YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Volpi

lines on the record: 81
first: 2019-08-19
most recent: 2019-08-19
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

“They get all your privacy and you get delivery in one day. Service is fantastic. You get a free map. They gave you a free map and some email. They get all your information and they monetize it and they have 26 houses in Palo Alto. I'm sparky. I just feel like they have better envy of the envoy.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What is it? Siskel and Ebert here? No. You know, the good news about good partners is you don't have to agree on Cisco. I am more in the camp of like there are certainly certain things that need regulation as in like privacy needs some regulation. But I don't know that necessarily breaking up the big companies is A, good for the United States, good globally because fundamentally I get a fantastic service from Amazon and from Google. I love my Google Amazon services.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The reason we're fucked is because you're so big. It's an interesting, you know, that's their argument is we need to be this big in order to fight. And I thought the only way you fight is through more startups and competition and competition of ideas.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I actually When I see there's no new social media companies, no new search companies, no new lots of areas that need to have new fresh thinking. And then the argument you get from these big tech companies is we need to be this big to fight China.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think they have parts of it. Yeah, so I think that's not flippant and laissez-faire and big companies are great and actually if the more regulatory scrutiny there is, it will only benefit the larger companies. I don't buy that. I actually think there's more work to be done to figure out which parts of these businesses are giving them such a competitive advantage that it's crushing the opportunity for the consumer to get better products.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my opinion is I think that it's worth investigating more if a breakup does make sense or not. Like if there is so much monopolistic benefit for very few companies that fundamentally it's really crushing the innovation and the opportunities that smaller companies have. So I'm actually open and I think that the EU might be more in line with regulatory scrutiny on these companies and making sure.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First, Discord started as a game, and then they realized okay, this game is not going to work. We're going to create a communication platform for gamers. And lo and behold, they created something that gamers love. And they hang out there while they play games in between games. And it's become part of, you know, I was reading an article today where it's Discord is the church where gamers worship. It really has become part of the whole gestalt of being a gamer. But what's happened is as a result of the way that Facebook has handled things and the question of trust, Discord is now much more mainstream and has actually been adopted by folks in every industry and people have Discord servers and their community are migrating from Reddit, migrating from Facebook. And lo and behold, Discord now has to figure out how to handle these people. Right.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's also interesting, you know, one of our companies, I don't know if you've met Jason Citro ⁇ n from Discord. I don't know if you've spent any time with Discord. Explain what's going on. But it's really interesting. I mean, Discord started first. Explain what it does.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“At some point, you grow up as an organization, and you have to come to the realization that you have a social responsibility. That parallels your sort of need to survive. And I think a lot of companies sort of super grow, and they get to the point where they're still fighting a survival battle and they forget or never learn or never understand that they have a social responsibility. And the tech lash is basically giving them a cold shower and saying, wake up, you have a social responsibility.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think TechLash is an important issue to think about, but I do think it principally has to do with the larger companies for now. And that's basically because when you're small, you're fighting for survival and you do everything to just win the battle that day.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“100%. 100%. But that doesn't matter. It's easy. It's a very easy thing. And you get good enough returns, and sometimes it's just, you know, you just happen to be lucky. All right, I want to finish up asking you about tech lash and the challenges from places like China from venture capitals there. There's a lot of difficulty for Chinese investors to invest here or own parts of companies. How do you look at the tech lash that's going on? It's not really hitting venture capital. It's more the big giant companies from Washington, the attention. But is that going to affect your world?”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think Time you Excel. It's also a matter of convenience and speed. If you're looking for convenience and speed, I think people do a lot of things for convenience they shouldn't do. Marguerite Vestager said this to me actually interesting. You always trade convenience for good. You know what I mean? Like that you get something faster or it's easier. That's how we pattern it. And the good is good enough so it doesn't matter. You don't see that there's other talent.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think part of the issue is that this whole business of venture and funding. It's very much about pattern matching. So you pattern match to look for partners in your firm, you pattern match to look for entrepreneurs, and with every entrepreneur that you've looked at and every partner you've had as a male, You sometimes not even knowingly have a bias for that. And I think you have to sort of almost hit the refresh button every time you walk into a room with an entrepreneur, every time you're interviewing a candidate, every time you have an internal meeting with people and just say, wait a minute, am I behaving in a way that allows a person of a different background to excel? It's also a matter.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think the problem is that people woke up too late to the reality that this should have been transformed years ago. I mean, and now it's a question of catch up and making sure that it's an environment where women feel like they're getting the same opportunity and that they feel welcome and that they can actually blossom. I mean, I think that's the biggest fundamental problem, I think, is related to time and how late things started to change.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Our partner, Sarah Cannon, reminds us that intelligence is distributed unequally between the genders. Yes, it is. And as it turns out, or maybe females are smarter. That's the case, but go ahead. And certainly the industry doesn't represent that, either in the venture capital business or in the entrepreneur business is probably worse from a funding.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“What's going on there, right? The other thing, though, Karen, I think that's important is a lot of entrepreneurs are not static in who they are. I mean, if you look at, say, Bill Gates, he might not have been a nice guy 20 years ago.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I mean, I think those types of circumstances, I haven't personally encountered one where I thought it was egregious. You know, there's people who have taken out five or ten million dollars because unfortunately buying a house in Palo Alto does cost you that much these days But not too much in the success of that. And I would be very worried about it. There's also a caveat emptor part of this, right? Which is like somebody's buying those shares and you got to be asking yourself like, hello.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think, I mean, I think that, first of all, it's not true for every entrepreneur because it has to be correlated to the amount of ownership that they have in the company. And many times the ownership that they have is does not give them that chance. Second one is that it is true that in many cases the entrepreneur has such a longer-term view of what the business can do that they're really thinking, look, I want to make sure that I'm surrounded by people who are going to not second guess me and not think of the liquidity event, but actually are here for the long ride. So I think part of it is just finding the partner who believes in what you're doing and is willing to support you in that way. I mean, I have one entrepreneur, this guy named Jack Conti, one of our themes is sort of the creative class and the fact”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The source of capital that is least focused on that governance and says, you can have my votes, you can have all your friends on the board, and I'm okay with that as long as you take my money. And that does happen. And in some circumstances, we Face a choice of like we either have to give away the house and let the entrepreneur run with it or we send our ground. And I think more often than not, we try to select entrepreneurs who we feel like are willing to treat us like partners in the journey.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Today, Well, except that that has bad impact. I mean, I look at two things. One is the ability of entrepreneurs, and I talked about this earlier with Scott Cooper, was the ability, and he doesn't like it either, of them to be able to say have full control of the board, a founder controlled board. And then you lead to the situation at Facebook where he's unfireable and doesn't have any scrutiny that he deserves. And, you know, you look at them staying private longer because they feel like doing it and they didn't have the scrutiny of Wall Street. You can look at Uber's problems directly related, the fact that they weren't under scrutiny. And they got to misbehave with the venture capitalists looking the other way. Is that a good thing for those founders? I know they need to be protected, but I don't think they do. I think that's just they just want control.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Two, there was a very nice definition used to be like, these people do Series A's and these people do Series B's, and these spoke. Now it's all blown up. Everybody does everything else. There's a massive amount of capital. And with that capital has come a degree of professionalism. Which means very data driven, very analytical, highly competitive, and essentially I actually think that if you look in the long term, the balance of power has shifted away from venture capitalists to entrepreneurs. No doubt about it. I once talked to Don Valentine and I asked him what his Cisco deal was. And he said it was a four pre $3 million in. That deal would never ever happen today, right? So you have this long time horizon where entrepreneurs are gradually gaining the upper hand because our product is becoming more and more commoditized.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, we're in the midst of it. We're sort of in the midst of a big change. I think that if you harken back like, you know, 30 years ago when I got started in this business, venture capital was a few firms on Sandhill Road that nobody had ever heard of. And there's a bunch of things that have changed. One is we've become a branded product, right? Entrepreneurs are very sensitive to the brand that we offer and so forth.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, the intent is that venture capital and the Silicon Valley style of investing, which really started here 50 years ago, is now a global phenomenon, and we want to make sure that folks get to appreciate it in Europe and in the US. So that's really what we're all about. It's an interesting question in terms of what's going to disrupt venture capital.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Pretty much everything that involves AI machine learning, essentially using that, not necessarily in the cutting edge of MLA, but using that to make businesses better, particularly enterprise businesses. Danny gets to work with very fancy founders doing cool stuff, and I have to work with the nerds. But that's okay.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you So Of goat, and It's really interesting. I bought some Game of Thrones sneakers apparently from the Sun. I did not. I was like, I'll be fine with these treorns, but it was interesting. It was really interesting because I never see my kids react so much to retail, which they don't, you know, in general. But Sneaker, that store was really interesting to me. So retail, you talked about urban mobility, any other areas?”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but it is what's new about it is that it used to be quite segmented and it wasn't many people. Now it's really mainstream. And you see it with the fact that, you know, when we invested in goat, the global number for sneaker sales was valued at a billion dollars. And you have three players today that are going to be doing something like $3 billion themselves. So it just gives you a sense of how mainstream these trends have happened. So Flight Club is the physical presence of GOAT, and Goat is the online marketplace for buying and selling, guaranteed authentic.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Nice Well, Flight Club is part of Goat, which is a sneaker marketplace. So, you know, basically folks are becoming quite tribal in the way that they recognize one another for their expression through clothes. That's just a fact”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And you go there They're on the wall. They're just surrounded by all these Do you have one in LA, too, right? Correct. Yes, I've been there. I've spent quite a lot of money there. There you go. You wrap like sneakers in plastic, like, and they're on the wall. That's right. I've been there. Yeah. It was right near the other store where I spent $150 on the sweatshirt. Tyler.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I don't know how to put it. It's the next generation of stores. I mean, actually, what's fun is that we have two companies that are really innovating in stores in New York about two blocks from one another. One is Glossia and the other one's Flight Club. Slight club is for sneakers. And you go there. And you have these, I mean, it's quite intimidating. You're just surrounded by all these basketball players. And they were looking at me and like, what are you doing here? You don't fit at all. Get out of here.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I hated that there was so. She's like, There's lots of cleansers. And I was just like, no, it's the best you'll have. I'm like, whatever, lots of cleansers. And then I tried, I'm like, oh, she's right. And I wrote her note. I go, fuck you. It's really good.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, she's a, I mean, what Emily and the team have developed is exactly what we're talking about, which is, first of all, she's an authority. She's not an influencer. She's not a celebrity. She's an authority. She's been placed on this earth to build. This business. So she knows a ton, and she's got so much credibility when it comes to it And then, second of all, she owns the entire supply chain. So she's listening to her audience and really refining exactly what they want and then delivering it. And so what's interesting to see, as you said, there are very few SKUs, but there's no hero skew with Glossier. The customer really loves what it's all about.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When you're on that cutting edge of trend, you can get really cut quickly. So, when you think about that, are you in Glossier? So, you know, Katrina's on the board of Glacier. I interviewed Emily at an event. Talk about that business. I find it fascinating. They only have like a hundred skews. They test everything. They essentially test with customers. They're super slow to roll out. It's really, I'm fascinated by what they're doing. But can you talk, like when you think about an investment like that?”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It didn't work because fundamentally we didn't own the supply chain. That was the biggest lesson there, that in order to be a successful direct-to-consumer brand, you really have to learn everything from where it's being manufactured to where it's being packaged to where it's being delivered to who it's being delivered to. And we were just skimming the surface and actually repackaging product that was being developed by someone else. And as a result of that, we couldn't defend our margins as more and more folks looked at the way that Nasty Gal and Sophia was dressing everyone. And we're just literally copying everything we had to do.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then one would think it's up for grabs. I mean, fundamentally, the combination of very little loyalty to specific brands because they don't really offer much. And the fact that people don't really want to go into stores as much anymore. And you can learn everything you need to learn through YouTube videos means that a lot of folks are buying better products online. And so we think that a huge amount of the commerce landscape is going to be reinvented with these new brands, these new direct-to-consumer brands.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We still You want to talk about that one? Yeah, I mean, in the commerce area, obviously, well, it sounds like Katrina was just here and you've interviewed Emily. You know, we've been big believers in the fact that a lot of the beauty industry, which is an enormous industry that's closer to trillion.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And by the way, you have cities like Paris and New York where there's a good metro, but like my hometown, Milan, which is like a European city. Scooters are doing super well there because there is no public transport to speak of, right? We have two subway lines in the city of 3 million.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, what's good about it and bad about it in parts is where they have bike lanes, it's totally pleasant, excluding here in San Francisco. It's a really interesting, I'm thinking about the business. Like once you get the bike lanes in, and you can get helmets out to everybody. You know, there are injuries. I mean, I probably should. And by the way, you have, you know,”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was much more pleasant on a scooter. I'll tell you that. But the metro's quite good there. Now you have a very good public transportation. The buses are great. I'll tell you that. They come every two minutes.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So now they have to sort of urbanism has to catch up with the demand and the clear benefit of actually having these scooters around rather than having these huge cars everywhere that are stuck in traffic. So Paris is...”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But Kara, to your point, I mean, Paris is being figured out because fundamentally it's sort of a transportation revolution that's going on there. I mean, you saw the number of scooters and the number of people who are using them.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, too many brands in DC as well. But I think you're going to see consolidation because if you operate just in DC or you have the small number of vehicles, it doesn't really make sense. But at the end of the day, I think you have to have an alternative transport form like that.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You're the driver A company's perspective. You Necessarily going to be the same form. Yeah, the three-wheeled ones, the ones that work on bumpy streets. I have to tell you the bird experience in Paris was painful on so many levels. I think I got one of the older scooters there. And then, of course, the French are all up in arms about there's like 12, except there's 12 companies. I wrote a column about this because there were literally 12 companies. So it does change the urban landscape. And it's not the case in San Francisco. It's quite organized. Yeah, it's quite organized.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And that meant they broke a lot or they got stolen a lot. Now that the scooter companies and Bird has been the leader in this area have developed commercial grade scooters. The Unit Economics look super good. And I think people have been slow to realize that that change was afoot. And now I think that they're extremely promising. In fact, arguably in the case of scooters, you don't have to pay the driver because you're the driver. And so effectively, the rake is going to be a lot better from the company's perspective. So, you know, there are skeptics around it because they worry about issues of regulation and where you park these scooters and safety and so forth. And I think, you know, at the end of the day, Bird is like a two-year-old company. I think they're going to figure a lot of these things out. And, you know, frankly, in all the form factor is also, you think of a scooter a certain way today, but it's not necessarily going to be the same form.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, Travis tweeted this a little while ago, but fundamentally, it's all about the unit economics. And the first scooters were these sort of retail scooters that you could buy that weren't designed for everyday use 24 by 7. Right.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Why don't you get into that? I think it's a critically important point. It's urban mobility, something I write about a lot. I think it's a really interesting area. I'm not so sure of investment. I just was visiting Lyme, for example, just talking to the company, which was interesting. They're developing all kinds of different urban mobility solutions. So talk about Bird, because a lot of people think I love scooters, as you know, but some of these valuations seem to confuse people. Can you explain why you are putting that much money into something like that or why those valuations are so hard?”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because you have incumbents who have been taking advantage of consumers for a long time. Yeah, banks and insurance companies, mortgage companies and mortgage companies and whether it's overage fees or credit card fees or brokerage fees or you name it. There's fees everywhere. And it's an industry that's dominated by very large players who are too big to fail.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Meaning that, yeah, we think that the US has so much opportunity if you apply a different lens to it, that a lot of opportunities come to the forefront that a lot of our peers maybe are not viewing in the same way.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“China is an incredible market. We just didn't see the advantage that we had. In terms of understanding the culture, understanding the entrepreneurs, and really seeing what we could add. So it was really more about looking at the US actually as our China. Interestingly, I think from”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In Israel, we've done here and there, I would say, the venture capital market in Israel is very Israel-centric. So they have a very well-developed kind of insider market. You can make the decision to be full-time on the ground there, or you can be a little more of a tourist. Candidly, we're a little more of a tourist. So when these opportunities, Israeli founders take, for example, Elastic CEO, is Israeli, but he moved to Amsterdam to start the business. And that's where we found them. And occasionally we find Israeli founders that move to the US or otherwise. So we do cover the market, but we have not made the decision to have anybody on the ground there just because it's such an insider market there.”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, here's a very populated I think Israel is the only competitor to Silicon Valley that I can see in a very, you know, maybe China, of course, obviously. We'll get in that in a minute. What is happening there that's interesting? Do you invest there?”
2019-08-19 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Index Ventures' Mike Volpi and Danny Rimer · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT