YouSaid · the spoken record

Puneet Agarwal

lines on the record: 26
first: 2019-08-12
most recent: 2019-08-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“You know, it is a crazy business. I kind of wish I didn't know all that I know now. Because if I knew, I think I'd be walking in too fearful or I would have tried to mimic a journey that wasn't my own, if that makes sense. I think you have to, just as getting into venture is a very serendipitous journey, your journey as a board member, somewhat serendipitous, you have a duty. So I'm not trying to minimize the duty, but you have to go find your way and figure out how you react in all these various situations. So if I knew that all these crazy situations would come up along with the success, I may have overthought it. And I think you have to trust your instinct oftentimes in these boardrooms and really try to take the information in, but trust your instinct, trust who you are and what you really think about a situation, not be fearful of voicing it. And so I would be very careful not to have too much information almost, if that makes sense.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a good question. There's been a lot to me, it's the relationships. That's the first thing that popped into my mind. Our partnership is going to sound corny too, but it just has a lot of love between it. We really care about each other at a deep level. We like being around each other. We know each other, not just as professionals, but personally. I never really thought you could do that. I worked in a lot of different places. I had good relationships with various folks. But I used to always have a separation between work and personal life. And I still do to some extent obviously have my family, et cetera, but this has really blended for me and this is something I will never ever forget. And I think it's very, very unique. And that's, again, something that I hope we can maintain forever.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Back to Punit. Oh, you know what popped into my head was my grandfather said this to me when I was a kid years ago. So my grandfather was based in India, so I used to go visit him in India all the time. And I know this sounds corny, but he did say this to me a long time ago, and he said, only a person who risks is free. And I didn't really know what that meant for a long time, but I've come to know what that means. And to me, it means that if you kind of live by other people's rules or are too conservative or just too worried about what other people think, you're never truly free. You don't have that just freedom to go out there and take chances and do the things you need to do. And so I've always tried to live by that, that you got to push the ball forward, not really worry about what everybody thinks at all times. I don't think I'm the best at it. I think I see other people who are amazing at it, but that has always stuck with me.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“With you that tell me what's the single biggest challenge of your role with True today? Challenge is an interesting question. I mean, it's so much fun. I enjoy every day of it. I enjoy spending time with this team who I love deeply. So to me, it's just maintaining and continuing to push ourselves. So maintaining the great culture that we have, because every time you add a new person, the culture evolves and changes. And that's important to add people and continue to add different perspectives. So we want to make sure we do that while making sure the culture continues to grow. And I think the other piece is just pushing ourselves to continue to take risk. Like I said, I mean, maximizing risk is such a core tenet to what we do. It was the third bullet point on the first page of our investment deck that we've been pitching to LPs for the last 13 years. And we have to keep pushing ourselves on that front. It's really easy to, once you've achieved some level of success, and I'm not saying that we have, but once you have done something in this industry, it's easy to sit back and react and we have to continue to be proactive. And so it's just pushing ourselves to do that.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What makes Richard Trey so special? You've worked with him for a number of years now. What makes Rich so good? Rich is, I shouldn't say this publicly, but I'm going to one of my favorite people to work with. I think that Rich, someone described this to me, rich is sneaky good in a funny way. So he's not like out there beating his chest all the time, but he's got so much authenticity and he really understands his business at a depth that is quite remarkable, both at a product level and a united economics business level. And he's got a calmness about him. He's a leader. People want to work with him. He's a listener. And he's got that patience and capability to kind of see it through over the long haul. And he's just a hell of a lot of fun. He's just a great person to sit down with and chat with and hear about his own life. He's persevered through a lot. I mean, you know, as you know, he actually had to sell shoes, him and the team just like ends meet to kind of get the business off the ground. So he's got a great perspective. Never gets too high on himself, which I really like. Couldn't be a bigger fan of Richie's all traders.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really hit me. It's kind of a fun book. Have you read billion dollar whale? I got recommended this by Martin Mignot Index this morning and I bought it. Is it good? Oh, it's terrific. So I've had, I don't know, mildly obsessed with these books that are historically true but written in a fictional way, so historical fiction a lot of ways. And so it's a true story, but it's written like a fictional book. And it's just mind-boggling. It's about an individual named Joe Lowe who embezzled tons of money from the Malaysian government and ended up investing in all kinds of areas, everything from movies with Leonardo DiCaprio to all kinds of businesses. And it's just a fascinating story. So ever since I read the big short way back when, I've always been fascinated with those types of books and the reality of what is behind these stories because they're true and they're real. Bad blood, big short. I would highly recommend this book. They're all among the same ilk and they're just mind-boggling every time you read them of what can really happen in our society. Clearly, I need to check it out.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Company anywhere. And a lot of EC firms still haven't done that. They're still very provincial about that whole aspect. I think they're going to miss out because some great companies are being built everywhere. Trey as an example, right? Duo is another example. Various others. I can go on and on and on, but they're getting access to tremendous talent. They don't have a lot of the expense issues that we have out here, to put it lightly from a San Francisco perspective and some of the competition perspective. So you have very loyal employees. And a lot of companies are building and scaling out there. So you have a lot of lessons to learn from. And so we are all about it and we do not discriminate on that aspect at all. And it absolutely does separate you and make you very unique, as you said. I do want to finish though today, Bruni, with my favorite, though. It's a quick firearound. So Isaiah short statement and then you hit me with your immediate thoughts. Are you ready to roll? Let's do it. Okay, so I'm on a flight with Rich on our way to see you and we both need a book for the flight. What should we be reading? You know, the book that I just read that”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we're big believers in it. So we've invested in Montana, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Oregon, Africa, Europe. It wasn't like we intended to do that right out of the gate. A lot of what we did initially in the early days was around the valley, and I think there's still a lot of promise here. Great companies are being built everywhere. And we sourced them because our network has grown. I mean, I think it's from a few places. One is we funded $250 to 300 companies over the life of our time here as a venture firm. And those companies have thousands of employees and we're hyper-connected in a lot of ways and done a lot of work connecting them. So we get a lot of referrals that way from our existing network. You know, as a team, we have deep operational experience, have worked for decades in the industry. So those networks help us. And there's a lot of small seed funds that we've gotten to know extremely well all across the country. And they have also referred to steels. And we love working with them as well. The other thing is we've put a shingle up on top of True and said we're fine with investing in any kind of”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I've never figured this out perfectly. I don't know anybody who has, but I don't think you can be ruthless in the business. And I think some of the time allocation statements that people make about, hey, you need to spend more time with the winners are maybe a little bit off base because maybe you actually don't need to spend as much time because they're doing just fine. I'm very much with you there and makes a lot of sense. I do want to finish though, Pune, on an element that actually both Phil and Rich said to me that I had to ask you about. And it was the element”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And really make the reputation where it's needed. Yeah, it's an interesting conundrum. You know, there's always that old adage, like, hey, spend more time with winners. Don't spend as much time with losers as you said. I don't think you can do that really once you've signed that social contract with a portfolio company. It's a challenge. I don't have an exact answer. The best way to do it. Oftentimes, though, it's inverted. Companies that are doing extremely, extremely well sometimes don't need your time. You kind of just need to let them go. They're growing. They're getting bigger. You've added more board members around the table. There's moments of time where you can step in, but there's less frequent moments of time. And then there's a whole bunch of companies that are in the messy middle, I would say, that have the potential to break out. That's where I ended up spending the most of my time, honestly, trying to figure out how to get through, figure out an inflection point. And then at the very, very early stages, sometimes you also need to get out of the way because someone's just building product and you need to just be there for that individual when they call or when they want to ask or talk about things. So it's funny.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's colleagues of mine who vehemently disagree with me on that, but I do think you can be friends. I mean, if you unpack what friendship means, it means respect. It means love for another individual. It also means honesty and transparency. And I think those are all the qualities that you need to have as a board member. Yes, I have a fiduciary duty to all shareholders, as do all board members, and that's very clear up front. But that's where the honesty and transparency comes into play. And I've become very close with the people I work with. And I think it's one of the joys of the business. I love it. And so that's me, other folks vehemently disagree, as you pointed out, but I think you have to choose your own path in the way you do business as a board member. If that's maybe one board, say, the hardest thing I think, and one of the biggest challenges in ventures, time allocation, how do you think about time allocation across the portfolio? Because if you're logical and highly scientific and IQ, not EQ, you only spend time with the winners, they return the fund. How do you think about that versus balanced or spend time with the”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because it was literally the day of wiring. He says, You invested largely because of me. And so just send me the wire instructions and we're just going to figure out we have to do with the company. And so, you know, you take that all in. That was pretty shocking at that moment. There's no real lessons for how you handle yourself in that moment. But we at that moment instinctively said, no, you keep the money. Let's go forward and try to build this business. This is what it's about, how to work through these hard times and work as a team to go figure it out. And so you see the gamut from crazy bad behavior to intensely personal issues. By the way, that company is doing quite well now and that person, I think, is on the path to recovery. So touch wood every day about that. But you see all kinds of stuff in this job. And I think you learn every day. And there's never a moment where you actually sit at the back and think you know everything. I mean, amazing to hear, and I'm thrilled to hear that on that company. I do have to ask, some people have different feelings on this. Do you think board members can be friends with founders or do you think there's a line of professionalism that has to be drawn? No, I do think they can.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Things will come up out of left field, crises of all kinds will come up in every single company. And I think that's where your inner stripes. That's where I want to be called, frankly. And that's where I think True wants to be called. I've never asked this question before, but you laid it so nicely for me. What's the craziest thing you've seen? No names mentioned, but what's the craziest thing you've seen? Yeah, I have seen some crazy stuff. I'm trying to figure out how to actually say it without not saying it in a funny way. I do some really bad behavior inside of companies from a founder or CEO perspective just on a personal level with employees and some of that stuff has been very crazy. I've seen some really personal stuff separately. For example, there was a company, and I've been a little bit open about this, but there was a company that we put $5 million into the company on the day of wiring the CEO called me and said that he was diagnosed with colon cancer and that he didn't have a long time to live. And the first thing he said to me was, how do I give you the money back?”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the time in the industry is you sort of force a founder to meet with you every week or every two weeks and just say, hey, let's have breakfast every two weeks. And if you unpack that, I think the investor is doing that more for themselves than for the founder. The founder doesn't necessarily always have to meet with someone every two weeks, earn their trust and have them want to reach out to you. I think that's where you earn your stripes in this business. So part of it, I think that's one part of it. The other part is I think a calmness inside of a boardroom, a rationality and a calmness. There's oftentimes, again, I find panic in either direction, either over exuberance about where the business is going or over exuberance on the downside of how bad the business is doing. A company missing a quarter doesn't mean it's a bad business. It just means it misses a quarter. Let's figure out what we need to do to improve things. So if you can be that calm, rational voice, you'll earn more trust with the founder as well. But those are two things that I think that I've learned over the years. And that calmness comes from just seeing all kinds of crazy situations because things do come up. I will tell you.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I love that in terms of not being kind of monarchically focused on perfection. There is a round, though, Pineet, that I wanted to do, and when I was constructing the schedule, I was like, you know, there's some questions I just have to ask. So these are based ones where I'm too intrigued not to ask. So we spoke about boards earlier. You know, I know Rich obviously very well who said the most wonderful things about you. So how have you seen yourself evolve and improve as a board member? And then what advice would you give me having just gained my first board seat? Yeah, I think when you first get in the business, you're so eager to just keep doing stuff for the founder, get in there, get involved. But part of the trick, I think, at least I've learned is, and I alluded to this earlier, is learning how to actually not talk. It's one of the most important skills you can have as a board member to actually just listen and absorb and let the founder go through their process and maybe help afterwards or on the side, but don't be too eager. Don't monopolize a board meeting. One of the pet peeves I have as well is, and this happens.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is such that we start small, and we say this. We start small, we don't think small. So we start with this very small check, thinking that we can build a very big company here. We get our ownership early and we maintain our pro rata all the way through. And the reason we're able to do that is because we have very heavy capital reserves. I think you kind of have to, if you want to be an institutional investor and you want to maintain ownership, you have to do it. And we end up working really well with everybody, frankly. So we end up working with funds who may have gotten in earlier or before us or in conjunction with us. And we end up working great with the later funds who want to come in and also get their ownership as well. But there's enough room for them to do it too. So that's just the model we built. It's interesting though, Harry, that we're really one of the only institutional seed funds that we tend to see out there. I think more.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And the dollar amount. So we maximize risk on one vector, minimize on the other, and that's how the businesses essentially run. Can I ask you said that about being maybe 1% or sub 1% of the fund in terms of the initial check? That kind of suggests a kind of a heavy reserve allocation. How do you think about dollar deployment over time? And I'm always quite skeptical and I always think it's actually incredibly challenging to build ownership with the likes of Sequoia, benchmark coming in hard and kind of taking the treasures into the trees, so to speak. Do you think I'm wrong? And how do you think about that ownership over time? Yeah, you know, I think ownership's important. You want to align the business correctly so that the founder has enough ownership, but you also want your ownership as an investor because that's how you get fund level returns in this business. So when we make that one to three million initial check, we target around 20% ownership. And we have a big enough funds who are latest funds around $350 million and we have an opportunity fund, which is about $280 million. That's only for existing portfolio companies.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Not pushing the envelope and you're not failing, you're probably not doing it right. It's just a part of how the business works. I totally agree with you in terms of pushing the envelope there. On the flip side, I have heard you also say that in some cases you like to minimize the risk. So if that's how you kind of maximize the risk in terms of the product, how do you think about risk minimization? And where's that maybe important? Yeah, you have to minimize risk as well. So the way we minimize risk is on two vectors. One is on the actual dollar amount. When we first write our first checks, we're writing sub 1% of the fund into an investment, which again reduces all that loss aversion piece that I was talking about earlier. It frees up all the creativity for both the founder and us. So on the dollar amount, that's where we minimize risk. And the other thing is on the founder quality. So most of the founders that we invest in today are referred to by our existing founder network, which is vibrant and highly connected. But more importantly, we really look at that founder, look at their backgrounds, look at who they are, try to really get to know them. And that's where we minimize risk because both on the founder”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think about loss ratios? No, I mean, I think you have to build it into your business. We place super early, it true, right? We play at the seed level. We're the first one to three million in a company. You know, we are very open about the fact that 40 to 50 percent of the companies we invest in will probably lose or go to zero. It's just the nature of the game because we invest super early. But you have to build it into the model. That's part of what we do. I would classify investors in two camps these days. It's the people who invest before you know what's about to happen for all the traction is there and the people who invest after the traction is there and are sort of trying to ride the wave and hope that it gets as big as it can possibly be. When you're investing before all the traction is there or all the information is there, there's inherent risk, but you have to embrace that risk. True, we talk about it all the time. We say we maximize risk on product market timing, which means that you have to build failure into the model. And if you don't, we would fail. Like it just wouldn't work. Failure is a huge part of the venture capital business. In fact, if you're not”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of our fund to begin with. It's $2 million, for example. Maybe that's one half of one percent of the fund. And by the way, I give Phil and John a ton of credit for the structure that they created around True. But because of that, when I'm going into a boardroom with that first check, it's okay to lose it. Not that I want to lose it, but it's okay. So everybody's creative. For me as a board member down to the team member, down to the founders, they feel that creativity, that they have the space to say, okay, well, this is not working. Let's try this. The fear mostly comes from the fact that you're afraid to make a mistake in front of your investors. So you can't tell the truth about, hey, this product's not working. I'm going to miss this quarter. You're more trying to gain the investor versus actually do what's right for the business, if that makes sense. It totally doesn't. I'm super interested though. And we're going to unpack it more, but I do have to touch on that element of loss aversion there. How does that mean then you think about loss ratios? And I don't mean to denigrate some LPs, but it surprises me how many LPs still really care about loss ratio, even in this game of kind of upside maximization that we seem to play.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, great questions. I mean, I think the fear aspect comes when a board member comes in, I would say, and makes it about themselves. So one of the biggest skills I've learned as a board member is how not to talk, actually. I think it's one of the most acquired skills you can have inside of a boardroom. It's just that listening gene and just letting a founder speak and talk about all the various issues. And they don't have to be perfect, right? Like the founder doesn't feel like they have to be perfect. They can talk. They're given rope and space to make mistakes. And I think if you as a board member say, okay, that's okay. Let's work through how we can constructively make something better versus saying, hey, that's horrible. You missed the quarter. I can't believe you're doing this. Pull the cord quickly, fire quickly, all those things. I mean, I think that's the difference between fear and safety. And I think the other thing I would say too is I think structurally as a firm, true has made it so that we can bring safety into the boardroom. I think firms can structure it so that you can do that. For example, we invest in very small portion.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no great question here. I really do. I do think it's what's going to separate the best firms in the next decades to come. I think IQ, if you want to call it, just being smart, understanding industries, I do believe that's table stakes in a lot of ways. There's a lot of smart people around, a lot of people who are very smart at digging into companies. But I do believe the human connection is what's most important. Venture capital to me is fundamentally a human business. I mean, I'll give you an example. I get questions all the time when I'm on various boards and things come up all the time. I want to sell a company. I'm not getting along with my co-founder. I've missed a quarter by a mile. I can't work with this person inside the company, even to very fundamentally.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That perspective to today, and you see some parallels, but I do think it's very different now because we do have real fundamentals. Multiples may be high. You can argue that back and forth, but these are companies with real revenue product, not just selling to themselves. It used to happen a lot back in 1999. Startups just ended up selling to themselves. And when the startups failed, everybody failed. Here you just see real customer bases, real revenue, real growth. So, yeah, I do think in some cases multiples may be high, but it's sort of a different atmosphere. But it does give you perspective and keeps you grounded.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, I think it affected me tremendously. I mean, to live through that was pretty remarkable. So when I got there in 99, you know, Mayfield had done, I believe they had done 50 deals in 99, you know, one deal a week. And it was crazy. I mean, companies were going public at that time with sub 10 million in that billion dollar market caps. The numbers just were bonkers. And then the winter came, I guess you want to call it, back in around 2001, 2002, and everything fell apart and money dried up. companies just completely dissipated almost overnight. So to actually see that process, to see the complete euphoria and then to see how you had to build companies back up or restructure companies, I went back into the workforce. I worked for a company called BEA Systems and spent, you know, eight or nine years in the operating world. But to see that that can happen, how that happens, that the euphoria can sometimes get the best of you, that's a great learning experience because you really apply any.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“John Callahan, his co founder, said, Why don't you just come hang out at True? And it wasn't here, let's come work together. True had just started, it was about a couple years in. It was around 2008 timeframe. And it was more like, hey, come here, hang out. Let's see how it goes. One thing led to another, we really clicked as a team. I loved it. And I think within two years, I was a partner. And 11 years later, I'm here. So it's funny how it works.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, great question, Harry. I find that most people enter the venture world in a very serendipitous manner, and I think the same is true with me. So I began my career really early. I was part of a group called the Mayfield Fellows, which is a kind of fellowship at Stanford where they take 10 or 12 engineering students and they put them into various startups. And that was back in 97, 98. And because of that, I ended up working at a firm called Mayfield, way, way back around 99 to 02, which was really the boom and the bust of venture capital. So I saw a lot during that timeframe. And during that time frame, I ended up meeting Phil Black, who ended up founding True Ventures. We didn't end up working at that time together, but we got to know each other. I ended up going into industry for a long period of time. And then when Phil started true ventures, I was coming off running product at a company called Geodesic, and it was based in India. And so I was flying back and forth quite a bit. I was thinking about my next thing. And Phil and John.”
2019-08-12 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source