class for a long time, great fund of funds, great family offices, foundations. And we wanted a good balance between those pools of capital. And we were able to do that. But we were also prioritizing people and firms and LPs that have been in the asset class for a long time and have seen world class. We fully expect footwork to be a top firm over our many years of working together. And I think what helps you hold yourself accountable to that level.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some level of alignment and intentionality and the fact that it won't break. And I think Mike and I did a lot of things to make sure that that was going to be the case for ourselves and that really helped us in fundraising. I do think that we have special stories as individuals from our backgrounds. Mike is just too humble to discuss all of his achievements as an operator, the boards that he's been on. And I think that success makes him a really unique player in the venture ecosystem. And with my investing background, I do think that that combination helped us show that we were a unique firm from day one to a number of limited partners. And then we were just rigorous on making sure that we followed up quickly in every conversation that we answered every question properly and concisely. And I think all of those steps helped us drive an efficient process. But Mike, maybe you can talk about what we looked for.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all, we feel very fortunate that it happened quickly for us. And there is a lot of luck involved in many elements of our business. Our timing was good and in some ways we probably benefited from the pandemic because we were able to raise this capital from our homes on Zoom versus having to travel to see every single potential LP in person. But I do think there are things that we did that helped our process. One of them was just being intentional about every single aspect of fundraising from how we came together as a partnership, the questions that we went through to sort of push one another, to decide to do this together. I think that we showed alignment in the conversations that we had with LPs in our own partnership. And the most important thing for a first time fund is LPs are betting on the GPs with just an idea. And so the partnership has to show strength and has to show”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We bring on a third GP or a fourth GPE, and you get even more creative styles and skills. We just think that that's the best way to run a firm. We talk a lot about teamwork as sort of a core pillar of ours. And, you know, on a good day, I think venture firms, on their best day are golf teams, like individuals shooting their best score, their lowest score and adding them up at the end. We really think about our team and our approach more like a basketball team or a soccer team where people have differentiated skills on the court or on the pitch. And we want those skills to shine and be specialized, but the power of them all coming together is what we're super excited about in our equal partnership.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only thing I'd add, Beeser, is one of our core values and principles is diversity across every dimension is a competitive advantage. And Nikhil and I are different. Nikhil, like as said, has been an investor for 10 years and I've been an operator for a number of years. But we also have different styles and we have different superpowers, we think. And we're showing already. Nikhil is tremendous at understanding real product market fit and being able to ask a lot of questions of founders of what's the cohort doing and where are your retention curves and where do we need to improve on the product. And I think I'm really good at org design and leadership and talent management based on my experience at stitchfix and walmart.com. And I think when you bring those superpowers together instead of having them be individual things that show up in working with the company, the company gets all of it. They get all the power. And I think.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our belief is that an equal partnership reflects the type of work that actually should happen at footwork in the years ahead, where this isn't about which investments are my investments and which investments are Mike's investments. What matters is that the firm and each of the investments in our funds are successful. And all of us on the team should be equally incented to help make those companies successful. It's the economic incentive that drives the principle behind wanting all of our investments to have a shared attribution to have the attention of all of us in our partnership to help them. We really don't care who is the one sitting on the board, who is the one that sourced it, who's the one that perhaps was more excited about the company when we made the decision. Once an investment is part of our portfolio.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That Nikhil walkthrough that we both have. And I also think just like ourselves showing up hungry and humble. I mean, we're excited to be founders of our firm. You know, we're entrepreneurs ourselves. And I think that resonated really well with Tajius. And I think we'll continue to resonate really well with founders as we continue along this journey of building footwork.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like all three financial statements and can talk really intelligently about how their business needs to scale and what capital is required to scale their business. And so knowing your business inside now is characteristic number two. And the third one is someone who's a talent magnet. It is impossible in my opinion to sort of scale these businesses by yourself. You need a great team around you. You need to, like I said earlier, understand your gaps in terms of understanding what you're really good at and where you have your energy and where you have to source talent to help fill the gaps that you have. And so those are the three characteristics. And I'll take a stab at speculating why Tajius and Greg picked us. I mean, I do think it has to do with a lot with the core values and principles and our core pillars of footwork. I do think Tajius in particular liked the combination of an operator and an investor, specifically in the e-commerce space and the experience.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, there's three characteristics that we look for in founders. The first one is a founder that's hungry, but also humble. We seek humility because we think that founders that are humble, I mean, you have to have confidence to do this, but founders that are humble recognize where they need help in terms of team building and where they have gaps in their own leadership skills. We like that humble founders also are honest with us about what's working and what's not working in the product. And we can be good thought partners to help them think through challenging situations that they're having as they scale the product or service. And so Hungry and Humble is the first one. The second is someone, a founder that knows his or her business inside and out, someone that understands the unit economics of their business, the contribution margins of their business, what capital is required to scale their business, and the best founders, I think, just know.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That characteristic felt very special in Via and led us to believe that this company has a chance to have some serious longevity. The third element that we look for in any footwork investment is a market that is hopefully large, but more importantly is expanding. And what we feel about this area of mobile commerce is the world is just going to continue to move to mobile more and more folks purchases are happening on mobile. There are estimates now that the majority of e-commerce is happening on phones versus on computers, and we don't see that trend changing anytime soon. In fact, we think as the checkout experience becomes easier and easier, more and more products are going to be bought on phones. And then the final piece that we look for that we saw in Via as well is about the founders and perhaps Mike, you can talk about that and what we saw with Pejis and Greg.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Revenue, it's barely spent any capital, and it's in a space of SMS-based marketing and customer support in this mobile commerce ecosystem that has a number of other players. And yet it has differentiated itself as a product and it has a go-to-market engine that is really working. And so we saw the early signs of customer love and product market fit in Via and got really excited about the investment. The second piece that we look for is the potential for a product to have decades of customer love. And with Via, what was exciting to see is several of Via's customers are now driving the majority of their revenue and the majority of their sales on the Via platform and through Via's service. And the success they're having with Via has only increasing as they continue to use Via.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There were several elements that led to Mike and I decided to make this investment. Maybe we discussed that first and then we can speculate on why those founders via PICUS. For us there are four elements that we look for in every investment. The first is that we have to see some early signs of product market fit. And with Via, the product had launched just over a year ago. The business is already at hundreds of customers, millions in annual”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have now looked a number of different companies. We've been thinking about that category for several months and we ended up landing on Via as investment number one in that thesis area. And we also think that that's a thesis area that makes a lot of sense for us given our backgrounds, given the investments that I've made in e-commerce and in SaaS and given Mike's really unique operating background at the helm of a couple different commerce businesses that have gone on to be incredibly successful. And so that's an example of our approach and hopefully it makes sense.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When you're a small firm and footwork is two of us is GPs and $175 million fund, we're not a 30-person team or a 100-person team billion dollars of funds. When you're a small firm, you can't do everything in today's ecosystem. And so you have to decide where you want to spend time. And so the principle behind being a thesis-driven specialist is finding swim lanes where we go deep in certain areas where we look at all the companies in that area and where we figure out the types of bets we want to make in those areas before making an investment. And so examples of this for us, and we've announced, for example, one of our early investments in Footwork Fund one in a company called Via, which is in the e-commerce infrastructure software space. That space is one where Mike and I”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we have of relationships that are human not transactional, that is also showing up very strong on the field. I mean, we like people. We like to spend time with founders. I think we ask really good questions. I think we're very good thought partners. And I do think that just how we're showing up on the field in the early days of footwork, we're getting terrific feedback from founders that it is kind of a differentiated approach.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That wasn't attached to a firm. And I do think that my differentiated experience as an operator, there aren't that many people of any people that have sat in the seat that joined a company as employee number five, as a C-level executive, went through the challenges of building a company, as we mentioned, tough fundraising environment, really, really hard to scale from zero to two billion in the speed that we did it play a number of different roles that the company is COO three different times, CFO three different times, and actually CEO twice when Katrina took full 16-week parental leaves. And that to us is showing up with founders very, very strong because Nikhil has a track record of doing a lot of different deals in SaaS and consumer tech and showing success there. And my experience as an operator isn't just regular experience as an operator. And I think founders are really resonating with how we both show up. There's also a core value.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I could double click on that a little bit. I mean, first of all, it's really interesting now being more in the ecosystem, in the investor ecosystem, where I see pitches now for new funds that are getting started and they talk about investor operator combo. And I think that what is different about us are the specific experiences we had and the success we've had in each of our individual lanes that is very differentiated. So I'll brag on the kill a little bit. I mean, he's in a very unique cohort of investors that are still early in their investing career that have invested capital at scale. So over $100 million to capital invested at costs that have outstanding returns, he can do this for decades more. And that's not a regular investor. I mean, there's a handful of people that have a track record like that. And frankly, he was the only one.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of them is this combination that we have in terms of operating and investing experiences and how we think that can add value to companies, but also how we think that differentiates how we source investments, how we make investment decisions. And so that is core to footwork today in Mike and my combination. But as we think about the firm five, ten years from now, 15 years from now, we want that combination to continue to be reflected in footwork. And so that's principle number one of what we're building together.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get with us is they get us all in and they get both of us and they get both of our experiences. And it'll be interesting to see as we raise capital for fund two and fund three, how do we scale this? I mean, I think that's the most challenging part of a full equal partnership model. And when the GPs are on the field, how do you scale that kind of approach? But early on, we are showing up, I think, extremely well to founders because of our core values and principles, how we show up and where we can add value to teams. core is early stage really being hands-on and being true thought partners to founders as they scale their ideas.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, as Nikhil said, we raised $175 million. We are focused on the early stage of venture investing. So Series A and some seed investing. We look for early signs of product market fit. We have to see that in order to really understand what's working in a product or service and what, frankly, is not. Where is there friction so we can understand how scalable is the idea? And so we look for that. We like to lead or co-lead investment rounds. And so we like to get our ownership stakes up front. And we definitely take board seats because we feel like we have a lot to give. We have differentiated styles and differentiated approaches, but we think that those styles and approaches are really creative to founders and founding teams. And so the way we work organically is one of us will take the board seat and the other one will be a board observer. But what founders and teams”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mike and I had been on the board of a company called Imperfect Foods Together, which is an online grocery delivery business starting in 2017. I had been part of the Seed and Series A investments in Shasta, and Mike had joined the company as an independent board member. And we had shared car rides to and from those board meetings, we had discussed working together beginning in 2017 and 2018. But last year, I reached out to Mike and said, would you think about building a venture firm? Because I knew that Partners, and then in January of 2021, Mike left Stitchfix, and in April we closed our first fund with $175 million in commitments and are now off the races. So that's the footwork Genesis story.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The journey for us started just over a year ago when I left Shasta Venches and I had been thinking for a while before leaving that I wanted to go build a new venture. And the question for me became what type of firm to build? And even more importantly, who to build it with? And so I embarked on a process where I did a bunch of writing for myself about the venture ecosystem and where it's headed. I've published some of those pieces of writing into blog posts along the way as well about things like solo capitalists, about the bifurcation of our industry and to agglomerate of firms and specialist firms. The second part was coming up with a list of questions to go through with potential partners to figure out what we wanted to build and to figure out where we were aligned on values and principles, but also where we were different. As part of that process, what the questions that the reason that I got so excited about paying Mike was”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then, frankly, we had a really challenging time raising capital for stitch fix. I got to see some tougher parts of the asset class where I felt like venture capitalists weren't understanding our story. I thought I had more to give. So that's one of the primary reasons that I got into venture capital was I thought that as an operator, the specific seat I got to sit in at Stitchfix taking the company from five people to 10,000 people from basically zero revenue to two billion and also just the kind of challenges that we had in the ecosystem. I felt like I had a lot to give to founders and hopefully to founding teams as a venture capitalist based on my operating experience. So that's one of the primary reasons I got into it. But then there are all these personal reasons too. Nikhil's the primary reason. I think he's just a very, very special person and amazing investor.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“People to over 12,000 people. And I was responsible for as chief operating officer for 10,000 of those 12,000 people. And it was just an amazing experience of hyper growth. Now, at the time, I thought it was a startup. And I think when you actually get to work at a real startup like I did in my next journey at Sitchvix, you recognize startups are very different when you actually have to go raise your own capital. But I had an amazing run there and then joined Stitchfix when we were just four people. I met Katrina Lake and just was blown away by her and was there for nine years. And I do think that both those experiences in particular, the walmart.com experience and the stitchfix experience really drew me into venture capital. I again really loved the early stage and hyper growth that comes from the most successful startup companies. I love the learning that comes from those kinds of experiences.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, I feel really lucky to have just amazing mentors and great experiences on the operating side. As you mentioned, Beeser. And so I grew up in Virginia. I went to University of Virginia for undergrad and then moved out to California after a few years of consulting to go to business school at Berkeley. And similar to Nikhil, a little later in life than 13, got to experience venture capital and understand the ecosystem of founders and the ecosystem of startups. And I was just blown away. I kind of found my way six years after business school of not having found exactly my swim lane of what I wanted to do had this amazing experience at walmart.com where I joined in the first like 100 people were at the division at the time, 150 million in sales is what we had done and got an amazing nine-year run of helping build walmart.com from 150 million in sales to 5 billion in sales take the company from 100”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So at Shasta, the first couple companies that I got to be a part of in the 2012, 2013, 2014 era were Class Dojo, which is an education technology company, and Canva, which is a design software company. In Class Dojo's case, we led the Series A at Shasta. And in Canva's case, we were part of the seed round. And so those were the first couple investments, both of which have fortunately gone well since.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sounds wonderful. I got to move to the San Francisco Bay Area when I was 13 years old and I never heard of entrepreneurship or venture capital until I moved here from the UK and suddenly I was exposed to it at a young age. And so fast forward a couple of years I started a company during college. I got exposed to venture capital from that side of the world. And I was just fascinated by it. And the light bulb went off for me that at some point in my life and in my career, I'd love to go to the other side of the table and to get to try investing. And I had that opportunity to do so at Insight Partners starting in 2010. I spent a couple of years there and then moved to Shasta Ventures and to early stage investing back out here in the Bay Area in 2012 and spent the past eight years at Shasta before starting footwork with Mike. And so just feel fortunate to have gotten exposed to venture capital at a young age, to have started.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our job to go out there and try to find the funds that we think are going to overperform, be it within our existing portfolio or ones that are not there yet. And we do look at a number of first-time funds. They just have some special advantages. I don't know if that's a polite thing to say to the rest of the world, but you have this marriage of Nikhil's investing acumen, and Mike is a phenomenal operator. I mean, you can read his resume and just see what it says on the words when you speak and do the references. Everybody wants to work for him. I mean, at the end of speaking to him, I wanted to work for him. So he's very powerful in that way. And there's something about bringing that operating experience and integrating it into the fund. They're doing in a slightly different way than other funds. It's leading with who they are first versus tacking on an operator on the side and saying, oh, you'll get a little extra opinions on this two or three hours a week. But this is really much more of how they go to market and who they are.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We knew Nikhil, so that's the base of the knowledge, and we had experienced him in how he thinks about deals. So a lot of it was trying to get to know what that meant for footwork and for bringing in Mike and who Mike was as a person. He's probably, I think one of the first investments we made in someone we'd never met in person, which is a thing during COVID, not a thing beforehand. We have since met him in person and more than lives up to any of the glory of Zoom, in fact. The resonance is even stronger in person. So a lot of it was gained to know the deals. They had done some deals together. It's always a question not just what you've done as far as dollars invested, but why someone likes a deal. It really speaks to us about what makes this manager different, how they think of a deal, how they think of the space. It's in those kinds of questions we understand who they are as an investor because that's the blind pool bet. I mean, Mike and Nikhil can tell you what they think of the world, but until you see what they do and how they get their spot on the cap table, you don't know what's happening.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Excellent question. So we've known Nikhil now, I say almost going on four years, late 2016, 2017, I think, when he was investing with Shasta. You know, it was one of our jobs as an LPs to keep our eye out for getting to know great people and keeping an eye on them. So when we met him, we were instantly impressed, I'll be honest, the second you talk to him, it's crystal clear his investment acumen around the consumer space and the consumerization of enterprise. Gotchnome during his time at Shasta when he left Shasta, we heard about it and reached out to him again, our job is to keep tracking potential folks out there. And we are really excited to hear about him joining up with Mike Smith and launching footwork. So there you have it.”
2021-09-23 · Capital Allocators · Mike Smith and Nikhil Basu Trivedi – Footwork Ventures (Manager Meetings, EP.12) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source