YouSaid · the spoken record

Oana Olteanu

lines on the record: 44
first: 2022-11-18
most recent: 2022-11-18
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“The most recent publicly announced ASCORDOSE. It containerizes entire distributed systems and allows testing on them. The Ethereum Foundation used them to test the merge, for example. I said yes because the founders showed deep care for the product, technical rigor, and they are also very deep reflective thinkers who actually do pay a lot of effort into building a healthy culture. And if you ask any of my founders, they will tell you, I don't like to work with jerks, so that's very important for me. You can be amazingly smart, but you also have to actually want to build a healthy culture in your company.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just focusing on your strengths and finding your own style, being honest and trying to be helpful gets you a long way. You don't have to be part of the golf club or the battery club or whatever club. You can just be yourself and people will appreciate that.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would like for VCs to pay more attention to the founders listen to them and do more work and maybe change a bit the reputation that VC has. Even today when somebody calls me a VC, I cringe a little because I don't see myself as the best wearing person who talks a big game is a blow hard and does not really care about the founders. That's not me. And I think that kind of perception deters other people like me to get into ventures and to be honest, the only reason how I landed in ventures is I'm an immigrant. Scale promised me to sponsor a green card. And I said, sure, I can be a VC. While I was a VC, I got a taste for working with founders and I felt like this is doesn't feel like a job to me when I Work with the founders, and so I didn't know I want to be a VC until I was one for immigration reasons.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was told that they're likely to go with another bigger brand, I put together a pitchpack deck based out of completely just memes, but also with content of what is the vision I see for potentially the product and why I'm excited, especially for this large language models to now be applied in the developer tooling space. And I was totally funny and they got also some ideas they haven't thought about it before. I was also sick with COVID and coughing my lungs out while giving this presentation. So all those things together were appreciated by the founders and they decided to join Signalfire.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a company in Stealth using LLMs for DevTools, and it was a very competitive round. I went the extra mile and it reinforced that hustle does pay off, even if you go against some top-tier funds.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I grew up playing in the tank, but that is a tank mechanic. I love the feeling that a tank gives you basically feeling unstoppable. You can overcome any obstacle.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Cover three of them. First, when out of the comfort zone, we fall back into what we know best, which is write more code instead of talking with customers. Second, we do have a passion for technology. However, if you want to reach wide adoption, you have to talk about the developer experience first. Pay attention to what words Vercel uses on their website. We have this belief of everything has to be organic and doesn't have to be organic. If it saves you time, why not pay for it?”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Foundational models, I think they will get commoditized like compute, and I think the companies who deliver the last mile will be the ones to capture most value.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think right now is the daily stoic because it helps me slow down and sometimes I post it's one thing per day and followers also find it very helpful. It speaks differently to each person reading it.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, so scale venture partners, I got my green card. And once I had my immigration freedom, I wanted to invest at the earlier stages. The other compelling factor was the focus on founder NPS, not only verbal, but also in action. Signal Fire has a world-class portfolio support team, data science platform called Beacon, an engineering team. That's where I can go with them, my desk is with the engineering team. It attracted me that aspect of you can have a VC fund, which is built like a tech company. And if I'm not mistaken, that it was the first VC fund built like a tech company.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The hardest thing coming from an operator role was the fact that you can work for months on something and not have anything to show. Well, before I would go to a customer conference, show the product, there was something tangible.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would like the best to see is VCs who are in the business to serve the founders versus being inventors to serve their ego. If you start with that thinking in mind, things will change. Yes, the founders don't have to be only men. You're there to serve the founders and the mission of those companies. And that doesn't have gender in it at all”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes I do feel like I'm the only woman, and the struggle is very much real. But I think as you establish a relationship with people and you earn their respect, even if you might be the youngest person in the room, things are starting to course correct along the way.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the time. I was called this time, the only female at the start of working or in an engineering team. And now in boards. So yes.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Benefits parental leave both for men and women, resource groups, training, introductions to potential mentors. And I do get that if you're an early stage company, you might not have the time to think about this because your maybe seed or pre-seed. Or maybe you might not have the time as a CEO to coach some of these people who maybe just graduated from Berkeley and they're just getting their first job. But there are other people that you could introduce them and give them that feeling that you are setting them up for success. That if they are joining, they're not just joining to be your token woman. You actually care about helping them thrive.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“An example of this Ashley at Axel, she hired the first four people, all women. What helps if you have women in leadership? Second, if you have inclusive policies and processes to collect feedback from all. You don't talk in the abstract that you're committed to diversity. You actually show some of these policies.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sponsors, you can post the job there, you can browse the candidate list, and that's a way where I'm doing the work for you. You have to be intentional and you have to be able to hire these people to win them over.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think first being aware of unconscious bias, we tend to, when faced with a new task, to draw upon what has worked in the past. And so if you worked in all male teams and you do what has worked in the past, you might not lead down the path to where you can have diversity in your team. Then there are three things you could like places where you can find these people. One for your recruiters. I keep hearing from founders that I told my recruiters I want more women, but they keep bringing me white males. Well, get another recruiter. Second, you could, for example, reach out directly, but do it in a respectful manner, in a manner where you don't reduce people to their gender. Like, who wants to work for such a company? And turned in my free time, I started this thing called She's Ready to Dev, which is a community for technical women. It's free.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you cannot hire diverse people if they are not even in your candidate poll. And so if you cannot get them into your pipeline, you should make a list with what makes your company attractive to these people. And if that list is short or there isn't anything you can put on the list, then the problem is you and the non-inclusive policies and you should revise that.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it comes down to values, and one of my core values is speak truth. You can be transparent and speak truth in a way that doesn't offend people. The idea of that is to establish a relationship where it's safe to share when things are not going so well, not be super shock and disrupted that, oh my God, this thing happened. It's okay and what actions can we take such that the next time we learn from it?”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Or it's where board members definitely like to meet afterwards. I think getting alignment and knowing where everybody is in terms of maybe their worries or things they can do for the founder. But then always debriefing with the founder. I always debrief with the founder, give positive as well as constructive feedback, and offer help for some of those topics. I do think it's helpful, especially if you want to have everybody aligned and maybe you're an earlier stage company rather than a later stage company. And for later stage companies, it's also important to set up the expectations in terms”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If a founder doesn't feel comfortable, I hate the situations where the founder, as previous to the meeting, asked me if I can interfere by basically asking a question or let's table that for later, you can have an ally in the boardroom. If you do not have that, simply focusing getting back to the main point, and maybe this is a great point, let's discuss it afterwards. I have so many more other questions.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“First of all is focus, getting to the heart of the issue. If there is anything that people can be informed beforehand, we don't need to reiterate it in the meeting. Let's talk about the MITI topics. Also, reading the room and sometimes you might have an investor which acts like the mob and tries to monopolize the entire discussion and you have to stop that as a founder. You control the power meeting. It's on you to give everybody room.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I had a board meeting recently, first time founders, where the fathers told me they watched the Silicon Valley HBO show to prepare for the board meet Yes. So I have a guide on this, and it's public that I share with founders. You have to distill down what has happened and talk about some highlights, lowlights before the board meeting, talk with each board member individually, figure out what is it that they want to talk about and ask them for even like three things. Ask them to do some homework, be prepared, come to the board meeting ready to have a discussion and add value. If you're not doing any of these things and you just show up, it might be okay for a first board meeting where people are still getting to know each other and it's anyway a very early stage company. But ideally you have to prepare or meeting skills can be very valuable if you do the work up front.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I will pick the most recent board meeting, and that was with Dan Scholnick, who invested in Uralic, Docker, weights and biases, and a bunch of other amazing companies. I like Dan because he's low ego, he's very action-oriented, and he acts in service of the founders.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think putting aside the governance issues, they're valuable in seeing some of the functional leaders present that gives you as a board member a better lens into how the founder builds the team but also gives this functional leaders a voice.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think you're providing valuable, actionable, tactical advice. I follow you on Twitter and I'm amazed how focused you can be and how valuable the advice is. And proof of that is I'm sending it to my founders. I'm forwarding some of the tweets. I think that's amazing. I think as long as you provide value versus serve your own ego, then that's a winning formula.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think a lot of VCs who recently joined the industry of constant self-promotion and that erodes the mind and spreads misinformation among the founders. Yes, I'm outspoken. I will call out if a VC takes credit for a founder or if they announce their newest associate bench, which is five white males. I think it's 2022 and there is no excuse to hire only like that.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It depends on the type of VC again. I like to think long term, also putting the founders' needs first. At the same time, if I'm selling my position in a company, that doesn't mean I cannot still be there for them. I left scale ventures.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it doesn't have to be. Our job as investors is to maximize the success of the companies while listening carefully to the founder. So I think if you manage to do that, there can be goal congruency and the founder can feel like they have the sounding board that they desperately need.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ideally, I would love to get all the founders I get to work with together for an off-site for tank driving, but that hasn't happened yet. Then many of them are all over the world. So there is a Slack channel where founders that I get to work with or founders where I'm not an investor, but they say I'm on their mental cap table. I invited them all there and they can be vulnerable and share how hard it is as a founder or ask each other what's fair compensation for each stage. It's a safe environment with no VCs. I only chime in if there are some data points that I can share other than that it's their space.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the beginning, I only had the couple. Now I'm at nine. And the way I scaled myself is I adopt the Romanian village mentality of if you raise one or two of the kids right, the other kids will raise themselves. And maintaining this sense of community among the founders that they do want, not nobody asked them, I don't ask them, they want to help each other out and elevate each other and help each other overcome these common hurdles.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I will give an example because I have invested at the later stages of scale ventures, I could tell that one of the founders I get to work with at CED is lagging behind Go-to-market. Now, if I was a Schrodinger's VC, I would look the other way and spend my time elsewhere. I'm not one of those. And so what I did, I reach out to 50 potential customers. I put together a document on the feedback. I prepared a list of 15 companies and where they were in revenue each quarter. I presented the material together to the founder and I've made intros for him to other founders who have overcome that hurdle. Founder to founder talk always beats VC Talk. That way you show that you're supportive. You also put the bone to work and you provide data. So the founder themselves, they actually can reach to that conclusion.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I do believe that hiring is a founder's job, but that doesn't mean for me as a VC I cannot source them diverse candidates. I cannot guide them how to filter for a culture in the process, that I cannot help them land amazing candidates in the final stages of the process. So all those things providing the perspective, showing them maybe ahead of time when there is a crucible moment because you've done this many times and you can sense that. Or to give an example, maybe you can sense when they are lagging behind go to market and they will be heading towards a very difficult fundraising process for the Series A. That's a conversation a VC can have and can help the founder realize that and get back into gear. The founder is doing the work. You're just advising.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes. Well, I think, as you said in the past years, that has happened, which has led to a bunch of besides Twitter jokes about how useless the VCs are. Also, it led to very low expectations. Right now, many founders will tell you that if IVC is not harmful to the company, that's already a success. I say the expectations should be higher from founders because while VC cannot play the chess game for you and move the pieces, they have seen a lot more games and therefore they can advise from near the chessboard. And there is value in that to the founder. And the value is there. It's up to the founder to extract it and manage the VC and give them homework.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the good news is you can extract value, and it's up to you as a founder how to manage and keep them accountable and give them homework. For example, one of my companies asked me, how do you nail platform ICP? What I did was I went, did the work, collected the results, and presented it back to the founder together with the list of potential intros to relevant people. What doesn't work is you sending material or a deck before a board meeting with no asks. Usually those tend to go, for example, the founder presents, the VC listens, there is nothing being shared back, and that's a waste of time. And time is precious should not be wasted.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, you determine by asking them to give you an example when things were not going so well, what did they do? How did they react? And also taking that information from the founder. So triangulating from all the sides.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Three things. One, you have to really pay attention in the diligence process. Do they act in service of you? Not talk, act in service of you. Second, you have to select from first principles. You're rather selecting a partner rather than a firm. Would you rather go to Harvard and have an awful professor? Or maybe go to an OK school and learn from somebody amazing? Third, do you know how they react to bad news when everything, the ARR, the GREARM is up, everything is great, but when things are not so good, that's when in face of adversity true character gets revealed. So a positive sign would be them walking you through their entire portfolio and especially how they serve the founders when things were not going so well. A negative sign would be them taking credit for the founder's work. And there's nothing more sinister than that.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Schrodinger's VSD is what I call a VC who preaches a lot of help, especially before winning a deal. But then if you ask the founders, they will tell you they added no value. And ideally, you want to avoid the Schr ⁇ dinger's VC, but if you already have one, there are ways to extract value from them.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm running from unfulfilled potential. I think there is nothing sadder than unfulfilled potential. I'm running towards fairness and many amazing opportunities for good people. And good people are often very diverse people.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Head of microelectronics division at Atari. I was and still am a diehard Atari fan, so I was starstruck when I met Mr. Robert Brown. And that's when I felt like I truly arrived to the valley.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I grew up in Romania in a village until the age of 18. At 18, I won this grand prize in a contest organized by NASA, and that was the first time for me on a plane. I was flying to Mountain View, to NASA Ames. And there I was mesmerized by the amount of intelligent system work they are doing. And I knew I have to be in software. So I get back home and I tell my dad, I want to go to college. And he got the shock because this was something new for our family. And I moved to Germany by myself to study computer science, actually machine learning back when MathLab was the only MLOP school around. After classes, I was working for SAP and two other jobs, but SAP was the one who got me back to the Bay Area. I transferred into their Palo Alto office. Yeah, my first experience in the US was finding a room to rent on Craigslist and I ended up living in the house of the”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thank you for having me, and it wouldn't be without the founders to be on this show or adventures. So I'm very grateful to you and to them.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't have to be part of the golf club or the battery club or whatever club. You can just be yourself and people will appreciate that.”
2022-11-18 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source