How to think about raising your first venture fund

04/24/19 • 35 min

Lee Jacobs and Brian Balfour join Ryan at AngelList HQ for this week's episode.

Back in the day, Lee was one of the first syndicate leads on AngelList and later went on to join as a Partner. He previously started an education marketplace startup called Campus Dock. Ryan got to know Lee at AngelList a few years ago, when Lee was kind enough to help him craft his deck as he went out to raise his first fund. Lee is now a full-time investor with his own fund, Edelweiss, which he started with Brian Balfour, Elaine Wherry, and Todd Masonis.

Brian Balfour invests part-time at Edelweiss and spends the majority of his time as CEO of Reforge, a professional education program for experienced practitioners. We've had some of our teammates here at Product Hunt go through the program. Prior to Reforge, Brian was the VP of Growth at HubSpot, EIR at Trinity Ventures, and the founder of several startups including Boundless Learning, POPSignal, and Viximo.

In this episode we talk about:

What kinds of questions Lee and Brian ask founders when they first meet them
Some of the mistakes that first-time fund managers make and how to avoid them
How to think about fund strategy and why the style of your fund should match your personality
The importance of cultivating resilience, both as a founder and as an investor

Of course, we talk about some of their favorite products as well.

We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Bubble, Spoka, and Dipsea for their support. 😸

Quotes from This Episode

“Investing is actually a very time consuming thing. For any operators out there who are also thinking about investing, I would highly encourage you to consider finding a partner who has a completely opposite superpower than you.” — Brian

“The key is figuring out who you are, what your investor-strategy fit is, and designing a strategy and a way that you’re going to get deal flow and what the right check size is going to be, based on who you are uniquely.” — Lee

“There are some investors out there who are very thesis-driven and others that are very people-driven. The more I do this, the more I realize that we are not the best at forming and finding the most interesting ideas and markets. With so much interesting stuff going on, I’m not going to sit here and pretend I know how it is going to play out. The entrepreneurs and people who have an organic connection are going to be the ones to find the interesting problems.” — Brian

Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode

Dandelion Chocolate — A bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the Mission District in San Francisco.

Five Minute Journal — The simplest, most effective way to be happier every day.

Krisp — Mute background noise during calls.

TweetDeck — Create a custom Twitter experience.

Twttr — Twitter's new prototype app.

YouTube TV— YouTube takes on the cable providers.

Lee Jacobs and Brian Balfour join Ryan at AngelList HQ for this week's episode.

In this episode we talk about:

What kinds of questions Lee and Brian ask founders when they first meet them
Some of the mistakes that first-time fund managers make and how to avoid them
How to think about fund strategy and why the style of your fund should match your personality
The importance of cultivating resilience, both as a founder and as an investor

Of course, we talk about some of their favorite products as well.

Quotes from This Episode

Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode

Dandelion Chocolate — A bean-to-bar chocolate factory in the Mission District in San Francisco.

Five Minute Journal — The simplest, most effective way to be happier every day.

Krisp — Mute background noise during calls.

TweetDeck — Create a custom Twitter experience.

Twttr — Twitter's new prototype app.

YouTube TV— YouTube takes on the cable providers.

Previous Episode

Why staying true to yourself is the best path to growth

Today I'm joined by Everette Taylor, a fellow entrepreneur and community builder that I got to know back when he was building GrowthHackers.com five years ago.

But well before this, Everette began his founder journey starting (and then selling) an events business in his teenage years. He later went on to join a few startups to run marketing and growth, including Skurt (a company I regularly used prior to its acquisition) and StickerMule (a company that makes our awesome Product Hunt stickers). Today Everette runs ET Enterprises, a collection of businesses that include PopSocial, Hayver, Millisense, and his newest venture, ArtX.

In this episode we talk about:

Everette's path to entrepreneurship, including dropping out of school
The importance of being authentic in everything you do
Some of his favorite self-care apps

Quotes from This Episode

“We get so caught up in portraying an image that isn’t real or isn’t true and I think the best way to grow is just being genuine and true to who you are because people are going to see through it. What’s the point in building a huge brand and then getting exposed later for it not being true?” — Everette

“Don’t get so caught up on the top layer of things, because at the end of the day if you’re able to build a skillset or provide value in some type of way, that’s where the magic really happens.” — Everette

“Even though I started my own company I felt like I wasn’t really experienced in the startup space. I got offered an opportunity and I left literally a week later — dropped out of school and the rest was history.” — Everette

Companies and Products Mentioned in This Episode

Apple Music— All the ways you love music, all in one place.

Cash App — Send money instantly.

ChowNow — Online ordering built just for your restaurant.

GOAT — The most trusted way to buy and sell sneakers on mobile.

Headspace — Learn to meditate and live mindfully.

Philz — Order your coffee ahead.

PopSocial — Grow your social media brand.

Roadtrip — A music listening app where you and your friends jam out together.

Slack — Be less busy. Real-time messaging, archiving and search.

Soothe — Massage delivered to you.

Spotify — Music for everyone.

Stripe — Payment integration and management.

Tidal — Lossless music streaming service, backed by JAY-Z.

Venmo — Make and share payments with friends.

Next Episode

Danielle Morrill on founder loneliness and the power of fiction

In 2013, Danielle Morrill was just starting up her blog, and writing about startups from a unique, data-driven lens. The blog turned out to be an MVP for what would later become Mattermark, a company she co-founded with her husband, Kevin Morrill, and Andy Sparks.

Danielle's blog was also unique in that she opened up publicly about some of the challenges she was facing at the time, such as feeling lonely as a founder. She also admits to being a “secret introvert” and how over time, even with the level of transparency she brought to her writing, blogging “came to feel a bit like performance art.”

“There’s so much content online but a lot of it is very impersonal... Pain is a little easier too bear when you share it. Sometimes it’s easy to believe when we’re struggling we’re going through something no one else has been through. But it’s not true.”

In 2017, Mattermark was acquired by FullContact and Danielle moved to Denver Colorado, where she now resides. Danielle recently joined devops platform GitLab as GM of Meltano, a developer workflow tool.

In this episode Ryan and Danielle talk about...

Her love of reading, the mind-expanding power of fiction, and her book recommendations.

Danielle admits that until recently, when she was on sabbatical, she hadn't read many of the classic “startup books.” She's checked many of those off her list now, but she still loves fiction for its mind-expanding power. She says that she thought of herself as a fairly worldly person before she started reading fiction.

“I understand a lot more about emotions like empathy and compassion after reading fiction. Each time you read a new book, you try on these new characters’ lives and you get new perspective.”

You can follow Danielle on Goodreads, “one of the most underrated social networks.” She loves to give book recommendations.

They also discuss...

The tools and strategies Danielle uses to track her time and stay productive, and how she ensures she makes time for solitude and self-reflection.

Danielle runs through the tools she uses to manage her time and how her routine of Sunday planning and reflection lets her make sure ahead of time she won't have regrets about how she spent her time that week. She talks about the importance of solitude and says that she blocks out time for it in her calendar.

“The blog was a good outlet but in a way it became another form of performance art. There’s always more truth you don’t share. There’s the internal work of constantly working towards some kind of coherent story about your life. Journaling, working out, or other things that cause you to have to be in solitude are good for that.”

She also talks about what it was like to move from Silicon Valley to Colorado and what it was like to have a co-founder who's also a spouse.

We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Spoka and Pilot for their support. 😸