YouSaid · the spoken record

Peter Pham

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34
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2016-08-29
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2016-08-29
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  1. “Handstand. Handstand is, yeah, that's the one. We have a CEO, Tiffany. We've been working with her for over a year in our offices. And by single-handedly, when I say this, it's literally, it's a one-person, has built a amazing business, basically fitness trainers on demand. We actually just raised money with Reebok. We just did a big partnership with them. We're about to do a massive rollout over Labor Day. You know, that's one of the businesses people have been saying no to us for a while. Her resilience and what she's able to accomplish has been unbelievable and better than almost every CEO we've worked with just in a different way. Her hustle is unlike anybody else we've seen and her wanting to win is at the extreme level I've ever seen. So yeah, handstand. The CEO is just phenomenal and I can't wait to see her thrive and build the team around her.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yeah, I mean, it's quite amazing to see the personality dynamics and new partners, old partners, retiring, understanding who's retiring, who's the new blood, when did they raise the newest fund? Are they deploying from the last fund? Are they already deploying from the newest fund? Is the new fund bigger? I take that entire matrix as part of my decision process of how to pitch and who I'm pitching in terms of blogs, recode still is probably one of my favorite.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Actually, the newsletter, again, because I raise money most of my days, Dan Premac's fortune newsletter is awesome just because it's a quick summary of every deal that's gets done. Every company that gets funded, every VC, because in the back of my head, I'm thinking, what firm did what deal competitively or what firm did a deal and that went to zero? Because the other part about venture investing, interestingly enough, in terms of figuring out which partners, the personality and the psychology of that partner in the moment, did they just win on something big in the category? Did they just lose big on that category? Are they in favor inside the partnership or are they out of favor inside the partnership? How much juice they have at the given time, right? There's a dynamic. Again, that's probably way too much inside baseball.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Enough to see the pros and cons of them and figuring out that is fun. My focus is always how do I make sure at the end of the day that CEO walks away and says, regardless if the company went to zero, and ideally it went to big, that was an amazing experience. Let's do it again.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “Yeah, so it's interesting. I thought my whole life I knew what focus was. Now I absolutely know what focus is. But I like that my brain contact switches very quickly, right? And my joy is every hour typically I'm thinking about something else. I'm thinking about company and what their needs are. I spend a lot of time on the platform side of the business, which is, you know, what's the world look like with Messenger? What's next door? What's medium? Where are the new places that we should be figuring out, thinking about and growing audiences and traffic? What is Snapchat doing? What is Instagram doing? And luckily, we've had, Mike and I go back so long ago when social 2004-2005, there's like 10 people doing social company-wise. We've been lucky to become friends with all the people who end up kind of making important decisions and running these platforms. And we have these honest conversations of where we think these things are going. I think our advantage is, you know, we've been around life.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “You really value add. I kind of hate that word because that's not what we do. We help people build companies. Yes, there's value add, but that's different. I can't imagine a world where I just am not doing what I'm doing, which is just in the weeds every single day with the CEO.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “We have theses every couple years, and our vision is to build amazing companies with amazing founders, right? And my biggest joys so far is every time we've had two exits this year, Hello Society, which New York Times and Dollar Shafe Club, hopefully we have more. The joy is to know where these CEOs started, right? When they first walked into our office and us working daily with them, daily with them and seeing them kind of succeed and seeing the team. I love that. And I think there's value and I think there's companies to be built that aren't built the right way in our opinion, right? And investors leveraging and understanding how to deploy capital in a different light. The idea of the studio model has been tried multiple times. Everybody does it slightly different. I just want to keep proving that when you put a lot of smart people in a building and”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “It's been three weeks, which is funny because new cycles change so fast. But I think the combination of dollar shape club for us and jet.com for the e-commerce industry definitely has a bigger effect. Everyone thinks we're smarter now, I think we're obviously the same people. But we just had the vision four and a half years ago that retailers don't know who their customers are. And kind of building on that thesis that the social web and the social mobile now in the last two years is where you should be making impact on growing audiences of brands. The pipeline is increased. The investors are calling me back a little bit faster, trying to figure out the next one. And I mean, it's great, but we're just doing what we're doing, building the same stuff. And hopefully we get right again.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “I don't read books. There's one book my brother gave me when I was 18 years old. It's Dale Carnegie had a win friends and influence other people. You know, I've read it seven, eight times. I've actually even taken two Dale Carnegie classes and I'm still bad at it. That's a good reminder. I should read it again. It's my only book.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “But yeah, I think Bill Gurley did a great post a couple years ago about how the little things you do on the conversion inside the funnel before you dump everything at the top end of the funnel, there's a multiplier effect by increasing the retention by twenty percent or increasing the time for someone to do something by twenty percent. Like those little things make the, before you dump everything at the top, whether it be big viral tactics or big advertising or big PR stunts, whatever it is, you're wasting all of that effort. If you're not focused on that tight funnel of conversion. So we spend a lot of time thinking.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Large number up top, it's the little things, it's the cohorts, it's the conversions, it's the retention, and tweaking and tuning that so that I understand what my LTV, what my lifetime value is in scale means every time I put a dollar to work, and whether that means building the team or buying traffic, that there's leverage on top of that. We have a law of concentric circles and startups, whereas everybody's assumption is I've acquired this many customers for the X. People believe that's linear. That's never true. Never, ever, ever true. Where do you find the outer bounds of each one of those? How much does that cost? Again, whether it's people, network effects, or actual paid media, which generally speaking, we're probably pretty well known for, is at scale, Dollar Safe Club has to buy podcasts, television ads because there is a saturation point on all places, and the only way you can reach mass adoption is.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “There's a lot of lessons learned of all the things we've done, but I think at the core, we were fairly conservative at science four and a half years ago. Being in LA, we realized venture was, and by the way, I do 50 trips a year to the Bay Area. I was there three days this week. And I understand the money big checks are in Silicon Valley. The scaling of it is the metrics. Being early, realizing like we need to get from point A to point B as a company as fast as we can. And B, scale or kind of a zero. We shouldn't waste a lot of time if we know it's not working. The scale part is if you're really good at the internal metrics, dashboarding and KPIs early, you can understand that a one person or three person or five person company where your effort should be because we're pre-seed. We're at the inception concept idea is rarely at the first year am I that concerned about the GMV or the”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “Where I can think about it every day. I can talk contact switch. Mike can't think about the product and how he can be helpful. The marketing team can't. If we don't think we can be tactical in a very multiplicity way, we have to say no because I'm doing disservice for the company. I need the Michael Dubins and the Aaron Hirschhorns and the Kyles of the World over a very long time to tell other people, say, no, science made our business. We fundamentally changed the trajectory of the business. Otherwise, I'm paying a short game, right? We have to play this. We're going to be doing this for a very, very long time.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “I think we try to be helpful in the sense that we can always give people tactical advice, right? So no is, look, it doesn't fit our model. I don't see us 10Xing, 100xing the value that we provide, right? And remember, our model is a bit different. We co-build companies for equity. I don't have a fund. Mike and I, our team, we don't not have a fund. We are an operating company. We are an LLC similar to BetaWorks, but we don't have a fund. So I can't say to CEOs, I love the idea, let's do this and give you a million dollars and, by the way, move in and build it. We say, look, we're going to help you co-build this. Come on in. We're going to earn our equity. But it's sizable, right? We're not, again, we're not an accelerator, so we don't do 6% and 7% equity. I have to know that I want to work on this every day. Part of that, no, at least it's a bit easier for us is we say no to things that we don't think we can be impactful, right?”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “It turns out like when you get a Pac-Man David Pac-Man, who believes in it when other people don't, that's important. To me, no's are okay. I'm okay with my friends saying no because it's not for them, right? I want them to be obsessive about it. I want them to think about the company all the time. I want them to think about how I can help that company 24-7, when I'm talking to press, when I'm talking to partners, when I'm talking to other VCs, how do I make sure that this company is on top of their list when they think about those things, recruiting for all these little things that I'm hopeful I don't expect because the reality is most VCs don't actually think about you all the time, but I'm hopeful that in that passing conversation with a strategic person or a hire or venture or press, our name bubbles up first because they love us more than anything else.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “They're telling me it's a shitty business. Yeah, preparing them for the nose actually is pretty hard. And I do that by being really hard on them early. I mean, in every case, the simple nuances of those first couple pitches, and I have to see them interacting kind of real-time live with the VC, it's like, don't say this, don't sit like this. Don't look this way. Never say this word. Never talk about this. Push on this. Focus on this. And it's a refinement of what that story is because, again, you have 20 to 30 minutes to tell your story and get the other person believed. And also, by the way, the nose, I always have to remember, I say no as well. Nose just means they're not into you. I want fundamentally investors that are passionate about the business. I really don't want passive investors who just say blindly yes to things, right? Because when startup, the highs are highs and the lows are low.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “Oh gosh, it's funny. I think I have a process not a lot of people understand or like it so far has worked for me. I'm pretty hard on the CEOs. I break it down and build them up and see what the resilience is. Because remember, maybe they're saying no to me, but fundamentally they're the founder. It's their company, right? We're helping them. We like to say we're helping them build a company. We're alongside with them. We're co-building it. But it's their company. They're the founders and they sleep, think, and drink this thing 24 hours a day, seven days a week for however long, year, two years, however long this project's been megging on their head. And for them to get 20 no's, 30 nose on their dream from really smart people that they've probably looked up to, right? They read about, they know that investor investments in so-so company, and they imagine this person that they're sitting across is, you know, they're impressed and they're smarter than me. And wow, they're telling me it's a shitty business. Sorry, I don't know if I can cuss.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “And motivates the entire team. It motivates Mike, the CEO, to say, What do they know? We're building things. We have perfect data, right? They're judging us on the hardest part of everything. They're judging us on 30 minutes. If you look at Venture, in a lot of ways, they're just kind of judging you inside of 30 minutes. And wow, I have data thousands of hours with the CEO in this company. And they're judging it in a 30-minute moment whether they want to continue. And then maybe they judge it for another hour. And then they do another meeting. Maybe it's two hours. Maybe they look at the data and they're looking at that spreadsheets for another three hours. You know, they're judging this thing in hours. We judge it in months, which is a different perspective. And so, look, I'm not saying we're going to be right every time. That's improbable, right? We do have our convictions. And when we have our convictions, yeah, does it bug me? Sure. But I have to get over it knowing that I may have to go back to the same VC probably next week.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “I used to do in enterprise sales, I used to do like 100 cold calls a day to CTOs and directive IT. You know, it gets to you a little bit, particularly I think in Venture. I genuinely am friends with a lot of these people. Over the years, I've probably pitched the same person a dozen, twenty, thirty times. And also just being in the industry, you generally become friends with them. Inside and outside. And after a lot of no's on something, when you have so much conviction, right? And when we say we have conviction, it's a bit different. When we say we have a conviction, this company is in our building. This company we've been working on every single day for the last x months, three months, six months, a year. Like we have one right now. She's been working with us for a year, right? I have so much, obviously we have conviction. Otherwise, we would have shut it down already. We wouldn't waste our time, right? And so when you get enough nose, part of me gets a little upset, but part of me wants to be right. And I love proving people wrong. And it motivates me to do more.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Right, and convincing everybody, it's the cop out of every GP and every partner is always the well, I love the deal, but I couldn't get my partners. No, that's actually a lie. They didn't have the conviction. They're using that for optionality for later, right? Trust me, I've heard every which version way of saying no, I don't get insulted anymore. It's a no.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “A terminology, I have a general rule, I call the 24 hour rule, which is there any engagement with you inside of 24 hours? And I might expand that to like 36, but generally 24 hours. And I'd even consider a favorite of a tweet, an engagement, right? It's something. Did they text you? Did they email? Did they ask for a follow? Are they trying to schedule follow-up? They're asking for information. Are they starting to ask for information so that they can sell to their partnership? In the telephone game adventure is the most important part of all this. In rare instances, will a sole GP make a decision on their own, right? They have to sell, even if you're the top partner at every firm. They have to kind of sell everybody else. And are they asking the type of questions that they know already and they're happy with? But are they asking you to help them frame it so that when they tell their partners, it's an easy way to digest? And that's the hardest part because that telephone game.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “And I said, okay, walk me through the communication and what they said, exactly what they said. Go through it, and I said, it's a pass. It's like, no, no, no, it's a pass. I'm like, I'm going to bet you it's a pass. And of course, it was a past two days later, right? Like, I know what they feel like. And that's just a law of numbers of I've just done it enough.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “It's lucky. In the history of every round I've ever done, not just the ones within science, I've helped many other entrepreneurs and friends raise round seed rounds, late, $50 million rounds, $100 million rounds. It all generally is the same, which is if someone's interested, they're interested. If you think about an A round investor or a B-round investor, right? They're doing three deals a year, tops, maybe four, but really two or three. The reality is if they met with them and they liked you, they're following up and they're clearing their calendar tomorrow. And they're clearing their calendar for the rest of the week. And they're doing everything to get this thing closed, right? I always make sense of the sense of urgency. Otherwise, it's a pass or it's an option no. And fine, push them away. I think the false positives of venture is the hardest thing to entrepreneurs, right? It's false hope. I just got off the phone with one of my CEOs literally yesterday, and he says, no, no, that, you know, so-and-so is interested for sure.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “You know, I think the framing of questions and how it's answered is without repetition, right? I always tell people, I'm not the smartest person in the room, but I've done this thousands of times and I kind of understand why they're asking it. If we know the data, how to answer it so that they can comprehend and understand the answer. I think there's always a miscommunication a lot of times when a VCO asks a type of question, like competition, where you see growth, what does this mean? What does this mean? I think in their mind, they want to hear an answer in a framework that they're going to digest and understand that looks like everything else. So that looks like everything else. And it's that part. And then the process of honestly understanding what a no means, which is, I think, most entrepreneurs just have no idea and they waste their time, right?”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Well, I always say I'm their Uber driver, and I just want to, and I'll sit quietly in the corner, but generally I don't sit quietly. I generally interject when I find them struggling in the meeting a little bit.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “With Aaron, the CEO. And we're doing the pitch for the partnership, and everyone was like, Peter, what are you doing here?”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “Yeah, so that's kind of where I come in. I pre pitch, I figure out who to talk to. In a lot of cases, I'm doing the first phone call. And then generally I'm shadowing the CEO that's both on phone calls and in person in the meetings. I remember when we first started this four and a half years ago, almost every FC when I walked in with the entrepreneur into the partner meeting, they would look at me and they say, Peter, what are you doing here? Right. And I said, I'm just here to make sure that this is a fair exchange of information and that they understand what you're asking and we're going to make sure that they answer the question with the data that you're looking at and the prism and the lens because I know they have it. That's why we're here. But I want to make sure they're putting the best foot forward. And it was weird. I would say the first six months a year. And now I think it's normal. All the GPs and partnerships of all the firms expect me to be there and are okay with it. But I'll never forget, you know, when we met Bill Gurley at benchmark for Dog Vacay and I walked in.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “And also, they've seen hundreds, if not thousands of pitches at this time. You know, entrepreneur, especially first time, they've never raised. Even on the second time by an entrepreneur, they've probably only done three rounds. I like to even the playing field a lot of it, which is understanding and deciphering the product, the company, and pitching it in a way that venture would understand. So my process for all of our companies is I'm the front lines, right? I go out there first. We say we're going to go raise money. I'm out there talking to BCs, angel investors, softly pitching. This is what we're working on. Is this something you're interested in? At this point, I think I'm at 3,000 plus no's, right? And what counts as the 83 yeses that we've had and 350 million raised against the portfolio?”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “So, my approach is that always I think it's unfair, I think, in the battle of entrepreneurs, the VCs, to get money in the sense that a VC has been doing this for years. They're getting a couple pitches a day, years, and so their default answer is a no.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Facebook paid acquisition to design to CTOs in engineering to help you architect. I spend my time and Mike spends our time more tactical on a day-to-day approach where Mike is product. He's probably one of the best product people I've ever met in his contacts switching of understanding different types of product from web to mobile and always with a stint of, and this is the LA, I think Gene in all of us, is with always with the stint of paid marketing growth in revenue, right? So how do I make money if I built this? Is it through advertising or is it going to be through somebody paying buying something or is it going to be a subscription? So that's a stint and he spends a lot of his day-to-day working with the CEOs to figure out what that is and the bobbing and weaving of the product to understand and get growth. I spend my time kind of split between managing platforms and business development for our companies and then fundraising, which is”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “Gosh, writing a check to early stage startup and then just checking in on every board meeting just wasn't what we felt like we wanted to do. And we also had our own ideas and we love to kind of build things. And so science was born, you know, at the end of 2011. And so we started what we call a science studio, you know, the terminology kind of continues to change, but think of us as an incubator is how people kind of come to understand the term. We're not an accelerator, right? We're not a Y combinator, which I think is amazing in a gold standard, but we go deep, right? We have a $26,000 square foot office. All of our CEOs start in our offices, take a desk, and work with us side by side. There's daily reports. We have access to all the data and analytics. We have team members that do lots of different things. From growth marketing,”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “I was CEO, co founder of a company called Bill Shrink, Trinity Venture is also backed. They backed Photobucket, they backed Bill Shrink. We sold that to MasterCard. EIR'd at Trinity Ventures twice. I like to say I'm the only two-time EIR they've ever had. And I don't know if because they felt sorry for me or I was good. But I returned the money twice. And it was my taste of venture. I knew I wanted to help companies build and I knew I wanted to kind of be part of that but be more hands-on. So 2011, Mike and I got back together. He had done his stint in private equity. He was a CEO of MySpace at one point when kind of Facebook overtook MySpace. And we started science. And our thought was, let's do it in LA. So I spent six years in the Bay Area. Really learning and spending the time of building companies, but also kind of understanding venture and understanding the needs of startups on the full stack. So when we start at science in LA, we thought.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “YouTube sold to Google. I remember the moment I had TechCrunch up on my laptop, I turned the laptop over my CEO and I said, Alex, I think we should sell the company. And he says, if you can do it, do it. And I hustled and we sold it for $300 million in MySpace. I actually moved to the Bay Area for that. When I moved back to LA, Mike and I had been friends because back then, you know, I always remind people, MySpace only allowed six photos on MySpace. Photo sharings, this whole idea of social was fairly early. Mike had founded a company called User Plane, which was like web chat. And again, he powered all the major social networks. What is like web messenger today? He built it years ago. And I remember sitting in his office once and thinking to myself, you know, after we do all this, I really want to build lots of companies. And the idea of ideal labs and incubation and doing everything that we're learning applying to lots of companies should exist, but really on the west side of town because I prefer the beach. Fast forward.”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “Sure. So, Mike Jones and I have known each other for quite some time. And this goes back to where I started. My first entrance into consumer internet was a company called Photobucket back in 2004. Prior to that, I actually did enterprise sales. AS400s, RS6000s, Lotus Domino implementations like hardcore, CA Unicenter, TIPCO type stuff. Sexy stuff. Yeah, sexy, which I kind of miss to some degree. You know, there was a company called Photobucket based out of Denver. It was four engineers and a guy new called me up who's VP Venge said, this thing's growing on my space and blogger and live journal, but they don't know anything about business. You should come help them out. So I joined and kind of ran everything except for engineering, business development, marketing, et cetera. User acquisition was my specialty in business development, grew that to 60 million users in one day when”

    2016-08-29 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Science Inc's Peter Pham on Why The Battle Between Entrepreneurs & VCs Is Unfair, How To Even The Playing Field & How To Tell When A VC Really Is Interested · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source