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Niko Bonatsos

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26
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2015-02-05
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2015-02-05
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1
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  1. “Because the company and the market they're going after is not at an inflection point. As a venture capitalist, I always want to invest in a company as well as a market that is opening up very quickly. So the moment I'm putting in money, I know it's going to start appreciating from the day after.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “I continue to be Uber excited about anything that can be delivered through a mobile device, frankly because from 2 billion smartphone owners, we're going to get to 5, 6, 7 billion over the next decade. Convenient people were excited about that.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “I don't. I think it's going to complement the school experience in life, but I have a hard time saying totally replacing schools because a lot of the schools are owned by states and funded by the government and it's going to be a massive unemployment issue and a lot of other risks that Polisan wouldn't let happen.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “It's going to be great because regardless of how old are you, where you leave, who you know, how much money you have, you are going to be able to learn whatever you want, your own pace with the best and the brightest and do that 24-7.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Especially if you find yourself in an environment with a lot of opportunities and the Silicon Valley environment and the tech environment in general has been charged over the last 15 years.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Yeah for me the biggest one is to try and constantly be intellectually curious and Every single day. Continue to be a learning animal because it doesn't matter. When I start working on something, I'm a domain expert. But what matters is, will I be the domain expert three years later? And the way I get there depends on all the micro decisions and learning opportunities that I make or go through every single day. So strong intellectual curiosity coupled with an ability to be a learning animal will result in somebody having a fabulous career.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “This could be a blog, this could be Twitter, this could be anything that is visible to that world. It could be typing stuff on LinkedIn groups or Quora. Stuff like that, doing a podcast so that the venture capitalist will, or somebody that girly knows will pay them something like, oh, seems like to be a theoryful young person. I'm interested in meeting with that person and hearing his views about this company or that space. And the third thing is build a network that Would be like, you know, we need to have access to that network. And this is historically been the case with college networks. So a lot of companies have come out of Stanford and other universities. And this is acknowledged that they need to maintain their network fresh in this ecosystems. So knowing people helps a lot. when it comes to being.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “It's hard to be a young person, and now a lot of his unless you go to Stanford, you can call email people and some people will reply. But normally, you know, you can attend startup events and meet VCs over there and start building a relationship. The best ways to get a referral from a founder that they backed or an executive of their portfolio. So that's the best way he's working. So number one is novices. Number two is be opinionated and in particular if you concern like Yourself a little bit about a specific area that you know well.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Sure. The first thing is to know OBCs who are hiring managers because especially in the top funds, all the positions are not really advertised. Whenever, for example, here journal catalysts were looking for an investment team member. We first look into our first networks and then we start asking folks that we trust.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “So a lot of new venture creation in Asia very strong continues to be the new venture creation rate in Israel. There was excitement in Brazil. You know, now that we have about 15 million developers and we have several billion people that are in iOS and Android, anybody can get started and build something. So even if you may not have a strong ecosystem in your local town, but you code an app really quickly, you have a shot. You have a shot to win the lottery of building something”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “So that's what historically has ended up happening. Personally, I'm excited to invest in companies all over the world. It doesn't matter.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Very quickly, if you get started overseas, either you're going to receive interestors who are based in Silicon Valley or you're going to figure it easier to raise money from Silicon Valley folks because of the risk tolerance, because nobody in your area will be able to provide youth capital. And more importantly, there is a moment in a company's life where you need to hire a bunch of people. especially for tactical roles, you don't need to reinvent the wheel. And there are a lot of such folks who've been there, done that, joined us growing startups based in Silicon Valley. So that's why you see a lot of companies who weren't born in the Bay or San Francisco Bay Area move here, either because they want to raise or because they want to hire or simply because a lot of their early”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “If you look back into the data, yeah, like the companies that have become 10 billion. Plus in market cap tend to have come out of Silicon Valley. But I think Silicon Valley doesn't have a monopoly in innovation and where you get started doesn't matter much. And honestly, moving forward, I expect a lot of the world's greatest companies to be started outside of Siddha Madhya. That said,”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Kind of stuff. And if you are an MBA graduate or you have bunker friends, it can help you. But at the end of the day, at the super early stage, it's mostly market driven, growth driven, and strategic interest driven.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Prices, you know, and the third thing, in my opinion, and the most important one, especially for earlier stage companies, is how quickly they're growing. And Snapchat has been one of these companies that has experienced insane growth over the last few years. So we know that growth is growth. And when you see momentum as an investor, pretty much it's 50-50 if it's healthy, sustainable growth, it's going to work out. So people are willing to pay up a year or two, you know, you can eat a more in advance in order to get into a very hot property. Then you can use in a traditional valuation frameworks, like how much revenue per user you can make, how much you think the monetization is going to be worth all that.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “Latest was 10 billion, yeah. Yeah, so how do you buy you such a company? It's a function of a few things. The first one is how strategic of an asset this company is for a bunch of folks with deep pockets. The second aspect that you can use for valuing such companies was the market interest, meaning are there a lot of other investors that are interested in investing in the company. So if that's the case, always high demand.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “And number two clearly if I miss something, it's either going to be a function of me not evaluating it properly using a different framework than the one that would be appropriate for that particular company or losing the investment opportunity to another firm. Yeah, it's annoying and bugs me when I miss stuff. But it's not like, hey, you know, I have to get to invest in everything. The good news about being a venture capitalist is you only need a few of these to make a very successful career and make a lot of money for your limited partners.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “I mean, I would like if I say no, it doesn't, I have the benefit of being early young in the industry still. I've only been doing what I'm doing for the last 40 years, so I haven't missed a lot of companies or so I think. Obviously the number is going to grow over time. For sure, if I don't miss stuff, it means that, number one, I'm not looking into the right opportunities.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Do is the differentiated product. A lot of the stuff that gets funded looks a little bit like others, but once in a while you come across a product that is And thirdly, there is always a metric that grabs my attention. And this could be about intensity of engagement. This could be about rapid growth. This could be about crazy customer user retention or unbelievable revenue per visit to the company's website. So there's always a metric.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, flip a kind and depending on what the outcome is, you know, the same. So normally I look into a couple of things. The first one is the founder. Once in a while you get to meet an individual that can create the reality distortion field and can paint a very detailed version of the future. And as soon as you hear about all this, you're like, if 5% of what a person told me comes true in a few years, I definitely want to be part of that. And unfortunately, this kind of people did not come in my life very frequently. And they're probably like a thousand of them every year that get funded. But when you meet as a person, you know it from the very first date that you have, you know, that person. So that's the first. The second thing I'm looking into.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “The reason is not every person can be really good at everything. So if you find others that you trust, if you find others that complement your skill set and people that are as motivated as you are, obviously you can do a lot more faster. That said, there is always a lead actor. It's like, you know, all the music bands, right? One person is a lead and you know that. So it depends, you know. Sometimes you have a senior co-founder, junior co-founder, or, you know, even in the rare instances where you have a solid founder, that person actually starts something with a bunch of others but doesn't give them the title of co-founder either because of ego reasons or you know because he's done so much of the groundwork So it depends on the team, but the data says two to three co-founders tend to lead to the best outcomes.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “You know, historically, if you look into the data, the companies that have built unicorns or that have built Tech products and companies that have become $10 billion plasma market cap enterprises tend to have a team founding team of two to three, you know, like we have two to three co-founders.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “deal, but at the same time you don't control your destiny anytime that the rules of the games change, you are gonna suffer. And this may happen without you knowing anything about it. So basically, you know, taking platform risk is a very serious gumble. The third thing I learned is pick your teammates and co-founders and every single one of your early team members very wisely. And would you say it's important?”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “Yeah, so I learned a few things. Being first to market doesn't really matter. So in our case, we're literally at the very first meetup that the LinkedIn platform team hosted one day released their API. So it's good to have a lot of risk taking appetite. It's good to explore a lot of things. But if you're in a first to market, doesn't mean that you're going to definitely win. Secondly and most importantly, what I learned was taking platform risk is a very serious gamble. And for sure, when you decide to build on top of somebody else's platform, use our position may become easier. You don't have to deal with a lot of other hassles that historically you may have to do.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Cloud computing. And also Sarah Desauce Networking company that ended up being a massive failure due to huge platform risk that we took. I liked how to join a venture capital firm called General Catalyst right when we were starting the office here in California in late 2010. And the last four plus years have been avis. So in terms of how it became a venture capitalist, happened to be the right person at the right time for the right thing. It wasn't planned. I hadn't thought about becoming a VC at the time. I wanted to be an entrepreneur. But unfortunately, my company was clear that it would fail. And I only had one to figure out What I want to do next because as a Fulbright scholar and overseas born person, I would Have been exported. Which is pretty much the same thing, unless I had an opportunity full-time, basically no opportunity.”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “So I grew up in Greece and my background is in electrical and computer engineering. I've basically spent the last decade studying and researching many different types of engineering, electrical, computer, manufacturing, biomedical in a bunch of different places and industries in the world. So spent time working as a computer engineer in Tokyo, spent time studying manufacturing, engineering in the UK, did research in biomedical signal processing at Harvard. And I was very fortunate to move to Silicon Valley five and a half years ago to go to Stanford, study a little bit of operations researcher and the research”

    2015-02-05 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: Niko Bonatsos on Startup Valuations · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source