The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch - 20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP

20VC: What Happens To Growth Rounds in this New Environment? Where is the Funding Crunch? How Does This Impact M&A and Going Public? How do Crossover Funds Respond? What Does it Mean For Early Stage and more with Eric Liaw, General Partner @ IVP

04/08/22 • 40 min

2 Listeners

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Eric Liaw is a General Partner @ IVP, one of the leading later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms of the last decade with $8.7 billion of committed capital and a 40-year IRR of 43.1%. At IVP eric has led investments in Datadog, Github, Klarna, Robinhood and UiPath to name a few. Prior to joining IVP, Eric was with Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and was actively involved in originating, executing and managing investments, including Netflix, Zillow and eHarmony. As a result of his investing success, Eric was recognized by GrowthCap as one of the Top 25 Software Investors of 2021 and 2020.

In Today’s Episode with Eric Liaw You Will Learn:

1.) Origins into Venture:

How did Eric make his way into the world of venture way back over 20 years ago?
What were some of Eric's biggest lessons from his early years at TCV?
What are the most significant changes in venture over the last decade?

2.) Eric Liaw: The Investor:

How has Eric changed as an investor over the last decade? What caused those changes?
How does Eric reflect on his own relationship to price? How does he determine when to pay up vs when to remain disciplined?
What has been Eric's biggest miss? How did it alter his style of investing?
From UiPath to Supercell, what has been Eric's favourite story of travelling around the world to win a deal?

3.) The Market: Venture

How does Eric expect IPO markets to behave as we move further in 2022?
How does Eric expect large M&A to play out for the rest of the year?
With the public markets crashing; how does this impact the large growth rounds of 2021?
What does Eric expect to happen to early stage pricing with the crash at late stage?
How does Eric expect crossover funds to behave in this new environment?

4.) Eric Liaw: The Person

How does Eric think about being an awesome Dad and also not losing an inch on being a world class investor?
How does Eric reflect on his own ego when having such large investing wins? Where does he feel he is most insecure?
How did having children really impact his mindset towards investing and working with founders?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Eric Liaw

Eric’s Favourite Book: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

Eric’s Most Recent Investment: Aiven

In Today’s Episode with Eric Liaw You Will Learn:

1.) Origins into Venture:

How did Eric make his way into the world of venture way back over 20 years ago?
What were some of Eric's biggest lessons from his early years at TCV?
What are the most significant changes in venture over the last decade?

2.) Eric Liaw: The Investor:

How has Eric changed as an investor over the last decade? What caused those changes?
How does Eric reflect on his own relationship to price? How does he determine when to pay up vs when to remain disciplined?
What has been Eric's biggest miss? How did it alter his style of investing?
From UiPath to Supercell, what has been Eric's favourite story of travelling around the world to win a deal?

3.) The Market: Venture

How does Eric expect IPO markets to behave as we move further in 2022?
How does Eric expect large M&A to play out for the rest of the year?
With the public markets crashing; how does this impact the large growth rounds of 2021?
What does Eric expect to happen to early stage pricing with the crash at late stage?
How does Eric expect crossover funds to behave in this new environment?

4.) Eric Liaw: The Person

How does Eric think about being an awesome Dad and also not losing an inch on being a world class investor?
How does Eric reflect on his own ego when having such large investing wins? Where does he feel he is most insecure?
How did having children really impact his mindset towards investing and working with founders?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Eric Liaw

Eric’s Favourite Book: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

Eric’s Most Recent Investment: Aiven

Previous Episode

undefined - 20 Growth: Why Retention Defines Product Market Fit, What is Good Retention Levels Today, The Most Counterintuitive Elements of Product and Growth & Why So Many Startups Mess Up Hiring For Growth Teams with Brian Hale, Head of Consumer Product & Growth @

20 Growth: Why Retention Defines Product Market Fit, What is Good Retention Levels Today, The Most Counterintuitive Elements of Product and Growth & Why So Many Startups Mess Up Hiring For Growth Teams with Brian Hale, Head of Consumer Product & Growth @

Brian Hale is Vice President of Consumer Product & Growth @ Doordash. Before joining Doordash, Brian spent an incredible 10 years at Facebook, most recently as VP of Product Growth working across Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp and more. Prior to Facebook, Brian was Director of Growth @ Uptake.com and it all started for Brian in 1999 working at ACDSee in Canada where he was asked to “figure out that search engine thing”.

In Today’s Episode with Brian Hale You Will Learn:

1.) Brian Hale: Entry into Growth:

How Brian made his way into the world of growth from being a "marine ceramic engineer"?
What were 1-2 of his biggest takeaways from his 10-year journey with Facebook?
What are 1-2 of the biggest misconceptions about the Facebook growth team?

2.) When is the Right Time:

When is the right time for startups to hire their first growth leads or reps?
How should the founder allocate resources to the growth team? Hire new designers, engineers etc for the team or pluck them from existing teams within the company?
What are the biggest mistakes startups make on the timing of this hire?
How can startups accurately assess whether they have product-market-fit?
What levels of retention suggest PMF? How does this change by industry?

3.) Who To Hire:

Step by step, how does Brian structure the interview process for all new growth hires?
What are the must-ask questions for growth leaders to ask candidates in interviews?
What are the clear signs and answers that suggest a 10x growth hire? How do the very best interact with data? What do they really hone in on?
What literal tests does Brian do to determine the quality of a hire? How do the best perform?

4.) Onboarding and Integration:

What is the optimal onboarding process for all new growth hires?
What can leaders do to set their new growth teams up for success?
What are the biggest ways new growth hires can mess up in the first 60 days?
What have been some of the biggest challenges for Brian in his onboarding at Doordash?

Next Episode

undefined - 20VC: Why Crypto is Software Eating Money, Why Crypto Firms Will Outcompete Traditional Venture Firms, How To Price Tokens and When To Have Them, DAOs: How Are They Structured and What Makes One Successful with Avichal Garg, Co-Founder @ Electric Capital

20VC: Why Crypto is Software Eating Money, Why Crypto Firms Will Outcompete Traditional Venture Firms, How To Price Tokens and When To Have Them, DAOs: How Are They Structured and What Makes One Successful with Avichal Garg, Co-Founder @ Electric Capital

Avichal Garg is Co-Founder & Partner @ Electric Capital, last month Electric announced they had raised $1BN for their new fund making them one of the largest independent and crypto-native VC firms in the world. As for Avichal, prior to Electric, he was an investor in crypto projects such as Anchorage, Bitwise, Lightning Labs, and OpenSea and unicorns such as Airtable, Cruise, Deel, Figma, Notion and many more. On the operating side, Avichal successfully sold his last company to Facebook where he became Director of Product Management for the Local product group, a team of 400 engineers responsible for billions in revenue.

In Today’s Episode with Avichal Garg You Will Learn:

1.) Origins into Venture:

How did Avichal make his way into the world of startups and angel investing?
How did Avichal make the pivot from software to crypto investing?
Was Avichal nervous when making the move to institutionalize what had been personal investing?
What does Avichal know now that he wishes he had known at the start of Electric?

2.) The Landscape: Crypto Investing

How does Avichal assess the crypto fund landscape today?
Will we continue to see a small number of firms (a16z, Katie Haun, Paradigm, Electric) dominate the market?
What happens to all the small crypto funds that have been raised in the last year?
Why does Avichal believe crypto investing is much more collaborative than venture investing?
How can venture size returns be made if the ownership levels are so much smaller?

3.) Crypto Firms vs Traditional VC Firms:

Why does Avichal believe that crypto is software eating money?
What does this mean for traditional venture? Who will survive? Who will die? Who will thrive?
Why can generalist firms not compete with crypto native firms?
How are the teams of crypto native firms structured so differently to those of traditional VCs?
Do crypto projects and investments need the same level of service and help that generalist VCs provide with their platform services?

4.) Tokens - Equity - Liquidity:

How does Avichal advise investors on how to think through token vs equity investing?
When does it make sense to have a token vs not having a token?
How are crypto tokens priced and valued? What do you need to know when buying tokens?
How does the liquidity of crypto markets make it challenging for investor psychology?
What is the biggest lesson Avichal has learned on when is the right time to sell?

5.) DAOs: 101

What are DAOs? Are they not just another form of government?
What makes one DAO successful and another not?
What tooling and infrastructure are required to manage a DAO successfully?
What does Avichal believe the vision of a DAO should be? How should they define success?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with Avichal Garg

Avichal’s Favourite Book: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization

Avichal’s Most Recent Investment: Magic Eden