Fireside with a VC

Episode #59 Fireside with a VC talking to Arthur Andrew Bavelas, Managing Partner, Family Office Insights, discussing why the recession is making the current vintage of VC perform better, talking about secondaries, VC strategies to return LP capital back faster via SPVs and secondaries and how to involve LPs in the VC process. Video on YouTube and Spotify - https://youtu.be/AHv4F7t2uWE. Audio on a...

Play this video back at 2x speed if you are proficient in English.  Fund performance is now up since recording this video. Our first fund has a MOIC of 4.11x and expects to return a minimum 7x cash on cash return. Fund II MOIC of 4.41x and expects a 12x to 15x cash on cash return. Fund III is already up 1.27x and newest investors still get in at cost.  Talking to some old friends in the...

Episode #58 of Fireside with a VC discussing early stage VC in sub-Saharan Africa with Marsha Wulff, cofounder of LoftyInc Capital Management as a guest speaker at Chapman University talking to Professor Andrew Romans and his students at his class on VC.    *Starting a VC fund to invest in sub-Saharan African early stage tech startups.   *Overcoming challenges in raising LP capital...

Episode #57, John Vitti, CEO of Versus Game on campus at Chapman University with Professor Andrew Romans Talking about lessons learned from 4 previous startups and how we raised nearly $40m from top Silicon Valley VCs including very hands on investment and support from Eric Schmidt, Kevin Hart, 7BC Venture Capital and other investors. Building a large business to over $100m in revenue and leveragi...

Episode #56, Update on the war in Ukraine from the front lines in Kiev with Eric Kadyrov, Founder at Private Tech Network. Talking about specific numbers and the state of the war with images, videos and how he has helped move weapons around the country and done direct outreach to thousands of companies to stop doing business with Russia from HP and Cisco to startups. In this episode Eric is a gues...

Venture Capital Thursdays: Discussing and understanding secondaries, VC performance metrics and evolving liquidity in the venture capital asset class across the stack from founders to angels, Seed VCs, Series A VCs, growth investors and LPs with my students in California. Recommend to play at 2x speed if English is your first language. · Direct Secondaries – primary vs secondary investing · How do...

Episode #54 Brian Laung Aoaeh, GP @REFASHIOND Ventures on Fireside with a VC sharing his story of going from his home country of Ghana to becoming a VC at KEC Ventures and now cofounder of REFASHIOND Ventures focused on supply chain and sharing research on how family offices can best play in the early-stage venture capital space. · The Research Report on Family Offices: Towards A Partnership Model...

Episode #53 Nathan Beckord, CEO @Foudersuite and podcast host of “How I raised it” on Fireside with a VC discussing all things fundraising from angels and VCs. · How to email VCs with a warm intro or cold email. · Researching investors and forming the most suitable target investor list. · Developing relationships with VCs before your funding round. · What docs founders should have prepared for a V...

Episode #52 Cindy Padnos, Founder & Managing Partner at Illuminate Ventures. Discussing: · What it was like being a woman founder and CEO raising VC funding in Silicon Valley decades ago. · What it has been like being a woman solo GP launching a VC fund in Silicon Valley compared to being a man doing the same. · Talking about the practical realities of how relationships are formed for women to...

Episode #51 Kelly Perdew, Cofounder & Managing Partner of Moonshots Capital, Entrepreneur, Military Veteran, Winner of Season 2 - The Apprentice, and father of twins! Discussing: · Advice to founders on how to raise angel and VC funding. · How Kelly went from being a VC-backed founder to making angel investments, pooling angel investors together into running a Syndicate on Angel List and then...

Episode #50 Alan Patricof, godfather of the VC and PE industries, he’s 87 years old now, and founded legendary VC firm Greycroft and seminal PE firm Apax. Alan founded VC fund Patricof Company Ventures with a $2.5m fund in 1969. · Greycroft has over $2bn of AUM with a reputation trying to keep things from getting too big and follow the path of Apax which has AUM of over $60bn. Their last fund I be...

Episode #49 Nicolai Wadstrom, Founder, CEO and General Partner BootstrapLabs, AI focused VC on Fireside with a VC discussing: · What is real AI compared to AAI (artificial artificial intelligence). · Founding a VC fund from scratch that is not a spinout of a large existing VC fund. · Tips and tricks for raising initial LP capital. · Raising LP capital for a first VC fund and then a second and thir...

Episode #48 John Vitti, founder & CEO of VersusGame, a prediction game of culture discussing: · How he raised $25m in his Series A Funding round and built this company from scratch to transacting over $100m in 2021 with payouts to players, game creators and his startup. · Being transparent and authentic and developing relationships as a key driver of success. · The importance of listening to o...

Episode #47 Niran Shrestha, founder & CEO of Kwant AI, NYC SaaS for the construction industry. Discussing: • How IoT smart badges collecting real-time data connected to an AI operating system of software can save lives, save huge amounts of money, increase productivity by 11% and speed the time to completion of projects. • How fatalities and accidents are prevented and reduced using smart tech...

Episode #45 Zach Coelius founder of Coelius Capital an active San Francisco early stage VC fund. Discussing: · Brutal war story of how Facebook exploded his startup in a good and bad way. · Working with Mark Zuckerberg as a partner. · Crashing and burning and rising from the ashes as a person and professional. · How Zach successfully pivoted from entrepreneur to VC. · How to launch a Syndicate on...

Episode #45 Ryan Welsh, CEO & cofounder of Kyndi, Natural Language Processing (NLP) AI company, raised $43m in funding from 7BC Venture Capital, Dick Kramlich, Pivot North, Intel Capital & Darling Ventures on Fireside with a VC. Discussing: · How deep AI is good or bad for humanity and threats to the human race. · Impact AI will have on economies of different countries and impact on human...

• Discussing strategies and advice for first moves when starting a business and then how to raise the first capital for a potentially high-growth high-tech business. • Characteristics of great founders, recruiting cofounders, advisors, angels and VCs that add value. • How to triage or think about startups that come into your inbox or orbit. • What are the key things you try to figure out when look...

Episode #44 Brian Cohen, General Partner, New York Venture Partners (NYVP), Chairman Emeritus, New York Angels, legendary angel investor in Pinterest, Comixology, actively making 3 new investments per week, 100+ and NYVP. Talking about how to price pre-money valuations on seed rounds. How to create the partnership between founders and VCs. Talking about how to run a fundraising process for Seed, L...

Episode #42 Andrew Romans talking to Yuri Rabinovich, MD at Tribe V, at their VC Masterclass taking a deep dive on M&A for investors and venture backed startups. · Different types of M&A exits and considerations: all cash, cash and stock, all stock, milestone based earnouts, PE exit structures & secondaries. · Different types of M&A buys and specific dynamics: acquihire, team buy,...

Episode #41 Fireside with a VC - Louis David Mangin CEO & Co-founder at Confiant, one of our successful Fund II portfolio companies based in NYC in the cybersecurity malvertising sector protecting users of publishers and advertisers against bad actors attacking their devices, data and stealing wealth via fraudulent investment scams. Confiant is the industry leader in Detecting, Preventing, and...

Episode #40 Jonathan Fish, CEO & cofounder of QSBS Expert, explaining how to pay zero capital gains / no taxes on your gain up to $10m in tax savings or 10x the cost of your investment, whichever is bigger. Qualifications for Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) tax exemptions. The small business must have assets of less than $50m on the balance sheet (not valuation) at the time of the invest...

Episode #39 Brian Cohen, General Partner, New York Venture Partners, Chairman Emeritus, New York Angels, legendary angel investor in Pinterest, Comixology, actively making 3 new investments per week, 100+ and NYVP. Advice to founders on how to raise angel and VC funding, make an emotional and personal connection with the angel, smile a lot, be funny, have breakfast, lunch and dinner with each comp...

Episode #38 Jeff Epstein, Operating Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners and Lecturer at Stanford University, ex-CFO at Oracle, $250bn market cap, ex-CFO at DoubleClick sold to Google for $3.2bn. Talking about key milestones and metrics for VC investors. What VCs want. How many financings rounds a startup should go through on a path to an IPO exit, how much funding a startup should raise at each f...

Episode #37 Robert Siegel, Lecturer at Stanford University Graduate School of Business & VC on Fireside with a VC talking about his new book The Brains and Brawn Company: How Leading Organizations Blend the Best of Digital and Physical https://rb.gy/ctfxbb . Rob is also a General Partner at X-Seed Capital and Venture Partner at Piva Capital. In THE BRAINS AND BRAWN COMPANY, Siegel demonstrates...

Episode #36 Nathan Rosenstock, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Crafty on Fireside with a VC talking about corporate culture BC (Before Covid) and AC (After Covid) and how the kegerator became the new water jug and led Crafty to become the leader as “the platform for employee consumption” driving corporate culture by developing a technology stack and product service offering delivering and servicing the...