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Sonali De Rycker

lines on the record: 46
first: 2022-06-27
most recent: 2022-06-27
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“I think the fun one is be real and the reason is because, I mean, you should tell me that we're lucky to be in it together. But the founder there is Alexei is really recreating social identity. I mean, it's such an important thing he's doing. I have a 15-year-old daughter, so this matters a lot to me personally. It's also very bold. Yeah, it got me to Andorra to visit a two-person company.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How it's what I said, how exceptional great founders can be, and how incredibly ambitious some people are in what they can build.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, I always tell people don't have regrets, but a line in the sand, move on that I find myself going and unpacking the past, thinking, why did I do what I did?”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, that's nice, Harry. Empathy, independent thought be independent, and the third one is, I would say they should be kind of responsible to everybody around them, the team, the environment, their mother.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You asked about team building, it's about ensuring that we have and that we keep the highest concentration of just the greatest talent in the venture business. That's the goal. That's hard.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I care a lot about people, so I'm always trying to help. Biggest weakness, I'm a warrior. I come an Indian mother. I worry.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Absolutely my favorite, the fine balance. You set in the emergency India in the 70s and it's like a very tough tale of everyday people and the injustice, but the elegance with which they live your life. You know, when some characters stay with you, those characters have stayed with me. It's an incredible book.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it is a sign of a maturing ecosystem, right? We all know how vibrant and exciting it is here, and it truly is, right? I think the downturn here is not going to change the fundamental of the great entrepreneurs in terms of what they're building. So I think it's a sign of the fact that it's very interesting market to be in. And how do you say you're a global investor if you haven't figured out Europe properly? So it had to happen. But the reality is it takes decades to build the capillary networks, the relationships, to really honor that commitment, as I said, to the founders, which is what we've been doing.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Decision making very well too. So that was sort of a structural consideration, if you will, that has really stood the test of times and we're very proud of what we've achieved. And I think that was always a challenge. Maybe the second challenge is really honoring our commitment, great founder, great ambition. We will back you no matter where you are. So it meant going very early to Russia, to Vilnius. So we've invested in 40 cities in Europe from London, which is not easy, right? To pull off. It means the way you structure your team, the way you think about thematic investing, the way you think about covering the ground. And to do that, being the early investor, being sometimes the first investor was not trivial. So I know these are more sort of structural as opposed to talent answers. These are two things that we thought very hard about and we feel like we got right in the end.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so it's interesting because I think it's the timing is quite unique in terms of European venture, right? We both know that. If you just go back when we started out in 2000, we made the commitment to start excel here because it wasn't just about Silicon Valley. It was our first step in going global and then India was 2008, which has also been very successful. So it took a lot of conviction, but you will know very well, Harry, that there were many folks who came here, everyone other than Exile, left. And if you ask us why, and the answer is that we figured out the structure of how do you do global well is that you have boots on the ground, you have local decision making, you're investing in entrepreneurs, it's a relationship business, you need to be able to make that investment decision sitting across the table, not from thousands of miles away. So we got that structure right, but it took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears to kind of evolve how we do global grade, but local.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh my god, there are so many insecurities. It's probably around the fact, I don't know if I can always get it right in terms of the exceptional founder. I mean, that really hurts. At the seed stage, I spent a lot of time with seed companies, as you know, because we exchange notes and that's so much fun. It's difficult to get it right.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Okay, okay, so for me, it's false negative versus false positive. The false positive, it doesn't work out. You can only lose one times your money, but the false negative when you say no to outlier business, right to a founder that creates an exceptional business that could have returned the fund multiple times over, that really hurts. And so those are the ones you really have to learn from. I make two mistakes, and we actually do this as a group. We put all our companies.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's very hard because, as we all know, it's all about backing the founder. And I think you are able to have open discussions with the founder to ask them, where are we going? What do you think? I think you have to be open if you feel like you have the support of the board and you actually can have an open, non-defensive chat with the founder. I've certainly had to do it. It's not easy. The way to mitigate that is not get into that situation in the first place. But I think we owe it to us LPs, we owe it to ourselves to be able to have open and authentic discussions. And by the way, there's very few of those discussions that happen. It's become a cheerleading market. And I hope that goes away with this current cycle. But it's pretty dismaying to see where the market had got to. It was like fragmented cap tables, party rounds, and a lot of cheerleading.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, totally. But at the same time, it's either you believe or you don't believe. Does that make sense? And then if you believe, you should allocate funds and actually even buy Apple. This is a great time to buy ownership in the right companies. But yeah, if you think the pricing is out of whack, then it doesn't make sense to go deeper.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No longer just about what the individual on the board, so we have some heated debates around follow on, which is very important, by the way, because that's where a lot of your capital goes in into the companies. And I think we do believe that if we really are fans, we buy up. It's only going to get more expensive, right? And you'll never get the ownership. That is the important element of our business is getting the ownership when you're partnering so early with these founders. But we do have some heated debates. I mean, if you look at the last cycle, the biggest mistakes were just putting a lot of pro rata money in or just following it and supporting companies. So you get your outliers. But then if a lot of your percentage of your fund goes into companies that actually don't return capital because you've just been supporting them blindly, the return here and then you have the loss here and it adds up to a pretty average fund. So you've got to think very hard about that following capital, which is why for us it's the we versus just somebody believing in it.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know the challenge in this last cycle, the follow on rounds came so quickly that it was really hard to make the decision around, okay, what worked, what didn't work, et cetera, versus what we used to do rewind a couple of cycles ago. I don't think it's as simple as all in or nothing for an initial investment decision we're very much a conviction, not a consensus organization, right? It's all about, we get around the table, isn't your prepared mind thinking you have to be first, that's the way we think about it, but the intellectual integrity, honesty, all out on the table. But when it comes to a follow-on, we think of the company as a we. That's also the reason why it doesn't go well. There's no like finger pointing, there's no naughty corner, it's our company. We collectively made the decision even if one person had the conviction, but we all ask the hard questions, there was real debate, there was real transparency, there was real trust. But we take the decision as a we'll really look at it together.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Totally none. The truth is that when you have conviction, and this is my other big lesson, when you have complete unadulterated visceral conviction around a founder and what they're doing, just find a way to partner with them. Just find a way. And it's great. We do the work. We're very thoughtful in terms of prepared mind. This is what allows us to do that. I'm sure when you had our founders, Jim and Arthur, they talked about prepared mind, which just for the benefit, it was a term coined by Jim and Arthur after the quote of Louis Pasteur, which is chance favors the prepared mind. And you have to have luck, you have to have serendipity, but you better be able to recognize what good looks like, be able to recognize what makes for a great founder in a certain business, right? Because it's also about whether the space is. And I think when you have the magic of that founder and the magic of actually being prepared in some fashion around the category, it's really explosive. And I think that's also been a big learning is you can do all your outcomes.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was my big learning in terms of how Uncap this business can be. People told me, but it's only when you experience it, do you believe it?”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One thing that I honestly could not say I understood how great great was. If only when you're confronted with it in reality that I think you realize what uncapped kind of exceptional greatness looks like and I think Spotify is a great example where we invested, it was unfortunately not the first money and shame on us. But when we invested, it was sort of 70-ish million in gross revenue. I mean, it's 10 billion now. And it was about a million and a half paying users. So still tiny in a world of where it could have gone. We had no idea that it could get as big as it ultimately got. Yes, we dreamed, et cetera, but it was never at the same kind of range of what it eventually, of what Daniel Lyke was able to achieve with that business. So I think it's only when you see it close up that you really start to believe it. Learning is all about seeing. So I think that's probably.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have more faith because you know what I'm seeing situations and you're seeing them too at the later stages that some of the crossover hedge funds call them what you want. It's not easy to work with them and things are not going so well, right? And they're nowhere to be found. And I really believe that entrepreneurs talk to other entrepreneurs. And if anything, you want someone to call. Literally, I'm in a couple of these situations right now. And the founders tend to call the ground zero investors even after like a cap table or series ABCDEF. It just, it tends to be the case that they want to be able to, there's alignment around being early, frankly. That never goes away. I mean, just the other point I want to make, because the reason you might take this capital is because they'll come later. But it's not so obvious that they will come later, right?”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I don't know. Do you think the early entrepreneurs, we talked about us doing C and A and being there at ground zero and partnering with them, do you think they're going to work with funds that are totally passive?”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“All the founders disappeared. There was drives like watching paint drives. It's the opposite of where we are today. I think there's a lot to be excited about. And the good news is I think you can maybe focus talent, concentrate talent again in some of the really great businesses versus this fragmentation of talent that happened.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not worried about us losing confidence, not backing the outliers. I mean, we invested in Spotify in the early 11 is when we were talking to them. It wasn't kind of the most obvious time either and was incredibly bold plan. I think these exceptional founders absolutely are there. They have the confidence. They have the attention now. And yeah, maybe they're more capital intensivized capital intensive, but there is enough dry powder, Harry, right now. I think it's like the numbers are two, three, four hundred billion that is out there in venture capital at the moment in dry powder. So I think long-term secular trends are not going anywhere, right? You agree. Digitization, AI, et cetera. The founders are there. It's never been more vibrant. After 2000, it was B2B and B2C. Do you know what that meant? Yeah. Back to banking and back to consulting.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was no learning, but I'm 100% sure that you've learned something coming out of it, the capital intensive business models.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there are some situations where you can do all of the right things where the entrepreneur does all the right things. Go back to what I said, it was the bull market, grow fast, go big, or go home. Money was flowing into our system as we know why for a number of years and especially the last two years. But Harry, have learned something. You have learned that capital was cheap for a while, but it's not forever cheap. So you think about the business models you back next, the goal of what the cost of capital plays and the unit economics will be front and center. And the other thing I've learned in some of the situations I've been involved in is that actually, you know how you do a memo, we do a memo because that's sort of part of being a responsible investor. It helps you articulate your thinking. You write down, oh, there's regulatory risk or you write down there's funding risk or you write down this geopolitical risk, but you just write it down. I now have deep respect and learn that over the years. If something can go wrong and in a long enough period, it actually might go wrong. So don't just write it down, absorb it, internalize it.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What you've learned and moving on because I experienced it is just you go into a rat hole, you feel a bunch of regret, you think what you get wrong. But the key is to extract some learning from that situation and make sure you keep investing. The worst thing you can do, as I said before, is be frozen and stop investing. You always have to be meeting those entrepreneurs because that's how you get out of it. You get out of the funk.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I do two things. The one is, and I think this is important, is I'd really lean in into your early stage businesses, right? In the vast majority of what we've done is seed investing, definitely pre-product market fit, or even if there's product market fit, it's super early. I think the joy there in terms of really supporting those entrepreneurs, I think you need to keep that joy alive, if you will, during tough times to remind yourself what good looks like, what's possible, kind of the infectious enthusiasm around building something. So I think you need to really lean into those situations. And we all know the great companies get built in a downturn. And I think a lot has been said about it, but it's truly a special time to be partnering with your entrepreneurs that you've already backed. So I think that psychology element is incredibly important. Of course, it's incredibly important for them. We all know it's not about the type one mistakes, frankly. It's all about the type 2 mistakes. So candidly, yes, you could lose some confidence, but it's about distilling.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The smart ones figure out that this is a real conversation and they've got to give it their all. And that's the other thing, by the way, Arthur said is you cannot convince people to be an investor. They really need to want it because it is so hard over a long term. And I think the individuals that we've met that I've met who really want this, who crave it, I think they give it to their all and they really engage. And if they don't, that's telling you something, right? You're not really getting to them. And maybe you have a follow-up meeting. But generally, I feel like you get a lot out of it. Look, it's not perfect, but it helps us a lot to really distill kind of characters traits.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have to be the person sitting at the side of the founder. It's not about being the star in the room. It's really about building those relationships, being able to persuade. So how self-aware you are in terms of how you change your tune, how you work with people. It was about how persuasive you are because you're always persuading someone, right? You're persuading the founder to work with you. You're persuading your partners is a great idea. When you're doing a follow-on capital investment decisions, there's persuasion. So we started asking questions around that. There's no magic, Harry, in terms of the question. But when you ask someone, for example, what was the most surprising negative feedback that you got? And why do you think you got it? The person will tell you something that you're never going to.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I think we figured out a while ago that we don't have the operator pool here back in sort of the late 2000s. And there's a lot of investor talent, but it's later stage. And given we're trying to be the first partner, that didn't work either. So we really had to figure out the homegrown nature of talent. And it's what the track record was in the US too. And we thought when we made mistakes, what we were getting wrong was kind of the emotional characteristics. Really the who as opposed to the how or the what. And so we started to think about we wrote it down on the whiteboard actually and we realized that what really mattered, and it seems so obvious, but we weren't testing for it. We weren't asking for it, like resilience. Most of this business is rough. You have to reboot yourself so many times, especially historically was mostly bad news because the companies that didn't work would shut down and then the good news it took longer for great companies to percolate. We weren't testing for like how reflective you are, how self-aware you are.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the end of the day, you have to empower the right individual to be able to make those decisions and help them support them, help them win. But there's a time to start, right? So I think for the right person, they'll be on the plane making the call with a team if we can't be there, one of us can't be there. But I think we really empower people maybe earlier than they think they're ready, but they're ready, if that makes sense, because we've seen it. We have patent recognition. And it's the second thing is what I said. We genuinely drop things to support people. There's nothing more important than the team here and the team winning.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The sentence that we use is that we want to be hyper competitive on the outside, but we're ultra collaborative on the inside. There are no sharp elbows here. It's not a star culture. It is a safe place. And there are written rules. There are unwritten rules on the written side at a young level if one of the younger investment team members identifies a great company, a great founder that we actually end up investing in, everybody gets a bonus because that's sort of a way to hard code collaboration, an unwritten rule. Anyone here picks up their hand and says, we really need to work with this founder. We need to do everything we can to convince him or her. We will all drop everything to get on a plane. Actually, that's the funnest part, the chase. And when we're all together, because as you know, venture can sometimes be a lonely business. So I think it's the code of conduct because we all know we're all very kind of aligned in terms of our mission.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a really, really good question because that's what you do. You ask good questions. I think so. I was in a conversation with my Harvard Business School lead professor, leadership professor, she's incredible. And I was sort of going on about being authentic and being the best version of yourself. And show me Sonali. Why do you think people can be authentic and be the best version of yourself? You're just lucky. So I thought that was good feedback, which is like it's not so easy. So you're right. It's not so easy. I don't know I've always been kind of a version of this. So I feel that I push the envelope up on that front. But yeah, I think it is easier when you're more senior and that's great because you can draw and model it and hopefully you can change that discrepancy to be candid.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thought that we needed a Wendy light figure, but because it's all about if you're telling your companies to focus on culture, you're telling your companies to focus on talent, why would you not want to do that? And of course, you can do that yourself, but it's not a side hustle. You need one person to really be thinking about it all the time in terms of how you can be world class. So I've had candidates tell me the fact that you have Chloe, that shows me how serious you are to sort of mentorship and commitment. And I think the final thing I'd say is one of the reasons I think I maybe have people say that is because I open up a lot. You have to give, you have to get. And part of that is being vulnerable and being very open. And so I do that a lot. And I think you know because you've been incredibly supportive and thoughtful, I had a tough situation with my thumb for a year and a bit. And there's not a person in this office who didn't know that and who wasn't supportive because that's how I do it.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Contraction multiples, and then some there are businesses that are being affected. I think we're mostly just seeing our contraction multiples for the most part right now. I think there's a little bit of a wait and see, especially given the divergence in the venture business.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I'm really surprised at, Harry, because I sometimes check where things are sitting because we're now going to be soon in our 40th year, we've always seen that it pays to be a combination of conservative and realistic. We don't make up our own way of accounting. And so we're pretty proactive about taking down the valuations, but they're already sitting at pretty deep discounts. That's us, depending upon. We have various layers of doing the analysis. And I do think people will be proactive because you have to be, but it's going to take time and it's going to happen much more on the companies that have to have an outside mark, right? In terms of doing a round. And the challenge is that people are just not interested in going out and getting an outside mark right now. They'd much rather just put their head down and take the capital that they have and keep going. So I think you have to sort of really take a different view as it going to be about a multiple change? Is it going to be about a business risk? There's two different things that are going on.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are in the business of partnering very, very early with founders, right? The majority of what we do is either seed who knows whether it's pre-seed or seed these days. It all got sort of merged O series A. And those are 10 to 12 year relationships. They certainly 10 to 12 year funds. And I think you only stay in business for 30, 40 years as we've done is if you have the references and those relationships and you know very well about that because you're at the epicenter of a lot of it. And I think we have kind of a commitment to really be there for the highs as well as the lows. Now, maybe we can staff it differently. Maybe we can support them in different ways, but I don't think you could just check out. It's just not the right thing to do. And the question is, then how do you do it at a fun level so you allocate your time wisely, which is something we do spend a lot of time thinking about? I think the relationship with the founders matters a lot because that's what we're in the business of doing is back in repeat founders. Company number one didn't work, but company number two might be a blockbuster.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I'm sure you advise for me. I think we're much more aversion in a version of 2000 than we are in a version of 2008.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Collateral's venture. I had a great time. It was a difficult time because the bubble was slowly deflating and I moved to Excel in 2008 and I've been here since.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I got the bug. I was totally hooked. I thought I need to be part of businesses like this. And I spent the rest of my time when I was there just being part of teams that sort of touched, if you will, tech or tech IPOs, etc. And let me remind you, this was the start of the bubble. Fast forward, I went to business school, collected some more debt, collected some more degrees, did the immigrant thing. And while I was there, I did immerse myself in all things kind of technology, venture capital, entrepreneurship. I stayed out of trouble, I think too, because it was really like the heyday. I made two decisions really. One is that I wanted to do venture capital. And then this is the big one, Harry. I decided that I must be in Europe. I was in Boston, Route 128 felt super cluttered. It was so early that I thought it was cluttered back then. And then Silicon Valley was also completely full up. I was like, what am I going to do there? So let me go to Europe. It's ground zero. The ecosystem felt like it was buzzing because I went back and forth and I met people. It really felt like it was the next frontier and I joined a firm.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I was so completely confident that this was the only way that I could forge my own life. I try to tell that to my 15-year-old kid, whether I'm my daughter Another story. I didn't even know when I'd go home, so I had no idea when I'd be able to sort of afford to go back. It was really like a one-way ticket, but changed my life, it changed my family's life, so clearly the best move ever. Fast forward, I graduated, it was liberal arts, and where I went to school, none of the big banks came, but I had a lot of debt and I had a student visa, so I thought, okay, I better get myself a job with something pretty stable. So I managed to get a job. This was in 95 at Goldman Sachs. And being kind of the scrappy person that I was while I was there, I weaseled my way into this group that ended up spending most of their time with young startup companies. And I happened to join them in a meeting with this business called Spyglass. And in fact, it was the first internet software IPO. And when I walked into that room and I spent time with his founder, this company didn't exist a few years ago. It was growing fast. It had just gone public. I think the founder was wearing Birkenstocks. This is in contrast to like suit.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think I've ever been bolder, more ambitious, more entrepreneurial, more scrappy, more resourceful. I feel like I was my startup. Does that make sense?”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Book with frayed edges about how to apply to America. I swear it must have been like five, 10 years or out of date. I have no idea. I followed the instructions and by some miracle and landed up on the East Coast in America of America with a full scholarship at a liberal arts institution.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Now, if you will allow me, I'll take you back a little bit longer because I think the history kind of always predicts the future. So I grew up in India in the 70s and 80s, socialist India. And what I mean by that was choices were limited. There were like two choices of soap. There were two TV stations. Means were limited too. So I always knew I had to be a professional, quote unquote. So that was kind of the job career market. There wasn't much business at the time. And being a professional meant, at least in my house, from a very young age, I was either going to be a doctor or hold your breath. I was going to be a chartered accountant. I had no interest of any of these two things. And I thought I got to get myself out of here. I decided to do that. The only problem being is I had no money. I had never been abroad and wanted to go to the US. So I kind of camped out at a building, which I don't know if it exists in other countries. It was called the USIS, United States Information Service. I would literally go there every day after school. I would climb a ladder. I would pick up this big...”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a personal highlight for me to actually be here with you finally today. I think you know I'm in admiration of everything you have and you continue to do at 20 VC. So thank you.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The only problem being is I had no money. I had never been abroad and I wanted to go to the US. So I feel like I was my startup.”
2022-06-27 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Accel's Sonali De Rycker on Building a Generational Defining Venture Firm; Hiring, Culture, Incentives | Investing; Biggest Mistakes, Biggest Lessons from Prior Crashes, Why Market Size is Dangerous to Focus On | Decision-Making; Type 1 vs Type 2 Ri · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source