YouSaid · the spoken record

Wes Chan

lines on the record: 49
first: 2022-08-22
most recent: 2022-08-22
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I always do this planning exercise with my founders and write down the things you want to be true in five years. And I wrote down like three things that I want to be true. One, we remain a small team. Two, we have a family of founders who vehemently tell everybody else we're their first phone call and that like, you know, anytime I have a problem, whether it's like a therapy issue or like a fundraising problem or a product issue, Wesley and Pega are one of my first phone calls. And you guys need to work with them because they'll be one of your first phone calls too. And then the last thing that I sort of say is that everybody on our team continues learning, understanding truly.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I would probably take my iPad, but there'd be no communication. But that's so much information reading that I love learning on.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“God, that's an interesting question. I changed my mind like eight times a day on stuff. You know, Pega, my partner, bought a deal to me that I thought was in an area, those payments that I thought was hard or terrible. You know, she basically said, no, look at the founder's vision on this. And I said, oh, well, in that case, I'll change my mind on it. And we would end up doing the deal. So there's this famous saying when I would pitch up to Larry where he goes, Wesley, if you have the data, you're right. If you don't have the data, then I'm right. And you don't want me to be right because I'm often wrong. So bring the data. And so, you know, I think that that's how we operate our partner's meaning is that people bring data and when that happens, we have a productive discussion, but not it's a bunch of people yelling and opinions. And that usually causes people not to change their minds if it's just random opinions.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I was one of the first to boo hoo crypto. Some of it's done well, but I said, I can't be involved in a bunch of stuff where I think more than three quarters of it is scammy. Like I said, I manage children's hospital money. And last thing I want to do is like, oh, I'm sorry. I lost your money in a scam and we took advantage of a bunch of little ladies. That's contrarian. A lot of people thought it was crazy when they said that. And, you know, some of us coming home the roost now is we see Celsius Voyager and some of these other companies really take a lot of retail investors and a lot of them folks that aren't very wealthy or don't have much money or they talk to their life savings and ran off with it. It's terrible.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's really the empathy that they have with their employees, right? The best founders like Cliff and Mill have massive empathy with their employees, especially if you're growing, because you can imagine if you're walking in a company, I went through this firsthand, you know, when I was at Google where the company was doubling every two months. You can just imagine how unfrazled everybody gets in a business where it just keeps growing. And every day is different and you walk in and it's uncertain. And so you just have to have an empathy of your employees and truly understand that they're going through their own journey. And they've joined you on that journey. And if you can demonstrate, communicate, and have that empathy, like, you know, you can go to the moon and back.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Biggest strength as MP3 founders really truly understanding the part of the journey, biggest weaknesses, I appear really awkward to folks just given my sort of engineering upbringing.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Favorite book, Liars Poker, Michael Lewis. Michael Lewis is one of the most amazing storytellers on the planet, and he tells the story of the mortgage crisis back in the 80s. It's just amazing. A lot of interesting analogs to what's happening today in the markets and venture capital.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“For me, my art and my edge is indexing on the product visionary and finding that founder that says, I get product and I get what this company can be in 100 years. And when I hear that, I back up the truck and I don't that I'm like, ooh, let me do some more digging. And if I can't unsurface it, and that's a deal that I tend not to do. So it's one of these things where that's my edge and everybody has a different way of doing this. They have a different art and they have a different way of succeeding. That's what makes this business so exciting, right? Like because you learn from other people's mastery of it and you go, all I would not have thought of it that way. And they have this amazing sort of ability to have this edge that no one else has. And I look at it and go, is there something I can learn from that? Is there something, you know, I don't want any sort of copy because that sounds completely unauthentic, but is there something I can adapt into my behavior change or my investing? The answer is no. Then I just go, oh, I'm not going to do that, right? And if the answer is yes, then that's another piece I add to add to my mastery of this business. So I think that that's the pieces that I love getting to mastery. At the end of the day, that's why I love meeting folks like you and everybody else who approaches venture capital in a slightly different way and go like, what is the piece that you've found?”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Anyone can issue a term sheet. Anyone can go find a great company. And then what's the art that's the mastery of it where you go from being just mediocre or you're being averaged in venture capital, having outlier returns and outlier companies like Canva and Gusto and Platt and whatnot? And what is that one edge that you can master that you can do slightly different than everybody else so that you have an edge that people can notice and that pays off in the end, that compounds, right? And that's the piece in the piano is just really, truly understanding. And my edge there is just breaking it down into certain tiny elements where I think mathematically about how long the playage note and sort of like how much pressure to sort of apply to the key and then you can sort of create something that is a slightly different interpretation that people still think is good. So that's my lesson.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I tried to hire a piano teacher. I was a disaster. You have to learn scales, you learn to street music. And I said, I just want to learn Chopin. Nobody wouldn't teach me that. I basically learned using a YouTube. So you learn that there's two things that I sort of broke on the learning process into. One was the mechanics of it and the technicality. Where do I put my fingers and how do I, and for how long? So you learn that on YouTube. You figure out the fingering for it. You know, practice one hand at a time, you get that right. And then the second piece of it is the mastery of it. Like, you know, some of the world's best artists, Arthur Ribbenstein, Garrick Olson, how do they play it, right? And like what are the nuances that they do to master the piece? And so you have all this stuff in Chopin, which is very emotive, roboto, which is, you know, that's the whole timing element where you robbed in the past to give to the future, you know, so the timing isn't consistent, isn't just like one, two, three, or mechanical. And you listen to them play it, and then you duplicate as much as you can in their timing and their emotive sense, and then you learn those two things together, and then you get the mastery, right? It's the same with venture capitalism, the mechanics of doing the deal. Anyone can be a venture capitalist.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What a crazy story, right? Like, I started fundraising three days before Russia started invading Ukraine, I thought it'd be screwed. And, you know, it's very terrible what's happening there. There's this irony. I invest in boring money making businesses, right? Or in life science companies that create new drugs to cure cancer or whatnot. And one of my LPs had this sort of ironic insight. I raised the fund pretty quickly. We were able to close in less than a couple months. And we were almost two of not 3x oversubscribers.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't mind doing an investment and wandering the wilderness like a Canberra, right? After eight years of doing that deal, everybody looks at it and goes like, oh, I can't believe I passed them that deal on the series A. I'm like, but you did.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“$100 million plus valuation. No one got it, right? Like, in fact, everybody's like, that's a head scratcher, Wesley. Why are you doing this? And it turns out to be the Lifetime Achievement Award, right? And so it's one of these things where you just have to have an open mind and not be dogmatic about stuff. But like when you spot that product visionary, and again, that's when I index on is product visionaries, right? And you go and you back up the truck, and I'll take the risk that most other people won't. That's how I invest. I'm not saying it's the right way of investing, but it's what served me very well. The lovely thing about BC is there's hundreds of, if not thousands of different ways to make money and be successful at this one that's authentic to me.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's multi geo, multi stage. I mean, the only thing we're not touching right now is crypto. My best company that I've had the privilege of working with is Canva, which is located in Sydney, and it was an NGO that wasn't obvious when I led that deal with Fisis, right? And so you never know where the world's most amazing founders will come from or where they live or where they might be hiding or what they might be doing. This is a pleasant surprise. You just have to keep an open mind. But when you find that and you spot that amazing fountain that's going to be the next Larry Sergei or Clifford Mela Canva, like you kind of sit there and go like, I want to work with you. Let's make it easy for you to say yes. Again, I'm not dogmatic, right? I don't say I have to own 20% ownership or, you know, only in the US or be in places where I have to be able to drive to. I'm willing to some of my best companies, like I said, are in sectors that, you know, people like, I don't understand. Why you're in it? You know, there's this joke that my old firms and that some of my colleagues would have that, you know, and in fact, Don calls it sometimes, it's called the Wesley at Scratcher. When I did Canvas, a Wesley head scratcher. I don't get it. Australia Company romantically involved founders. They haven't launched revenue yet.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The product is simple. We're an investment firm where at the end of the journey, the founder says you're one of my first phone calls. That's it. Whether you IPO the company and we make billions of dollars for some of the children's hospitals whose money we manage or whether we shut off the lights, at the end of the day, the product is simple. You have a relationship with me where you're willing to say I'm still one of your first phone calls.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, you don't ask that. A lot of people tell you what you want to hear versus what you're doing questions. You have to ask it 10 different ways in ways that make sense. And, you know, again, it's one of those things I want to give away the trade secret to how I do it. But you have to ask it 10 different ways and listen carefully. And if the answers are consistent, you can truly differentiate those that are product visionaries than those that aren't. You have to do it in ways that people can't game, right? Like, you know, if you ask about your product planning, people can game it. They create a roadmap or they have a friend who works at Google, create some product roadmap, and you look at the roadmap, and it all looks really legitimate, right? But it may not indicate their ability to really truly understand what the company needs to morph into. That's the piece that is the art in this business. And that's one of those things where you sit there and having been at Google where I got the build and work on and dream up some of the best products that the world uses today. You just have to listen to that and say, is this founder capable of that?”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Everybody's thinking, oh, he's only going to build the $500,000 cars for rich people that are electrically driven. And you sort of sit there and go, ooh, I'm not going to do the deal because I don't think Elon can morph the company into something where the model three and these other great cars that he can create at $30,000 price point is possible. The company changed, right? So you have to truly believe, listen, and here if the founder is capable or has a plan to change the company, what the real vision of the company is versus what the company might be today. That was the piece in my biggest learning lesson in doing this business for 10 plus years.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My comfort level on getting over that is you really have to truly understand. This goes back to that thing about building products and not features, right? The founder's vision and the 100-year plan. My biggest lesson learned on investing is that what you see today is not what if the founder is truly visionary will not be what the company is a year or two years or five or ten years from then. So you have to really believe that the founder is capable of morphing the company and the set of products into something that's truly incredible. That's the piece that I spend most time doing. I don't ask them about what the product is today or all the problems or issues that customers have. In fact, like a lot of time, I'll do customer references just to understand what the limitations are. But like, you know, my early lessons of investing, and I missed out on quite a few companies because I listen to customer references and listen to them bag or height the product. And I was like, ooh, we can't invest in this customers hate it. It really, this goes back to the founders. This is a founder truly one of those incredible product visionaries that's capable of morphing both the company and the product in something that's truly visionary. Now, can you imagine meeting Elon Musk and thinking about Tesla when he only had the roadster and you”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whatever you use, it's ridiculous. Yeah, yeah. I learn too much. I like these tools. I'm too used to it. Like you just hate, you hate everything you know too much about.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Natural bias is passed on it and say no. And I'd rather have one of my colleagues or partners who don't know enough about it take the pitch and then be really excited about it and I'll go there and poo-poo it afterwards and it survives that then the deal gets done and then to have me go and like have the natural bias. That is literally my biggest set of misses is ones that I knew too much about.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“One of my big misses was Twilio. You know, Jeff Lawson, I was the founder of Google Voice and had built that for multiple years and knew a lot about telecom. And he kind of said, like, oh, I'd love to have the Google Voice founder on my cap table. Would you invest? And this was at the Seaground, right? Like when I was at GV. And he's like, you know, and I passed on it because I looked at it and talked to my team at Google Voice and everybody looked at it. It's like, oh, this is easy to do. Once the company gets big enough, they don't need Twitter anymore. Boy, I didn't understand how much he would evolve the product, how much he would change. That was a big miss. My lesson learned on that one. many of my other misses is that when you're an expert in the area you know too much and everything becomes hard as it's not invented here syndrome especially if you're a classically created engineer you know my best investment like canvo or some of my life science investments right or cabio or or zealous or these amazing life science companies i've had the chance to be part of like if you don't just enough to be dangerous where you can believe the founder instead of having all the skepticism going no it can't happen that's where you do the best i try not to take any pitches nicks at areas i know too much about because i've opened the”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh yeah, no, that's what we're doing. We've done at least seven deals so far, right, since our fund is like two months launched. So we're being very aggressive and we're being very thoughtful in terms of what we're putting capital into. But in most of them are companies that I've known well, the founders that know me well and that have no need for more capital. This is a wonderful time to be into those companies. But would I be doing a company that comes to me and says I have two months of cash? If you write us a check and it will last us 12 months, it's a great market with a great founder and like, you know, two months of cash, I probably wouldn't do that deal.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Is so easy to make a mistake because you might be the investor of last resort for that founder and then have to either shut down the company or keep writing checks in that company until the capital markets free up a little bit. And so there's some treacherous behavior that one has to be careful about as you're looking into this market.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's the best time to have a fund. It's not the best time to be investing, right? There's a lot of treacherous deals out there. I don't know when there's these market corrections, what winds up happening is a credit and capital market sees up a little bit, right? And so the challenge is you have no idea who's going to write another check into your company. And so you might be the last check into that company. And so it's very treacherous. Imagine finding some company that has four months of cash left, right? And you have a 25 or 30 million dollar fund. And you say, oh, I love what you're doing. Let me go write a $4 million check in your company or whatnot and concentrate capital in there. And then the last 12 months and the markets are still seized up then because who knows how long this last money policy isn't funding more capital into the markets. VCs are still sort of skittish and waiting for the markets to reprice. So a lot of them aren't doing deals. And then the founder comes back to you 12 months from now. It's like, I'm out of cash again. You just put four. I need another four. What are you going to do? Nobody else is knocking and returning any fungals to that founder. It's treacherous. It is a great time to be in great companies, but it is not a great time to invest because”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lumped into the system where, like, you know, if you have the cache, you're out with a bunch of other people, they're knocking down and banging down every door because they might run into cash because a lot of people aren't doing as many deals as they were a year ago. So I just said, hold on, let the market reset, then figure out what the right strategy is. And if you have quiet investors where you can raise some more money quietly and do it at terms that you're excited about and that they're excited about, then go do it and shore up your capital pool. But don't be out publicly raising. Because everybody that was out there had a bit of desperation in there. And so that was the impetus for it. And we got a lot of people who said, well, I totally hear you. How do I find quiet capital that's willing to do it or go to folks that know me? And that served some of the founders well that had access to that. Guild was able to raise a great round from investors they knew without being on the market. And they were one of the big success stories of being able to get up rounds even when everything was falling.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, you know, I had a lot of founders say, I want to raise now. It would be great to go out. And I sort of said, look, the market's just completely changed. A lot of VCs don't want to be pricing a falling knife, right? Can you imagine doing a deal and you're fun? And then three months later, it's worth half as much and you have to go to your LPs and explain that. Everybody's sort of thinking about what the new market sort of is and what the new reality is. My counsel, the founders, was like, look, if you don't need the capital, don't go out there with everybody else desperate to get capital right now because everybody's out in the marketing the market going like give me money The one data point I had was when we announced a fund right like I've announced a bunch of funds before from my previous firms that I worked for right like you know I'd get a couple hundred people saying oh it'd be great to talk to you about raising money and then you know this time around my inbox and my LinkedIn messages and whatnot was flooded by over like five or six thousand people saying I need money from some companies you may have heard of that you read about in TechRange and I just would ask people how much cash runway do you have and everybody you know it was like four months or less so the people outraising have at that point to be outraising and you don't want to”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In your bass companies, It depends, right? On campus, we were able to concentrate more capital. And by the way, Sequoia came in on that round too with us. It really depends. Look, this business is in art, right? There isn't a hard and fast role of let's go do X, Y, and Z, and that's the pattern. In fact, the VCs that subscribe to hard and fast rules that have dogma are usually the ones that get knocked out very quickly. It's the art of the deal, right? Like everyone's a custom, unique boutique deal. That's what we spend time doing, right? And we just make it easy for the founder to say yes.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like it has to be something the founder wants, not what I want. But do you think boards actually add value? I've sat on many with some great people. They don't really add value, but maybe one has added value. Again, that's a founder's decision, right? If my being on the board adds value to the founder, he wants it or she wants it, I'll totally do it. I don't need you on my board. Great. Do you feel boards do add value, though, generally? It depends on the board, right? Like the one on Canva adds lots of value. It's a small board with me and Rick Baker and the two founders. And we have lovely discussions about how they want to move forward and what their 100-year plans are. If it was a 20% board, we would not have those discussions. Then I'm on some boards that have like 10, 15 people on there. I just sort of go to the board meeting. I'm like, ooh, I'd rather not be here because there's not much value that the board has and everybody has a different opinion. And the founder spends more time managing it. This is really up to the founder for me. Like, I'm only willing to do it if the founder wants it, right? You mentioned leading the series, C.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Lot of great deals, but there has to be a line of it's worth it enough. Kchack in the seed round. Yeah, if Kama came to me and said, What you leave the series thing for 100k and have like 0.001% ownership, that would probably not work. I mean, this is the market, right? There's some market efficiency that will work out between the founders and myself, and we say, like, look, let's make a deal that you want to say yes to, but at the end of the day, like, you know, I don't need 50% or 20% or whatever other funds are requiring for the model to work. We have a very flexible model to be able to win. That is something, again, that I learned from my wonderful colleagues at Felisis, and it's near and dear to my heart today, to build a set of terms that make it easy for the founders to say yes. You said about board seats there. Similar as dogma, and they're still ego around boards. Yeah, I don't care. I didn't get a board seat. I'm on the board of Canva today, but they said we love this. We don't know you well enough yet to give you a board seat. And I was like, fine, I don't need one. In fact, it felt like we go to IPO of a board seat. I'm fine. But they said, Wesley, we trust you, so we want you on the board now when we let the series see at Canvas. So it's one of those things where I'm not dogmatic on this. My preference is to only take the board seat if the founder wants it.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“VC is saying we have to have with the ownership requirements and everything else in camp is sort of the lifetime achievement award, right? Like it's going to return so much of the fun for Felisis. It's one of our investments in my new fund, one of the first that we did because it's such an amazing company that continues to scale and build products that people want. That's the thing where if I had to subscribe to some dogma about ownership or subscribe to some dogma about board seats or whatever else, I would not have gotten in or I would have said no. Can you imagine me missing out on this company because I had some dogma?”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If series A rounds were done at $5 to $7 million, I would totally do it. But most of them aren't. We have a $450 million fund so we can write and back founders all the way. The capital that we have is designed for us to sort of go to the founder and say, if you're raising 50 million, we're here to back you for 50. If you want to raise $5, we'll do $5, right? There's no hard and fast rule that I subscribe to. Another thing I learned at Felicia is that we get into the best companies and we do what we can to get into the best companies. We don't go and have dogma. I did not have 20% ownership of Canva when I led the Series A. I did not have a board seat. In fact, so many people said no to them because they said we're not giving you a board seat or they said we're not giving you 20% ownership. Or they said, we're not going to do X, Y, and Z. And remember, the dogma back then in 2014 when we were discussing the deal was 20% ownership in a company located close to you not run by a romantically involved team in a board seat. Basically, we didn't get any of that from Canva. I was one of the few people that said, in fact, the only person that said yes, we'll write the check for you because we really believe in what you're doing. Fine. We'll waive all these things that everyone”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually look at it slightly differently, and this is something I learned from my dear friend Iden at Felisis, which is we like more shots on goal. Like, if you're in some company like Canva, right, you'll return 10x plus the fun, but you have to be in a company like Canva. So the more you concentrate, the less chance you have of finding a company like Canva. That's my strategy, right? I help to start the deceit fund at GV. So I didn't also started Felisis as a seed fund. And so he and I have this preference for having more great companies in the fund. And we can always concentrate capital later on through other vehicles. You're quite an expert at understanding some of those strategies in place. But we'd rather have more core positions so that we give more shots on goal than to sort of say like, I'll do three companies and pray that one of the three companies works, right? If you do the odds in this business, you have to have just enough to get a high confidence of returning. I studied electoral engineering when I was at MIT. Like, you know, when you study statistics, you want a high confidence score and I want to be able to go to my LPs and like the”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Whether you call it outcome planning or understanding what the possibility of returns are, they just don't return the fund. So we tend to wish the founder much luck and give him a big hug. And this is not something I can go back to my children's hospitals and whatnot and say that we can make them a lot of money on this.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like six companies, that's like six fund returner. If you do the math, my point is that for that to come true, I have to convince myself that the company can return the fund. And so that's where we have to go, instead of doing scenario planning, outcome planning, we sort of say, what has to come true for the world to say this company is highly valued? And sometimes I predict that I'm way off, right? Like, in fact, that's where companies like Google, like no one expected it to be worth Chrome Plus. Like, I still remember in the early days when it was a couple hundred people, we said we were happy if the company was worth over a billion dollars, right? So Trillion Dollars now, two. It's one of those things where we go through just to convince ourselves that there's a chance that it can happen, and that's the case, you know, we'll do the investment. Now, there are companies that very, very, very, very hard to do that, right? And that's why we don't invest in them. I'll give you an example. Like a restaurant, do the math. Like, you know, there's just very few restaurants. They usually change or have private equity firms where they're valued north of a billion. So there's some sectors or markets or areas where we just can't, you know, when we even look at the math and sort of do the...”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We do a back of the napkin planning, right? So look, I can only do maybe 20 at most core positions in my fun, a 450 million dollar fund we raised. A lot of our LPs are charities and foundations, I think like 80% plus our charities and foundations and the rest of our friends kids college funds, right? One of the nice things about having companies like Canva that I've invested in previously allows me to be picky about who our investors are, right? I have to make the money. So I have to look at every investment that I do and sort of say like, what has to come true for this company to return the fund, if not more? Sometimes I don't even know what the steps are, but I have to at least convince myself and look every one of my charities and foundations whose endowments that I manage in a straight face going, like, I think this company has a chance of returning the fund. And then if you get like four or five of them, you return 5X to fund, right? My hit rates are around 30%, right? So, you know, one three or four companies I hit are a billion dollar plus and I've been an early investor, you do 20 plus companies and you have like a 30% hit rate.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And that's a fallacy where founders get screwed on their dream because they don't truly understand how to migrate from the feature to the product where they were never out creating a product in the first place. So it's not so much market sizing. It's like, are you really creating a product and not a feature?”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A more important exercise is the ones where you can truly convince yourself that you're creating the product and not the feature. The challenge for many founders that I've heard pitching, and this is not a knock on them, it's just something that folks maybe are taught in business school or I have no idea where they get this from, but they come and they say the market sizing for cars is $3 trillion. And then they come and they show me a pitch for air conditioning knobs. I'm like, the air conditioning knob market is not $3 trillion. And then they go and they sort of like conflate those two things and go like, oh, come invest my air conditioning knob company. The market size for cars are $3 trillion. And then they conflate those two markets and then they convince themselves that they're going after a $3 trillion market and then they do this crazy math in the head. It's like, if we only get 1% of the market, we're a $3 billion company. And I'm like, ooh, that's a lot of jumps in your head for like, you know, turn an air conditioning knob into a car company. Now they're a truly visionary founders like Elon Musk who can go and sort of say, I'm going to start with the air conditioning knob and eventually build the whole car after it, but those are rare. That's the fallacy in market sizing, right? Is that people conflate the feature part of their thing and the market size for that feature for that of the product?”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't do it. I don't actually look at the say, is the market big enough? I just say does the founder have a unique insight on a market that hasn't been created yet, or they're about to expand into? And if the answer is yes, that's where we back up the truck. Most founders come up and give me this crazy slide, oh, here's the TAM, here's like, you know, some Gartner report that does it. And I just look at this and go, I'm like, I don't believe this. The best companies are ones where the founder says, there's no Gartner report. There's no McKinsey estimate on what the market sizing is. We're creating it. Those are the ones where I sit there and I'm like, ooh, let me get involved. How do I write a check?”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I love all three of them, but where I've been the best is when founders come to me and say, oh, this market doesn't exist yet, and we're going to make it happen. That's the goal, right? Like, you need a founder that has unique insight and says, like, I can create this. The time is right. The technology is right. I had the people on my back to go make this happen, and then go create the market. That's where the upside is. The companies that I've had the privilege of working with are ones that create new markets. Now, that said, I've got quite a few companies that have done well on what you call the market theft, right? Like, look at Gusto. Look at the incumbents that they were working against. It was terrible. Payroll was hideous. And they said, like, we're going to create a better experience, you know, $4 a month per user. So it's one of those things where there's ways to win in all three, but the ones that I had the best success in or ones where we create new markets.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was Photoshop. And in fact, she created a whole new market of people that wanted and cared about design. That was the genius that Cliff and Mill had. The market's bigger than anyone ever imagined. So yes, the market always wins, but the truly visionary and incredible founders are the ones that understand that there's a new market to be created and they go create it, right? There wasn't much of a market for electric cars.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, the market always wins. I hate to say it, but it is also true that the founder is equally as important. I watch founders who don't have a good sense of the market, but they're brilliant founders. They launch a product that the market isn't ready for, and then it goes to zero. It's money loss, right? A market will beat out a great founder. But the best founders understand how to adapt to the market and find the bigger piece, right? It's sort of how Cliff and Mell were misunderstood. Oh, a lot of people pass them because they said, oh, I don't get the market, right? You're a Photoshop competitor. They're more funded. Only so many people are using Photoshop. And the market back then, of people who use Photoshop were like professional designers or people who were advanced and were willing to take a class, Mills actually unique insight because she was like a yearbook teacher in her high school was that like, you know, people shouldn't be taking four years of yearbook class so that they can learn how to use Adobe products so that they can build a yearbook in the last and final year of high school. And she said there's got to be something easy where like you could get started just by logging in and not having to take a class to learn all these advanced features of like how to layout and edit photos and whatnot. But everybody misunderstood her market as a tiny market because there was competition.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's true for my life. I don't plan more than three years in advance. I don't even plan more than three days in advance. Half the time people ask me to commit to these vacations or dinner parties, and I have no idea what the future will hold for me. But the truly visionary founders, Larry and Sergei, Cliff and Mell at Canva, Brian Peterson at Fuxworth, they have 100-year plans. It may not work out the way they envisioned it to, but they know what the world looks like in a hundred years and they plan to go build a company to adapt it and make that happen, right? That is the big difference. They know.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Grand per car. He was going to go and build the electric car for the masses that was like $30,000. And that's what he did with the Model 3. It just took him like 10 plus years, right? So the founders unclearly understand the vision. They understand timing. Canva did not start out as what it is today. It is amazing today. It's going to get even more amazing as, you know, they execute on their 100-year plan, right? But every founder that invested in that are building products have the 100-year plan where they're going to go change the world, right? Flexport didn't just start out as an import, export piece of software and stop there. They had a, you know, Ryan had a 100-year plan. So it's one of those things where I told this to my team as we invest, what the hell is a hundred year plan that the founder is articulating? If the founder comes to me and doesn't have a hundred year plan, I don't care. I don't want to be involved.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, I mean, the wedge on Gmail was that they limited the invites. That was magic, right? Like, it wasn't open to the world and everybody got two gigabytes. They had an invite only service for north of almost six plus months, right? But the team knew what they were building and what they were going after, right? There was no questions about two gigabytes was possible. That was the launch offer, and that was what eventually, you know, it was open to the world everybody got. The difference between founders who build the features rather than products, you know, this is something Bill Campbell used to say, Wesley, you should be building something that's a product and not a feature. And I always look at the engineers that I had the privilege of working with. I'm like, guys, are we building a feature or are we building a product? It's a feature. It's not worth our time. Are you building a feature? Are you building a product? Let's go make sure we're building products that people want. This goes back to the answer to your question. The founders know that they're building a product. The product may not be what it looks like at the beginning when they launch, but I'm pretty sure Elon knew what his vision of conquering the world of electric cars was when he built Tesla. It wasn't one like this thing where he started like, oh, I'm only going to stop at the Roadster and just build that piece for rich people and charge.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really interesting. I still remember pitching Google Analytics and working on the ad system early on, and they look at me and say, why are you wasting your time on this? They always would push me and say, Leslie, you got to go work on something that changes the world. Life is too short. This is not big enough. And, you know, when you're 21 and you sort of hear this, your heart just breaks, right? You're sitting there going, I've just spent the last two weeks coming up with this proposal, doing all this research, and you're like at this executive meeting with Larry and Zergie, the founders of the company, and they just poo-poo the whole idea and say it's not big enough. And that was the most amazing experience. It stung in the moment, but it's one of the most defining moments where I look at this and go, is this big enough to go change the world? Is this something worthy of Google and worthy of my time at Google? Right. It was one of those things where every time I would bring them a product or I work with or mentor other product managers or mentor other engineers that would sort of say, I want to go build this, I just look at this. I'm like, you know, Larry's been sergeant, I'm going to rip you apart and ask the question, is this big enough for the world? And if you can't answer that question with a straight face, then you're not going to get this through.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And sink it at Felicity's Ventures, who built one of the most amazing seed funds. Help him build that. As I didn't built up Felicisis, got to a size where I said, I love you guys, but it's time for me to go back to my roots of being on a Navy SEAL-sized team where I can go and make decisions quickly and work with amazing founders in a way that's authentic and legitimate to me. And that's how we wound up starting FPV ventures. It's Peggin myself and a couple folks or five people. We move really fast and decide on things in less than 12 hours sometimes. Sometimes we meet a founder and we say, you're amazing. You check all the boxes. We want to back you. Your mission is nothing sort of incredible and give them a term sheet on the same day and sign it that night. We're that type of nimble fund. And like I said, I work best on Navy SEAL mission driven size teams where I can feed them of one or two pizzas. When you have that, you can just accomplish very impossible things.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Started to Google. I had to go and shop for paper towels and cleaning supplies and everything else. He looked at me and said, you know, that might not be your calling, so why don't you go and think about doing investing? You were great at buying some of Google's most interesting acquisitions with Urchin for Google Analytics with Grand Central for Google Voice. It helps with Android and YouTube. And he said, you're good at picking companies for us to buy. And they turned in some Google's most iconic products and services, you might want to try your hand at investing. And we're starting Google Ventures. Corporate Venture Capital has been an utter distaste in the success, and founders hate it because the interest of the company that's investing and the interests of the founders diverge. And I want you to go build the venture fund that I would take money from. I helped build and start Google Ventures with David Crane with Bill Merris with Rich Minor in that original group of four or five GPs. And Bill Google Ventures and spent five years there learning the craft of investing from some of the world's best venture capitalists, Mike Morich and John Door, Bill Campbell, Brooke Byers. These guys were legends in the business. And then Google Ventures got way too big. And so I left and joined up really good friend and partner.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's always an accident, right? Everything in life is a pleasant accident, and I found my way into a venture after almost more than 10 years at Google. I had built some of Google's most interesting and well-known products, started Google Analytics, helped build the ad system, helped build Google Voice, and helped bring in a lot of the tech into Android. After 10 years, Google had ballooned to some large number of people, right? I think there were hundreds of people and I went there, and when I left, there were somewhere around 50,000. When I was thinking about leaving, and in 2009, I basically went to Larry and Sergei and said, I love you guys, but I've been ten years here and I missed the old days of being part of a very, very small team. My best work on Google Analytics or on Google Voice was done when the team was less than 20 people, right? You could feed it with one or two pizzas. And it was like a Navy SEAL mission. Everybody believed in accomplishing the impossible. And we built something that the world needed and the world appreciated. When I told Larry I was going to leave and do a startup. It was my dream was to go be a CEO and build a startup and to found something to build great products. Larry just looked at me and said, like, Wesley, look, I had to buy toilet paper.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The best companies are ones where the founder says there's no Gartner report, there's no McKinsey estimate on what the market sizing is. We're creating it.”
2022-08-22 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: Why Market Always Wins Over the Founder & Why I Do Not Do Market Sizing | Why it is not the Best Time to be Investing but it is the Best Time to Have a Fund & The Type of Deals to do Today | Why The Best Founders Have 100 Year Plans with Wes Chan, C · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source