The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
01:03:22 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[01:03:22] S1: the growth. Better there. I think outcome scenarios are bigger than they've been in a long time, which means the upside and the multiple invested cash is much bigger. But I think we both did fireworks at, a 15 price. I think there's a 20 x in that for us. [01:03:35] S0: I agree. A 100%. And and so when you can get early venture return MOICs on late stage derisk companies, man, I'm with you. That is that is a great spot. I will say that, you know, we have a world class early stage franchise that's been doing pre seed, seed, early, you know, series a's for a very, very long time. If you can buy 1020% ownership early for small checks, man, that's fantastic too. I would love... I would... You know, we're gonna continue to keep doing that all day long, but, yeah, it's definitely an... And that's why I love our model as a giant platform. We're we're... Synergy of that practice with our early growth practice, with our late practice, like, is really, really something. [01:04:16] S1: I wanna do a quick fire where I pepper you with questions, and you give me your [01:04:20] S0: immediate Okay. [01:04:21] S1: Who's the best picker in all of Basima? The picker.
01:04:25 · Sameer Dholakia
[01:04:25] S0: I mean, I think we got a bunch. I think Byron Jeremy, Adam Fisher in Israel, and and David Callan out here has been doing it for three decades. But if I had to pick one, I will say Byron Dieter, mostly because when we were going public, the morning of the IPO, we're in the New York Stock Exchange. We brought out every SendGrider who had been in the company for more than four or five years. So we have this room full of SendGrid employees. Then president of the New York Stock Exchange comes out to welcome and greet us before the bell ringing ceremony. And he says, you know, I just wanna welcome all you SendGrid employees that are here. You should be so proud. SendGrid management, so great to to have you all. Esteemed board members, thanks for coming and being part of the special moment. Byron, great to see you again. And he just pauses. He's like, Byron, how many times have I seen you here in the last... Mind you, this is a decade ago. And Byron sheepishly, because he's a very humble guy, says... You know, and I I can't remember the number at the time he flashed up, like, I don't know, like, six. And, you know, we just laughed, like, you know, that he had been there for, like, multiple of these IPOs in the in the recent time. And then I was sitting right in front of Byron, and I and I just started to count in my head, and I could come up with more than what... More than the six. I'm like, no. No. You've done more than six. And I turned back, and I was like, no. It's more than that. And he said, six here. NASDAQ was another another big number. He has had so many from early stage all the way through IPO. I mean, it's hard it's hard not to say Byron Dieter.
01:05:45 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[01:05:45] S1: Byron is the picker. Who is the winner? And what I mean by that is when you're like, oh, Sequoia around this, Founders around this, Benchmarker, who is the one person who closes Founders better than anyone else? [01:05:58] S0: Oh, that's a good one too. Can I revise my answer then knowing both of those two? I would go with David Cowan as the picker because he finds stuff that everybody thinks is crazy, like Rocket Lab that then becomes, you know, an enormous business, and nobody knows what he's doing. But when it comes to closing, Byron Dieter every time for sure. A 100%. That guy is he is a force of nature. He's charming. He's funny. He's smart as all get out. His experience is ridiculous. He knows how to have a good time. He'll host people, whether it's at a 49ers football game or up, skiing at his house in Montana. I mean, the guy is is is... He's an amazing amazing closer. [01:06:35] S1: What company is Bassam and not in that universally the firm ruse and wishes it was in? [01:06:40] S0: So many. I would say Stripe. We were the developer API venture capital firm. We were, you know, led the seed in in... I think in b in Twilio, led the series b in in SendGrid. We had Auth0 that David Cowan led. I mean, we were the developer API company, and we weren't in Stripe. That hurts. That's probably the... I'll I'll I'll use that one. [01:07:02] S1: You can add one person to the venture partnership that is not there currently. It's a dream ad. It's not like a realist, but who would that be?
01:07:02 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[01:07:02] S1: You can add one person to the venture partnership that is not there currently. It's a dream ad. It's not like a realist, but who would that be? [01:07:11] S0: If I could convince Ravi Matre to come join us, I would love Ravi over here from Lightspeed. Ravi is incredible deep thinker, goes deep on the technology and and the markets. You know, you look at some of the investments that that he has led and made, not the least of which was a billion dollar check into Anthropic. In the $60,000,000,000 round, that guy's... He's just... He's really good, and he's willing... He's not just really good, but he's willing to take these giant risks that seem almost borderline insane. And, I I I have deep mad respect for both. [01:07:42] S1: Billion dollar jack. That is some serious bulls. You're just like I'm messing around. The the finance director, like, typing those zeros must just be like, wow. This is... Wow. [01:07:56] S0: That's that's that's a lot lot of numbers. [01:07:58] S1: What have you changed your mind on in the last twelve months?
01:07:58 · Harry Stebbings, Sameer Dholakia
[01:07:58] S1: What have you changed your mind on in the last twelve months? [01:08:01] S0: In the last twelve, I would say just my deep appreciation for how big the open token economy is gonna be. I just didn't see it twelve months ago. I didn't appreciate it. It's a big part of the reason we're we're investing as much as we are behind fall and fireworks both fall on the gen media side and the infrastructure side there, and they're going up and down the stack. They're amazing, amazing business, amazing team. And fireworks, obviously, we talked a lot about those two. I just didn't appreciate how big that market was gonna be twelve months ago. [01:08:29] S1: Final one for you. What are you most genuinely excited about moving forwards? [01:08:34] S0: I'll say two. One is I'm wildly fired up about all things robotics and embodied AI. Like, we invested nearly 200,000,000 into Waymo, and I just think that, you know, autonomy and what that changes and how that changes the way we work and live, I think, is awesome. Is that [01:08:50] S1: is that humanoids, or is that not humanoids? [01:08:52] S0: It can be. Can be. And certainly an area that we've been looking at, and I think we're probably in the equivalent in embodied robotics in that sense. I think we're probably at circa 2021 relative to the generative AI era. So I think it's... We're still... We've got a a couple few years to go, but it's it's on one of these curves, man. It's gonna go... It's it's happening fast. So I think we will get there faster than it... Than most people think.
01:08:52 · Sameer Dholakia, Harry Stebbings
[01:08:52] S0: It can be. Can be. And certainly an area that we've been looking at, and I think we're probably in the equivalent in embodied robotics in that sense. I think we're probably at circa 2021 relative to the generative AI era. So I think it's... We're still... We've got a a couple few years to go, but it's it's on one of these curves, man. It's gonna go... It's it's happening fast. So I think we will get there faster than it... Than most people think. [01:09:16] S1: Are you in any of the robotic data companies? We saw Macca just get done by Sequoia yesterday. You've got Micro AGI in Europe. Are you in them, and how do you see the data market for robotics? [01:09:27] S0: We are not yet that I know of or that I can think of offhand, but I know that we have spent a lot of time around robotics. And so I'm sure there's my early stage partners listening going, Samir, come on, man. We met with, like, 20 of these. We're gonna make this pick. I I don't actually know offhand. I think there's a lot of excitement in the firm around that area. I'm personally looking at the autonomy. You know, we did Waymo, but now you're like, okay. What about autonomy in construction? What about autonomy in mining? What about autonomy in agriculture? You know, there's tons of areas. [01:09:56] S1: Oh, this is a good quick find. You do Waymo at 01:15, and Uber has a a market cap of $1.20, $1.25. [01:10:03] S0: Yeah. Why am [01:10:03] S1: I a moron?