YouSaid · the spoken record

Saar Gur

lines on the record: 22
first: 2017-03-27
most recent: 2017-03-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“That helps companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses, recognizing them. As the 2017 best place to work in the US by Glassdoor, Currently works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies, such as Airbnb, Is not only costly for a company. Can also turn into an unhappy one. Applicant tracking system. Can make well informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are employed. The best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Found Makes the leading CRM for raising start up capital 2016 founder sweet customers of raised over $100. million dollars in seed and vanish capital. Your fundraising”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Trump campaign. Now, really scared about our new president and continue to have to figure out how to explain his behavior to my kids. I have to say it might be cheesy, but TechCrunch because I love learning about all the cool startups out there. How do you measure success for yourself? My short-term success is probably what my founders say about the impact that I've had on their successes and my long-term goal is, you know, I dream of working with these foundational companies that have a big impact in the world and, you know, ideally are around when my grandkids are around and their grandkids and they could look back and say, you know, your grandfather helped had an impact on starting or building that company. And then finally, let's finish on your most recent publicly announced investment and why you said yes. So funny enough, it would go back a while. My last four investments have all been stealth very early, but the answer as to why I said yes is very easy. Team, team, team. Absolutely. Well, so thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really appreciate it. Ken told me it'd be a fantastic episode, but I so appreciate you taking the time.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Know, I definitely don't think we need more VCs, but we definitely need a lot more diversity in venture. And I say that partly because of all the great businesses I know out there that aren't getting funded and could have a big impact in the world, and they just don't get funded because of the biases that we have as a male white-dominated industry.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, my latest favorite from the summer was the Wright brothers by David McCullum. Lots of reasons I love it, but it shows the two brothers in a bike shop in Ohio can change the world against what everyone else in the world was thinking at the time.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they're still on the board and can create a lot of problems. And so helping navigate those transitions, I think is where we can spend a lot of time also just, you know, even trying to help coach founders, like, hey, if you want to stay engaged, here's some ways to think about your new role in the company and how you might be successful here, because you're not the CEO, you know, and your friend who is the CEO, we have a lot of belief in, they're likely not going away. You might be if you don't figure out the program.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Later, they've got an amazing relationship and they're doing phenomenally well. What's the, you know, how involved? To me, it's easy to just talk to one founder and make a decision. It's different to go get, I'm trying to think in the one situation, I think it was like, you know, no less than 20 conversations. Maybe even more with a number of walks and dinners and lunches, you know, to just really dig deep and try and figure out what was really going on and what was motivating both sides and assumptions people had. I'll give you a classic example of founders. In many cases, two founders, three founders start a company. One becomes the CEO. As I mentioned, the CEO role changes over time. And the other founders who felt like a CEO or felt like a leader as the company really gets product market fit and grows as an organization, you get a lot of challenges and ego challenges and figuring out where to place people and skill sets and other things that make it really hard. And that can really, now you have founders who, let's say, are not actually in a function.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, the fun part in what I find in most of venture capital is VCs can get as involved or as uninvolved as they want. And most people choose to stay uninvolved or they use heuristics like if two founders are fighting the obvious venture answer is like, kick this person out. And I try in my best to be very open-minded that people are complicated. And I'll give you an example. I have two companies that come to mind. In one case, the boarders are not getting along and the board said the obvious answer is to get rid of this founder, but this founder was so special and contributed so much that I said, you know, give me a week. And I cleared my calendar and I spent a bunch of time with the founder, the two founders. And luckily, I can look back two years later and say, like, I felt that that was not the right decision, that this was fixable and that both of them could be highly productive and contribute a ton of the company. In that unique example, I was right. And fast forward two years.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Executives we hire are not going to work out, or they're going to work for some period of time, and then we need to find someone else. And that part, I think, is just this recurring challenge. And, you know, people are complicated. So it's one of the fun and challenging parts of our business and just an ongoing challenge, I think, for every founder.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that many teams, like at the state, again, where I tend to get involved is when the team is very tiny. So there's a natural challenge in the founder who's been driving the product, driving the sales, doing almost everything to building a team underneath them who's highly capable and can execute a number of those functions and figuring out the balance. Like some folks think they just hire someone whose resume and they basically no longer, you know, now they can outsource that function. And that doesn't end well. And other folks just get so involved that they don't actually trust or let people execute. And so that's this kind of ongoing challenge. And I think you said, what's the number one thing I would say hiring is just so hard. And even the best companies, let's say as we start to take a team and bring in more seasoned executives, think, I don't know, it's like 30 to 50% depending on the company.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of your time on hiring, but many first time founders that haven't worked in a company have no idea what the company building process actually looks like. And so helping founders understand this kind of concept of the company as the product and what that really means and how that can unlock the potential of their organization and help their product realize its full potential, I think can have a dramatic impact.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Listen to the board, but trust their own judgment and hold firm to their convictions when they have them. That process of becoming a great CEO, I think, is a process. And so sometimes just helping founders realize, like, this is really, really hard stuff. And, you know, this role that you have is quite challenging and constantly evolving. And I play a lot of sports. So just like an athlete, you should be training and trying to get better at this and applying that energy. And it just turns out a lot of founders, if they don't see that, if they don't see others doing it, it's easy for them to just think they were basically born with a skill set and that they can just keep executing that. The same thing happens with company building. So one of the things I love in being a venture capitalist is once a company finds products, some sort of product market fit, the company actually becomes the product in my mind, meaning a lot of the work that we do as VCs and many VCs will tell their CEOs, you should be spending 90%”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I guess I could spend hours on what getting entrepreneurs to think differently is sometimes it's telling a story of how another company solved a problem. Sometimes it's making an introduction to a person that can tell that story if I can't seem to find a way. But thinking about the world differently often has great impact and unlocks huge potential in founders and in companies. But to give you two specific examples that I find are kind of common themes. One is just around the role of the CEO. It turns out no one is born a CEO and many young founders I don't see them applying a growth mindset to sort of understand what being a CEO means and how that role changes over time. And some of my best CEOs are just maniacal in their thirst for learning and understanding every part of the company building process and every part of what it means for them to be a leader, for them to, you know,”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ability to pilot this ship. Here's the manuals I've seen that have worked to land this plane or get out of this. And often it's hard as a human being to go against some of these instincts. And I think that's, you know, but when you can, when you truly just come at this from like, okay, we can only lose one times our money, let's focus on just believing in this team to figure it out. I think magic can happen. I really do.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That hasn't worked in my marriage. So that investment to me is like part of the challenge of figuring out every founder has their own style and you have to adopt to figure out how to do that. Some of my founders want to take a walk on Sunday evening. Some of them want to talk on the phone several times a day. Others want to text and engage primarily over text. It's sort of part of the challenge. But I think that's one part. And then second goes back to this concept of saying before where, I mean, it may not be the right word, but I honestly feel like I approach my founders from a point of love, wanting them to succeed and a point of wanting to be fearless in believing in their success. So I find many investors, especially at the early stage, when things are not going well, it's like turbulence in a plane. They're like the person freaking out and yelling like we're going to die. We're going to die. Instead of just doing the exact opposite and saying, no, like, you know, I believe in your.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a great question. For me, I think there's a few things that lead to natural relationship building. So at the stage where I invest, there's often not much there. So authenticity to me speaks volumes. Like if you're working on a problem and it's very authentic to who you are and you're inspiring to me that you're working on this problem and I see potential talent in your ability to solve that problem, I find it very energizing to want to build a relationship with those founders. And that, to me, I guess, also gets built with a high level of trust over time with my founders. I find that first we need to build some level of communication, not unlike my marriage. Like, you know, if I don't find regular communication, it's hard to have ongoing trust.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Have to be pulled. Yeah, it's a great question and it's a hard question. And I find investors have different points of view. So I'll give you, you know, the lens that I, again, having worked in companies, I realize that I think we add value, but 99% of the work is on the founders. But the biggest value that we add is the money. And at the idea stage, Harry, if you start a company, your mom and dad may love you. But in most cases, they can't give you $10 million. I can. And the same holds true when companies struggle and they almost all do. You know, to answer your question.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was ego wise. I just came around to thinking I was ready. And what I mean by that is like, you know, in my early 20s, while I loved helping other founders, I also wanted to be a founder. I wanted to be an operator. And it took me a while to really come around to saying I think I can be totally happy focusing 100% on other people's companies, you know, not my own. And I think when I came around to that realization, I was ready to engage and join the folks at CRV.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“VCs were excited about the internet again. And I basically landed on their radar for a number of venture firms. Now took me a few years, a couple years to kind of come around to getting really excited to do Venture. And I think there were probably three things that kind of got me engaged. One was at that time I loved the idea of not only being able to help startups and help founders, but the idea of being able to give them lots of money at a time when many VCs were doubtful of consumer internet companies was exciting to me. Second, I think it's like you can decide you want to do venture, but that's like deciding you want to get married. These are like, you know, it does depend who the girl is or the guide, you know, and for me, I finally, you know, I did find a partnership, the folks here at CRV, who I really liked and respected and thought they could also make me a better investor. And then lastly, I think the tough one for being young inventor in particular.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My judgment and my intros got better. Anyway, fast forward after working at a bunch of companies and helping start Brightroll and working at Adteractive and working with Sean Parker on causes and some other things, I found there was this window in 2005 to call it 2007 when there was a real gap in the funding market. And so rather than just spending time advising companies on thinking through products and thinking through customer acquisition and go-to-market strategies, I ended up spending a lot of time helping a number of companies get financed. And along the way, for some of the teams that I really loved, I wasn't trying to be an angel investor, but I ended up making some angel investments in some of the teams that I really believed in at very early stages. And honestly, I just got really lucky that some of those companies for a period of time became very high profile in Silicon Valley. And as these things work, where a number of VCs were not excited about the internet and web 2.0, the web came back.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“True happiness for entrepreneur successes has led me into all sorts of wonderful friendship and experiences and ultimately led me to start my own companies, you know, help start up and get to CRV. But to be more specific, no matter what my day job was in my 20s and my 30s, I found I was always spending time on weekends and on evenings and during work, you know, trying to help my entrepreneur friends. And honestly, not unlike the enthusiasm that you have right now about venture as you've built your brand, I'm sure you're getting pinged by folks who want your advice now on how to get into venture, how to get in touch with VCs. And I think some of that started for me at a young age. And when I look back, I think a lot of my advice and introductions in my early 20s really sucked. But I think my genuine enthusiasm just carried a lot of weight because I think it was very authentic. And over time, I just seemed, at least, you know, from feedback I heard from entrepreneurs and getting more referrals and asks.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I guess I know you've got a lot of folks that you've interviewed that have sort of walked you through their resume, so I thought I would try something a bit different. You know, I was looking back and I realized one of the very consistent themes that I've had since my early 20s is I've had a fascination and a respect for entrepreneurs. In some ways, I guess I'd say I've been a cheerleader of folks who have taken the leap to go out on their own to create something new. And having now been an entrepreneur, I also recognize how freaking hard it is. And when it worked, when entrepreneurs actually succeed, I have to say that I've been genuinely happy for entrepreneur successes, whether I know those people or not, whether I've helped them or not. And strangely, I think that's what's made me somewhat unique in our ecosystem in that genuinely love seeing entrepreneurs succeed. And, you know, don't get me wrong. I think many people love their own successes. They love the successes of their investment. But that's not what I'm saying.”
2017-03-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How Investors Can Build Relationships with Founders In Organic, Non-Transactional Ways & How VCs Should Handle Founder Disputes with Saar Gur, General Partner @ CRV · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source