YouSaid · the spoken record
Peter Rojas
- lines on the record
- 36
- first
- 2015-10-14
- most recent
- 2015-10-14
- sittings or episodes
- 1
- sources
- podcast
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“Raising money for hardware on Kickstarter, for example, is that You can raise money so easily if you lay out a compelling product vision that it actually takes away some of the constraints that would force you to build a company that could actually deliver a product. And so I think that one of the things that's important for entrepreneurs and founders to remember is that as frustrating as constraints are, whether it's time or capital or people or whatever, sometimes and oftentimes I would argue that those constraints actually force you to make the better decisions and force you to think really hard about what you're doing and how you're doing it in ways that down the line lead you having a better business and a better product as painful as it is.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My favorite recent book would probably be Antifragile, which is by the guy who wrote The Box Wan. Randomness. And what I like about it is it's very, it sort of takes a very counterintuitive approach to how you should think about risk and ecosystems and about how stressors can actually be an important and valuable thing. We sort of think about things that cause damage or that cause stress as being negatives that you always want to remove. And I actually, it kind of really helped my thinking around how constraints it can actually be these amazing forcing functions which help businesses in the long run. I wrote something a few months ago about how, again, not to, I actually, not to trash Kickstarter. We're actually an investor in Kickstarter and I know the founders, I know the founders, but one of the things about when you're building”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, so this is the part where I'm still getting up to speed. I mean, we have a lot of inbound with BetaWorks, which is great. And so we haven't necessarily had a challenge finding deal flow. I think for me getting referred deals from other investors that I know has been really important. And the first deal that I did for BetaWorks, which I can't announce yet, but closes on Wednesday, that was referred to me by an investor who I've been friends with for a really long time. So that was those sorts of relationships, again, are critical. I actually do look at Angel List, which I know, again, is a tool that probably everyone who would interview would look at. But I think that what I like about it is that it does democratize the process for a lot of people and gives you a chance to, if you're starting out, and again, outside these existing networks, you can create a profile on there just like anybody else. And so I do really try to look at the new.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I still read TechCrunch in a gadget and Product Hunt is a new one. And so I find those to be, again, I think these are ones that most people would probably list. And I think that they're still indispensable. I think Jason Hirshhorn's redef newsletters are also really, really useful. I wish I had time to read all the different links that he curates every day. But those are a handful of sources that I use”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I still use an RSS reader, which maybe is a little archaic, but I love being able to stay on top of a lot of different information sources really, really quickly. And so I use Feedbin for my RSS feed sync, and then I use Reader R-E-D-E-R on macOS and iOS for actually reading the feeds.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“very thoughtful and introspective in the way that they think about this stuff. And I think that that really shows. I think you can tell the difference between the people that are just really passionate and want to geek out on new tech and ideas and innovation and the people that aren't. And I think that the people that are into that are the people that I kind of vibe with.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, he was great. But because we were, he just made an angel investment and we sold so quickly. I never had a chance to really work within that much because it was so early. But with Gadget, I mean, I got to work with Moffman from Spark and Bijan Sabette from Spark. I got to work with Tony Conrad and John Callahan from True Ventures. Again, I got to work with John Borthwick and Andy Weissman when Andy Weissman was at BetaWorks. So many really great people, but then beyond that, you look at, I mean, I'm sure probably everybody you've interviewed would say, you know, Fred Wilson is somebody they really look up to and admire Bradfeld, who have had the chance to meet a couple of times. I mean, there's a reason why those guys have a great reputation is because they're”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was lucky to have a lot of amazing investors in Gadget. And we only had one investor in Weblogs Inc., who was Mark Cuban, who, of course, his reputation.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yep. Yeah. And I think that's one of the things that is, I think the people that are, the VCs that I know and that I admire and that are the reason why I wanted to do this are people that are some of the sort of most soulful kind people that you'll ever meet, right? People who are passionate about new ideas and new things rather than just like they're not, I mean obviously everyone wants to make money, but I think that If that were the only thing that you would just gone into like investment banking or something maybe a little safer.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get one in over entrepreneurs or there are other investors. And so far, knock on wood, it's been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think And I will say, like, having done this for a really short period of time, I don't necessarily feel like I have much great pearls of wisdom to deploy, but I think one of the things that I've been pleasantly surprised by is how open and friendly other people in the venture community are. People are, I spent a lot of time just really since I've started just going to meet with people that I either know or have been introduced to and getting to know them and asking them what their advice is. And people have been very, very generous with their time and generous with their advice and also generous with their willingness to collaborate and work and refer things to me or to BetaWorks more generally. And so I think that's been great. I think there's maybe this stereotype that of feces is very kind of cutthroat and always trying to”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Try to twist and turn, take whatever twist and turn with the product to solve that problem rather than trying to fall in love with a product and then trying to find a problem that it solves, which I see all the time. I see founders who they have a product, they built it, they love it, right? Because they've poured themselves into it, but it doesn't really work. It doesn't have product market fit. And rather than trying to change it or tweak it or do something different. They keep trying to find a way to make that product work. So find a problem for it to solve. And that usually doesn't work out. And so that's a big red flag for me.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How does this sit within the ecosystem? And what about this platform risk and those sorts of things? So that's the stuff that I care a lot about is the product first. Is this something that has a chance to find product market fit? And then if it finds product market fit, can it scale up into a large business? And you kind of need those two things. Then I also really care a lot about the founder themselves is do they have they really passionate about this space? And frankly, are they one of the things I always say is you fall in love with a problem and not a product, which is to say, is there a big thing that you want to solve and that you're willing to”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, not metrics driven at this stage for me. I think that what I care a lot about is I look at the product. And I think that's also maybe my bias having, again, been a blogger and then a product person and an entrepreneur and product person. So I really like to dig in on a product and try to understand how it works, what is appealing about it. Does it have how does something like this scale up and hit a large number of users or if it's not necessarily a large number of users, how does it become something that can drive a lot of revenue someday? And I think that that I have a good understanding of maybe the mechanics of those things now. And I really love to kind of grapple with that and just frankly to sit down and talk with founders and kind of push them and press them on these things and say, well, how does this grow and how do you acquire users? And what about this?”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think I still have a little bit of that outsider mentality, which makes me very open to, I guess very receptive to people trying to get in touch with me. And that doesn't mean that you don't need to have still a great product and a great company and a great vision. But I really want to give people who feel outside of the networks. I want to give them a chance.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Maybe, yeah, and hopefully not the last, but I think I understand that being a little bit on the outside. And when I was starting up, I was very lucky to have people that were open to me and that helped me even though they had no reason to and that answered my emails even though they had no reason to and frankly being a blogger being a blogger in 2001, 2002 had no access. You were the ultimate sort of outsider in terms of people that did not take you seriously. People did not want to admit you to their events, that sort of stuff.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“San Francisco 45 minutes, yeah. I used to go up to London all the time. So I know what it's like to sort of feel maybe a bit on the outside. And I think also, you know, being from my family's from South America. And so that's also maybe a little bit of a non-traditional background for venture capitalists. There's not that many Hispanic American VCs that I've met here.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think that having been, I remember what it was like to be on the outside. And I think also maybe my background is slightly unusual for someone to come in venture capital. I mean, I came in through journalism and blogging. I have a master's degree actually from a British university in English”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you're doing a Kickstarter, don't if you're raising money but also doing a Kickstarter, that's one thing. But if you're just asking me to back your Kick”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, well, I mean, I'm happy to have my email is just peter at betaorks.com if anyone wants to get in touch with me. And I answer pretty much every email I get. The only things I don't answer is people begging for Kickstarter backing.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To have deals come to them through somebody they trust rather than it being sort of a cold email. I'm actually pretty open to the cold emails for what it's worth. I take a look at everything. But I think that if you are outside of that world, outside of that network, it can seem very opaque. How do you break into it and start to get the attention of the right people? But it's easier than it was before, I would say. And I think that's one reason why There are now so many great startups that are able to kind of command attention. And I think that's one reason why the valuations are going up.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that they've actually started to rationalize a little bit more. It's one of these things where It depends on what stage you're at in the business. And I think that if you have a really hot deal, there sort of can be a pile-in effect and the valuation can go quite high. I think that also you have a lot of great platforms that startups can use if they get access to them like Y Combinator, where they can get on a literally and figuratively a very large stage and present what they're doing to the venture capital community. And so I think those make a big difference. And I think one of the things that I think is actually great about what's going on now is that it's easier to get access to these networks that you need to get access to to be able to raise capital. And venture capital is very relationship-driven game. A lot of VCs, they like referrals and they like...”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that there's a lot, probably more, there's access to more capital here because there are more funds here. I mean, that's just, again, that's just the sort of basic facts, I think, of the situation. But I think that if you are raising money in either place or outside, I think it actually makes a lot of sense to come to both New York and the West Coast because I think there is value in having a mix of geographical sources of your financing.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, our differences, but for the most part, it's more about just there are so many more people working on so many different things here versus New York.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think the biggest difference is just more of size than anything else. It's just, it's so big here in the West Coast compared to New York. And New York is very strong. And I feel like I grew up in that community and was in some ways it was very bittersweet leaving New York for me, just having been there for so long and having moved there really at the beginning in some ways, basically at the beginning of my career, even though I was here for a few years before that. So I think that there are some differences in the kinds of companies that get built, which I think is kind of natural, just given the interest that people have and stuff in New York, I think tends to be more maybe design focused and somewhat more commerce focused, though not exclusively. I think people are building more, say, on-demand startups and things like that here.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You don't take money just from one place usually. You sort of think about the different, you kind of, and at least this is how I did when I was raising my seat around, you think strategically, you think, okay, I want some people in different places to help you all to help me with the different relationships in different parts of the country. I want people that have experience with different parts of the business, some people you want to be able to help you with products, some people you want to be able to help you with business development, some people you want to help with sales. So I think that With BetaWorks I think that we're great to have in around because of the breadth of experience that we bring because we also have this studio side of the business.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How much trial and error goes into finding product market fit and really have been, I mean, I think Betaworks has been remarkably successful in producing hip products over the years, which I think is having tried to do it at AOL, I know it's no simple matter. You have to really give them a lot of credit for the track work that they've had. And so I think that that is a differentiator. I think that it's not, and I think one of the things is that when you are raising a seed round,”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think because of the studio side of the business, we are different. And so not that there aren't other incubators and accelerators and things like that, but we're not that. I mean, if you take an investment from us, you don't go and sit, go through an incubation program or an accelerator program, though there are circumstances where we've made an investment and brought a company sort of in-house for a few months to work on something. But I think one of the great things about BetaWorks is you can tap into a whole network of people that have a tremendous amount of operational expertise people that know and have a ton of experience building and scaling businesses that know a lot about customer acquisition, that know a lot about monetization, and that frankly have a really kind of hacker mentality to how products get built and really understand how experimental the process is, how important the trial”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And so I think as Betaworks wanted to ramp up its seed investing, it made sense to have somebody who understood the BetaWorks DNA on the West Coast who could help. I mean, I think there's no substitute for having boots on the ground with this sort of thing. There's so many companies to meet with, so many people to work with. And I think also for a lot of startups now, they have a lot of options when it comes to deciding who they're going to take money from. And I think having somebody that they can sit down with and help them out when they need it actually here in the Bay Area makes a difference. But I think also taking money from a fund that has such a strong presence in New York, they kind of get the boast of both worlds.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, New York has been the home for BetaWork since its inception, and I think historically they've been very focused on New York, both in terms of the companies they've invested in, but also because they have the studio side of the business where they build and incubate businesses. That's always been if you wanted to do that, you do that in their space, right? You're in residence there in New York. Now, DataWorks has done about 25, maybe 30% of its investment.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Got in touch with my friend John Borthwick, who I've known since actually when he was at AOL in the, I think, 2002, 2003. And BetaWorks had been an investor in Gadget. And we just got together just to tell him I was moving to San Francisco. And he ended up offering me this entrepreneur and residence position where I could sort of be an ambassador to the West Coast for BetaWorks, help on the seed investing side, and help advise some of the portfolio companies based out here.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Over the intervening years. On the side, while I was still at AOL, I started a music cycle called Record Label with a music label called Downtown. That was more of a side project. And in 2008, I left AOL with Ryan Block, who was the editor-in-chief of NGadget. And we started a new site called Gadget, just GDGT, which was more of a social kind of commerce platform around consumer electronics, the idea that we build a structured database around consumer electronics and build a whole set of consumer and sort of enterprise tools around that. That was acquired by AOL in 2013. I stayed at AOL for a few years. I ran strategy for the media side of the business, and then also with Ryan co-led an experimental product group called Alpha, where we released a handful of mobile apps and then decided to move to San Francisco after being in New York for about 14 years. And when I was getting ready to leave.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Product which took on established technology, journalist brands like CNAD and Wired and things like that. And he saw it as more of a casual, you'd have one person per blog writing in their spare time, which is how I'd done Gizmodo and how he was doing Gawker and some of the other Gawker media sites at the time. I really wanted to have a full-time staff go 24 hours a day, really kind of take advantage of the speed and flexibility of blogging to do technology journalism in a new and different way. And so I left and helped start Weblogs Inc. with Jason Calcandus and Brian Alvey. And at Weblogs Inc., I kind of personally oversaw NGT and Joystick, which were the gadget and video game blogs respectively. We sold that business to AOL in 2005. I stayed for a few years and helped kind of get engad in the other web blogs incites firmly established there. Like engadget more firmly established than others since AOL shut down a lot of them.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In 2002, a friend of mine named Nick Denton moved to New York and also from San Francisco, and we were just hanging out one day and talking about blogs and where we thought they might go and came up with the idea for a site called Gizmoto, which we sort of threw together and launched a few months later in summer of 2002. I worked on Gizmoto for a couple of years and really... Nick and I had sort of, I guess, maybe a difference of opinion over where we thought blogging could go. My idea was blogging could be this much bigger”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Modus operandi was let's follow where the VC investment dollars are going in technology and that'll tell us the future of technology. And so it was a very venture capital focused business of technology publication that I joined in the late 90s. And so started off sort of writing about VC funded startups and emerging technologies and stuff like that and did that for a few years until the bubble burst in 2001 and Red Herring imploded. They laid off half the staff, me among them and moved to New York. I was based in San Francisco at the time, moved to New York in 2001, and had started blogging a few months earlier and was really interested in it. I wasn't sure where it was going to go. It seemed at the time blogging was a very, very, very small space. There were maybe, at that point, I think there was probably less than a thousand people blogging.”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so I started out actually as a technology journalist with a magazine called Red Herring, which was the magazine covering the business of technology sort of revolution in the first dot-com wave in the late 90s. And Red Herring's innovation as much as you could, looking back, it seems very obvious right now. But there...”
2015-10-14 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC 079: BETAWORKS WEEK: East vs West Coast Investing with Peter Rojas, EIR @ Betaworks, Co-Founder @ Weblogs & Engadget · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source