[Array] Podcast

Roy Bahat is one of the founder of Bloomberg Beta. I met Roy through my friend Shivon Zilis who is also a partner at Bloomberg Beta. Shivon was in one of our earlier podcasts on Array talking about AI. Bloomberg Beta is one of my favorite firms to work with and not only because they are also an LP in my fund Array Ventures but because I respect how they have built their firm and constructed their portfolio in a thoughtful way. They are the only firm I know that sends a survey to their companies asking for feedback on what they can do better. Bloomberg Beta was born out of Roy's frustration when he was raising money for his own startup. That's when Roy saw a need to start a fund with transparency, focus on their experience with the founders, and clear thesis on future of work. With so many VC firms being formed in last few years differentiation is important to be able to attract the right entrepreneurs. Let's dive into how Roy thought about building a new VC firm from scratch and how he thinks about the VC industry today with all the changes in recent years.

Shruti's twitter: @atShruti

Roy's twitter: @roybahat

Bloomberg Operating Manual: https://github.com/Bloomberg-Beta/Manual

Array VC: www.array.vc

If you look up the word hustle in wikipedia, You might find a section on today's founder, Tawheed Kader (TK). TK shares his honest thoughts on how he successfully sold his company ToutApp to Marketo in 2017. This did not come without challenges. Even while he was growing fast and at $5m in recurring revenue difficulties came from stock market crash in early 2016. Emergence of highly funded competitors in the category made it tough to fundraise and TK had to layoff a large portion of his company. This is a perfect example of making lemonade out of lemons. TK takes us through how he came out on the other side despite opposing external forces.

TK's twitter: https://twitter.com/tawheed

Shruti's twitter: https://twitter.com/atshruti

Esther Dyson trained to be in space and wants to retire on Mars. Esther's global perspective has made her an effective investor and valued board member. A medical scare led her to start Way to Wellville (http://waytowellville.net), a health intervention program for American health system to get healthier. Esther launched her entrepreneurial career in a unique way by acquiring a company she was working for.

Esther Dyson's twitter: https://twitter.com/edyson

Shruti Gandhi's twitter: https://twitter.com/atshruti

Roland Reynolds started one of the early fund of funds investing in emerging managers in 2007. He then joined forces with Industry Ventures in 2009 to land their fund of funds initiative. Industry ventures as a firm started in 2000 now manages $3.5B in assets under management. They invest across the entire stack of the venture capital ecosystem in secondaries, hybrids, directs and fund of funds. Roland dives deep into their investment criteria, how they decide to work with their investments, and where the market is today compared to 1999.

Shruti Gandhi's twitter: https://twitter.com/atshruti

Array Ventures website: www.array.vc

Roland Reynolds bio: http://www.industryventures.com/team/roland-reynolds

Industry Ventures website: http://www.industryventures.com

Today on our podcast we have Rory O’Driscoll, cofounder and partner at Scale Venture Partners. Scale Venture Partners just raised their 6th fund of $400m managing over $1.5 billion in assets under management. Scale had interesting beginnings as a firm; they were an in-house VC fund inside Bank of America and spun out as a separate firm in 2007 by Rory Driscoll and Kate Mitchell. Scale is one of the few model VC funds in SV with a woman founder and many women investing partners .

Scale has been a helpful partner to Array since our early days and one of the few firms such as Array that focuses in enterprise investing. Rory has led investments and sits of the boards of companies such as Box, DocuSign, Pantheon and many more where Scale invested in these companies around Series A or B until they go public. I wanted to sit down with Rory and learn how to build a long lasting firm and how his views on the enterprise sector have evolved over the years. In this episode, Rory discusses the typical lifecycle of an enterprise startup and there path to IPO, his views on ICOs, how to pick an investment strategy, when/if to consider changing your investment strategy and much more.

Rory O’Driscoll's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rodriscoll

Shruti Gandhi's Twitter: https://twitter.com/atshruti

Scale Venture Partner: https://www.scalevp.com/

Array Ventures: http://www.array.vc/