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Ravi Viswanathan

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58
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2023-07-13
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2023-07-13
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1
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  1. “You don't really know until the negative times. But really, it's two things. One is actually adding value. We're not private stock pickers. It's really company building. It's not just capital capital is fungible. So how do you add value to the company in ways that the company really wasn't able to do without you? And second, and this is more important, even in good times, the journey is never completely linear up into the right. It's tortuous. It's a tortuous journey. So being a good partner when there's serious issues with the company, whether it's product or market or team or execution. And sometimes there are times, especially 0809, Sure, here, where it's just invest and everything will take care of itself. And that usually never happens.”

    2023-07-13 · Capital Allocators · Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “It was an amazing time I joined in the DC office. It was a smaller office back then. And it was very much an apprenticeship model. This is the old days of venture capital. Peter Barrish hired me, ran the firm, ended up running the firm for 20 years. And so really sitting at the feet of giants like Peter, Scott Sandell, and some other tremendous investors, I joined as an associate, just worked my way up, principal partner, general partner, started as a generous, but really found enterprise software and also started our fintech efforts about 11, 12 years ago, well before it was called FinTech. It was really company building and also the ethos of the firm from Dick Cramlik was one of the founders, very focused in the entrepreneur and really being a good partner and a long-term capital partner. And those are just lessons that I still hold pretty sacred.”

    2023-07-13 · Capital Allocators · Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Actually, happening, and for those that were not accustomed to that market, you would think that would be the norm. And there was a lot of education that know this is very much a long-term, sometimes brutal game to get to the finish line in a positive outcome way.”

    2023-07-13 · Capital Allocators · Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “A spectator experience a lot of company failures. I spent a lot of time thinking about the downturns, what we can learn. And I'd say every downturn, there's similarities and differences with the one you're facing now. There were probably a fair subset of companies that had no business being companies in that downturn. The dot-com era, we all know, the lore of that era, but saw a lot of company failures, saw a lot of business models that up until then was masked with capital. And that's something that every downturn is a referendum on product market fit. Whereas before, when you had that run up, capital or some other factor masked that, we also saw a lot of strife within the LP community, whether it's individuals or institutions that want it out. I remember having conversations with folks and they thought, oh, if I invest in venture, I'll get a 5 to 10 X in two to three years. Because in 1999, in the early part of 2000, that was.”

    2023-07-13 · Capital Allocators · Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “This thing called venture capital. Maybe I should try to go to a pure play firm and really learn the craft of company building, which is how I really was taught. I knew the NEA folks and joined them in 2004 and spent a wonderful 15 years with them as a general partner. NEA has a firm that really started mega funds well before it was called mega funds. I didn't even call it that because there's so many funds doing it now. But it was one fund seed all the way to growth, tech and med and then I was a GP on the tech side. focused on enterprise software and fintech and growth investing.”

    2023-07-13 · Capital Allocators · Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Very, very interesting time. It's the first of three downturns I've lived through. Hopefully, this is the last one. The second is the group I joined was a private equity group. It was actually a mishmonitored fund investing, direct investing, co-investing in secondaries. And I drove the venture piece of that. And so actually back then, because of the downturn, I did get exposed to venture secondaries, which shaped me a fair amount if you fast forward 20 years. We spend a good chunk of our time focused on that market. It's changed in that it's probably two orders of magnitude larger in terms of market size. Venture and secondary is put together as a bad connotation. It was really not done and what was done was more continuation vehicles and close out funds. There's much more transactional, more passive, more of a trade. We're trying to do something very differently, but that experience really shaped me. I spent four years. There was an amazing experience and I finally figured out I really like it.”

    2023-07-13 · Capital Allocators · Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “That you've been on ever since? Venture is actually my third career. I was a scientist many, many years ago in the Bay Area, a material scientist, decided I don't want to be a scientist thought the commercialization of technology was more appealing to me than the research of technology. So did a hard pivot via business school, did consulting, and then really the path to venture started in January of 2000 when I joined Goldman Sachs. So I've been a VC for over 23 years, three firms, Goldman for four years, NEA, which is the bulk of my experience 15 years, and then launching NewView about four and a half years ago. Goldman really shaped who we are and who I am in terms of what we're doing here at Newview on a number of different levels. First, I joined in the beginning of 2000, if you remember, I come back to those days.”

    2023-07-13 · Capital Allocators · Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Guest on today's sponsored insight is Ravi Viswanathan, founder and managing partner of NewView Capital, a venture firm that created a disruptive model for strategic secondary investing that blends portfolio acquisitions with direct investments. Our conversation covers Ravi's path to the venture industry, lessons from 15 years at NEA, Catalyst for Creating NVC, and the rationale and opportunity set for venture secondaries. We discuss new views, investment process across the sweet spot for portfolio acquisitions, fallacy of discounts, work with portfolio companies, and exit strategy. We closed with new opportunities on the horizon and the future of New View Capital.”

    2023-07-13 · Capital Allocators · Ravi Viswanathan – Venture Secondaries and Growth Capital at NewView (EP.327) · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source