YouSaid · the spoken record

Miles Grimshaw

lines on the record: 92
first: 2023-09-18
most recent: 2023-09-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Give you three Dylan and Figma, Zachaplaid, and Alex at scale. Got to know all three of them really early. And I just struggled.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe kind of test accounts. They didn't even have the full banking license yet. But it's a feedback loop, right? To strengthen confidence in the idea that a ferocious founder with a no hold back all the elements attack on a market can break through in ways you did unimaginable in many ways. Tom like really did that. You know, he did everything from get a full banking license to build out all the technology from scratch. And this is where for me, it's a story of a founder, again, incredibly mission driven, incredibly mission driven and ferocious, where it's all against that. Like there's so many marginal and incremental decisions a team makes and like they're all that way that sort of totality of mission ever found at a breakthrough. And to me, it's like a feedback loop on how special that can be as well.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“70 million cool checking account users in the UK. Monza now has 7 million accounts. It's like a tenth of the British population has signed up to this thing. And both of these, by the way, like Benchling was five people. Monza was probably more like 30 people, but about like 5,000.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I think if you realized it would probably GitHub a segment, if you look at unrealized, maybe benchling or monzo. And so on benchling or monzo, it's funny, you learn two very different things. Benchling really is a visceral felt story of the power of someone perfectly matched to a totally new market and a story of what could maybe seem like a small market because it's a vertical market, getting opened up and being the leading provider to grow with that market. If you want a positive feedback loop to small but growing markets with high degrees of market share in them and a founder perfectly matched to dominate that market and what could be possible, it gives you a feedback loop for that lived reality. Monza, the exact opposite in many ways in that is banking. It's a UK outside the UK audience that might not have barely heard of Monzo because it's a UK phenomena. But in the UK there are something like 60.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's zero sum by any stretch of the imagination. The end of that in a given year, even for that percentage is like three companies, right? And so it's not like we're doing 30 that win. So the n is small and there's a lot of new companies formed each year. I don't think of us as competitive, I think. To our point earlier, some people maybe think of us later. And there's no such thing as too early for when we invest. There's no such thing as not enough traction.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's something like 50 60% of all the investments we make. We're the first partner. 30-odd percent, we're like literally the first investment. You know, we don't use the term incubation, but I think probably about a third of investments are at inception. It's not to say that's really the focus. There are occasionally exceptions”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We really don't think about it very much. She would hit the spreadsheet of our investments. Almost all the capital we invest is the very first time we partner. And yeah, we have reserves, tough times happen. Who knows what, right? Like we certainly have reserves, but we don't reserve with a mindset of buying more later. We don't reserve with a mindset of, hey, we started, we got some ownership now. We're going to try and buy some later. We're either fully in and it's a whole commitment and that's what we're doing or we're not in. And so we don't reserve with a future investment orientation.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we do a lot of that. Hey, come join this. Hey, let's go meet together. There's ultimately one person who takes a board seat, right? But it is a, again, we're an equal partnership, so it's a whole firm commitment. No person is incentivized to help move one thing versus another. A founder really gets the whole partnership, but obviously they have a principal relationship, a dominant relationship with one person. But we're constantly pulling each other and actually just before I came here, a founder who works with Bill Gerlay, I spent some time with recently and sent me a text like remembering something I'd said to him on a line because he was using it again and again. And so we're always pulling each other into current investments, future investments.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, you're looking here, but the Domino chain is sort of happening conceptually in the market. And so I'll sort of happily take that and go on that journey. If you feel like the dominoes are really falling.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's dangerous to this sort of like, I don't know if you go back to sort of philosophy and economics as this idea of like normative versus positive, right? Normative how things should work positive is like how they do work. I think it's dangerous in many ways in a visa to think other worlds should work this way. And now I'm looking for people who also think the world should work this way but don't really have the strategy from cracking that open or there's not a dislocation that opens up the window for that to happen. And so I think that can be on the flip side sometimes you think the world should work a certain way and a company's got an advantage in a moment in time of which it isn't working that way. Sometimes that also doesn't happen like the world doesn't correct itself. And so I think that can be dangerous coming back to the user working backwards sort of from that I think can put you in that mindset of that adoption question and like timing can sometimes be how can you reach them and those sorts of things. I think you can sort of puzzle through that in a way. Force of will can do a lot, but you've got to feel like the dominoes got tilted.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You might call I don't harshly think about it as much from sort of a timing lens, so much as the investigation and the thinking of like what's different, what's new, what's a dislocation, what's emergent.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The ability to when a fanner comes to a creative act to sort of try and make change is the cool of being able to really get going.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Which is the core bulk of that. No recruit is like just on how much money can I make? That's a very mercenary recruit too. So the mission matters who are they working for matters and the team and it's so like a recruiter's thinking about it in a holistic way. And so we actually just had a partner meeting the other day. One of my partners was literally before asking any other question asked my other partner, can you recruit for that? Are you excited to recruit for that? Really is a cool one for me. If you say, okay, Miles, what do you really look for when you're making a new investment more within best to speak? I think the biggest one is what's changing? Where's there a gap? What's new either from their perspective? What's a gap in the market that's opening up? And change begets the opportunity for new, begets the opportunity for dislocation. And then you've got to have a founder who is authentic to that, a strategy that can get on the field and work in interesting ways with that business model that you think can be valuable upon success within that. But that change.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nothing you can ignore by any stretch of the imagination. But when you're in these early stages, and I'd call early suddenly even tens of millions of revenue, not just like one, you're setting up systems, you're setting up learnings and systems for the future to repeatability and scale in the right way. Other successful revenue can be empty calories. If you think about it as a diet, you want to make sure you've got a good diet, not empty calories. And so anyway, back to the sort of aspects of it. I really think it's an integrated system. And so the real question I think about a lot, which gets to that sort of holistic nature of it, is how do I imagine recruiting for this? If you think about the journey after investing, I'll probably do many hundreds of recruiting calls between exec interviews as they change exec teams on that journey between individual ICs that I might help out with early on. If you then add in other investors who are going to have talk to about the company, you're going to pitch the company hundreds and hundreds of times. And certainly just apply to the requirements.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm comfortable doing it. And in fact, I used to do more growth investing later stage investing. And I actually would always push myself and the team on the idea that we should have a point of view of what data should look like. We should be able to have strong theories absent any data. We should always start from like product and customer, not data. And data should be in some sense validation, not learning. Simply said maybe like data second investor. And so I'm quite happy doing that personally. I actually even think at early stages like data can be a trap. And I often say with companies I work with or companies I'll meet with like they'll be, oh, we're aspiring to get to X million of revenue. So we grow at Y% for the year. And I'm usually much more like, what do you really want to have proven in the year? What do you really want to have learned in the year? What would be the right customer adoption in the year? Often cases, I'd rather take less growth in the right ways than more growth in the wrong ways. So I don't personally see it that way.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This sort of pageantry of signing, winning, whatever, is if you think of investing as betting. I think you spend a lot more energy on the funnel and winning the first. It's like you're placing chips on a roulette table. And I don't think of it that way. I really think of the work we do as making a commitment, not a bet. And if you were to sit around our partnership meetings and the like, you really wouldn't hear the word bet come up very much in that regard. And I think if you listen to many people in the industry talk, you'll hear the word ben. I bet on this, I bet on that. You know, that's a bad bet all the time. And I think if you're more wired that way, you think of it more sort of as that funnel, sort of the sourcing funnel and coverage, you know, to make sure you get exposure to the best bets and sort of the signing of them being kind of the end of it is the most important. So those would be after the other two for me in which order I'll let others tell me.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They will have done great things absent, an investing partnership. Can it further supercharge that? I think so. But you can't coach height. Gotta have it. And so, yeah, I think the very best are very capable. But I think the very best with a great trusted partner as well, deeply committed to them can add to that. Go look at even the very best. Go look at Jeff Bezil for it. He's still got a board and he's still got partners who've been with him that entire journey.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'd say two one you should always have the Hippocratic oath do no harm. I've been in some board meetings where investors don't really get the product, don't really get the strategy that has to be pursued.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I see the aspiration and the job as really helping a founder make the very best decisions. It's always their decisions and it's them making the decisions. A couple really important decisions over the course of each year, times 10 over the course of 10 years, round number. You move those odds a little each time. That really adds up. To do that, I think you really need trust. Trust is the foundation of that. To do that, I think context, high amounts of context and high amounts of high bandwidth communication really filters in. Without trust though, you can share stuff and they're never going to listen. They're always going to doubt it. But I think trust with context, with high bandwidth communication, tilting those odds each time, leading to a more successful company through their decision making, but where they look back and say that partner really helped them get clarity, maybe help them see slightly differently, that they maybe added more clarity, slightly tilted a decision. I think really happens, and that's only what I aspire to.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you were to pocket it, I'd then say it's selecting And supporting. And that's where I derive all my energy and spend all my time.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Doing CS, and they're an amazing engineer. And if I went into their world on architectures, languages, frameworks, technologies, I wouldn't know some of the later stuff they might know about. And simultaneously, though, if someone was dismissive of that idea, right, of customer retention, right? If they were dismissive of that idea and didn't care for the concept, obviously, or whatever else, okay, we've got a problem. If they know that to be true, they just don't necessarily know some of the terminology yet because they haven't done that and they're willing to acknowledge that versus hide it. That's a superpower.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Regardless of whether we did or didn't make the investment kind of thing, we won't show any more. It's not a binary condition for me now. There's all sorts of situational costs. If the person's 35, okay, we've got a different situation on hands, right? They've had 13 years stereotypically in career at that point. If the person is 21,”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think the rate of learning and the willingness to engage in that discomfort, right? Learning is an exciting thing, but kind of an uncomfortable thing to be not knowing very much. And my partner, Eric, has this great saying, which I really like around this, which is that the very best entrepreneurs are always making mistakes. The really great ones are just making new mistakes each time. And I think there's a lot of truth to that. And so that slope and pace is the most important.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I certainly think it is a challenge. I'll shed two thoughts around it. One is a fun story and then how we think about, in some sense, the very best founders. A fun story. A founder came and pitched us, came to the partnership and presented a while back. And we were talking about strategy going forward and how to think about it. And one of my partners sort of goes, well, when you think about kind of the LTV of a customer, the important thing might be to end the founder goes, sorry, what's LTV? And you might say, wow, that's like kind of embarrassing. It's pretty LTV. But they're an engineer. And this was a company at its infancy. But the fact that they're willing to say, I don't know and quickly learn and grock it is really, I think, like the most important thing, that rate of learning. And in fact, I'd say most of us saw it as a strength after that pitch. It would be easy for us to say speak of imperfect pitches, right? It would be easier for us to say that was like a no-ga. They don't know what that is. They haven't lived in that world, and that's okay. Like, they're going to learn it.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of course, you don't know exactly how the expedition is going to go and the metaphors, but like, it should be looking forward, not an examination of the state of today. The examination of today is only a means of sort of taking stock to think about where we're going. That's the experience that should be felt. And I think you can feel that and engage in that in any 60 minute conversation. And if it's great, the founder, you know, should say, let's do more.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you can create, even if it was at a short amount of time, you can create that feeling when we're our best, every founder who spends time with us should really be able to say they got a lot out of that meeting. And I'd encourage all founders to take advantage of us, right? Like sometimes I'll only pitch benchmark when I got the perfect pitch. Like that's silly. That doesn't need to be the case. We're also unique in that you might end up pitching other investors multiple times because they have growth funds or cost and all this other stuff. We're only early. You get sort of a chance of it, but also we're not going to rejudge you in the future based on what you taught us now, whereas other funds might. And so take advantage of us, and it should feel like we really work hard and aspire to have it feel like the founder got a lot of that meaning. And the way they get a lot out of that meeting, hopefully, is you really stepped into their shoes together. And there's a certain amount of obviously context you've got to assimilate quickly, right? Like what they're working on, who their customer is, who their aspirational customers, et cetera. But very quickly, trying to move to being in the shoes together, planning that expedition, looking forward.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's not an ass. So it is. You can make it an S. Sourcing, selecting, signing, supporting. And then I think of it as summiting. There's no such thing as an end summit, a peak summit. You could call it separating. But actually there is, it's only a great investment in some sense when share.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we have no teal flow list, no sheet, there's no memos, there's no data room presentations, there's no agenda, there's just a time block, conceptually about 10 a.m. to about 3 p.m. or so. And we just hang out. Bizarre in some sense. You're used to, you know, in any other format, any other company, you might say, who owns this meeting? What's the agenda? But it's a chance really to come together and share learnings from the week. Obviously talk about new opportunities and new things we're seeing, inviting entrepreneurs to come and meet with us. But there's kind of a trust in free flowing, trust in each other and a trust in just having that time block and therefore learning in it together, sharing in it together. And if something's important, we're going to get through it. We don't necessarily need to put on the agenda. So in many ways, very different, but very freeing in that sense.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Wasn't sort of like entry indoctrination, or you know, or whatever. In many ways, it was probably like UBU. Be you totally kind of unfiltered and as authentic as you are. And the best version of you be the best investor. Trust in that. And I think in many ways when you get rid of structure, there's no like level to be had or nothing like that. Just be yourself is in some sense the hardest. And if anything, it was sort of the freedom and the push to really be that.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The third one, again, the greatest gift to things you sort of carry with you as ways of being what I might call impatiently patient, a duality that almost shouldn't exist. Why not now? Why not yesterday, like hyperactive all the time, but still a really high standard and really patient for the long term? And so that combination of fully present, fully engaged, new and active, but also like high standards are not rushed. And that duality he really lives and having a mentor like that early on who can show you that through their lived experience is a really powerful thing to carry with you.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think an appreciation of will over skill. It's really a gift of a confidence in someone's work ethic and determination. And yes, they have to have the mental capacity and the intellectual capacity and all those things, right? But you can know that in somewhat. But the person who will love it and is passionate about it, you know, I have six younger siblings. Sometimes I think about what lessons I'd like to potentially impart as I go sort of on them. And you think about these days everyone talks about follow your passion. And I kind of believe that for sure, but I believe it for the reason not where everyone else necessarily talks about it, but you should follow your passion because you just work harder. If you think about compounding 10 extra hours a week, 50 hours a year, 500 hours, you know, not far into the future, you've learned more. You've caught up, you're better and you're always improving yourself. And so that belief in, yes, you can, that belief in sort of will over skill in many ways leads to a really powerful compounding of individuals' abilities.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe I'd say three things that jump out to me as lessons from Josh. And one from Josh would really be kindness and competitiveness don't have to be oil and water in business. And sometimes the cliches treat those as opposite poles of a magnet. You're either a pushover or you're doggedly. He really showed that they can be in harmony. And that's a really special thing. So kindness and competitiveness. Another would be sort of this idea like, yes, you can. Belief in someone's potential and someone's possibilities is such an amazing gift. He suddenly gave me that gift and I've watched him give many others that gift, many founders that gift of like, yes, you can. Real belief in their potential. It's a beautiful thing to give someone and it's an amazing way to go through the world and keep with you.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely, and obviously there's relative in it, but the element of, in many ways, all of these were still sort of being fussed. The thing I remind myself, if it was 2013 and 2012 again, is like, it's so early in all of that.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At Shopify. I was at a conference the other day spending some time with him, and I showed him. I remind him of this, and he dug up the email. He was like, yep. It's a lesson I give to so many founders now. Like, you should always be proactively recruiting. This was 2014. And so it wasn't like if I was small anymore. So always be proactive. But anyway, we have a Shopify versus Etsy. There should never be a versus. It should just always, in some sense, been and. Like there was such a big force that so much was still coming online. You tell yourself, don't try to be too smart in many ways in some of it all.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One would be I knew it at the time, but if you don't have as much historical context, it's sometimes hard to necessarily really fully appreciate the wave in terms of context and history and specialness that you're on. If you go and look, call it 2012 to like 2022-ish timeframe. Cloud spend went from like 10 billion to 300, 400 billion. There's a chart that, you know, the banks put out, right? It's sort of like McKinsey. This is AWS spend and, you know, Zua spend the customer and all of the cloud. Like 10 to like 300. But over that 10 year period, that's what happened. And that is just a tectonic shift. And I knew I was spending a lot of time in cloud developer products, cloud application products. But I remember at one point I wrote this sort of analysis of like this was before they went public. Shopify versus Etsy. And funny enough, actually, Harley, the COO of Shopify, actually emailed me, cold emailed me having read this little post saying, hey, you want to come like work?”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tumblr days Foursquare, you know, in New York City at the time, Wobby Parker, Harry's, MakerBot, GroupMe, and a number of others. The movie of the time of inspiration was probably was the Facebook movie. This is what inspired me to venture. Yeah, exactly. The idea that you could be a kid and you could build something in college. You sort of felt like you got handed all these superpowers and could choose. And there was this question at the time of could you have a silicon alley? Could there be tech built outside of the valley? And I was in the East Coast and spending a lot of time in New York and I got to meet Josh and this guy Will Gabrick and they were so setting up Thrive and we just started spending a lot of time together talking about ideas, pursuing them trying to help founders and it was infectious, that excitement. And so they invited me to join the team as I finished up. Serendipity met and been running ever since.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Into the blood in many ways. And then fast forward, you know, I didn't know what the job was to do things with those sorts of people per se, but I knew that was really intoxicating. And fast forward to tail end of college, New York City and sort of app development, you know, was having a really vibrant moment. In some sense, it was sort of really early in cloud, obviously. This is like 2010, 2011, 2012.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Worth whining the clock back a little further than just there, sort of where the motivation, the inspiration kind of incepted in many ways. I actually grew up in the UK. We're here recording in the UK. And I went to the US because my parents remarried. And my stepfather is very much a father to me, was an entrepreneur. He founded one of the very first e-commerce software companies taking that public in the dot-com. And when we moved over to the US, he was starting another company out of our living room, our kitchen table, actually. And it was like two people, him and a friend, and then three people and then four people and then five people. And I started to really know what it was in many ways, but it was like really inspiring to come home from school and see him working with friends and working hard and talking about new ideas. It was e-commerce software again. And so at that point, in many ways, the American dream was his lived experience. He's a Korean immigrant. American dream was sort of mine in some sense coming to the US from the UK. And that love of being around people like him and his friends who were creating kind of just go.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
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2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
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2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“General partner at Benchmark, widely considered one of the best firms in Venture, and before Benchmark, Miles was a general partner at Thrive Capital, where he led investments in Airtable, Monzo, Lattice, GitHub, segments, Slack, and Benchling, to name a few. But before we dive into the show state, this episode is brought to you by Tigus, the go-to research destination for bold investing. Tiga's curace, expert in science, analysis and financial data to give you powerful perspective for your investment decisions with Lightning Fast access to over 60,000 transcripts across 20,000 companies you'll discover a wealth of unique insights to fuel your fundamental research, gain perspectives, synthesize information, and even model outcomes all on Tigas as a 20-minute VC listener, try it for free at Tigus.com forward slash gross, and speed you tools we can't live without like Tigus there, mayfare helps companies protect and grow their cash automatically.”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you say, okay, Miles, what do you really look for when you're making your investment? I think the biggest one is what's changing? What's new either from their perspective, what's a gap in the market that's opening up, change but gets the opportunity for new but gets the opportunity for dislocation. I actually even think in early stages like data can be a trap. The very best entrepreneurs are always making mistakes. The really great ones are just making new mistakes each time. Oh my god, I am so excited for this show. So seven years ago, I met Miles Grimshaw in London. He was an investor at Thrive Capital in New York, not long out of Yale. I was an unemployed podcaster about 100 shows into 20 VC at the time. And I always remember the meeting. Not only was it the start of a great franchise, but he's one of the most insightful and strategic thinkers in Vanchur. I've wanted to make this episode happen ever since that meeting seven years ago. It's probably the longest wait time for a single episode, but I'm so thrilled to make this one happen. Miles now is a”
2023-09-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source