Fireside with a VC

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...

Episode #35 A brake from Fireside with a VC, Andrew Romans delivering a short keynote and doing Q&A with old friend John Ricci, MD of US Angels. Discussing new ways for angel investors to participate more actively in VC funds as Limited Partners, sourcing deal flow, conducting due diligence, taking boards seats, mentoring founders, advising portfolio companies, joining General Partners and Par...

Episode #34 Taking a deep dive on SPACs with Adam Birnbaum, Executive Director at GP Bullhound, understanding how SPACs work, what are the moving parts and processes, taking a look at the different players from sponsors, IPO investors PIPE investors, target companies overall process and how some of these are changing. SPACs vs IPOs. What characteristics must a target company have for a SPAC to be...

Episode #33 Nitin Pachisia, Founding Partner of Unshackled Ventures, a pre-Seed, pre-revenue, pre-MVP venture fund in Silicon Valley that funds teams with at least one immigrant on the founding team. Discussing their model on how to support founders with capital and hands-on support as well as a specialty of helping companies deal with U.S. immigration issues. Also discussing the specifics of inve...

Episode #32 – Karen McCormick, Chief Investment Officer of Beringea, a US & UK venture capital firm with approximately $750m of Assets Under Management focused on Series A investing discussing the innovative structure of Beringea’s publicly traded, listed VC fund, the advantages of being a publicly traded VC fund compared to the evolving secondary market for LP interests and how to optimize a...

Episode #31 – Victoria Cheng is a Partner at PruVen Capital. PruVen was established in December 2020 with an anchor LP Prudential Financial with a $300m first multi-stage fund investing in the largest industries of the global economy across #FinTech, #InsureTech, #HealthTech, #PropTech, #EnterpriseIT. Discussing the current investment themes and strategy of the new fund, but also digging into the...

Episode #30 – Patrick Sheehan is a founder and Managing Partner of The Environmental Technologies Fund - ETF Partners which he established nearly 15 years ago. Discussing the evolution of environmental / cleantech / green / sustainable technology companies and venture capital’s ability to support them. How this has changed from 2006 before the term cleantech was a buzzword to the dark days of Soly...

Episode #29 – Mohanjit Jolly, Cofounder & Partner of Iron Pillar, on Fireside with a VC talking about his strategy to invest in Indian-based growth companies and connecting them to Silicon Valley and around the globe for worldwide expansion. Brilliant VC fund strategy with a great track record and pedigree. Also talking about his time as a Managing Director at DFJ and Garage Technology Venture...

Episode #28 – Matus Maar, Cofounder & Managing Director of Talis Capital, on Fireside with a VC, investing 33% US, 33% UK, 33% Europe, talking about how Covid is changing our industry, investment themes, the revenue growth of startups and scaleups in the VC market compared to the stock market, fintech and cybersecurity, emerging business models we are investing in, what generation Z is wants a...

Episode #27 – Ernst Theodor Sack, Partner at Blue Bear Capital, an early-stage VC in Los Angeles on Fireside with a VC. Talking about investing in high-growth technology companies across the energy, infrastructure, and climate industries as well as the new 2.0 generation of capital-efficient startups tackling humanity's most compelling challenges. How AI and enterprise software are reinventing bot...

Talking about how to evaluate an investment opportunity and what drives a VC to invest or pass on a deal, the dynamic of operator turned VC, how to start a VC fund, how to raise LP capital, raising LP capital from small angels and larger LPs, evolving a strategy for portfolio construction to neutralize early stage risk and optimize the impact of the best exits, what percentage of a fund should go...

Talking about how Telstra Ventures migrated from an on-balance sheet / full-time employee business unit CVC to an independent 2&20 VC fund controlling its own IC (Investment Committee) and diversifying its LP base to include HarbourVest and other financial LPs. Discussing the evolution of a CVC with the Investment Committee (IC) changing and evolving. Video of this podcast at https://youtu.be/...

Ed leads technology investing at Albion, where they have backed over 200 companies over 22 years, delivering top quartile investment performance. Discussing the personality characteristics in a founder when deciding which entrepreneurs to invest in, leadership and culture eating strategy for breakfast, tech trends exciting Ed now including RegTech or regulatory technologies, and explaining the Ven...

Per is a cofounder of GP.Bullhound, a $400m AUM VC and investment bank with 125 deal makers across 10 offices in Europe, the US and Asia. Discussing investment strategy, getting into category winners, primaries, secondaries, M&A market dynamics, the impact of CIFIUS on Chinese acquisitions of European and American startups, the future of global entrepreneurship, VC and investment banking. My f...

Episode #22 – Fabrice Grinda, cofounder of FJ Labs, invested $284m into 571 startups, 193 exits, IRR of 62%, former cofounder of OLX, classified in emerging markets, Zingy, which reached $200m ARR and profitable in 4 years. We talk about startups and raising funding in the US, Europe and around the world. Full video https://youtu.be/eK_rzNhnplU  Please use this link to invest in our VC fund o...

Episode #21 – Garrett Goldberg, Partner, Bee Partners, active Seed VC in San Francisco talking about investing during Covid, portfolio construction to neutralize risk and maximize venture returns, timelines to complete exits, details of terms for pre-seed and seed rounds, side letter agreements to give preferred rights to investors when investing via convertible notes and SAFEs, how to form a boar...

Episode #20 discussing how In-Q-Tel came into being and how it has evolved to be investing for strategic benefits on behalf of 8 U.S. intelligence agencies and how In-Q-Tel partnerships with startups can add enormous value and revenue opportunities to startups around the world in working with the U.S. government such as Palantir. Discussed other issues such as CIFIUS and FIRMMA. More information o...

Episode #19 - Fireside with a VC – Harrie Vollaard, founder and Managing Director of Rabo Frontier Ventures, talking about best practices of Corporate Venture Capital (CVC), Fund of Fund (FoF) + direct investment strategy, strategic vs financial returns, how to manage the separation of Corporate Development / M&A and investments / CVC, coming up with frameworks to agree on investment themes wi...

Episode #18 Fireside with a VC – Eran Davidson, founder of venture debt firm Davidson Technology Growth Debt in Berlin. Former founder of Hasso Plattner Ventures, the venture arm of the cofounder and former chairman of SAP. As of August 2020, Forbes reported that he possessed a net worth of $17.9 billion. Eran explains how venture debt works, when to take it, what percentage of a funding round sho...

Episode #17 Fireside with a VC – Marcus Frampton, Chief Investment Officer (CIO) of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, the largest sovereign wealth fund in the United States. Talking about how to manage such a large pool of capital, allocations to different asset classes and strategies to balance the fund during Covid and other fluctuations in the market, the IPO markets, domestic and emerging...

Refreshing conversation with Sammy, a VC in Dallas Texas, about a very down to Earth approach to Venture Capital and the innovative way he started and has grown his venture capital business with a new fund every year. https://youtu.be/ZZmY0cC01-U. Full audio on all major podcast platforms. Search Spotify, iTunes, etc. “Fireside with a VC”  Please use this link to invest in our VC fund on Ange...

Episode #15 – Sean Seton-Rogers, cofounder of ProFounders Capital - Fireside with a VC – London VC, Former Benchmark Capital Europe / Balderton. Talking about founding ProFounders Capital and its initial launch strategy, current position in the UK & European venture landscape, portfolio construction and investment strategy, the impact of Brexit, how ProFounders delivers value to startups, IRR...