YouSaid · the spoken record

Rob Go

lines on the record: 67
first: 2023-06-23
most recent: 2023-06-23
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“My vision and our team's vision is for NextView to be, I think of benchmark and YPO had a baby and focused on seed. That's what I'd love next view to be. From on the benchmark side, it's a very partner-driven model, equal partnership, a lot of stability, best in class, best in class investor, very concentrated model, YPO, an ethos of founder vulnerabilities support communal excellence. Folks are able to have like lifelong relationships that they think is one of the most important things in their lives. Like, I would love that to be what founders say about being part of the next week portfolio. So if we can marry those two things, I would love that.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think Venture is very one size fits all. Even though there are a lot of different managers, a lot of different funds, there's just so much similarity in the ways that they approach it. That's why I love what Bryce is doing with Indy. Like it's completely different as so many vectors. When I got an adventure, I remember there was this very heart and fast rule about like you have to own 20% as a venture fund. One of Union Square's big innovations was they were willing to own 15%. And I remember people were poo-pooing them for own 15%. Like, why is that wrong? There's just so much one size fits all on the venture I would love that to change around like the types of people who get into it, the types of companies that can raise venture, the type of economics maybe that could allow different types of companies to work. I don't know. I think in a lot of different ways we're not thinking creatively enough.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of our biggest hits is attentive, and we invested in an uncapped note. And that changed my mind because we never would have done it before. It's not like we're looking to do uncapped notes left and right, but it made me realize you just want to get into the best companies. In a power law business, you just want to get into the best companies”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My biggest miss was DraftKings. I was actually Jason Robbins' teaching assistant in college. I knew he was special. He walked into our offices to pitch draft kings, along with two other extraordinary co-founders. We passed not because of regulation, but because we misunderstood the market size. And ever since then, I've been very careful to not say no to an investment just because of market size without thinking very deeply about whether or not we're misunderstanding the market, mystifying it, or just underestimating the growth that's on the other end.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“See something happening in AI that's very similar to the early days of the internet. There are teams that I see that are clearly trying to become AI native. And that doesn't necessarily mean that you're like an ML researcher or have a PhD in the space. It's just that you are approaching building every software product with expectation that AI and AI driven tools can massively create efficiencies or to enable new capabilities. And there are other teams that are just like, ah, this is probably the next new fad. I don't know, I'm going to put it aside. This is very similar to the internet, right? Or cloud. Like there was a time when you would talk to a founder and you just knew, is this person native? Is this person just like native to the types of products and tools that are out there and available to them or not? I kind of see the same dynamic happening. And it's not that every company would invest in an AI company, but every team we invest in, I'd like them to be very, very AI native.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would probably say summit partners. They're the OG of the classic growth cold calling machine. Like they invented that model. They execute it like nobody else. If I could, I would specifically invest in their smaller fund. They have a bunch of different funds. I think they have a small $400 or $500 million classic growth fund. That's probably what I would do.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Be benchmark persistent success over time, successful generational transition, quite disciplined, amazing brand, great people, hard to be.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He would be in DVC. So this is Bryce's Fund. They have a completely different model focused on a completely underserved different segment of the early stage market with a unique investment product. That's like different on four or five dimensions with a great guy, and I can't wait to invest in this money.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Right. No, I saw that tweet, right? It's like a good old fashioned enterprise software Series A with good metrics that isn't doing AI or not pretending to do AI. That's great.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Related to your last question, I think there's actually a lot of opportunity out there for non-consensus thinking. I think there are a lot of companies that aren't getting very much love because they're not AI, the teams aren't fancy founders that came from well-known companies that are just having a really tough time raising. And I think that there's going to be many diamonds in the rock that come out of that. I think there's a lot of like doom and gloom and disgruntled chatter among seed investors right now. And I'm like, there are a lot of companies out there. Go ahead and do it. And by the way, if the founders are really that great, like just go ahead and pay a higher price. Like, that's okay too.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, we see them. I spoke to a founder yesterday who had been part of a company that had a very successful exit, then joined a unicorn company before it was unicorn, led growth, and he did a preseed, and it was pretty reasonably priced. Like the seed will probably be pretty expensive, but the precede wasn't bad”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a bifurcated market. Prices are very high for certain types of companies. But if you're a contrarian, there are a lot of companies that don't get any love as well. I also think that part of the complaint is that seed funds are looking for what effectively used to be a series A investment. And I say like, why don't you do a precede? Because pre-seeds are still pretty cheap, especially if it's not a super proven founder. By the way, like when we started, we were doing seed rounds.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the degree of difficulty is relatively high. I don't think that it will persist because at some point the multi-stage funds will say, hey, it's not really worth our time and effort to invest at this stage and they'll turn their attention to later stage rounds where they write bigger checks again. But for now, it's pretty difficult. But there have been other times where it's been difficult as well. And when we started, seed was a cottage industry. It wasn't that it was a lot easier. Today it's harder, but we didn't get into this to do something easy.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like I said, I've become so much more Zen about this. In the first fund, every time someone said no, I took it personally and I felt like it was a waste of time. Now looking back, it is amazing. Like this one LP that I mentioned, it's actually our biggest LP now. This is the one that I talked to them in Fund one. They didn't actually engage very much, but they always took a meeting or two and then passed. And then I think three or fund four, they didn't even take a meeting. And then Fund 5, they came in. And I was like, how much of a waste of time was that? Not much, right? It was like a handful of meetings over the course of however many years, some email updates. And they're great partners with us. And they're a pretty large LP for us. And if that has kind of changed my thinking, where like you just don't know. People are in the business of meeting managers. You're in the business of meeting LPs and you just don't know how relationships are going to evolve. People are going to go to different platforms and add a new platform. Maybe you become a really great fit for them when they weren't before. So just like allow serendipity to happen and do your job. And I feel like things will work out.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Since Fun One decided to come in at the very, very end. It was 100% about their own timing. Were they ready to say yes to us early on? No. Like literally with like, I sent an email and I think they either ignored me or they said no, like just by the email. And then nine months later, they were ready. Because I chatted with them in Fun, like they had the sense that they tracked us for a long, long time and they were ready to say yes to us. And so I was like, okay, great. This is going to work. So I'm much more relaxed.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think you want to be organized, especially the first couple times you do this. I think you want to be very organized, but don't try to manage it too tightly because you actually don't know enough to be able to manage it like a fine oiled machine. And you have to allow for some serendipity. I'm like a little Zen about this kind of thing. I try to stick to my timelines. I try to be very transparent with RPs. I always say that if you're not for us this time, maybe next time. And who knows? When I started, I had so much urgency around like we need to hit this date. We need to close this amount by this amount of time, like trying to jam people into a framework. And now I'm just much more laissez-faire about it. We had one experience with one of our funds where we closed most of it, frankly, right before the lockdown happened with COVID. And we were like, we've hit our target. Should we just like stop fundraising and just like focus on uninvesting? I was like, yes, but you never know what might happen. Nine months later, one LP that frankly is a relationship I cultivated.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was crypto. That's not the case anymore. Probably if you're an AI specific fund, that can very credibly tell a differentiated story. That could be a new new thing, although it's so crowded, perhaps not.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say that we are not the new product, but we have a lot of stability. We don't have the biggest brand, but our track record is pretty strong. LPs that don't care so much about the brand, that like smaller managers and believe in early stage and kind of like a no-frills, less flash, but great performance kind of partner that they can trust for a long period of time tend to like next wheel.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For a long time, that has executed the same strategy for a long time that just has shown that great level of stability. And that's what they want, right? I think pension funds tend to like that. I think some endowments like that. And I think they tend to convert great towards the middle later stages of the fun cycle.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Different types of LPs convert better at different times in your life cycle. So fund of funds are in the business of one of two things. They're either in the business of access, get whatever institution into these fancy names. And so they're very focused on brand. The other Java fund to funds sometimes is to execute a particular strategy and get folks into something new. And so if you fit the category of like the new thing in a new category, some fund of funds are really, really great at converting. Weirdly, when you're in the middle, you're neither new nor you so well known that you have like a great brand. Fund of funds are not as good. What I found is that funds two to three, it's actually harder to get a new fund of funds engaged because you're neither of the two. There are some groups that are very, very large LPs and they just want stability. They will never invest in a fund one or a fund two, but they love the idea of investing in fund three, four, five, or more with a team that's been together.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would say for individuals, I'm usually pretty loose. For institutions, we try to enforce some sort of a minimum, but the minimums typically pretty low. Because, like you said, sometimes you get great introductions from LPs. Sometimes it's our model to start really small, but they can actually upsize quite considerably. Like we've certainly seen that in our portfolio. I try not to be too snooty about that. I generally am a believer in building an anti-fragile LP base. Even though I said earlier, I really, I don't mind concentration. I also don't mind a lot of small chunks if you can handle it from a timing standpoint. A bunch of small checks is very, very anti-fragile. I'm not too snooty about that sort of thing. As long as folks are good to deal with and they're not like a huge time sink, I'm happy to engage.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think there's some GPs though. They don't have the constitution of always fundraising. I feel like this is true for founders too. There's some founders who are just so great at always having investor conversations and other founders that are just not good at that, right? And they're better off running a concentrated process, simultaneous process in big bursts. And so I think to some degree, like that's sort of the same for GPs too. Some folks are very, very good at keeping a lot of LP relationships and LP cultivation going. And I think some are just not as good at that.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah. I wonder if that's going to change though because I feel like what you've described, I feel like maybe everybody's figured out. And so I noticed that everybody basically starts their fundraise at the latter half of the year so that they can target a beginning of the year close unless they catch somebody who has end-of-year allocation. That is the most logical timing. It's captured the largest part of the market. But then I hear everybody's doing that. So I don't know if there's a way to zig when others are zagging. Probably not, but yeah, that's something I've been thinking about actually.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has come back like a year or two years ahead of expectant and it's throwing off our entire planning strategy. Like, there's actually something comforting in knowing that you're operating as predictably, if not more predictably, than their existing portfolio. And you're great to work with from that standpoint.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that's a great point. So typically, if I think about our timing, if we're looking to do a first close in, say, Q1 of a given year, we are probably giving pretty clear indication of what our timeframe is, at least like 18, if not 24 months before that. And then we remind people, hey, like this is what we said. You probably don't remember. Here it is again. Some MLPs are very good at keeping track of this kind of thing. Some folks tend to forget. And so we just remind folks. And like you said, it's not a surprise when the time comes that you're looking to close at a certain time. And I think LP is actually kind of, even those who pay attention, they appreciate the consistency of how you've operated, right? So knowing that you're a fund that is delivering on exactly what they said, they're hitting the timeline that they projected to earlier is like very reassuring because a lot of the existing managers don't do that, right? So, you know, when the markets were hot, what LP's always said was like, oh my God, so-and-so fun.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that's right. I think that as you get further along in the fun, it's easier to be able to say, hey, our last one was excise, the new fund is this size. Most of our LPs want to do, you know, want to increase their allocation. We probably have room for one or two more LPs, and we're trying to be very selective about who that looks like. We think that we'd love to work with you, but here's our timeline and try to figure out if they can meet that.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Then at least you know they're not really serious, or at least they're not serious within that time frame. But I don't know. What have you done, Harry?”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The tricky thing about this business is you know where most LPs have the incentive to be the second to last yes because it's not like you have that much benefit in being or any benefit in being the first yes to fund. So I have a couple of thoughts here. I think for a first fund, there is no shame in closing a very small amount as long as your strategy can support it. I always remind people like Lear's first fund was a $7 million fund and they're pretty well known folks in the industry. So I think there's something about like just do a close and then that allows you to like have a very concrete timeline of like what a final close looks like. Once you're done and you're in business, just do what you need to do and then you can create more urgency in your next fund when you have more demand and more points on the board. I also think that there's some LPs that pride themselves in being in a first close, some fund of funds, some endowments. It's meaningful to them that they're known for being the first yes. And so you can basically use a closed date as a forcing function. If clearly that's not going to work.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I agree with that. So I would say when I say don't ask twice, I would not be shy about sharing good news, but I certainly wouldn't ask without offering something over and over again.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Actually, I really like that approach, right? The thing not to do is do you want to take a next step? Do you want to take a meeting? Asking for something without offering something, I think that is really hopeless.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It seems like you've had maybe a different experience where, because if you've said 50 emails, that means for somebody else you've sent 10 emails and it did work. So do you actually think that the two email rule is not correct?”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have a basic belief that it never hurts to ask twice, but I never ask three times, right? So if there's an email that doesn't get responded to, I don't feel bad about asking again. After I'm ignored twice, that's okay. I just move on. That doesn't necessarily mean they're dead, by the way. It's just that I'm not going out of my way to proactively seek them out. But fundraising processes are long. You never know, right? You might see them at a conference in three months from now. And they'll be like, oh, yeah, you know, times have changed. Like, let's have a follow-up. And that's fine. They're not dead to me. I'm just not going to proactively reach out anymore. So that's my general rule.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Mark Suster had a post years ago, and one of the takeaways was, to paraphrase, like, always leave something more. Always leave something out so that there's some reason to have a follow-up. That's sort of why a blurb is kind of nice, because then it gives you the opportunity to follow up with the deck. So with one of our fundraises, we had a data room. For the first time, we actually had a data room. And we were so liberal about saying like, well, here's the data room. Have a look. We have since changed that. We do have a data room, but the data room is a preliminary data room. And it is intentionally incomplete. And the reason it's intentionally incomplete is if we offered the data room, I want to know they looked at it, which you can. Like a lot of times there's tracking for these things. But then if they actually like prosecuted it, it'll be obvious there's some other stuff that they would want to see. And so we have a subsequent data room that we offer for folks who actually dig in and care to look at it. So I like having these kind of gates that are out there just to assess whether or not LPs are serious. And it's sort of like a video game, right?”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The worst LP meetings aren't just when it's clear the person doesn't want to be there. We actually very rarely have those meetings now, and for the most part, it's because we don't fight that hard to get a meeting. Like in the beginning, I was like, oh, I just need to get in the room. And if we can get in the room, we can convince somebody that they want us. If somebody doesn't want you, they don't want you. I'm not that great of a salesperson. So it does mean no good to walk in to somebody who's already leaning way back. Like life's too short. There's other opportunities out there. And so I would almost say like, you want to scrape and fight really hard to get great introductions, but if somebody doesn't want to take a meeting, like there's not that much value in forcing it.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'll tell you the LP meetings I most enjoy are ones that focus a lot on the human beings, the nature of the team dynamic, the why behind what we do, the touchy-feely meetings. There is a class of LPs I think a lot of folks who have this approach have a heritage at Yale. So I really enjoy those meetings. Another meeting I remember was with Horsley Bridge. They're not LPs in our fund. But I remember actually a follow-up where we were talking about portfolio construction. And one of the folks there said, the best portfolio construction in the world is to invest in one company and put all your money into the first round and be right. And every derivative from that basically is allowing for uncertainty and risk. And I always kind of remember that. I kind of enjoyed their probing, taking ideas to an extreme just to stretch your thinking because I felt like I learned something from that. And obviously that's not what anybody does, but I kind of appreciated that.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Five to go, right? Like whatever the numbers are, trying to get that feel I think is really, really valuable. And whatever questions it takes to answer that, I think is what you're looking for.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, this is something that I didn't realize when we started the first fund. The number one factor in whether an LP says yes or no is just timing. Are they expanding their program? Are they looking for whatever box or category they put you in? Do they have the bandwidth to be able to do it within the timeframe they're trying to raise a fund? Like those are the main factors. And so you want to try to figure out what the answer is to those questions. So LPs usually will share like what percentage of their portfolio is private equity or venture. You want to get a sense for is that growing or shrinking? You want to get a sense of has this LP invested in something that looks like you? And what is our general strategy around that category of product, right? Because within venture, presumably if you're raising a first fund, you fit into some small bucket, right? So when we started, it was a institutional seed funds, not in the Bay Area. A few years ago it would be crypto. Most LPs hopefully have some strategy of like, we want to have X number of managers that look like you. We've invested two or three of them. And so we have another four.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You can go either way. I actually don't think it's a bad thing to send the deck. It's like people want the information, just give it to them. Sometimes we'll send a pretty detailed blurb so that there is some enticing information, but we don't have everything. I actually don't mind that because I think part of your job is to qualify and to try to manage your time well. And so having an obvious next step that is out there is kind of helpful for that qualification process. But I don't know. For the most part, I think sending a deck's not the worst thing.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the time, I thought that folks would be very protective about LP relationships. You don't realize that a lot of the market has this win-win perception. I got to tell you, though, some firms don't. I think it's a little bit of a scarcity mindset. And I would argue that this is a little bit of the function of the time. Part of why the Boston venture market at the time was not thriving the way the West Coast market was, is there's a little bit of a scarcity mindset here, a little bit more of a protective attitude towards everything, which, frankly, was part of why we wanted to start a fund, right? We wanted to buck that trend. And I actually think that many of the funds that exist today don't behave that way. There are certain ecosystems where I think that that is definitely the case.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thankfully, we had been an venture for a few years, and so we had relationships with GPs at our firms and other firms who were willing to make introductions to us. What I found actually very useful, though, was not necessarily our closest relationships as much as other funds that were sort of like us that had raised recently. And it was just amazing, Harry, how generous people were in sharing their insights in the process, their lead list, giving us background intel on everybody who they spoke to. I remember one person always sticks in my mind. There were a few, but Bryce Roberts, who was doing OATV at the time, I barely really knew him. I remember him sharing me his entire spreadsheet and talking me through every single LP and saying, like, here's how the”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And if we take this offer, we're just going to be employees. Don't listen to anything they say or what they promise. We are going to be employees. I do not want that. That was a very decisive conversation and he really convinced us that we need to go our own path.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That we actually had a situation where shortly after our busted anchor situation, we had a couple billionaires whose name I won't share who basically said, we kind of like what you're doing. We were thinking about starting a fund too. Why don't we just like merge? We'll create our own firm. We'll raise a couple hundred million bucks for you guys. We'll just do it together. We had a couple of conversations about this, and it was very enticing, right? It was like get into business. These were very high profile, you know, entrepreneurs and investors. You know, this was a time when like a couple hundred million dollar early stage seed fund was like unheard of. We were like, man, we can like get into the game in a big way. I remember my partner, David, was very decisive about this. He was like, you know, if you guys want to do this, you should do it. I'm not going to be part of it. Because the reason I left my job to start a firm was because I wanted to do things my way with you guys.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I wouldn't do it. I think it's a sign of strength not to take that deal. It's not very typical in venture. And so if you're talking to an LP that's very used to anchoring hedge funds, they're more likely to ask for this. But I think for the most part, it is to your benefit to show some strength and say no to that. And especially with our first fund, I remember every other LP asked, well, do any of the early folks in the first close have special economic, special governance? And everyone is relieved when you say no. And so you think about like the long game here, you really don't want to get stuck with somebody who has extra power within your organization unless you really believe they're a long-term partner. But I think that's very rarely the case. And I think there's a question of like, what did you do this for? Right. Most people who start funds, many people came from funds or could be doing other things. Like the reason you did that probably is to have independence and control and do what you want to do. And so once you have somebody who has additional governance, you kind of start to see something.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This was before our first close for that fund. We basically went back to all of our existing LPs who had committed and said, hey, here's what happened. The rationale, I actually think made sense because that institution was so large and our fund was so small that it really didn't make that much sense for them to be in funds like us unless they had to dedicate a strategy. And because they had turned over their leadership within the private equity and the CIO as well, they had just shifted the strategies. Thankfully, one of our other LPs that was going to be sort of a co-anchor in this fund was super rock steady. And I think that gave other LPs a lot of confidence that they could move forward. Shout out to Michael Kim at Sundana for helping us navigate that and being a really great partner.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's also extra risk if they drop you, things that really, really hurt. So, you better not lose them. We had a pretty influential institution drop us in our third fund. They did it the ninth hour. Most of the private equity team turned over and they just didn't give us the attention needed to make that concrete decision early on. That was a pretty devastating event for us. It goes both ways. Luckily, all of our existing LPs had the wherewithal to stick with us, everybody else, some of which actually increased their allocation to the fund, and we were able to get through it. But that experience is an important one in my mind because it made me realize that influence kind of goes both ways potentially.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think there are some LPs that are more influential than others. So if you have a really fancy endowment or foundation, that tends to be a stronger signal for other LPs that want to come alongside them and essentially outsource the due diligence or help them feel better that they're not making a stupid mistake. But frankly, I actually don't care that much. You get the partners that you like. There was a time when folks used to say that endowments and foundations are the most robust long-term partners that exist on the planet. It is just not true. I've heard so many cases where markets turn, things change, and the first ones to leave are the endowments. So it's hard to overthink it. What's more important is the individual who's there. You want somebody who is empowered, not at the very end of their career, because there's a risk that they're going to leave and then you're going to be adopted by somebody else. And somebody who's really committed to whatever it is you're doing, like whatever your strategy is, whatever segment of the market you're in. And as long as that person is still around, when you raise your next fund, I think you have pretty good chance to get that firm back over the finish line. And it doesn't really matter what.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Some funds don't want an LP to be more than 10% or 15%. Like we've had situations where we've had more than 20% of the fund with one LP. I think 50% is kind of extreme. I think it's probably unusual that an LP would be willing to do that without some special controls or economics. That I would recommend probably steering away from for the most part. If you have an LP that's 20% of refund, 25% of the fund, that's not ideal, but hopefully by the time you get to your next fund, you can start to dilute their influence.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually don't mind concentration that much, especially for a small fund. You're going to have concentration one way or the other.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's the strategy I would recommend for most folks that are raising CETA early stage funds. I think there's certain funds which are just not practical. And I have a friend who is raising a growth fund. It's just tough to do a minimum viable close. Or you do your first close, but you say, hey, we might end up doing a slightly different strategy because what if we only close at like half or a third of our ultimate target, right? I think in those type of strategies, you kind of need to have a meaningful anchor or some really big dollars behind you to be able to feel good about closing the capital.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So we had a couple LPs that showed very positive signs early on. And we went down the process with them. I don't exactly remember what happened. At some point, they just got some pushback and started to get cold feet. And we saw that Jenga towers start to crumble. It was easy to say no to us, right? We were new. We didn't have that much of a track record. It was a time when folks said, well, if you weren't in Silicon Valley, like, why bother doing Venture? Venture returns generally were really, really bad. So it was easy to say no. They just got cold feet and we were back to the drawing board.”
2023-06-23 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close, Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source