YouSaid · the spoken record

Sitar Teli

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35
first
2015-12-30
most recent
2015-12-30
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1
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podcast

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  1. “And it's the software that Mitten is developing that really enables that to happen at scale and at a way that's cost competitive with what people do now.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Yeah. Yeah, and then there's a lot of kind of smaller angels and smaller tickets involved. And why we said yes is because we think it's what we saw when we spoke to the founders is potential for the future of a software-enabled manufacturing, right? So it really is, no joke, like software eating clothing in this case, right? So really fundamentally change because, you know, like in the short term, you can see how they do kind of high-end jumpers and stuff on one-off. But in the much longer term, I can imagine walking into Azara and having them prick me some clothes.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Our most recent public investment was knitten? Which is a London based company Yeah. Yeah, yeah. There are small investors in that as well. So we were the lead investor and then local globe is in it, which is our Robin and Saul Klein's investment vehicle. And then Felix Capital is in it as well.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So deal sourcing. So we have kind of two main prongs. So one is referrals. We get a lot of referrals primarily from entrepreneurs. For entrepreneurs we've backed and then entrepreneurs we just know and haven't necessarily backed or even entrepreneurs we've rejected. I think we have a reputation for rejecting well or at least rejecting quickly and generally entrepreneurs respect that. And so we found that actually a lot of the people that we've said no to recommend us to other entrepreneurs, which is nice. And then the other is, you know, they're industries that we dislike, you know, areas that we get interested in. And when you start getting really deep into an area, you're trying to form a thesis and part of forming a thesis is seeing what are startups, not large companies, but what are startups doing in that space? And so you find a lot of companies that way.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I'm sure it's filtered, but hopefully it's not like super filtered. So they show that they're a human being, right? And they have interests outside of work and they have interests within work, but they show kind of what their interests are.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Right. Yeah, so they're both really good mobile products. I think so, yeah. So use them both a lot. The Twitter mobile app. What's up and I run so I've been using Strava It depends, I think. A lot of them, so what I see a lot of is like VCs where the firm has a Twitter account. And I don't think that's very effective. Because I think for entrepreneurs, right, your relationship is with the investor, the specific person that you're going to be working with, not with a firm So I think the VCs that use it really well are the ones who use it to build a personal brand, right? They use it to use the social media as a reflection of themselves.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “City Mapper, obviously Let's see. Cinemapper Outlook, which I'm kind of amazed, but I'm actually using two Microsoft products at the moment. One is Outlook, one is Sunrise.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “Yeah, and I think I particularly like it. It's quite data centric and research centric, so it's not, you know, a lot of times when you read blogs and stuff, they're quite fluffy, right? They're just kind of like opinions and stuff. And he has very strong opinions, but he reads a lot of data, interprets it, and then comes up with a thesis. And I really like that approach.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “Well, I don't really have one anymore. So I used to read them a lot more. And what I've found is over the past couple years a more like I'll read something that a lot of people that I respect are reading, but I won't actively seek out a lot of things. I guess one of the things that I do read every week probably without fail is Benedict Evans' newsletter.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “What a book that I've read a few times that I really like is The Amazing Adventures of Cavaliering, which is about a couple of kids in New York in, I think it's the thirties, and they start a comic book company. And it's a really, really good story about entrepreneurship in a completely different industry. But when you read it, you realize, you know, a lot of startups, whether they're tech enabled or not, or tech focused or not, they face a lot of the same problems. And in the book, the guys get like a terrible deal from their investors. It just takes advantage of them because they're young and inexperienced. Which is a comic book that users love, but at the same time they don't want to compromise on making it too mainstream. And anyway, it's just a really well written book about a lot of different things, but particularly about entrepreneurship.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “No, I mean, it needs capital, and it's probably a very good investment, but it probably doesn't have the scale that a VC is looking for.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “One and two, I think there's a lot of businesses out there that frankly don't need venture capital. They need capital, but not venture capital. Venture capital is a specific type of capital that's focused on a really high risk proposition. And a lot of what I've seen go through crowdfunding just doesn't fit that.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “We care a lot about product and user experience and we look for founders that care a lot about it as well. And then we help them with everything else. So we like to back founders that are very good at their experience. And CityMap is a good example of that, but so is Typeform, Marvel. There's a lot of them in our portfolio where that's the focus. And then we help them with everything from like pricing, business model, company culture, hiring, et cetera. focus on user experience we value a lot and the founders that care about it they they care that we care”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Right, so I think the thing with capital is always if you just view capital as sort of this, there's a whole lot of money, then maybe, although I think actually it's seed, yeah, there is probably enough capital for all the seed companies out there, but capital isn't just one giant bucket, right? There's different flavors of it. And like some people really care about e-commerce companies. Some people have a lot of experience with ad tech. And depending on what company you are, what kind of founder you are and what you're building, most founders care a lot about the experience or the thesis of the investors that they're going to work with because it aligns you, right? So you want kind of what the VC wants kind of longer term. So for us, the product in UX is what differentiates us, right?”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “Passion for doing this. So we look for that. We look for Founders that are on a mission, which is related to the first one, but one is you really understand the market and the other is you're doing it for a reason other than you just want to make money. There's like a problem you're trying to solve. There's something really important there that you care deeply about fixing. You see something wrong in the world or you want to enable something to happen. And then the third is we were very user experience focused. So we look for people that put user experience at the center of what they do. So whatever product it is you're building, whatever service it is you're building, if user experience is not at the core of that, it's just not likely that we invest at all.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “He loves public transport, right? And like anytime he goes to a new city, he'll ride public transport and kind of try to get a sense for how do people move through the city? What are the problems that they encounter? And how can City Member help solve those problems? In another investment we have. So that's a real passion for this. And in another company we have is a Stockholm based company called Oxy, the founder Henrik Lenberg. So Oxy is a music creation app. And prior to this, he was VP of platform at SoundCloud. And prior to that, he worked at Propellerhead, which is a sequencer software. So he spent most of his adult life working in digital music technology and his master's thesis was on how you can use digital means to bring music making to a greater number of people. And that's what Oxy is about, right? So in that case, it's someone who has experience and a life.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “So there's three things we look for when we look at a company. So one of them is founders that really understand the market that they're building for. That doesn't mean they need to be really experienced in the market. Like it's not about age or what you've done in the past. It's how passionate are you about it? How much time have you taken to understand that market if you have experience in that market even better? So I'll give you two different examples. In Azimat's case, Azmatz, the founder of CityMapper. Absolutely.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “It's so destroying, and I think entrepreneurs are really optimistic people. It's one of the things that allows them to do.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “And so sometimes you come in expecting an hour long meeting and it'll be 25 minutes. But I should think, and not I think all entrepreneurs think this way, but I think it's actually a good thing because the way of it is we just save them 30 minutes of time that they would have lost otherwise.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yes, I really like to say knowing the meeting as soon as I'm sure. And I've even cut meetings quite short as soon as I, what I try to do is make sure before we have the meeting that it's a fit. And sometimes that process fails. And if that process fails, then you have the meeting and it could be like 15, 20 minutes in you realize, actually it's not a fit. And for me, I think that the best thing I can do for the entrepreneur is to say, look, this isn't a fit. We're not going to invest. But if you'd like some feedback on your product or what you're doing, I'm happy to give it.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Right. So I think actually the biggest thing that you can do to provide value is to say no as quickly as possible. Because what's more valuable, right? It's the entrepreneur's time. That's the most valuable thing. And so the longer they spend trying to fundraise from someone who isn't interested, the more time they've wasted. And time is their most valuable resource. And so what we try to do is say no as quickly as possible. As soon as we realize it's not a fit for us. So would you say that?”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “You know, it's really the if you think about the software a company makes as a reflection of the founders and how they view customer experience and users, I think the investments of EC makes is a reflection of their thesis on technology and how they view things. And so the portfolio really is a reflection of the GPs. And without that portfolio and without consistency in your portfolio, I think it's very hard to establish a reputation.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “So, I think we're still working on building that reputation. But I think if I were to allocate, let's say there's $100, right? And I could allocate it to a bunch of different activities, I'd probably allocate 99 of them to the portfolio. To just making the investments and building our reputation through the investments and how we work with the founders. Or maybe I'd be like 90 on that and 10 on how you reject companies. And that's it, right? Because I think we do spend a lot of time going to some conferences. We do it less now than we did in the beginning. So we go up on stage and we introduce ourselves and we say who we are. But the thing that really gets people interested is what we've invested in. So I could go to as many conferences as I get invited to, but without a portfolio to talk about, it's not compelling for entrepreneurs.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “It's been really good to see over the last year or two how that reputation has built up and how founders that we've backed have recommended us to other founders”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah. Yeah, like, are you a real fund? And so it was really, you know, and because we had no investments, there was nothing for them to look at, right? There wasn't like people they could call and say, oh, this is what it's like working with Connect Ventures. So you're really starting from scratch. So a lot of the work we did the first year was really establishing that reputation and just focusing on making investments and working with those entrepreneurs in the best way possible. For us, we've always played the long game in terms of marketing, which is the best marketing we can do is the companies we invest in and working them really well. And if we do that right, that's how we build our brand and that's how we build our reputation. And it took years to build it. But it's...”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  26. “And so when the VC speaks to them, they would be eager. But, you know, it's one thing I really, really admire about entrepreneurs is even then they want to know that the person they're speaking to is legit and worth taking seriously. And so one of the things we had to deal with the first year is people didn't take us seriously until we had business cards because they didn't really believe we were real fund. And so we didn't have an office. We didn't have business cards. There wasn't a website in spiritual.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  27. “It's probably one of the worst startups you can think of. I mean, it's a sort of that takes, you know, a not insignificant amount of money to get going. A lot of times working competitive, you're competing against some quite established funds that have been there for a long time. You have to build a lot of the stuff you have to do with a startup. You have to do as well with the VC fund, right? You have to build a brand, you have to build a reputation. You have to think about the product and what is a product that you're designing. In this case, it's money, but it's not just money, right? It's what kind of experience are you giving to the founders? How do you work with the founders after you invest in them? What kind of founders are you looking for? What kind of companies are you looking for? It's really designing a company where the product is the services and money that you give to the founders. And so it was really hard. I mean, the first year, you'd think like founders would be really excited about getting interest from a VC because generally they need to raise money.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  28. “Yeah, no, I mean, so for example, Connect has three partners. So, when I think about how we think about our partnership, one of the advantages we have is Sabilla and I have been VCs for a long time. So we've seen really the change in venture capital in Europe over the last decade. But Pietro has an entrepreneurial background. So he started a company, built it, and sold it quite successfully, and went through some real ups and downs in doing that. And so he brings a really different perspective to a lot of the challenges our founders face than Bill or ICANN. And Bill, actually even differently than me, worked operationally prior to becoming a VC, right? So he wasn't a founder and he was an early accompanies, but he was an engineer and they became a product manager. And so the three of us have quite different perspectives.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  29. “I think it's both. And in my experience, in terms of what makes a good VC, I think it's the mix. I know people that have been operationally experienced that have gone into VC and been great, but also the same operation experience have gone to VC and been terrible. And the same with investment bankers. And so I don't think there is a great career path for going to become a VC, but I do think it helps. If you're starting a fund to have someone or at least some of the partners have started a company or been very early in a company because I think they can relate to founders in a very different way. But I think it's more about creating that right partnership. I'm a big believer in VC partnerships rather than.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  30. “Think there's a greater ambition level amongst the founders, there's been more cross-pollination between the US and Europe in terms of ambition level founders moving to the US, founders moving back from the US and starting companies. And there's been a change in the venture capital scene, you know, in terms of the ambition level of the VCs funding the companies.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  31. “I mean, the single biggest driver is there just more and more great companies coming out of here, right? So if you look at over the last 10 years, it's not just the gaming companies. I mean, there's a number of sectors, right? So there's gaming, there's financial technology, there's music and content, there's advertising technology, although that's probably less interesting at the moment and probably in the future. But there's a lot of different industries where Europe has produced really big growing companies. Those are expected to be kind of in the future very, very large companies. And if you think about 10 years ago, there wasn't really this, you couldn't point to, you know, a dozen or two dozen companies that were already large and growing and on really high growth paths. But now you can. And that change has happened over the last few years. And in terms of what's driven it, I think it's a number of things.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  32. “It was two thousand five, so it was ten years ago, and the New York scene was sort of very quiet then, right? So if you can imagine How lively New York is now and how London sort of kind of catching up at New York, but is still a ways away from where Silicon Valley is, think 10 years ago what it was like. It was just not in any way considered kind of the very lively industry here. But also I just was born and raised in America. I lived there my whole life. And so when I thought about venture capital and when I spoke to people at Broadview and other VCs, it never really came up on the radar. Things are very different now. But back then, it, you know, Skype was probably the only product people I'd heard of. And even then, 2005, Skype was pretty small, right? So there weren't really these big companies coming out of there. And so the VC industry wasn't very big then.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  33. “People from Broadview went into venture capital. And I talked to people in New York. I talked to people in California. And then I got a call from a headhunter who had an opportunity in London, which I hadn't considered. But I liked living abroad.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  34. “They'd spend time with the potential acquirer, and I'd sit in on the meeting and they always talked about the history of the company and especially the early days and starting out, and I always found that to be the best part of the process is hearing how they started out and the very early days and all of the difficulties they faced. And I realized that I really wanted to be more involved with the journey the company went on rather than the kind of exit or event that was there at the end. And so I realized I wanted to be inventor, at least try it out for a bit. If not venture, then at a company. But I wanted to be more involved in the early days of the company building. And because I didn't have an industry I was particularly passionate about, I thought venture would be a good way to learn about a bunch of different industries that were technology focused technology enabled. And so that's how I started out.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  35. “Sure. So out of university, well, first I spent a year teaching English in South Korea, but then after that I spent three years in investment banking in the US, which is where I'm from. And so I worked for a bank called Broadview. And Broadview at the time was a technology-focused mergers and acquisition bank. So they worked entirely with tech-focused startups and larger companies in terms of buying and selling companies. And so I got to know the venture capital industry pretty well through that as most of the clients we had were venture-backed at some point in their history. And I realized after a couple years that I didn't really enjoy being a banker very much. Actually, I realized that after a year, but I really liked working with the companies. And so one of my favorite things was, you know, during the process.”

    2015-12-30 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20 VC: How To Say No Fast and Efficiently and Why UX Must Always Be At The Core Of What You Do with Sitar Teli, Managing Partner @ Connect Ventures · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source