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Zal Bilimoria

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25
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2018-04-16
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2018-04-16
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  1. “This one, I would say, solugen. We led their seed route and really couldn't be more excited. They're an example of one of these non-human applications of genomics that I get personally very excited about. What sologen's done, they've created an ultra-safe, ultra-pure version of hydrogen peroxide, which is one of the most commonly used compounds in all consumer products. It's literally in every cleaning product in your home or office. And it's even used in higher concentrations and purity levels for rocket fuel, for example. And so solid figured out how to eliminate petroleum for the production of hydrogen peroxide using only air, water, and plant starch. And they used CRISPR Cas9 processes in their optimized bioreactor to do so. And so this was actually a perfect example of scientists founders who knew exactly how they were going to commercialize their product, even at real sales before our investment. And frankly, these were just fantastic storytellers.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  2. “Fred Wilson's AVC blog. I'd been an email subscriber since 2009. Absolutely love it. Really helped me get through my startup when I was doing it in 2010.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  3. “Again, think about all kinds of physical materials that are around you the moisture wicking, Lulu, lemon jackets you might be wearing, the polyurethane, maybe in the furniture that you're sitting on, all the plastics around you, our food, flavors in that food, fragrances, therapeutics. There's just so many different applications, and I'm most excited about some of these consumer applications like food and polyurethane and some of these things that we could do with outdoor recreational products. We're going to really be able to remove petroleum, which is the key input into a lot of these products and use engineered biology to create a much safer, healthier, and really a long-term planet for us.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  4. “So, everyone knows the mantra software is eating the world. Mark came up with that years ago. We believe biology is eating the world. Literally every portion of it.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  5. “I remember one meeting where as soon as we sat down, the LP just started hammering us with questions and pretty difficult ones. You know, it was clear that he had done his homework on us and our strategy, and he had met obviously dozens of other seed funds. And we walked out, completely exhausted, feeling defeated. But really, soon after, he called up and said he wanted to invest. And we were completely shocked and stoked. And so given the amount of diligence he did on us in a series of just really hard questions, we actually invited him to be on our advisory board.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  6. “Seven eaves by Neil Stevenson, hands down. He's actually going to go down as one of the best writers of his generation. And if you haven't heard of it, Seven Es is a fascinating sci-fi novel. It covers and blends so many cool subjects such as aerospace, physics, biology, epigenetics, philosophy, ethics, and even racism. So it's an amazing, amazing read.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  7. “But they'll never forget how you made them feel. So maybe that's a bit absolutist, but usually if you keep those things in mind, you end up saying and doing the right things anyway.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  8. “We have a very special partnership to have David kind of choose me as his partner was a mind numbingly awesome experience. I couldn't be more blessed. When I was leaving at Dreason Horowitz two years ago, we were thinking about healthcare and biology deal flow and decided to really dive in deep together. Both of us wanted to focus on seed stage, which was the origins of us co-founding Refactor Together a couple of years ago. David has just an incredible reputation among founders. It's primarily due to his ability to really listen and empathize with people. He's authentically just a very relatable person and it comes across every time he interacts with people as those listening here who've met him probably could attest to. And we're pretty different people, of course, and I think that's what makes our partnership so successful. But David loves this great quote from May Angela. I have to squeeze it in because he often uses it. May Angela said at the end of the day, people won't remember what you said or did. They'll remember how you made them feel. And he actually has a slight alteration of the quote. People will forget what you said. They'll forget what you did.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  9. “We spend the most time in go to market. So we realize that with just $2 million of seed capital, founders can actually take their product, commercialize it, get some sales going, and get to a point where some of these larger Series A's, as we've been seeing, really do require quite a bit of commercial traction nowadays versus maybe even five or seven years ago. And so our journey with the founders is to help them try to figure out what types of commercial partnerships, what kind of sales opportunities, what types of enterprise sales cycles are going to allow them to move as quickly as possible to get to the fastest revenue opportunities in front of them. And so our job is to help them close those opportunities and get them there in terms of their Series A. And so we spend a lot of time thinking about go to market with these founders.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  10. “Well, we want to be in the top five consideration set for any founder starting a company in these harbour, non-impossible areas. And we think we're getting there, but it might take a few more years to really establish that reputation. All the short-term stuff we're doing, how we treat and help founders, how we're measuring our NPS, how we're improving our own reputations are all great things to track, but long term, you need successful outcomes for companies. And track records are really the best milestones in the industry. And that's what matters most to LPs as it should be and should matter to founders as well to see VCs that are actually backing successful companies.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  11. “There's certainly a lot more capital on deep tech at the venture and the growth stages of investing. So let's say Series A and beyond, which is really fantastic news for us at Refactor.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  12. “Yeah, I think there's a lot that we have to do in terms of getting smarter and using first principles to become more aware of the opportunities in front of us. We have an incredible, stable of advisors that we rely on to get feedback and really understand and how to diligence some of these technologies, some of this science at the core. We also recently hired an in-house scientist who helping us as well lead a lot of the evaluation of these technologies. But our founders themselves finally are the biggest way for us to be able to evaluate businesses, but they're also a great source of deal flow as well for us.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  13. “They have the ability to launch products within the first few years after receiving seed funding versus a therapeutics company, which might take much longer.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  14. “Think it varies depending on the types of companies that we're talking about, even within the sphere of biology. I think the therapeutics companies sometimes definitely do take a long time to get to market to go through their clinical trials, to really establish great data, to show low levels of toxicity and safety among humans. First, obviously animals, then humans. And so the idea there might be it might take a lot longer. And some of these startups are not able to kind of take that all the way to market launch. And so in many ways, they're developing relationships with pharma companies earlier on. And with that, they're able to potentially have other acquisition opportunities with that. And then there's other types of companies that are in the biology sphere that are helping kind of re-engineer all the things that are around us, whether it's industrial materials, the plastics in your phone, hydrogen peroxide. We have another company that I'll talk about later. But the idea of being able to actually create value in these companies can actually be much more rapid.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  15. “So, the idea here is you have to be able to believe that every single investment you make can return the fund, especially our core investments where we're trying to strive for a meaningful ownership and be the largest checking around and be that investor, that founders can rely on on that daily guidance that we spoke about earlier. The important thing to understand here is if we're going to invest in 40 to 50 companies in this fund, one of them has to be the breakout winner and a few of them have to be able to cobble together another 1x, let's say. And so you're trying to put together a fund that really kind of creates value with a small set of companies. And you have to assume that more than half of your companies are going to go to zero. And that's no different when it comes to biology and other harder science companies. A lot of these are going to be very tough to commercialize, very tough to scale. There'll be all kinds of risks in terms of building a really enduring valuable entity. And so we have to be ready and willing to kind of take that risk in order to get that return.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  16. “It's definitely a concern, Harry, especially with our companies that might have a longer path before they hit a true inflection point versus the hockey stick that we saw in very successful consumer startups of the last decade. But we're lucky enough to have some very wonderful LPs who are open to different funding structures to finance these companies. So we're really hopeful on that front. But definitely agree. The typical 10-year fund lifecycles are pretty hard, especially for steed investors that are writing those super early seed checks and time to exit, time to IPO is maybe sometimes greater than 10 or 11 years now on average.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  17. “It may sound a little altruistic, but these fundamental human problems are those that typically reside within traditionally regulated industries. So think about healthcare, biology, genomics, crypto, agriculture, industrial applications, things like that. And optimistically, these founders are building products that allow people to lead what I like to call healthier, happier, and heroic lives, which mean they themselves are healthy and happy enough to help others. So David and I were attracted to these areas do our own interests, but also because we saw that the very best founders are starting businesses in these areas. They're looking to make it impact on society. But they also have the requisite experience in academia and or operating roles to do so.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  18. “That's also another interesting question because they need to be able to understand that what they are building actually has real potential as a business. They often are in labs, in academia, thinking about ideas. Maybe they develop some IP or have filed some patents with the help of their university. And they're thinking about starting a company. And it's never been easier to start a company. I mean, wonderful podcasts like this one are really creating a lot of transparency around how you start a business, how you get funding, and how you kind of take this and build a large successful business out of it. And I think that's wonderful, but good. We're seeing so many more scientists that are eager to start companies in these industries that we're looking at, these fundamental human problems. But it's important for us to be able to understand, are they willing to build a company? Are they willing to recruit a team? Are they able to speak with customers? Are they able to engage with a large, diverse group of people to make their vision reality?”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  19. “Yeah, you know, I think the scientist founders we meet have to be incredible storytellers. They need to be able to tell amazing stories to investors, which reduces financing risk, but they also have to be able to tell amazing stories to customers, to talent that they want to hire. The general public, if they want to build a successful enduring company. So being a fantastic storyteller is an amazing skill for just about everyone. And that's probably why my kids are going to do speech and debate in high school just like either.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  20. “Yeah, you know, I think that's the right question. I think if you're coming to us and raising a three or four million dollar seed round, we're looking to not only understand, you know, do you have a strong grasp of the science and the technology, but do you also have a product that can be sold to a specific set of customers? That leap from science to”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  21. “Pretty kind of him to mention. In these nearly five years as an investor, I've come to believe that there's probably three most important traits that VCs should have. You know, number one would be you need to have the highest degree of empathy. And this essentially is just top-notch listening skills and respect for the crazy journey that founders are on when meeting you. Number two, you've got to be super responsive. Fast email responses, quick phone call returns. It's just a must in the VC industry because there's nothing more anxious for a founder that when they have to wait to hear from a VC on a decision or if they really need your help and need to get a hold of you. And then three, that insane level of curiosity that I mentioned around Mark Andres's philosophy around strong convictions weekly help. Those are the three things really I think have guided me. And I'm still learning in this business here.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  22. “It's pretty crucial in making investment decisions. But as investors get more data and learn from those around them, they should be constantly editing those positions, making them even stronger. So it's that constant learning cycle that makes insanely curious and humble individuals really successful. And the final thing I'll mention about what I learned from A16Z is the idea maze. You may have read about this biology actually came up with this biology screen of Austin, the CTO and co-founder of Council, the Genomic Startup. So literally, imagine that you've entered this real maze. You know, 20-story hedges and all, and you're slowly learning, trying to decide which way to go, making your way through it. And then after the seemingly 50th turn, you see the exit and you begin to accelerate at a velocity you've never been able to reach before. So those are the kinds of journeys we want to hear about for founders who've gone through their own idea maze in starting their company.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  23. “Yeah, you know, so a few things come to mind. Number one, the way VCs should treat founders. I mean, we are only in the graces of this wonderful profession because of them. And one way we measure that at A16Z was NPS, Nepromoter scores. So all founders that interacted with A16Z in a pitch setting, so regardless of us investing or not, would receive a short survey with one important question. Would you recommend A16Z to friends and colleagues based on the interactions you had with this particular partner? And so we'd all get scores, Mark, Ben, the other GPs. And I thought that was a great tool to measure and improve ourselves in the short term. So we adopted it at Refactor and we actually use this really great inexpensive tool called delighted to do all that. So that's one. And then the second thing I learned at A16Z is how to be an insanely curious person and why that's the most important thing about investing. So Mark Andreessen had this great philosophy, strong convictions weekly held. And so he had this kind of Truder bio for a while when he was tweeting. But having strong opinions about how you see the world.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  24. “My last operator role was at LinkedIn, where I was helping start the sales solutions business, which is the premium product for salespeople. And so while I was working there, funnily enough, Andreessen Horowitz cold emailed me asking if I was interested in learning more about roles on the investment team. I wasn't actively pursuing jobs in BC, but at the time they were specifically looking for PMs to come source, evaluate, and work with GPs on investments. What I loved about A16Z is that everyone had operating experiences of different kinds, especially on the investment team, which was mostly made up of PMs at the time. So basically they were just looking for junior versions of Ben Horowitz. So I jumped at the chance to join the team back in 2013.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source

  25. “Yeah, sure. So let's see. My dad had a computer business while I was growing up in the 90s in Indiana just outside Chicago. So we built and sold computers to people's homes and offices, but it soon grew to selling to schools and libraries and other large companies. And that's how I really got into hardware, software, coding at a young age. And those experiences, I think, they really drove me to want to have a career in tech. So that's what got me into product management where I was lucky enough to spend 10 years working at some of the most iconic consumer platform companies of the last decade, including YouTube. So where I was one of the first modernization folks on the team after the Google acquisition and then Netflix later on where I was the first head of mobile. And then in between YouTube and Netflix, I co-founded a consumer mobile startup that really didn't go anywhere, but learned a lot, as you can imagine.”

    2018-04-16 · The Twenty Minute VC · 20VC: How a16z Uses NPS To Create Better Founder Experiences, Why Intellectual Curiosity Is The Most Important Investor Trait & Creating A Fund To Last Through The Ages with Zal Bilimoria, Founding Partner @ Refactor Capital · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source