YouSaid · the spoken record

Scott Sandell

lines on the record: 38
first: 2021-03-11
most recent: 2021-03-11
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think it was announced the other day that we invested in a company called Lone Pal in the middle of March last year. It was a day the market was down something like 3,000 points, which gives you pause, especially when you negotiated the price in December of the prior year. But it's a really, really exciting company. They basically have a system which enables them to finance solar loans for residential homeowners. They back about 40% of solar loans in the United States today. But I think what gave us the confidence is that they just have an extraordinary leadership team. And in the middle of March, we were fearful that the markets were going to be rough for a while. And so it was really a bet on the team. And they've done spectacularly well.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, it would have been nice to know that I was going to be successful. I mean, such a crazy, crazy career to embark on, you know, and it's just such a risky career. But I think the thing that I just love everything about it. And so I never allowed myself to worry too much. But it would have been nice to know that it was going to work out okay.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah. Well, so on my application to Dartmouth all those years ago, they asked you to pick a quote. I don't know how I came across it, but it's the Teddy Roosevelt quote that you've heard, I'm sure before. It's not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs, who comes short again and again because there is no effort without error and shortcoming. But who does actually strive to do the deeds? Who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails, while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Think the single basics challenge is there's just one of me. I love the investing side. I love the managing and leadership side. And there are only so many hours in the day. So it's really trying to figure out where do you use my time most effectively.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of investing, I think I just believe that we have the opportunity to invest in companies that can be enormously large and impactful and ultimately valuable. And most people don't allow them to believe in that possibility at the really outset. And unless you do, you don't select for the ones that really have that potential. And if they don't, you're almost certain not to get great outcomes. And so I really look for things that can be enormously large and impactful. And then I think the corollary is just to be patient and realize it takes a long time.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So for me, it's the old man in the sea, Ernest Hemingway. I'm dyslexic, first of all, so I don't read a lot of books. I listen to books. But, you know, I'm very slow. I love to read, but I'm a slow reader. And Ernest Hemingway has a real economy with words, which I deeply appreciate. But in his final great novel, it's all about daring greatly and perseverance of the old man in the sea. And, you know, I think like all great novels, if you read it carefully, it just leaves you with more questions than it answers.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is obviously tougher, Harry. There's no doubt about that. I think the thing that's been amazing to me and somewhat surprising is just how well we're managing to do it, you know, over Zoom. Who would have thought? Let's say, what are we in, we're still in January, less than a year ago, none of us were thinking about this too much. And in the course of that year, we've learned all the things we can do on Zoom that we didn't think were possible or we were at least very skeptical that they would be done as well as I think we're doing them now.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, I think that just happens naturally, but I think it is especially helpful, never step on somebody when they're down. We learned that on the schoolyard growing up, and I always think about that. When an entrepreneur comes into a board meeting and they've had a tough quarter or tough month or something hasn't gone right, you don't have to beat them up over that. Just be kind and they will always appreciate that. So that's a little bit there. I think in terms of advice for entrepreneurs, I guess it's easy to give advice, but I try to hold back unless I have a lot of conviction about it.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of the things I did, Harry, when I was just starting out that was really helpful is I realized that one of the great things about the venture business is that you get to work with people in other firms. In fact, oftentimes you'd work less with your own partners. So I tried early on to, you know, if I was the Series A investor, I'd try to get somebody to lead the Series B who I thought was going to be a more experienced grade board member and then I learned from them. Or conversely, if some really great person who I admired had done the Series A, I'd try to get on that board and learn from them. You know, I think every board is a learning opportunity. And then I try to check myself. And I like to talk a lot sometimes. So I just have to check that instinct and say, just listen, let's see what other people have to say.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think the thing that's been most profoundly obvious to me is what a courageous act it is to be an entrepreneur. And so I try to support that and I try to walk in the shoes of the entrepreneur before I utter something to them that might change their course. And I always try to look at each situation fresh as it is on the day, which is to say recognize that every business plan is dead the minute you start executing on it. And then you're facing new circumstances. And so when I get to a board meeting, I don't look at whether they miss the milestones, which of course I care about, but I look at how they respond to that and what opportunity sits in front of them given where they are and what's transpired since the last meeting and try not to be too judgmental about it.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, we've always thought of the role of managing GP as kind of first among equals. The magic of a partnership is that it's not a terrifically hierarchical organization and certainly the kinds of people who are attracted to work in venture capital firms are also the kinds of people who normally work for themselves. So if you have a light touch, you're more likely to attract, I think, people who probably would chafe under more rigid forms of leadership. So I challenge everybody to be a leader and give them the space and the opportunity to exhibit leadership and develop their own leadership abilities. And that works well for me because I also want to be an investor and that takes a lot of time too. So I try to celebrate other people when they exhibit leadership. I try to offer them the opportunities to pursue things when they see there might be ways to make any a better. I try to get out of the way as much as possible.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, Mark Perry, one of my favorite now retired partners and one of my mentors, we were just having a conversation it might be 20 years ago now. And he posited that the only reason NEA could have scaled to the size it is is because of the trust that we have in the partnership, which enables us to meet for three hours a week, make all the decisions necessary, and then have the confidence that they would be executed well, it really struck me when he first said it, I hadn't personally identified that as really the foundation, but then I realized that it was. And I realized that trust has a lot of dimensions to it. Among them, of course, integrity, but also we trust our partners to know when they're not the right person to do something or they need help. We trust our partners to give it their very best effort. And for the rest of us to know that things are being done as well as possible. All of those things are kind of part of the trust equation. I think trust is something we have to be very watchful to keep strong.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, obviously, we're careful in the hiring process. And the first thing that we look for that I'm sure everybody looks for in their organization is what we call fit. Is this person a fit with what we are and we don't want them to be identical to who everybody else is already? We want to always be evolving and changing and open to new ideas and even to new thoughts and values. But what we do do is once we've hired people, we're watching very carefully to see whether their behavior matches our values in our culture. And really that's the one thing that causes people to leave NEA on a relatively premature schedule. Otherwise, we're pretty patient organization, giving people time to develop. But that's the thing we stick to.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I don't think we have a lot of rules. We have a lot of guidelines or said differently almost any rule that we could write down probably deserves to be broken under the right circumstances. We don't live in a world of black and white. We live in a world of judgment and intuition and art and some science. And so we don't want to be too rigid”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, a process decision empowers usually five, six, seven people to literally run the whole process and make the final decision and report back to the rest of the group, whatever they decided. What we do, practically speaking here is we have two slots every week. They're an hour and a half long. The companies come in for an hour, then there's a half an hour for the process team or the team that has the power to make the decision to meet by themselves. And it doesn't always happen in one session. These things might go on over weeks and weeks. And one other thing we try to do is we try to keep that same group of people for all the follow-on decisions that happen later for a given company. That way there's accountability down the road.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In general partners, but the average process decision would empower five or six of them to make a decision. And the tests that we're always looking for is that those are the right five or six people that anybody in the firm would look at that five or six people and say, well, yeah, of course those are the five or six people I want to have make that particular decision. And so we actually vote on process decisions every day.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, first of all, the partnership has probably grown 50% in my 25 years. So it hasn't grown that dramatically. What we've realized along the way is that with these much longer holding periods and ultimately bigger capital requirements for these companies, you don't need a much bigger team to do this. But in terms of decision-making process itself, we are firm believers that the best decisions are made in relatively small groups. And since we have a relatively larger group and everybody wants to be in the room where it happens, so to speak, that's always a challenge for us. We kind of go back and forth between who gets to participate and not. But fundamentally, we try to keep group size to a relatively small level. One thing we came up with a few years back, because it was a ideas of Chip Linahans, I think one of our now retired general partners, something called a process decision, which is just to say all the general partners get to vote on the process, but they don't get to vote on the investment. And the process usually involves a significantly smaller number of people than the number of general partners.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there's certainly an opportunity to raise bigger and maybe different kinds of funds to meet these needs. And that's something we plan to do. But we've been growing actually relatively slowly, Harry, 10 or 15% fun to fund. We started with the first big fund NEA 10 in 2000 as a $2.3 billion fund. So we've been growing on a large base since then. And our latest fund is $3.6 billion 20 years later. So it hasn't been an extraordinary growth, but we just look back and we think we've left a lot of money on the table and we can serve our companies and our limited partners better if we have more of that capital in our own hands.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, what you're referring to, Harry, is this study we did over the last 10 years just looked at our growth investments and our conviction investments, which are two slightly separate things, but think of them as our best companies where we've deployed large amounts of capital. And yet even though we feel like we've deployed a large amount of capital, this particular collection of companies has raised $32 billion in total, and we've only been responsible for $3 billion of it. So that's kind of great. Our companies have had access to all this company. The problem is that that particular basket of companies, which is a sizable basket over the period of a decade have generated a return of 36% on average every year. So only doing $3 billion of it seems like we're leaving a lot of money on the table.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mentioned a minute ago, Harry, that I think one of the big challenges of our time is liquidity. And so SPACs are obviously a new form of liquidity for private companies. And frankly, what appears to me to be a new source of risk capital. These are people who want to invest through this vehicle and ultimately be able to have near-term liquidity in the public markets, but seem to be relatively risk-preferring compared to the traditional IPO investors, or at least the traditional IPO offering method, if you will. So I think it's great. It's all new sources of liquidity are welcome. There'll probably be some exuberances and not all of them will work, but to the extent that there are paths to liquidity for some of our companies, I'm thrilled to see it.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, no, I think where you're sitting, Harry, you got to be really careful about taking the precious capital that you have and letting your average price get moved up substantially. You know, you invest $3 million, let's say, at the beginning, and then your pro rad is $3 million in some super high price round, and you could have your average holding price go up by many multiples. And you just have to be careful about that. I mean, if you have a small fund, I think you want to be super sensitive about getting people who can carry the freight for a long time and not look for you to do your pro rata along the way.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We've seen situations where that sort of logic that served me well for a long time is completely invalidated by the fact that people are going to pay a price that I'm not going to be comfortable with for many years, even with extraordinary growth. So it's a tricky time.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I mean, I think the old adage that great deals are worth paying up for is true in any market, but that doesn't mean that all expensive deals are great. And so the tough thing is to figure out when to pay up and when not to pay up. But I think in an environment where there is this tremendous amount of capital and sources of capital at all stages of company formation today, you can assume that in almost all cases great deals will be priced at what appears to be a premium at any given point in time. And so what I always do is I think about is this something that's going to grow so extraordinarily fast that I will soon be very comfortable with this price. If it's a software company growing over 100% a year and I really believe that that's going to continue to happen for some period of time, then I can justify paying a price that not too far down the road, maybe $18 or $24 months or maybe even a year starts to look cheap. I mean, that's kind of what I'm hoping for. But of course, even in this environment.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Related idea is liquidity. I think liquidity has been a challenge because when you stretch out the time in the private market, all the participants are challenged to be able to have holding periods that long. But on the other hand, those longer holding periods are precisely why venture capital firms like ours are able to generate much larger returns because we're not giving those away to public market investors. So all of these things have two sides.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it certainly can be a challenge, but it's frankly also a wonderful thing in many ways. I mean, companies are staying private for longer, even though it's cheaper to start a company still takes a lot of capital to grow a company. And so a firm like Benchmark would be, frankly, in real trouble if there wasn't enormous amounts of capital because they only do series A and Series B deals and they hope other people are going to come along and carry their companies after them. So I think it's a little ironic that Bill would be pointing that out. Certainly that's more of a challenge for a late stage investor, but I think there's always a balance and sometimes there's a little too much. Sometimes there's a little too little. But the reality is that the timeframe to liquidity has stretched out quite a lot in 1999. It was something like two and a half years from inception to IPO and now it's more like six or seven. And at one point it was nine or ten. And those companies that are being built are growing faster than ever, which by the way for most of the means they consume more capital than ever. So I don't quite agree with Bill. I think a”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Business model of free, which I think is the most powerful business model in the world, is transforming one business after another. So I think those are just a few of the atomic elements, Harry. But if you look at any aspect of building a company today, I think you'll see that the physics are different.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Of newly public companies. And so you sort of have to unpack that and say, well, how could that be? And when you look at all of the different atomic elements of building a business, each of them have changed, and some of them have changed a lot. Just the development of software is now about five times more productive than it used to be. That's not because people are five times smarter. It's not even because the software tools are better. It's because of the foundation of primarily open source technology that's available that enable people to build on things that have already been built before. in so doing be much more productive. But I think on the distribution side, the physics are even more impressive. Again, look at open source software and the power of a free business model and the ability of a small company to give something of value away and suddenly dominate an entire market for a new category of software. And we literally have dozens of these in our own portfolio and they're visible all over the place. Mule softs of the world, Elasticsearch, and MongoDB and companies like that.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, this sort of dawned on me, I don't know, six or seven years ago. It again comes back to the internet, really, I think, is the fundamental change which has enabled the physics of building companies to change. And I think it's why we see companies growing so much faster than we ever did in history. When I first hypothesized this idea that the physics of building businesses had changed, I looked at software businesses because I know software well. I had one of our associates look at the growth rate of software companies over three decades, the 90s, the 2000s, and the decade just ended. And I remembered that in the 90s, which was the client server era it was called, it was a heyday for software. And there were a lot of great software companies that went public in that time. But interestingly enough, in the seven quarters after the IPO, the average company group 18%. And that was considered fantastic. You couldn't get funded today if all you were doing was growing 18%. In the decade that followed, they grew 28%. In the decade just ended 50% or something close to that. This is the average.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I think there's two things, Harry. One is in the innovation economy itself, and then the other is in the private equity market. So let me start with the innovation economy. And this is what you and everyone can plainly see, which is that the world is digitizing itself rapidly and actually that transformation has accelerated with COVID-19 as we can all plainly see. And so if you think about it as the balance of power shifting from the incumbents to the upstarts, that's what I see happening every day in one new market after another with one new technology after another. And I think the result will be that some very iconic companies are being built today that will be the exons and general motors of tomorrow or the IBMs. And we've already seen a handful of examples, the Fang companies have already shown us what kind of upside is available. And not all of them will turn out that way, but I think there's no doubt that some of the companies being created today will be enormously valuable and impactful over a long time.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We all wonder about that, right? We all wonder what are we missing? It's not obvious, right? But then COVID-19 wasn't so obvious either. So I think we always have to be mindful of what we don't know, what we can't predict, and what may just come along that no one predicted. So sooner or later, there will be a macro event. I mean, you know, our LPs ask me that all the time. I say, nothing I can see would cause me to think that there's something around the corner, but I don't know. What I worry about is what I don't know”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, it's really interesting, Harry, because if you just go back 25 years or whatever it's been, there have been two big.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To me, probably the most challenging thing is that if you go back to where I started, there were very few jobs and venture capital and it was a relatively small field. It seems like everybody wants to be a venture capitalist now. That creates some real exuberance and some challenges at the simplest level it's harder and harder to differentiate yourself as a venture capitalist when people will come along and offer valuations that might be, in your mind, sort of absurd. And so we've been facing this challenge now for a number of years, but it doesn't get easier. It just gets harder. And I really feel for the young people in the industry who are working really earnestly to learn the profession and to develop the skill set to not only evaluate investment opportunities, but to help entrepreneurs. And I think it's harder and harder for them to differentiate themselves, certainly than it was back in my day.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was thinking about that last night, Harry. You know, I don't think it'll surprise you, but I really think the biggest change is the internet. The internet has changed everything, even though we invest in information technology and healthcare, but the internet's even changing healthcare in dramatic ways. Telemedicine healthcare delivery, the ability to amalgamate data across the globe on healthcare outcomes and use that in research. And then, of course, all the things we know about the way that the world is being digitized, none of that would really be possible without ubiquitous connectivity to all the devices that we know and love. And we can talk more about how the internet changed the venture capital industry itself, but I think the internet is the most fundamental thing that's come along in my lifetime.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, you know, my father is definitely one of my heroes, probably my primary hero. I grew up in southeastern Connecticut. He was an officer in the Coast Guard. As Blake said, he finished his career as Dean of the Coast Guard Academy, where he taught in the math department for a very long time. What's so inspirational to me about him, he lived his life according to his values, and one of his values was excellence, and so he worked exceptionally hard and managed to always be frankly the best at just about everything he ever did. And that was noteworthy because he was so much better than a lot of people along the way, but he was still incredibly humble. You'd never get that out of him, not for a second. So I view him as a deeply honorable man and importantly as a father was just always there for me. He was very devouted father and husband and still is. Thankfully, I spoke to him about an hour ago. He's hoping to get his COVID shot next week, but he and my mother Lavon Cape Cod. They've been married for 57 years or something like that.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Baltimore and Office in Menlo Park, and someone introduced us to the NEA team in Baltimore, and we went out for a meeting. And after the meeting, Peter Barris, who was the managing partner just before me for 20 years, I guess, called Tom McConnell, one of the general partners in our Menlo Park office and said, hey, we had a pitch from this guy, Scott Sandell. We're sending him out to see you guys next week. But see if you think he might be good for us. And so after the meeting in Menlo Park, Tom called me and after a bunch of interviews, at that time you would interview with literally everybody in the firm. And so at the end of all of that, they offered me a job right before Christmas in 1995. And I joined in January of 96 as an associate. And I think that's 26 years ago, if I'm counting correctly.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Consulting work for a company, they asked me to help them pitch venture capitalists. This is before the day of video conferencing. So NEA had an offset.”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But some of us were lucky enough to be asked. And in my case, what happened was I had left Microsoft and I was doing some”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Obviously, a lot of good luck along the way, but the story is back in 1996 when I first had the chance to join NEA, people didn't think about joining a venture firm by design. They just got lucky. There were only a few jobs available in the whole industry in a given year. People didn't plan on having a career in venture”
2021-03-11 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: NEA's Scott Sandell on SPACS and Why Liquidity is One of the Challenges of our Time, Why We Are At An Inflection Point For Secondaries & Why There Is Nothing To Suggest The Boom Will Not Continue · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source