The Full Ratchet (TFR): Venture Capital and Startup Investing Demystified

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: Brendan Wallace Tim Guleri Dharmesh Thakker Brian Hirsch Each investor illustrates a critical lesson learned about startup investing and how it's changed their approach. Did you miss our guest's full length episodes? Brendan Wallace Episode #276 Tim Guleri Episode #267 Dharmesh Thakker Episode #283 Brian Hirsch Episode #265 For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions. To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We'll send a list of possible investors right to your email's InBox!

Dayna Grayson & Rachel Holt of Construct Capital joins Nick to discuss Competing with Amazon, Combatting 60% Talent Attrition, and Driving Transformation of Foundational Industries. In this episode we cover: Can you each give us the two-minute background and path to VC? What is the thesis at Construct? How do you define series A? Is there a geographic scope in which you'll invest? Why have you chosen to focus on these sectors and categories? How have you seen the current environment issues affect sales cycles and velocity over the past year? How do you deal with inertia, slow sales cycles, and tech aversion amongst these buyer and user groups? Is there any concern that the skills gap will broaden over time? Will capital intensity, timing of financing rounds, timing to exit, size/scale of exits, valuation multiples, etc. look different for a legacy industry portfolio vs. a standard SV SaaS portfolio? Investment philosophy has shifted from being much more decision-maker focus and top-down startups versus more user bottom-up focus solutions. Is that something that's part of your lens or is it case by case, depending on the startup? There seems to be a lot more VCs/Investors focused in these spaces, so why the need for Construct in this market where so much capital is flowing? What was it like pitching this narrative in the thesis? You raised your inaugural fund during the pandemic — what did you learn from that experience? There are two different philosophies on firm building. One approach is more of an independent/individual sport, the other a team sport. Which do you employ? If one of you wants to do the deal and the other thinks it's not a good way to deploy capital, what happens in that circumstance? How do you think about scaling your efforts and getting more leverage out of your time? What's the post-investment relationship with the founders look like at Construct? What do you know, you need to get better at? What's the best way for listeners to connect with each of you and follow along with Construct? Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions. To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We'll send a list of possible investors right to your email's InBox!

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: Nikhil Basu Trivedi Janet Bannister Sach Chitnis Guy Perelmuter Each investor discusses sectors, drivers and/or trends that may have significant impact in the future and are potentially positioned for outsized-returns. Did you miss our guests full length episodes? Nikhil Basu Trivedi Episode #246 Janet Bannister Episode #255 Sach Chitnis Episode #269 Guy Perelmuter Episode #280 For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions. To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We'll send a list of possible investors right to your email's InBox!

Brian Luerssen of Long Jump joins Nick to discuss The Rise of Low-Code/No-Code, How Tech is Changing Developer Roles, and the Launch of Founder-Led Venture Funds. In this episode we cover: Walk us through your background and path to Draftbit. Tell us about the customer market and who you're targeting with Draftbit. Are there good comps or parallels in the non-mobile space? Will the user of Draftbit still be a developer, or do you have cases where it's the application product manager or others? Is it just web apps and native apps covering the spectrum? There's this principled group of developers, that don't want to use App builders. They want to build the ground up themselves. How do you deal with that objection? Have you guys achieved product-market fit? Yes or no? What's the biggest challenge to getting product-market fit and hitting huge growth numbers? Where do you go now? How do you see the business evolve? What's the end-all large market opportunity for Draftbit? Does it stay a platform that you build on and it exports code or does it end up becoming kind of its own place you build within, like a WordPress, or maybe even a Webflow? Any thoughts or advice for founders out there that are early-stage builders taking on something ambitious? Tell us about the origin story of Long Jump and why was this fund founded? So $100k, across the board for all investments is or is there some discretion to move up or down? Is this kind of like an application accelerator program? What happens if you come upon an opportunity where they're raising an early round. It's coming together quickly. It's something that hits home with one of the GPs. Can you jump into that or does it have to go through your formalized process? I imagine a lot of the LPs are founders, former founders that have been through this. Is that a bad assumption? Do you have some back office or operations support or somebody that's kind of focused on connecting these dots? How have you thought about other established models and kind of taken best practices? Why not direct them to an accelerator program? How do you handle the criticism from investors that claim you should focus on the business Draftbit and not running a fund? What is the future look like for Long Jump? YC vs TechStars. Go. I'm curious as YC is scaling, I think it's like 700 companies a year now, the density and power of the network, is it the same as it once was? I don't know, does the signal decline or not? Have they architected a hub and spoke network or a mesh network? Can the spokes or the nodes get a lot of value out of each other as it expands, or is it overly reliant on the hub for value? I'd be curious to get your comparison advantages, disadvantages, to the Bay Area versus a second-tier ecosystem and how you've seen that change over time. What do you know, you need to get better at? What's the best way for the founders out there to get in touch with Long Jump? What are you looking for? What should they come with to get accepted? Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions. To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We'll send a list of possible investors right to your email's InBox!

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: Ed Sim Lanham Napier McKeever "Mac" Conwell II Mike Smerklo Each investor highlights a situation where they decided not to invest, why they passed, and how it played out. Did you miss our guests' full-length episodes? Ed Sim Episode #266 Lanham Napier Episode #248 McKeever "Mac" Conwell II Episode #277 Mike Smerklo Episode #278 For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions. To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We'll send a list of possible investors right to your email's InBox!

Ali Tamaseb of DCVC joins Nick to discuss Data on the Key Traits of Billion-Dollar Startups with the Author of Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups. In this episode we cover: Founders' history of building Second-time founders and their larger chance of being unicorns Super Founders bouncing to different industries isn't detrimental to their success Having domain experience does not correlate to success How non/technical founders partner with the same How proxy metrics do not define a good founder Painkiller or Vitamin Pill? Which holds success? How geography may be a dying metric for success How Super Founders tend to secure investment even in the opening rounds Which type of competition defines the unicorn Timing remains the most difficult thing to crack Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions. To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We'll send a list of possible investors right to your email's InBox!

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: Farooq Abbasi Ty Findley Lo Toney Monique Woodard Each investor discusses a portfolio company that did not survive and why it was that they failed. Did you miss our guests' full-length episodes? Farooq Abbasi Episode #251 Ty Findley Episode #250 Lo Toney Episode #249 Monique Woodard Episode #273 For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions. To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We'll send a list of possible investors right to your email's InBox!

Tsune Shirota of World Innovation Lab joins Nick to discuss Tech Competition between China, Japan, and Korea, Why IT is King in Japan, and When American Tech Should Expand to Asia. Other topics include the transition from manual services to software, B2B buying behavior in the US vs Japan, determining the shape of your S-Curve, and best markets - determined by need and distribution. Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions. To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We'll send a list of possible investors right to your email's InBox!

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured: Reid Christian Glenn Rockman Spencer Maughan Billy Libby Each investor describes the most unusual situation or pitch that they've encountered as an investor.

Ben Sun of Primary Venture Partners joins Nick to discuss Distribution vs. Product, Founders vs. Markets, and Winning Deals in a Hyper-Competitive Seed Market. In this episode, we cover: Can you tell us a bit about your founder journey? What are your thoughts on the major differences and challenges now versus when you started a Community Connect? Is there a bias at Primary toward consumer investments? What region focus does Primary have? Is Miami a viable tech center or is this hype? What is the thesis at Primary? What areas does the Primary team focus on (strategic, sweat equity, talent recruitment)? How collaborative is that formative ideas stage between Primary and the entrepreneurs? I imagine, some of them come and they're ready to raise, and if it's a great fit, you invest, but in other circumstances, ideas may not be fully fleshed out. How much of a role do you play? We've had many folks on the program that say, it's all about the market. The team is important, but there's sort of a base level of competence. Then many others say it's just all about the team and the best teams will find their way to the best markets. Where do you stand on that, and how does that square with kind of the way that you look at talent? Ben, you wrote this tweet, quote, there is no longer such a thing as proprietary deal flow in VC. It's now more about winning a deal versus picking a deal. You know, I'm curious, what has changed? Is it supply side of capital at seed? Is it other factors? What prompted the tweet? So put you on the spot, what is the win rate at Primary? And why do y'all win, going head to head against other firms? What do you know you need to get better at? What is the best way for listeners to connect with you and follow along with Primary?