YouSaid · the spoken record

Mitchell Green

lines on the record: 99
first: 2025-03-28
most recent: 2025-03-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Don't care. Some people argue back. And by the way, we passed on an analyst candidate. He emailed me and said, I am on like the Harvard varsity team of this and this. My rejection box is full. I reject your rejection. He got another interview. I was like, this letter is just like incredible. He actually, like, most people get rejected. Then 99.9% of people get rejected and you never hear from him again. This guy was like, no, I reject your rejection. Here's the reason why I think I'd be really good. Here are some really interesting companies that I think are interested in. This guy sounds pretty damn good. Like, why do we pass on him? They're like, oh, well, we were.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so, she's like, we have 10 years of amazing letters like this, 15 years. Let's start to put those out there, go on CMBC, like go on Bloomberg and entrepreneurs if you're on TV, you're now smart. We tend to be a pretty direct firm and like, actually, another thing that we pride ourselves on is fast nose. And I don't think enough people do. Tell an entrepreneur if it's not a fit. Tell them very quickly, don't waste people's time. People, I'd say at LPs, if we're not a fit for an LP, please tell me there's no reason for me to meet you two or three times and give you a bunch of data. I highly respect you have a call with somebody. And they're like, you know what? Like what you do, Mitchell. You guys just start off it for us. No problem. We at lead edge to all our analysts and associates and principals and VPs like drive down the fact that, hey, you talk to a company, like they've prepped for the median, they've done a bunch of work. Tell them. It's just not a fit. Like, don't drag it out a month. Don't drag it out two weeks.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that content we want to start to release to the public. Like we joke that's like, it's very funny that partners at Andreessen Horowitz who we're friends with or partners at benchmark or partners at first round have made the hierarchy of BSLET are kind of famous. Like we didn't actually make it famous. We just gave it to other people who distributed it. We should distribute our own content.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lots of things, but I would say the biggest thing we did is we started to call more and more non-Silicon Valley-based companies, our 1820 associates, 22, 24 year olds were like, dude, in Chicago, nobody knew who we are. And Indianapolis, nobody knows who you are. We need to get the brand out there. So we hired this amazing head of PR comms, Michaela, who had helped build Tusk Ventures for Bradley, who had probably built a pretty good brand over the couple years and were like, hey, Michaela, how do we get entrepreneurs in Madison, Wisconsin to like know who we are? We got 15 years of quarterly letters about the hierarchy of bullshit. By the way, other venture funds take viral. It's a book I'm reading. We literally have a foreign. It makes a good doorstop, good kindling in the winter for a fire.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, exactly. Look, I've got 80 employees. So, yeah. I'll tell you the best advice I ever got, and something I try to do every year at Lead Edge was from the founder of Excel KKR, which is a very good fund. And he said you should interview all your employees from admin to your other partners and basically ask them for feedback. Just be like, hey, if you were running the place, what would you do differently? Tell me everything you do in your job, green, red, or yellow. And so it's like, okay, well, I actually don't care what you do, green. I care what you do red because I want to get rid of those things. And like I've been doing that for three or four years and the feedback you get is just like incredible.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the odder now, but like it goes in waves. And I just like the amount of innovation that's happening and just like change. Like I get to meet really interesting founders. Some of them are going to change the world. Some of them are going to sell budget planning software to the Atherton Police Department. That's fine. But they're building cool companies. I am an entrepreneur. When I went to Wharton Business School, I was involved in the entrepreneur conference. And we'd always bring in people that built software companies, built consumer companies. I was like, why don't we go get Steve Cohen or the guys who built giant money management firms? Like, Steve Cohen is an entrepreneur. Like, he started with a very small business, started by himself, and now runs one of the biggest hedge funds on the planet. Ken Griffin, same thing. I mean, like, they're like incredible entrepreneurs. The ability I get to spend my day meeting cool entrepreneurs is just like, it's not a job. It's like an amazing thing to do.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Humans are just like very resilient people that like adapt to change. I mean, I'm glad I became a software investor and not an energy investor. Energy, I don't know, it's been like a dying industry for the last 15 years.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When? I don't know. It might be like a slow, you know, it might be like a slow hole in the canoe, but eventually, yes, they will, yes, 100%.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't have any thesis. By the way, my thesis is meet six or eight criteria that I literally, the amount of pontification in the world, especially on Twitter by people that are like in the investment business, people should spend less tweeting, more investing time. Here's what I believe. What you tell your LPs, just make sure you stick to it and do it. That's actually the best advice I can give for any emerging fund manager. It's like, define what you're going to do and do exactly that. Don't stray from it at all.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we questioned our existence in 2021 as like we were just getting annihilated on prices. We questioned ourselves now and are like, are we totally wrong on AI? And we just don't get it. It's like, are there going to be one person companies way sooner than we think? Are all of our software companies going to be completely disrupted and all of them go away and like taking a stand that it's they're not? But I guess I could be totally wrong. I think a good any investor who says they know the answer to something, that's the best way to fail. And we just, you know, you got to stay intellectually curious.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think we should. I think it needs to be way highly regulated. By the way, suicide rates, depression rates, all this bullying, all these different metrics you look at are going one way up into the right. That social media is the demise of society.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's absolutely horrible. We need, I am a bite dance investor. To be clear, Bite Dance in the vast majority of their market is highly regulated. Like kids in China go on TikTok to read about science experiments and math projects. You know, in the States, I assure you that's not happening or in England. The media companies are regulated. There's a reason the BBC or the Discovery Channel or MBC can't sail out of the things that get set on social media. They're highly regulated. They're like regulated by the government. You get massive fines. Social media companies need to be held accountable for the content. There's a law. I'm just forgetting.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's getting worse. That closes revolutions, to be clear. But the thing that I actually worry about more near term that's solvable is social media for teenagers.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Two things income inequality and that the fact that where I grew up in Michigan, like I worked in a factory in high school, I think a lot of those people today are like way worse off relative to what wealthy people were, you know, 25 years ago. If it's the 0.1% or the 1%, it's just like broken off in this printing of money has just caused like, it's going to cause mass. It's like massive income dispersion.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I thought you were going to ask me the short micro strategy is totally insane. I'm very not bearish on crypto, but I think it reminds me a little bit of the tulip craze that you can't actually use crypto to go buy if I could go buy a Tesla crypto would be amazing if I could go to Amazon and use Bitcoin and be incredible. But like you can't right now. Again, I think it's probably just so volatile. People can't like the currencies. The idea, like from what I understand, micro strategy is effectively issuing debt to go in the market and buy more crypto and they just keep doing it. But if that reverses, eventually got paid on the debt. It just sounds like a house of cards to me. It just seems to me like some of these crypto businesses are a little skeptical.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you need to own a large fund and write a $50,000 million plus check, best of merch is as good as any of the other big funds. Like, I think the guy's an index are amazing investors too. The problem with a lot of these funds is you got to buy the basket. Like, best market just has one fund, which I highly respect. I guess they now have a buyout fund, but like, and an India fund.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If I had to be like a traditional growth spectrum would be the growth fund, but that's a lot of your audience is not that type of growth. That's more like Bootstrap growth. Traditional growth, either iconic or Meritech. Like the returns of iconic are freaking amazing.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, self-driving cars, actually. Self driving cars. What V changed them? I went for a rides in them. Incredible. No, it can't take a long time to get out there. Now, 10 years ago, you know, I said people always underestimate tech over the long term, but they overestimate it always in the near term. Everybody was talking self-driving cars 10 years ago. The experience that I had in LA and like San Francisco and self-driving car is absolutely incredible.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, favorite place to work. Like on the second page of your presentation, if you're like, you know, we're the greatest place to work in this region. But a lot of it comes down to like they'll be like, oh, my revenues are this. You look at the chart, you start doing all the analysis, and you're like, actually, that was your total contract value. That's a pretty good one. There's a lot of ways to fudge gross profit numbers.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is expensive, but like it's just an incredible business with amazing price. I think they have an incredible. So, like you asked me who I thought was the best CEO I saw on that list. I think Sachi is an absolutely incredible CEO. It's a giant business. There are companies in a downturn. If we could get a 30% drawdown, like I would buy Snowflake or buy Datadog and put it in a drawer and let those compound for 10 plus years. I mean, Amazon, you could put in that bucket too. Just a lot of them are fairly rich.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, we got back 50% of our money on a 10% in this fund, then we're human. Yes. It was some like chips company that literally were like the cash balance on the balance sheet is like almost as big as their valuation for the entire company. This doesn't make much sense. I don't know. I don't know what this thing does, whatever. Maybe it'll be get something back. We got 50% of our money back.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of people are going after the multi asset stuff. So you'll buy an LP that's selling 30 positions in 30 old funds and there's 200 underlying companies or 500 underlying companies in it. We're looking for the stuff where there's like one underlying company and like it's an old fund 90% of NAB is in one company. And like we just write off the other stuff basically, I just like look at it. Gotcha.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Correct. And so we were like in a world where LPs and GPs are looking for liquidity, fishing in the pond of old funds, like 20-year-old funds. People are like, well, what's your discount to NAV? NAVs are relevant. What's fair market value? If like NAV is really cheap, I'll give you, I pay you 100% over NAV. But I can't do that because then the LP would think, oh, you know more than I do. So I'll pay a discount in NAV still.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“17 years old, and we went to the founders and said, Look, the funny must have like a bunch of LPs that went out, even in it 16 years, right? I mean, we bought it at like the position at like five times earnings. And we've gotten 90% of our money back through dividends in the company. And you're like, well, how'd you do that? The LPs were in the fund for like 15 years. They just like want it out.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Don't want to raise capital. You can go in the side door and buy out like an early investor or an early employee in the form of secondary. Again, it's still the same house. But let's say that doesn't work. Let's say like you can't buy secondary. So for whole host reasons, it could be rofers. It could be there's no sellers, whatever. Well, let's go through the basement window with a pickaxe and let's find a derivative. Let's fund somebody's co-investment vehicle. Let's find some 20-year-old fund where 90% of the nav is in like one company. So this example, this company work human is an awesome business up in Boston. It's been around 20 plus years. It's insanely profitable. And it doesn't grow 50% a year. It's a giant stable business. I'm going to totally get dates wrong, but like it came out of like a tooth. We met the company. There was nothing to do. There was no company didn't need primary capital. It was super. There was no secondary to buy. So we found an old fund that was.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let me explain. So the company I'm going to get to is this company called Work Human. That's where we're going to go with it. There's a table in front of us, right? Let's say this table is a company. If I buy 10% of this table or 60% of this table, it's the same table, right? If you own the table, but the chair you're sitting on, if you're the fund and you own the table and the chair you're sitting on owns half your fund and I buy the chair, I just bought 25% of the table. So like we just view it as like buying it to a rapper. So we describe investing in companies is we have these like very specific criteria. Then we take this completely flexible approach. We'll go through the front door. It'll stick up like a house. You're walking down the street. You see a three criteria house walk by it. See a four criteria house walk by it. Get to a six criteria house. Knock on the front door. You can go in the front door and you can buy, you can lead around in a minority deal. You can go in the front door and buy the entire business. Well, let's say like”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Favorite deal is buying like LPs out of a 20 year old fund and buying something like it four times. I mean, find something like it four times earnings.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, look, for every Tobi at Shopify, there's 100,000 founders that are like there aren't going to make it. But it's incredible what he built.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, 100%. Yeah, yeah, but in 10 sense, it's a huge company. There's giant Asian businesses listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It's very liquid. You could have a trillion dollar. Like, by the way, I don't know what Facebook stock market cap is yesterday, but I think it's like 1.5 to 17 trillion dollar company. This is the same size business in terms of earnings. Grows faster. And, I mean, like Alibaba and 10 cent don't really grow that fat. I mean, they're like 5, 7, 8% growers. What do they trade at 13, 15 times earnings? You do the math. This is a very, very big company. I like to, we like to buy stuff when no one else likes to buy things. Like when the world hates something, one of my longtime LPs.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think both countries should learn to get along a China and US collaborating together more is better for the global world than less. There's lots of things like both countries can do together to make both countries a better place.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's a reason when the amount of AI they have already embedded in the product in India, when they were kicked out several years ago, nobody's really been able to build a competitor in India. I mean, Facebook's trying. By the way, you know who hates Bite Dance, right? Mark Zuckerberg. And by the way, so would I, to be clear. I would be, if I was running Snapchat or Instagram or Facebook, I would be all over politicians in Washington being like, oh, this is horrible. This is all propaganda. This is like, you got to get these guys out of here. It's the biggest threat to these companies. Absolutely incredible what the Chinese have built. The Chinese, I mean, like if you look at all these stats, like number of PhDs and science spend and all these things is a credible country that is like, they're not worried about what happens next quarter or next year. They think in 50 year blocks.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can go into, I don't know, 140 countries around the world and buy Nike shoes. Probably go into 100 countries in all the world and buy a John Deere tractor. China's always wanted to build a truly global business. This is that first truly global business. They're very proud of what they built. It's a huge business. I think they're going to be one of the foremost AI companies on the planet over the next decade.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We underwrote by dance, we assumed the US business is worth zero. Bite dance, North America, is a single digit percentage of revenue. We assumed it would be shut down. And it's not profitable in the United States. Then we saw actually what happened when they shut it down for a day, and both sides of the aisle came running up with their bags saying, oh, please, please keep it open. Please keep it open. Please keep it open. We just want something to happen. Either shut the thing down for good or spin it off or do something. I suspect it's not done by April 5th or whatever the date is. They'll probably push it out. Again, I'm not saying I don't know. I think there's four or five people in the world that know what's going to happen. And time will tell. But again, it's like just the uncertainty. I do think this, though, that the Chinese government actually really likes Bite Dance. It's a truly global business. Alibaba is not a truly global business. Tencent is not really a truly global business. Nike is a truly global business. Microsoft, John Deere are global businesses. What I mean by that is”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot easier for me to do it than it is for Fred because he was there when it was nothing. I came in as a bigger company. But again, there I think are some VCs that are like world-class VCs that cut their losers. There are firms that are known to if you're a CEO and you don't perform, you probably won't be the CEO. Like I think if you just the founder coming in, you should just be I have no problem. I tell all my employees if I'm not the right person to run Lead Edge like throw me out like that's fine or put me on the side you come and run the business”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Did not return money. Look, I also think LPs should spend more time talking to companies of portfolios that failed. Like actually talk to the ones that didn't go well or like were the 1xs to find out what is the person really like to work with. The ones that work really well, those are the easy ones. Tell me the stuff that didn't work and like how did you how was the partner on the deal? How did they respond? How do they deal with adversary? How did they like deal with you? Those are the things I like to focus on.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I believe a great question that people don't ask that they should ask. Any manager who's been around 10 plus years, hey, in September of 21, September 30th of 21, how much unlocked stock did you have in your portfolio? And let's say September, that was like the high point of the insanity in the last duck run-up. How much unlocked public stock did you have in your portfolio? And the next question is, why didn't you distribute it to your LPS? And by the way, a lot of funds can distribute stock too. And like you could have kept the stock. So like, why didn't you hold? Some people would be like, well, I was on the board. Well, shouldn't you, I mean, like, isn't your goal just to returns to LPs? Isn't that like the whole job of the business?”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Bingo. Yeah. Entry place matters. Don't overcapitalize companies. The amount of stock dilution really, really matters. If you run a fund where you need IPOs, you better invest in founders that want IPO, their companies, or have a good plan how you're going to get a last secondary out of it. It's entry place matters. Entry place matters a ton. These companies are not all Snowflake in Facebook's. They're not. The vast majority of companies I put on one hand the amount of people that are capable of backing companies like Google's and Facebook's of the world and doing it more than once. It's a really, really, really small company. It sure as heck isn't me. It's like the Douglone's of the world. And there just aren't many of them.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that's a, for a lot of these venture funds, I think that's true. Again, I love to talk to people that have been in this industry longer than I've been alive. This, what's going on in AI looks very similar to the internet bubble. And it's like people didn't learn a damn thing from 20 and 21. It's like shocking. Let's not even talk crypto because that's like a whole other role.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Look, these bad returns will do it over time, but it's going to take a long time. I think the venture industry was about to be in for a rude awakening and then AI showed up. I”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They're relentless in thinking about how to get liquidity to LPs. So a lot of stuff they do in the buyout world now is like they'll do minority sales. They'll invest in a company two years later, sell 30% of the company to somebody else, get their rate back. So they sit on already a 1X. They're just like relentless focus on liquidity. I think, look, some of these giant platform funds, the Andreessens of the world, there's just so many people at these firms. I have no interest in having like hundreds of employees. Do we have 80 employees and that's plenty?”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Nope. No. I respect a firm probably one of the best returning funds in like the tech investments. There's a couple of them. One of them is spectrum equity. Incredible investors. They've kept $2 to $2.5 billion funds forever. By the way, benchmark. Funds are smaller. Now, benchmark has had like, it's incredible benchmark is it's like you had Gen 1, Gen 2, now you have Gen 3, and they still continue to put up really good numbers. They've kept it small. Josh Koppelman at first round has continued to stay small, Mike and Ann at Floodgate have continued to stay small. But like the firm that I think has generated the best returns in the tech investing world over the last 30, 40 years, and it's become more a buyout fund, but they used to do tons of minorities is TA associates. And look, it's gotten gigantic, huge funds, but the DPIs that they put up are just incredible.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Let's see over the next 20 years. Let's see over the next decade what happens. But you're right. By the way, they're far richer than I am. Design.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“About it? How do you think about returns? How do you think about treating LPs? Talks to a bunch of portfolio companies. Like, how do you actually add value? We tell LPs, everybody tells you they help companies. Wonderful. Let me go introduce you to 10 companies in our portfolio. Call them as many as people as you want and ask them if we add value.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Smartest ones I find are actually like, listen, if the opportunity is not there, let's go figure out where else to put it. It's not like I have to put a billion dollars in venture every year. Maybe a billion dollars in venture is too big. I should be doing smaller. I think there's a guy, Eric C. Bush, at Mercer, who runs research there, who took a bet on us very early on. Before Fund three, people would like laugh at it. Actually, our first institutional investor in Fund 2 was University of Virginia. And like we literally started the meeting with like, you're not going to invest with us. Like, why would you invest with us knuckleheads? Like, you know, we don't have a brand. We have nothing. And a lot of the investment consultants are very brand name focused. It's like, again, you don't get fired higher on IBM, hired McKinsey. I credit this guy, Eric Seabush, with like taking a flyer on us very early, and he's done it with a bunch of other young managers. Is this all about the people? And he like digs into, okay, I'm in your fun three. Why'd you exit these things in fund one?”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They do come right. They do. We've seen. I'm not going to talk about it. There is a very well known, very large private equity fund that historically would raise their, it's not in software, it would raise their funds and literally be like Dell Psychs. You have three weeks to get your Dachshund. Take it or leave it. These are the terms. We're not changing anything. They then had a bad fund vintage. They've been in the market for three and a half years. The fund they just closed is like a fraction the size of their fund before. And I asked the LPs, what's the problem? He's like, you know exactly what the problem is. They're jerks. Your LPs, they give you the money. Like without you, they're paying you. Like it's, I don't know.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Both, by the way, without good performance, you can have none of it. But I can tell you that people, here's the thing though, people want the nice guy, the good guy, the person who communicates to win. So like if you have a bad vintage or two bad vintage funds, they're more likely, I think, to stay with you.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think So, like we run our business trying to figure out how do we have 97%, how do we keep up 97% gross dollar retention, not net, gross with LPs. If you think that, what do you do? So we communicate with them. We do lots of events with them. We do quarterly calls. We walk people through the portfolio. We tell people how things are doing. Look, some companies are going to be doing well one quarter. Some companies are going to be doing bad one quarter. But again, when you grow 30% a quarter on average, some are going to be doing well. Some are going to do them bad. But just like the lack of transparency in this industry to LPs is shocking.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would tell you that we have two customers, founders, but more importantly, LPs. Because if you do not have LPs, you do not have a business.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do not, what we have is every person, if you've worked at lead edge, if you work at lead edge, like every person on the investment team has access to all the LPs. And by the way, to be clear, if you're an associate who's worked here for two years and you're going to Seattle for a wedding and you say, hey, I want to stay on Monday, we'll be like, wonderful. You should meet like these four LPs. We'll pay for your plane ticket. We encourage everybody that works at the firm to get to know our LPs, spend time with them, educate them on what's going on in the portfolio. Versus if I was like a vice president, I'll pick on index, but I can pick any from on the planet. If I was a vice president, it index and I was flying to Seattle to meet a company, I would go meet the company. I'd go meet maybe another prospect company and then I'd fly home. I wouldn't be spending six hours meeting four other individuals and like who are LPs and index. It's not their model. It's like these funds are primarily backed by the largest endowments and pension funds in the world.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a lot of work. Yeah, it's difficult to coordinate. So, look, every intro we make, I wish I could tell you that it's automatically locked. No, we BCC an assistant and it gets logged in Salesforce. It's a highly customized version of Salesforce that, you know, we've built, spent millions of dollars on customizing over the last 15 years.”
2025-03-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Traditional VC is Broken: How VCs Learned Nothing from 2021 | Why LPs are More Important than Founders & Advice to Emerging Managers | Bull Case for Bytedance & Why TikTok's Ban Doesn't Matter with Mitchell Green, Lead Edge Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source