YouSaid · the spoken record

Phin Barnes

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63
first
2023-10-02
most recent
2023-10-02
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1
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podcast

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  1. “I think the first is one that actually I learned before in my work at AND One, the basketball company that then I applied to my decision to join first round, but it was also Josh's insight at first round, which is there's tremendous power in being able to focus on a niche. And if you can know your customer better than your competition and you can craft your product to deliver against that customer's needs in a more salient way than your competition, then you will win. The challenge with niche is that at some point people look around and they think, oh, now we're ready to expand, now we're ready to go beyond the niche. And they forget that what made them so successful in the niche is the thing they have to walk away from to try to expand. So at end one, we would talk about running shoes, trainers. We would talk about lifestyle shoes and clothing, kids licenses and so forth. And the focus on those things eroded the quality of the brand we had built in basketball and that the core understanding.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “That's right. That's right. But I think you have to also understand the way they set that up. So for me, when I was in junior high school, I mowed lawns. I had a mower and I would walk around the neighborhood and I would offer to mow people's lawns. But then I realized that people wouldn't be home. I'm out, you know, knocking on the door. They're not there. And so I started offering people a certain number of lawn moanings per month for a certain amount. I would ask them how when did the grass gets to a certain length you want to cut or do you want to cut twice a month? How do you want to do that? And so within my neighborhood, I had this really nice subscription revenue business where pretty much every house told me they wanted their lawn mode somewhere between one and three times a month. And so then I was able to walk around the neighborhood when I had time and make sure I got to my route and mow the lawns. I didn't have to knock on the door. They didn't have to be home. In fact, they probably rather they weren't home. And the reason I did that is I found that my friends wanted to play basketball on Saturdays and Sundays, which typically when I had time to mow, you know, but also when people were away. They were doing their own things on the weekend. So I needed to find a way to be able to mow the lawns during.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Guess as to how they will handle the complexity that is certainly coming, the uncertainty that is certainly coming as they lead their business.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “Think I've come to believe that your priorities and the way you express those priorities and explain them is probably the most important thing to understand when you think about partnering with a founder. I like to ask people, what's the best thing that happened at your company this week? And in the answer to that question, you have an understanding of what are they excited about? What do they think will drive the business forward? How they approached a problem, and how do they respond when there's a solution? Do they give credit away or do they take credit? Do they set up the situation as something that happened to them and they were a victim and they overcame it? Or do they set it up as a challenge that they understood like a puzzle and they navigate it? There are many, many ways that your priorities and the way you frame the challenges that you have to overcome are telling in terms of how you will lead a company. If you can ask questions that get at somebody's priorities and their motivations and their operating style, then you learn a tremendous amount about them as a founder and you can start to”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “People do it as podcasters. They do it as journalists. They do it as members of law enforcement. There's many, many ways to interview. And then the other aspect is coaching, which is also documented and can be practiced. And so I think you can be very intentional about the technical aspects of the job. You can focus on how to get better at those things day by day. And then you can hold on to the belief that that will be the path to your aspirations.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Think there's something in being very intentional about what you're doing and appropriately putting in context the decisions that you're making. Don't set yourself a goal of being a partner in five years because you probably have very little control over that. But be very intentional about the day-to-day work that you're doing and making sure that that is both excellent in terms of quality and helping you build towards the experience that you hope to achieve. And I think too many people, you come into venture and everybody kind of says, go find the next Uber. It doesn't really tell you how to do that. It's an art, not a science. Everyone practices it differently. But I think you can be intentional about the technical aspects of the job. So I think you can be a student of interviewing because venture investing starts with an interview with a founder and you're sitting down with someone and you're interviewing them to learn their ground truth, what they're going after, the way they see the market. And that's an art that can be practiced. It's also well documented.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “And then serve and then eat. Maybe you ask your daughter to clean up because you need to go and get back online and do a Zoom or email integrating your life and seeing how far you can go as a parent, as a spouse, as a friend, as a venture capitalist, all of those things, they weave together. It becomes when you have your own firm and it becomes a piece of that life, I think, in a much more meaningful way for me. It is true. Young person game. It is true you got to grind and there are hours and hours and hours, but I also think there's a thought that occurs when you're on your run and there's work that gets done when you're off to come home or going to watch a child play a sport. And so I think you can integrate those things and create the life that you want.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Think hard work is a huge piece of seeing how far you can go. Far can you go with your life, your whole life, not just one aspect. And so everything has to integrate, like work-life balance, I think, is not the right model. You want a life that you're proud of. Work that you're proud of that weaves into your dinner conversations with your family that you have time.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Me, there's a question that eats at me about what am I capable of? What can you accomplish when you attempt to answer that question inside the context of an existing institution? The answers are not easy, but more obvious. You know, you could become a managing partner at the firm. Why I did that? You could deliver. As a team, we had done that. You could partner with unbelievable companies. We did that. You could change the industry in some way with the review or dorm room fund or Angel Track. And we did that. And so then Was there more, and what could that be? Existed was in trying to My own approach. That step years before, and who was very To shape the general partnership in a really organic but also powerful way.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “People that you care for and trust. But I think I underestimated the sense maybe that somehow meant that what I was doing wasn't good enough. And that was not at all what I was saying. And those relationships are strong and it's been some time. And, you know, Josh is an investor in the fund and so forth. But I think navigating that was a challenge. Sometimes doing the hard thing is the thing you have to do. And I felt like I did that and did it with integrity.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “Sure. Leaving First Sean was a really, really hard decision. I think you find your greatest opportunities when you leave the best job you ever had. And I think that's definitely the case here. I mean, it was a wonderful brand, very successful, wonderful people. But for me, there was always this question sort of eating at me around, was this it? Right? Was this all there was in my venture career? And was there more in the opportunity to build something of my own and find a way to do that and continue to push myself and continue to engage with the edges of what I was capable of by trying my own thing? And so, you know, in 2020 was looking at the market and feeling the work I was doing and where I wanted to go. And I had some conversations with Josh and other partners. And we figured out a path to navigate that was appropriate and acceptable to everyone, not the happiest of moments because anytime you know these are deep friendships.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “I'm really happy to be here. It's always wonderful to talk to you whether we're on the show or on WhatsApp. It's always great to hear your voice or read your words.”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “The fee and carry model doesn't work because those services show up as a cost center on the cash flow statement of the VC firm itself. There's been this push to scale. It's eroded the product of venture. If someone says the best founders don't need help, what I hear them saying is the best founders don't need my help”

    2023-10-02 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source