YouSaid · the spoken record

Taavet Hinrikus

lines on the record: 71
first: 2025-04-28
most recent: 2025-04-28
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

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“Maybe Sentisia. I made a pretty big ancient investment early on when it was two crazy guys, AI was, I don't think abbreviation AI was used. They were doing video generation using smart engineers. They've done an amazing job and still early in the journey.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I become a whole lot more optimistic on Europe. I think frankly everything that has happened in relation to US have become so much more bullish on Europe. We will rebuild the critical industries.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have never bought the public stock. That's really hard. For ten years. I mean, actually, maybe I would go very classic Ricker Hazaway for 10 years. That is going to compound in a much more predictable way if it's the only thing I'm allowed to hold.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There seems to be a lot of companies coming from Revolut today, which is pretty cool to see. I don't know how many of them are doing exciting things compared to trying to do fintech widgets, but maybe today it's a Revolut. I mean, Wise has a fair share of startups. Monzo has been great. Spotify, I don't know, top of my head.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“More capital for deep tech investment. Look at the encouraging entrepreneurship, reducing the regulatory burden. And I think the way we do government purchasing decisions, whether it's in defense or other areas, the government should be the biggest customer for European startups”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm all interested in the upside, and I'm interested in what are the good things I can do with returns. I don't need to go to work for the monthly paycheck. I think that is an incredibly powerful moment for everyone.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Frankly, I think it has not changed. I have generated liquidity through the years from Wise. I mean not until we were valued at billions. I didn't sell a single share of secondary, but after that they've done it in a, I would say, systematic way. I was also lucky to make money from being the first employee at Skype, from stock options. So in that sense, I've been financially independent since 2000.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't know, said Dew. I don't know what deutinek feels. So I can't answer on this. Here's what I would tell Nick. If he wants to build a big business in the US, then he should go public in the US.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't believe why it would have a pricing premium in the US. We spent a lot of time agonizing this over the years before the IPO. So I think for wise it has worked out well. However, structurally, we have a lot of issues here. We don't have enough retail participation in the UK. We don't have enough institutional participation from the pension funds. I do think UK stock market is subprime in that sense. If you're a retail product, you want your consumers to buy you. So make sense to go public in the US. But I also think in some sense maybe some of this is a bit of a wrong thing to spend so much energy on. Why is Return public in the US? Result would be the same. We would not be paying more tax in the US. We would still be headquartered here. So sometimes it feels to me people love to talk about this, but I'm not sure how big is the actual difference for certain companies.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't regret going public in London. I think wise is an example of a company that is well known amongst investor universe that can go public anywhere. At the end when public in Amsterdam, whoever knew they have a stock exchange, they've done very well. Why is this done very well in the UK?”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No entrepreneur ever has not started a company because of regulation. It's the best entrepreneurs say go through walls made out of titanium to make it happen. It's an excuse. But on the other hand, we need even more to make Europe a more unified market. Labor, capital. Why do we need to have a stock exchange in Amsterdam? Great companies listed, sir. London, Estonia. I would love, sir, to be in Estonia.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Harry, we don't brag about it as Americans do. That's the difference between Europeans and Americans. We're too humble. And I think we need to learn to become better marketeers. Absolutely. Maybe we need to hire American marketeers.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of this comes down to sufficient early stage capital for deep tech companies. It's a crazy investments that we like to do in plural. If we're looking at, for example, Proxima Fusion building a fusion power plant, the most advanced fusion company in Europe. It's a new German government has said they want a first not one but two fusion power plants to be built in Germany. So we're seeing that there is a political will to act now as well.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a correct thing to worry about, but I think also we need to be more entrepreneurial and find ways to build things quicker. And I think it's doable.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If we go back to the question around defense and timeline of a couple years, I think EFC's budgets are unlocked soon, we can actually still get a lot done. The urgency is higher now than it's ever been. Politician at the highest levels are thinking about it in the same ways today. So I'm hopeful that they will come up with the right answers, but it's by far not guaranteed.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's a very serious, very real concern. We should be living under the assumption that whatever happened in Ukraine now, Russia will try in another country over the next years. And we need to be ready for this.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We need to work together in Europe, but we need to work together in ways which are slightly more slightly faster than the way we've done it before. Like if you think about some of the defense collaborations that have happened in Europe, they're very painful. Italy says, we will take part in this project, but this widget has to be produced in Italy. And that makes things very slow. Like if you look at how war has happened in Ukraine, you need to be building iterating constantly. I think we need to be a little bit more modern about the way collaboration happens, but we do need to collaborate around Europe. And I think the capital everyone is realizing that defense contributions, we were not at 2% in Europe before. Estonia was ahead, but Poland was ahead. But we need to...”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do you remember how much capital Germany allocated to this the last couple weeks of February? I think it was between one point five and two trillion that Germany allocated just after the Zelensky White House meetings. These discussions are happening everywhere in Europe today. And the reality is we probably cannot use 2 trillion today. We need a trillion this year, two next year over time. So I'm feeling exactly.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What if the US says we're going to disable Android in Europe? You need independence. If we can't guarantee that Android solution works regardless of what people do in the US, we cannot trust it. And I think if you're thinking about anything else which has access to vast amount of information, if we talk about anything that gets visual audio information, robots, cameras, we probably want to control who has access to the information we gather and who has access to a kill switch.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are going into a world of decoupling for a while. I'm kind of hopeful that the Western world will come closer together after going through a rough patch. These are complex topics. Why do”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What if they turn this off when they don't feel good about Europe anymore? Do we want US robots roaming around our streets, collecting intelligence information? I think it's pretty clear we don't want Chinese ones.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We That's very kind of clear. But I think also what we're seeing now with the US saying we'll sell you a 10% worse fighter jet. Who is ever going to buy US defense equipment? I mentioned Teton before doing monitoring patients. Do we want the US patient monitoring solution in our hospitals? Do we want, we have a company which is making...”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We probably were living in a naive world before this. We saw human nature has changed and we're now post-Cold War in a different world. And maybe history could have worked out differently, but I think now the world is pretty similar and the idea that we overly rely on the US probably was already wrong back then. I think we all need to punch our weight. I believe we are better collectively. Estonia is better part of Europe. UK is better being part of Europe. Europe is better together with the US. But I think we all need to collectively put in the effort. And maybe we were relying slightly too much on the US before.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Our space sector, we need an independent energy sector. We need security, intelligence. A lot of sectors where I think we're going to be living in a tripolar world. So there's going to be an American version. Let's call it Andril. There is a European version, Helsing, a Chinese version. Defense space, energy, security, intelligence, everything, all of the critical services. And these critical services, they make up a vast portion of GDP.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Even zooming out when we were starting to think about plural in 2021, we raised our first one in 2022. So syncing of creating plural, we had two things which were really important, European sovereignty and GDP level impact. I was true four years ago and it's even more true now. Two things which have happened in between. One is the Ukraine war, which, you know, before that, investing in defense felt strange. After the Ukraine war, it feels like we need to do this in Europe. And I think the other thing, second thing which has changed is I think really what happened in the White House in February, where Zelensky was taken for a grilling and the way that US cannot be trusted anymore to be the protector of Europe. This kind of results in a world where we need to rebuild a lot of things on our own. We need to build our defense sector. We need to build our”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, in certain sectors which are deemed hot, you know, 2021, if you were an X-Y's employee, everybody would write a check to you without even meeting you. Does that make any sense? No. Same happened to Google employees maybe five years before. I do think that you need to separate kind of the early pre-product market investing from a later stage. But I guess I think also at the same time it's safe to believe that the returns will be coming down over time as asset class matures becomes bigger. Do you think that?”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fundamentally, I agree with this, but I think we have the ability to be very deeply involved if you need us and get out of the way the rest of the time.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Do not be that asshole. But I think it also goes back to founders of like actually creating a round where people have enough skin in the game to feel interested, to feel the company is important.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We are a commoditized productary. We see our commodity, you can press em down. Someone told me early on the only person to fight for your ownership is yourself. No VC will ever fight for the founder's ownership. You need to fight for it. There's a lot of truths in it. You know, the founders say need to fight for the ownership, absolutely. The other side of it is, and still easy, if you're a good fundraiser, you're building something which is deemed to be hot. You're building an AI SaaS company. It's easy to put a party around together, dilute 10%, and nobody gives a shit about the business. So I think you need to think about, do you have people involved who will help you through the good times and bad times? In the good times, you don't care about your advice. You don't need your help, but you want someone to pick up the phone when it's the bad times. There are plenty of stores out, sir, of respectable VCs not picking up the phone when it's a bad time.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You have five people with a relatively similar mindset, similar view of the world. You know, they will be looking at maybe the guy with the biggest fund or then the guy who wants to be the smartest guy in the room. They will dominate too much of the discussion. So right boards are slightly more balanced. I'm very much in favor of this idea that founders who are building companies. At some point it might be good for them to be on one board of another person building a business. You know, I think it's good for both.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do not love boards, I think is a fair starting point. The things that I don't like about boards, they oftentimes become way too big, way too quickly. Your C-round investor takes a board seat, your A round investor takes a board seat, your B round investor takes a C and D. So you end up with five VCs on the board and two founders. I don't think these boardrooms are any good. The other thing you want more.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Y is only raised 160 million primary capital, and we only burn through about 100 million of primary capital. 100 million primary capital to build in excessive 10 billion of value. If you look at companies outserve where you've raised 2.5 billion to create 10 billion of value, and certainly if a company raises a billion at 5 billion with the possibility of getting to 8, 9, 10, maybe the lick pref is different. But early stage lick pref, I don't know, it doesn't really make sense.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it makes that much sense. We are here for unlimited upside, 1x downside. The difference is purely marginal. We spoke about this when we were starting to play around with idea for plural and thinking like, what are the structural misalignment in the industry we want to fix? I think it's one of the next things we should work on. We haven't ultimately haven't felt it important enough. And I also, to be honest, as a founder it feels shit, but also as a foundry it doesn't matter. As a founder, you're also in here for the long trim upside. Let me rewind. But we need to think about in the industry is how much capital gets deployed for a size of an outcome. Founders too often think fundraising and large fundraisers is ultimate measure of success, you know, which I think is BS, something that hasn't been spoken widely, even so wise supposedly raised a shit ton of money. We probably raised a billion or more.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Share to help the companies forward in the next fundraise, which oftentimes means doing the prorata, which I think is a cop-out, but doing that, and then balancing that with can we keep larger reserves for deploying checks in companies where we are actually, you know, at that time maybe not confident of 100x because we've seen 10x already, but if at that point you see the momentum and you feel maybe it's 50x left, 30x left, you want to deploy more capital.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We flip it around. On the reserve decision is like follow on checks as we call it. So lead investor writes a memo, comes back with a proposal, but this needs a majority vote. It's the idea of marking up your own homework. Kind of the idea of the fund is we write whatever, 2530 first checks. Everyone does four, five, six, seven, like, doesn't matter who does more or less really. But when we talk about reserves, that's a finite allocation, a finite asset we need to divide up. And you cannot do that unless you take collective feedback, collective input. We think these ones are done best collectively. We're trying to balance how could we keep a bunch of reserves for the best companies, but you don't know the best companies. So next round, you might not know it's a surround after next either. How do we do our...”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We keep note directionally because I think it does help calibrate. And I think in an ideal world, we want to come back to it years later and say, hey, let's recall that I see and what do we learn from it?”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I completely respect the fact that we need to communicate to the founders how long something is going to take and if we tell them that, hey, we're going to have an IC on Tuesday and we'll tell you on Wednesday, it makes sense. We can get things done very quickly. We probably got them things done within a number of days. And if something is super competitive, we need to move. We need to decide soon. We believe that we tell the founder what our process looks like. We try to make it compatible 2020, 2021 there was a lot of deals done under the gun basically. I did some myself personally, made some big losses.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Probably more like 70 30, 70% gets done, 30 doesn't get done, but you know, we're not really, I'm not sure measuring is a right thing and start setting maybe wrong incentives. And by the way, sometimes also there is a time factor. We look at a deal. Doesn't make sense. It's the lead investor comes back like, hey, I'm not doing it now. Six months goes by and like, hey guys, I'm going to have a new IC. The company has done what they promised or something has changed and I want to lean in now. So let's have a discussion again.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, absolutely not. And I think SAR is probably no company where all the partners met say founders before the deal. It's typically one or few partners that meets a company. But we give a lot of trust to the individual GPs. The bar for being a GP super high. So we give them a lot of trust. And we kind of felt that it doesn't make sense to hire someone brilliant and tell them, you have to come on Mondays to ask permission to do a deal. Going back, we have the IC and after the IC, Salid partner goes back and thinks about the feedback. We have many cases where after hearing the feedback, Salid partner is like, hey guys, you know, Ian, you raised great points. Karina, what you said about your experience in the market is very true and I'm not going to do the deal. Many cases where this happens.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Most likely we've spoken about a company a few times before over the past weeks during our pipeline meeting, etc. There are a lot of companies where more than one partner meets with a team.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We typically start talking about the company way before the memo. Send as a lead investor says, I'm writing a memo. We're going to have an investment committee. We have a brutal discussion at the investment committee about the company and sends a ball goes back to the lead investor.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Should not be entertaining it. If we can't imagine 100x, we should not be entertaining the idea of this deal. There are many great investments which are 5x guaranteed. There are many great investors who should do this. It's not plural. Once we have that memo, we have an investment committee. And given that we don't vote on deals, the committee discussions are very honest, very brutal.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is super simple, and it's very actually very formulaic. There's a couple things every investor can only do a limited number of deals per year. It looks at two to three deals per year is the right pacing. If you come saying I'm doing deal number six, we're going to be like, hey, Tavet, what's going on? Limited number of shots on goal. Skin is a game, so you're willing to commit your personal money. Third one, you write a memo about the deal. The memo starts with why is this company important to me? Every deal we do, we're testing like, will you be willing to be a co-founder of the company? All the forty-nine deals we've invested in so far, we feel about all of them that's a partner who did the deal felt like bloody hell this is so important, so exciting, I would love to be a co-founder of this company. There was a memo starts with why is this important to you? Let's talk about the founder, why is it important for the founder? How can it be 100x from here? If we can't see that,”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think this is really hard. We try to be honest, but we're also cesar for the founders. And we kind of promise we're not going to give up before you. But it doesn't mean we're going to write bad money after good money. We've told our founders, we're here to have GDP level impact. If your company is not doing it, I'm sorry, we should not continue funding it. You may keep on working on it and we'll do our best to help you, but it doesn't guarantee the next checks.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fundamentally, I agree with the idea that just doing a pro rata is a cop out. You either want to do nothing or triple down. However, I think the real world is slightly more complex. Round happens a year later. So a company has done well. Saris's weird signaling thing. Some days I think signaling risk is real. Some days I think it's not real. You want to make sure you have some kind of a more uniform way of doing it through the fund. And we're working on that.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Reserve ratio fund one we had limited reserves which was kind of less than a cert fund two we kind of draws a line roughly in the middle I think probably we end up with slightly less than half for reserves and the reserves is still something that you know we are we're iterating and learning about the best ways of doing it I haven't found anyone who says they've nailed it”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On a per fund basis, I think fund one we probably had a model of twenty five to thirty. We ended up with 31. So we do pay attention to having”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“How many SaaS companies, how many carbon companies, you don't want to have the same risk everywhere? A company's outside are like, fuck, we have too many deep tech companies. We need a SaaS company. We're kind of okay mostly with the fact that we follow the most ambitious entrepreneurs, whatever they're building. But I can start sympathizing with the people who are saying, hey, you have this great carbon capture company. I love you, but we have three already in the fund. We can't add a force fund because it starts skewing the fund composition. Like you start learning nuance like that, which, you know, on a deal-by-deal basis isn't relevant, but, you know, if the whole fund is and subjects to carbon markets, for example, somebody should think about it then.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think maybe it's the biggest thing which strikes me is fund composition part. We really don't think we have much control over fund composition.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Timeline misalignment. Investors wanting their money back before the founder, which is a kind of hard one. In a way, if the founder is in it for the next two decades, it's a question of liquidity.”
2025-04-28 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: VCs are Spreadsheet Monkeys and are Commoditised | Why Fees and Carry Misalign GPs and LPs | Why Founders Will Realise Multi-Stage Funds Damage Seed Rounds | Why We Need European Sovereignty More Than Ever with Taavet Hinrikus · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source