Experience from the buy-side, sell-side and being an operator of start-ups. Having invested in >40 companies, managed a $400 million portfolio of direct investments and fund investments, started 5 companies, and successfully exited dozens, these are some of the important lessons learned.
4. CV
§ Investor
§ 70+ direct & fund investments
§ Entrepreneur
§ 5 funded start-ups
§ Vencast.com
§ Bump.com
§ Events.com
§ CRS
§ Fitmoo.com
§ EchoInvest (not funded)
§ Tech rights to:
§ Advisor 25+ early stage companies
§ Operator of numerous small businesses,
tech and non-tech.
§ Board of UCSD von Liebig School of
Entrepreneurship.
3 Start-Ups as Founder & co-
founder
2 are still operating
1 sold to Instinet
CEO of Private Equity – Genspring
Created the first PE FOF
CIO of The Drax Group
Generated $50M in excess return
Founded Venture Capital
Distribution business for Merrill
Lynch
KPCB first client
Founded Vencast.com
Founded Fitmoo.com
Personal
2001 HBS Entrepreneur of the
Year finalist
Ironman triathlete
Kiteboarder
Writer / Blogger
Cook
JEFF DYMENT
13. An entrepreneur is an investor in their own
business,
therefore
A venture capitalist is also an entrepreneur.
14.
15.
16.
17. Nic B**t – MD @ f**T**** Partners
Path to Success for Startups
§ There’s a great product idea – typically an exciting use case or exciting
solution to a difficult problem, backed up by some objective desk research
§ There’s a deep understanding of the market – customer behaviours and
motivations, supply chain, pricing, go-to-market etc.
§ The competitive environment is benign – competitors are properly
understood and differentiation is clear (note the properly…)
§ Business fundamentals are strong – there’s a clear picture of how
margins, customer acquisition costs, and customer life time value will
look at scale
§ Basis for long term competitive advantage – barriers to entry are clear, at
least at scale
§ Right skills – the founder is well suited to the opportunity
§ Compelling plan for the first year
18.
19. WHAT IS AN ENTREPRENEUR?
§ Owner of a small business, deli or cupcake store?
§ A CEO of a technology start-up?
§ An investor into private businesses?The maker of efficiency
application.
§ Employee of a technology start-up.
§ DJ or musician?
§ Pro-athlete who manages their own brand?
John Doerr - KPCB
§ Entrepreneurs used to START new businesses.
§ Now they INVENT new business models.
21. ENTREPRENEURIAL ATTRIBUTES?
§ Risk taker?
§ Calculated rick taker?
§ Knows how to make
money?
§ Wants to change the world?
§ Disruptor?
§ Problem solver?
§ Job creator?
§ Savant?
§ Flexible hours?
§ Works for himself?
§ Poverty?
§ Business purchasers?
§ Small business?
§ New Division within a larger
business?
§ Sold their company?
§ Works alone?
§ Works with a few other
people on something new?
§ Works for a higher
purpose?
§ Works at a coffee shop?
30. Who’s Right?
Marc Andreessen?
§ a product innovator
§ an entrepreneur
§ a potential CEO
§ biased towards people who
“never give up”
Eric Ries “Lean Startup”
§ Successful entrepreneurs
work in a
“context of extreme
uncertainty”
33. Who’s Right?
§ “Extraordinary benefits also
accrue to the tiny majority
with the guts to quit early and
refocus their efforts on
something new.”
§ Vince Lombardi: “Quitters
never win and winners never
quit.”
§ “Bad advice. Winners quit all
the time. They just quit the
right stuff at the right time.”
§ “Most people quit. Most
people just don’t quit
successfully.”
34. An entrepreneur is an investor in their own
business,
therefore
A venture capitalist is also an entrepreneur.
38. • 1,500,000 downloads in first 3 months
• Offered $100 million from Google + $25M earn
out.
• First liquidity event. Turned it down.
Instead
Raised $19.5 million instead with Kleiner Perkins & Greylock at
a $25 million valuation.
39. Sale Price to Google $125,000,000
Investment $ 2,500,000
Return 19,600%
Multiple on invested capital 25 x
3-Month Return
44. • Add Free Social Network, sort of like Ello
• Anti-Facebook
• 50-150 friends allowed
• 23,000,000 registered users
45.
46. “Arun Thampi of Singapore discovered that Path uploads users' address book
information to Path's servers.This action isn't in Path's Terms of Use, and it's
enraged a user community concerned about privacy rights….”
49. "We don't want to connect you with just
anyone on Path," Morin says.
"Without the contact list information, some
of these features just don't work."
56. § 4,000 tech startups each year
that attempt to raise venture
money
§ Andreessen Horowitz, funds
20.
§ The venture capital industry as
a whole funds about 200 tech
startups a year, but as few as
15 will generate approximately
95 percent of the returns.
E&Y Venture Report 2015
17,855 rounds / 6 years = 3,000 rds / year
3,000 rds/yr / 2 rds / company = 1,500
companies / year
1,500 companies / year * 10% tech = 150 / tech
year
(energy, healthcare, industrial goods, consumer services,
consumer goods, IT)
73. DYMENT PHILOSOPHY
ABOUT
ENTREPRENEURSHIP§ Ideas are different from businesses.
§ Visionaries are not entrepreneurs
§ Operators are hired
§ Emotional attachments are hard to
break
§ Make money from Day 1
§ Sell more Day 2
§ Follow the winners
§ Companies
§ Industries
§ Investors
§ Odds are against you so have fun.
1 idea a day – 300+ ideas /
year
10 make it to paper
1 every 2 years makes it into
a plan
1 every 5 years gets funded
2 of 3 usually succeed
74. Most successful businesses start
FROM ONE
§ One paying customer
§ One product sale
§ One download
§ One car ride
§ One room rental
§ One enterprise sale
LESSONS
77. Adjust holding periods when you can.
Use the secondary market.
Sell into structure products.
Entrepreneurs: Take the money.
Investors: Manage your holding period.
LESSONS
79. Philosophy
§ Liquidity is the new gold.
§ The secondary market will be
bigger than the primary.
§ Valuation adjustment has
already started.
§ More and more companies
will remain private longer and
longer.
§ LPs, investors and
entrepreneurs better buckle
up 2x long holding periods.
Business Models
§ Freemium (Strava)
§ Saas (Slack)
§ Recurring Revenue
(ClassPass)
§ Efficiency (Canva)
§ Email
§ Wed apps
§ Consolidator / Organizers
GENERAL TRENDS
83. A NEXT GENERATION DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL.
ACCESS TO THE NETWORKS OF BILLIONS OF PEOPLE TO DISTRIBUTE
PRODUCTS AND SERVICES GLOBALLY. EVERYTHING WILL EVENTUALLY
BE USING SOCIAL DISTRIBUTION FROM CARS, HOUSES, TO
RESTAURANT RESERVATIONS AND CONFERENCE TICKETS.
84.
85. GOAL
New Codec: 6 gigabytes in 1 second
over today’s bandwidth
All Lossless
6 billion bytes of data in 1 second
4,800:1
90. DIRECT, INDIRECT AND SYNTHETIC EXPOSURE TO THE BEST FUNDED,
LARGEST, MOST SUCCESSFUL PRIVATE COMPANIES, CLOSEST TO A
LIQUIDITY EVENT.
91. Venture Fund Universe
Largest and Most Repetitive Best Performers
Best Vintage Year Fund
Best Deals From Best Vintage Years
Strongest Balance Sheets
Companies Closest to
Liquidity
Discount to Last
Valuations
Best Funded Companies with Top-Tier Sponsors,
Shortest Holding Period, All With The Advantage of Hind-Sight
Preferred late-stage private company Investing methodology
92. ACCESS TO WORLD CLASS PRIVATE COMPANIES
THROUGH UNIQUE RELATIONSHIPS WITH
FUNDS AND CO-INVESTMENT INTERMEDIARIES
93. EXAMPLE OF AN INVESMTENT
STRUCTURE FOR LATE-STAGE
DEAL ACCESS
Loan to Founders, Executives, Early Investors
Interest = Prime + 300bp-500bp
3X-5X over collateralized
Stock Incentives
Outright grant or options on underlying with
discounted strike
= 10% of collateral value
97. CREATING UNICORNS
§ “Part of the problem seems to be that nobody these days is
content to merely put their dent in the universe. No, they have
to fucking own the universe. It’s not enough to be in the
market, they have to dominate it. It’s not enough to serve
customers, they have to capture them.”
§ The term startup has been narrowed to describe the pursuit of
total business domination. It’s turned into an obsession with
unicorns and the properties of their “success”. A whole
generation of people working with and for the internet
enthralled by the prospect of being transformed into a
mythical creature.
§ David Hansson – Ruby on Rails, Basecamp
98. STARTUP MANIA
§ The startup PR machine is crazy. If you’re not VC funded then
you don’t matter. Your success is measured in money raised,
not money earned. If you’re not “scalable”, then you don’t
exist. It took me some time to start ignoring this. I understood
that so many well funded startups never take of the ground and
my bootstrapped business has.
Matt Kubiczek – Amazon engineer, now runs a software
company that employs 60 people
100. CONTAGION
§ 1998 - Long-term captial management – over leveraged hedge
fund where negatively correleated assets all of a sudden
started to correlate a little to much or a little to long.
§ 2008 - Global Financial Crisis. Complete liquidity crisis for the
entire world.
§ Today – Europe migrant crisis, Middle East meltdown,
hyperinflation in Latin America, Puerto Rico debt crisis,
Greece, Venezula, Argentina, China, Russia
101. Rules
§ Look for trends and either
lead or don’t follow
§ Stay fluid, nimble
§ Liquidity
§ Exit
§ Barbell approach
§ New approaches to
traditional non-traditional
investing
Help
§ Don’t listen to Jim Cramer
§ Public equity vs Private
equity
§ Liquidity is becoming less
and less an issue except for
investing in no-name
directs.
§ If you need some help, call
me.
PROTECTION
106. Enhancement of Return by Shortening Holding Period
Year 0 Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 IRR
(100)$ -$ -$ -$ -$ 300$ 25%
(100)$ -$ -$ -$ 300$ 32%
(100)$ -$ -$ 300$ 44%
(100)$ -$ 300$ 73%
(100)$ 300$ 200%
107. Positive effect of Negative effect of
Positive effect of Negative effect of % Change of return % Change of return
% Change of return % Change of return per unit of time per unit of time
per unit of time per unit of time (5 Uts to 1 Uts, (1 Uts to 5 Uts,
IRR (5 Uts to 1 Uts) (1 Uts to 5 Uts) in increments of 2 Uts) in increments of 2 Uts)
5 Yr. Hold 25% -22% -44%
4 Yr. Hold 32% 29% -29%
3 Yr. Hold 44% 40% -40% 80% -78%
2 Yr. Hold 73% 66% -63%
1 Yr. Hold 200% 173% 352%
Negative Effects of Time
1 Year => 2 Years
(63%)