Steve Brotman 5:10
Now, before you went back to business school, you were a journalist, right?
Rebecca Kaden 5:17
Yeah, I had spent some time ever since I was in high school, I thought I would be a journalist. I really loved it. I loved writing. I loved the process of getting to know sources. So I had spent some time in magazines and newspapers and then as a literary editor and kind of exploring the world of publishing and journalism, and really liked it, but was also pretty aware of the limitations and the kind of evolution of it was having in the world, and thought I needed to kind of branch out.
Steve Brotman 5:49
I mean, I think Fred’s old partner, Jerry Colonna, was a journalist, and there are quite a few journalists who turned out to become great,
Rebecca Kaden 5:57
mostly Mike Lawrence, right? Whenever journalism comes up, you say, like, Thank God for Meg Moritz, because now when you say people like, oh, like, Mike Moritz, you’re like, exactly like, well, there’s,
Steve Brotman 6:08
there’s a good number of others as well, but, but, yeah, no, I’d say I’m thinking about someone who’s drawn a blank and will probably come to me in a few seconds. But, yeah, it’s, there’s definitely a good, good, good number, you know, has that, has that training translated into venture
Rebecca Kaden 6:27
There are definitely, I’m a big believer in general, on liberal arts education and the power of right thinking. And it’s very aligned with USV, right? A USV philosophy is that generalist investing is the repeatable action of going from kind of intrigue or curiosity about something to perspective on it over and over again. And what you’re doing around is going to change as the world changes, but that process of repeatable learning is the core of what we do, and that is journalism, right? Like the idea of becoming interested in something and pulling that thread and figuring out that story often with fewer data points than you might like and probably more than you would need, actually has a lot of similarities, and we really value the ability to express that often in writing. So I do think there are similarities, the output, the risk tolerance. A lot of things are quite different about it, but there’s something fundamentally —
Steve Brotman 7:26
Yeah, journalists can be a little more passive, but you are taking some risks out there and just inquiring about someone you know beyond you know more the details of of of of how they’re thinking and interviewing lots and lots of people, customers, consume, you know, consumers, um, you know, recruiting all that stuff. It comes out of that. But, yeah, you’re right about, about that. Um, that’s, that’s pretty cool. Well, I think you come, you know, I think you came well prepared. Um, it’s not, not common that you just get plucked out of a class by Bill Campbell. He’s a pretty famous guy. I think I read, read his book. He wrote a book, yeah, called The Coach, which was excellent, yeah. How’s it, you know, in terms of what you brought to USV, you know, I don’t want to, want to share, sort of the development of USV, how that’s, you know, how that dynamic has changed or stayed the same over the last, you know, decade or half you know.
Rebecca Kaden 8:29
USV started in the early 90s by Fred Wilson and Brad Burnham, two of my partners, really, as a small thesis-based generalist firms. The idea is we aren’t kind of sector category-specific, but we are very thesis-driven, which means we’re not going to be totally opportunistic. We’re not just going to see what the markets are kind of delivering. We’re going to spend a lot of time thinking about hypotheses and ideas and where there’s the most kind of interesting opportunity in markets, and what specifically we believe will drive that opportunity and then investing behind it. So I think of it as kind of low velocity, high conviction investing. Each partner is leading a relatively small number of investments every year and spending quite a bit of time on each of them. That fundamental model has not changed about USV at all. And I actually believe, I can say with, you know, quite a bit of confidence is never going to change about USV. There’s a lot of things we’re religious about. A small fund size, a thesis driven approach, pacing fund construction, you know, a very collaborative kind of thought based model, public thinking, a lot of things like that. What that thesis is and where we choose to kind of point the energy does evolve over time so we’ve published, really four horizontal theses over the history of USV, starting with thesis 1.0 which really was about network effects, large networks of engaged users creating outsized value. And it’s evolved. But what we always say is that USV, one of my partners, Andy, always calls it USV, is an ongoing conversation that has no kind of distinct errors. It’s not one thesis after another. It’s an evolution that kind of continually evolves, and people come into the conversation and out of the conversation, but we’re always kind of pushing it forward, and that’s been very steady. So right now, where we remain a small set of general partners, we run this equal model. We have a very collaborative approach. And we’re really interested right now in Where are their markets that we believe are structurally in moments of transition, that they’re shifting, and how can we approach them from what we call the edge, which is really the outside in, and come at them in new ways that we believe push those markets forward? We think that the world’s in a really interesting time, kind of fundamental institutions that in some ways we’ve taken for granted are actually moving around and changing, if you think about the energy transformation or education or healthcare, but the most interesting ways to transform them versus kind of incrementally approve them, are not going to be to go through the middle and the traditional paths, but to be a new way to come at them, whether that’s direct to learner and education or new forms of retail energy or different modes of connecting patients directly to care, or whatever it is. And so we really think about that across sectors, right?
Steve Brotman 11:26
No, I mean, you guys, I mean, I think you put your you’ve touched on something there in terms of, is the kernel of network effects still there? I mean, is it something that you persistently consider in your thesis?
Rebecca Kaden 11:47
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, because oftentimes the most interesting way to help shift a market from the edge is through a network driven model and thinking about network effects, right? Because that bottom up growth and approach is often the counter to through the middle right, which is the China traditional path. And so it’s something we’re really interested in, particularly because as a small fund, we’re interested in how moderate amounts of capital can grow very large value. We’re less well positioned, and less interested in how huge amounts of capital can grow a lot of value. There are plenty of examples where that’s necessary and the case and firms set up well to do that, but it’s not really our focus. And so leveraged models of growth, like network effects, fit very well into that model, right?
Steve Brotman 12:36
So we’re actually co-investors just by chance in — well, not exactly by chance. We talked to you about brave health before we invested, and we’re also by chance with 30 Madison is 30 Madison merged with one of your portfolio companies.
Rebecca Kaden 12:52
Well, 30 Madison’s actually a funny story, because I led the 30 Madison seed at Maverick, and then left and joined USV, and USV were investors in nurex and the companies merch. So I’m a big 30 Madison fan, and have gotten to see a big kind of evolution of that business.
Steve Brotman 13:12
Well, those are it’s just massive, massive, massive opportunity, massive segments that both companies are, and you, and you led the brave investment, correct? Yeah, yeah, well, and so that’s, that’s, that’s, it’s, you know that that sector is 2520 25% of GDP, the healthcare sector. Yeah, you want to, could you elaborate a little bit more about healthcare, and try, you know, specifically those companies, or talk about those.
Rebecca Kaden 13:42
So those are good examples of the thesis and teams that we really believe in and are excited in. So in healthcare, we’re interested in how the market can evolve to better serve patients, improve outcomes and lower costs. Very structurally difficult in healthcare to do that because of how fundamentally it’s set up. But all of our investing is really designed around how you can look at it in kind of new ways to do that. And there’s a couple of buckets. One is more direct access to patients. 30 Madison, right? Obviously falls into that bucket. It’s really a direct to patient model of care delivery. Another is making care more accessible and easier to pay for for patients. That’s really brave, right? We spent a lot of time looking at mental health in particular, just because of the acuity of the need, the challenges in that market, frankly, how big it’s getting, which is unfortunate to say, but the desperate need for more care solutions, and how hard it was to find the care and to pay for it, and that bucket of access to care, getting it online and making it easier to pay for brave and many others are creating. Market that is, frankly, I think, much larger than anyone probably believed when that kind of group of investments were happening. But Brave is really focused on the highest need patients and the hearts to pay right Medicare and Medicaid. And that has been very challenging for a whole host of reasons, but by going at the hardest part of the market and cracking it through very, very good execution, you unlock a huge amount of capital. Because frankly, that’s where the payers are the most concerned, because that’s their highest cost patient, and also where the need is the greatest and the outcomes can really matter. And so we were very excited to invest in that. It was very thesis aligned, and also we felt like it really, really mattered. But there’s other pieces of healthcare that we’ve also been excited about that we think can change the fundamental model. If you think about a bridge, which is another investment. Bridge is a medical scribe as it’s kind of a core foundational piece, but it’s becoming a lot more than that, because it’s creating really a direct link between the patient and the provider, and it’s also really allowing the provider to introduce a huge amount of efficiency to what they’re doing. By recording those visits and automating the notes and integrating directly with the systems, it makes what they do way more efficient and also adds a lot of value to patients and that business, when we got involved 20, probably 1617, before the AI craze, and it was really starting with a bottom up mechanic of going directly to those providers and those patients and seeing that kind of value emerge. And then it leveraged that bottom up growth to then go over the top and do that integration with epic and sell into the larger systems. And that’s a mechanic we really, really like. And so if you look at those three healthcare investments, they map out three different ways to approach healthcare from the edge and push it forward using kind of new channels and creating new access to care.
Steve Brotman 17:05
That’s pretty cool. We actually invested in radii, which is a sub segment of a bridges market, um, but it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s. My dad was a radiologist, so I remember him recording his interpretations of film, and to sort of see all that being released is just amazing. Yeah, and what can be done with all that data? It’s just so cool. Is just so cool? Or what’s it’s we’re fortunate to be a part of that as well, that whole genre, but you’ve also done a few deals, stash goes, team shares, carbon chain, you know, you’ve done a few more as well. You want to share more about some of those and how you can’t how those came.
Rebecca Kaden 17:54
To be sure, I can kind of go at random, but you know, we like those are actually an interesting group, because they all fit things that we really like. If you take Ghost, Ghost is a business with a lot of momentum right now that we’re really excited about. But fundamentally Ghost is a b2b marketplace for excess inventory. So it connects buyers and sellers of excess inventory, very broad definition of what that inventory might be: high-end fashion, sneakers, appliances. Doesn’t really matter what it is, but there’s a huge amount of excess inventory in the world, and traditionally it’s been a broker driven business owned by a very small player, a group of players on the buy side. By releasing that and unleashing a much broader set of buyers. You do a bunch of things. One tech in this market has largely been insights and analytics driven, and we’re really interested in where are their markets, where the innovation has been around insights and analytics, but could be made transactional, and by connecting that supply and demand, you can not only giving given them that insights and analytics, but also unleash new business and new opportunity and new growth. And this was a really directly up the middle example of that. It was an industry that was seeing dramatic growth already and was looking for kind of more direct mechanics to put that together. And that’s really what they’ve seen. But the most interesting part of Ghost is what you see is when you can create these marketplaces at their best, they also create business opportunities you didn’t even foresee when you put that together. So the original buyers for Ghost, right, were the traditional set of excess inventory buyers, the surplus retailers, the offline stores that sell excess all those kind of traditional set, what they found is that by making it easier to buy this merchandise, the whole set of Tiktok resellers, Amazon resellers, whatnot resellers, they were able to fuel and create a business for them that otherwise they didn’t have. And so they were kind of industry making in that. Way. And so that’s really exciting and very aligned with what we look for. Team shares is another great example. Team shares is a platform that buys the long tail of small businesses in America and transitions them to employee ownership. So this is an example where we really like unusual, odd markets that can enable a very new behavior, that are kind of category creating, versus incrementally improving, lots and lots of small businesses in America, 3 million plus previous generations, they would have been given to the next generation, the kids of the owners of business. That’s kind of how many of these have always worked. And they’re important. They’re the backbone of the economy all across this country. You don’t want to get rid of them. You don’t want it all to aggregate to the large platforms. You want this small economy to really thrive. But in this generation, the kids don’t want the businesses. So many of them die, but oftentimes the best owner for those businesses are the employees. But facilitating that transition and that transaction is very, very difficult to do so by creating a platform that enables that. You empower this generation of employees, you allow these businesses to continue, you actually allow them to thrive, because you can give them a lot of resources you aggregate on the back end, banking and accounting and insurance services that are very helpful for them, and also create a great business, because you get the benefit of this portfolio, but also you’re building a really interesting, horizontal FinTech platform on the back of it. So that is a company we absolutely love. We got involved at the seed and have really seen it grow to a quite impressive scale. It is hard to do. It is unusual. It doesn’t really fit in a box. It’s not a productivity SaaS tool, you know. And so being open to things that are a bit odd and come at it in a different way, we think kind of unleashes a lot of opportunity.
Steve Brotman 22:04
Very cool, very cool. Um, yeah. I was just thinking about the trend. I just read somewhere that, like, I want to say $16 trillion of small businesses is going to transition. Yeah. Why? Stupid number? Whenever I hear the number, the number t, um, or the letter T regarding a company, I definitely in team sharing, I guess, would qualify then. But that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know that backstory there. Um, what? Um, could you share an example of a company or an entrepreneur where you backed, where you saw potential where others might have overlooked. And maybe that’s every company you do. You know, what was it about that company or entrepreneur that caught your eye?
Rebecca Kaden 22:50
Yeah, we tend to like the unusual. So I would say, you know, definitely there are times we go out competitive investments and we fight for them and we chase them. And you know, that is a core part of this business, and you have to be great at it. And I kind of like it when that happens, because it’s kind of fun. But a disproportionate, I think, number of investments for us are not we. They’re a little bit unusual. They’re a little bit quirkier. And we think we can do that because of the thesis driven approach, where, when we come to it, we have an informed perspective, and we say, you know, it really matches something we’re looking for. One example might be journey clinical. This is another B2B marketplace in health care that we’re really excited about. It’s enabling access to the existing infrastructure of the Mental Health market to leverage new modalities of care, starting with psychedelics. And so right now, it’s focused on ketamine, and the future, as they become regulated, there’ll be a lot more. We had a very, very strong thesis around psychedelics. When you look at back to that access to care thesis that we were talking about with brave and some of the other businesses, you look at that and you say, mental health needs to be transformed. It’s woefully inadequate on how we’re treating patients. We need access to care, meaning it needs to be brought online and made easier to pay for, but we also need to push forward what care itself needs, and that if we only do the first and we don’t do the second, there are whole swaths of patients that we’re not going to be able to treat. And as we dug into that, you very quickly get to psychedelics, because you learn that since SSRIs, there’s been very, very little innovation in what care itself can mean. And psychedelics, ketamine has been regulated for now a bunch of decades in different ways, is definitely the best shot at this. So we got very interested in this, and we’re really honing a thesis on what we were looking for, and what we came to was we didn’t want it to be direct to patient. We wanted to leverage the existing infrastructure of the industry to deliver new modalities, because you need to combine the access to this treatment with trust and delivery. And it being kind of in the right package, in the right hands. And that is a basically exactly what journey clinical was doing, and really only journey clinical was doing. So a lot of people, when they came to were like, ah, psychedelics. That sounds like drugs and scary, and I don’t know. And we had done a bunch of work on the thesis that gave us mayor in mind. And so we were able to move quite quickly to get comfortable with that investment, since I’ve doubled down and they’ve performed super well in that market. So that’s one example there.
Steve Brotman 25:29
Oh, that’s great. I’ve, you know, as an old school VC sort of psychedelics and military hardware. There are different they’re different elements that can be contrarian to the whole, you know, VC outlook, but it sounds like you’re open. What percentage do you think are sort of, what you would call, sort of non competitive outliers in the portfolio that we’re not in sort of a mono a mono fight with other other question.
Rebecca Kaden 25:57
And it seems to vary kind of thesis to thesis, and a little bit Market to Market, probably 70%.
Steve Brotman 26:05
Wow, that’s pretty big. That’s and no wonder you’re so successful, because, because I think that’s, I think it’s
Rebecca Kaden 26:13
important though you have to be right, yeah,
Steve Brotman 26:16
Well, that’s, that’s right. Don’t screw it up, you know, yeah. But you know, given the track record that you guys have masked you, you often are right. You know, what get diving a little bit deeper into that sort of entrepreneur VC relationship, you know, what do you think the most crucial role for a VC is to play in a supporting founders, you know, just beyond, you know beyond, obviously providing capital.
Rebecca Kaden 26:45
I think this varies a lot, and one of the things I love about USV and our approach is because where this kind of low velocity, high conviction, limited pacing approach, we can tailor what we do to each company. We don’t need a playbook, and we don’t need a kind of one size fits all approach. We can see what comes up. There’s repeat things right, like I would say very often, we help a lot with hiring and team building. Right? Leverage our networks. We leverage our patterns around what makes great CXO or VP X or whatever it is, and try to help on the team building front.
Steve Brotman 27:27
So you don’t have a, you don’t have a platform team that does that. You guys do that as part, yeah,
Rebecca Kaden 27:31
the network team. We have a fantastic head of talent who helps us, but we’re each very involved in those and we, you know, we screen, we close, we source, we do those things alongside our team with for the companies. And that’s a kind of big role. Oftentimes, you know, some founders really like, and we really like a product strategy, right? And sometimes that really is helpful for that company at that moment. And because we’ve been thesis driven, we can kind of bring that. Other times they don’t want you near that, right? And you invest in them because they’re best in class a product strategy, and they really want you to direct your energy towards something else, and so we can respect that too. So I think my takeaway is you need to be a generalist in how you can help. You need to be flexible in what that means. You need to be there for the ride and in it, and willing to do the work. You need to tell the hard truths and leverage the access. You have to looking horizontally while they’re looking vertically, but you also have to be very aware on what you don’t know. I think we’ve all seen examples where the board member, the person around the table, feels like they’re expected to have an answer to every question and to know everything, and that’s not productive. And so know, being able to read where the needs of that company intersect with the skills we can bring and hone that in pretty quickly in each example is, I think, part of the core job. And you know, also knowing when to back off,
Steve Brotman 28:58
right, right? You know, you pointed to something kind of interesting, which is, which I haven’t heard in a while, which is low velocity, you know, and it sort of comes and goes. But, you know, in 20 and 21 it looks like you’re a little more you know. How do you see that velocity like? Is it four deals a year? Is it six deals a year? Look, what was it four?
Rebecca Kaden 29:24
One to three investments per partner per year. One to three, three would be on the high end. One is, you know, fine, probably more normal, right? Yeah. So that’s average to a person a year. There are definitely years where people don’t make an investment. Totally fine. So, right, you know? So we, we just, we try to take our time. We’re not believers, and including when new things come to market, when there are new trends in the market, we have a deep appreciation that the winners often aren’t. First to emerge, and we want a very thoughtful perspective on what we’re looking for when we go after something, and if that means letting things go while we develop that thesis, our whole model of a small fund is based on the ability to do that right. We manage relatively small funds, particularly compared to some of our peers in the market. And one of the reasons to do that is that we can take a true bottom up approach. Right. We don’t have to look at the market and say, there are going to be X number of billion dollar companies created this year. We need to be in y percent, or the model doesn’t work. Laura, there can be a lot of great companies that we’re non investors in, as long as we’re right enough about enough of the things we do, and so we really like that. It’s about what we do and not about what we don’t do. Now, we want to see the best companies in our thesis areas. We want to be very hungry for it. We want to have that coverage, but we’re okay letting things go by while we develop the the kind of tip of the spear and sharpest thesis so that we can approach things in the way we want to/
Steve Brotman 31:06
Would you, I mean, be willing to elaborate a little bit in terms of, you know, is there, is there a sector today that would fit that dynamic?
Rebecca Kaden 31:16
The AI is obviously the obvious one, right, where we have quite a number of companies that would fall into an AI portfolio, though we’ve stopped organizing it that way. We believe pretty quickly AI is becoming an ingredient across the board, and so we’ve stopped kind of verticalizing it. We also are believers that our portfolio should be designed around solving core needs, right? And what the outcome is of the company in its kind of best state. And technology is a tool set for getting there, but it is not you never see technology in our thesis. Our thesis is not about using AI or software or anything else or crypto, those become critical tool sets in accomplishing the Theses we talk about, but what those tool sets are will evolve, and so we try to really keep that in mind. So we, you know, we’re very interested in the application layer of AI and what new behaviors that will allow for that really push past just kind of efficiency and into the magic territory.
Steve Brotman 32:26
So traditional, low, low, low capex, application centric. We’re excited about solving that problem.
Rebecca Kaden 32:33
Yeah, we’re excited about it. We haven’t seen them all yet, and we think that takes, you know, some time to evolve. So I don’t know, I find, one of the things I find most interesting about venture is this inherent tension between patients and impatience, right where you have to be impatient. This is about capturing the new and running fast after it and being on the edge of the most interesting things. But it also requires this immense amount of patience both to really align with the right company around what you’re looking for, and then to be patient with it, you know, as it grows, and you want that company to feel that impatience, where they want to over perform every quarter, but also the patience in that things take time. And so I really like that tension. I find it hard, but it’s something I really like about venture,
Steve Brotman 33:20
right? I mean, at one point, you guys did focus a lot on on blockchain, um, still do, okay, um, you know, is that is, I mean, it’s, it definitely feels like a contrarian bet, almost, you know, except when things are just going berserk. Um, do you want to elaborate a little bit more
Rebecca Kaden 33:42
Crypto is really, it’s about 20% of our funds, and has been for the last almost 10 years. It’s very steady. In that way, we’re huge believers. One, when you’re at USV, it’s a little bit hard to argue with results, and that crypto has been a really, really good sector for USV and produce really exciting results for us, but also that’s come from not an effort to chase speculation or to be in it when the market’s hot, but a really, really kind of baseline thesis approach around decentralization and the belief that the internet is centralizing and that markets are aggregating, and that that’s a problem. It’s a problem for innovation. It locks it up. It makes it harder to do. It’s a problem for users and for privacy and what’s happening to data, and that the best solve right now for a bunch of those problems is a decentralized ecosystem, and we’re interested in both the infrastructure and the applications that allow for that. Right now, we actually announced an investment today called Sling Money, which is a cross-border peer-to-peer payments app. Under this under the hood, built on stablecoins, and in that, we wrote, you know, to a user, it feels like magic, and it doesn’t matter that it’s built on stablecoins. What matters it’s that it’s the fastest. Way to send money cross borders, that you can search by people’s names. You don’t have to remember users names, that it happens instantaneously, and that it’s almost free. Why that’s possible is through stablecoins, and because it’s built on the blockchain. But increasingly, that’s going to be the dynamic of the best applications here, where crypto is a superpower to unlock a core user behavior versus the headline. It’s the how and not the why. And we see that, you know, in sling, we see that in Blackbird and the loyalty system for restaurants, that it’s unlocking. And we think we’re entering a time where we’re going to see that more. And that’s really exciting.
Steve Brotman 35:40
Very cool. Thanks for sharing that. Has that been publicly announced?
Rebecca Kaden 35:45
Yeah, we announced it this morning.
Steve Brotman 35:46
Great. Just making sure, you know, going back to something you said earlier in our conversation, is that, you know, Bill Campbell was an early influence and suggested you go into venture, you know, in terms of like, you know, mentoring is a big part of the venture industry. It’s, um, you know, it’s, um, it’s a, it’s a cottage industry, and it’s, there’s a lot of apprenticeship work that’s, that’s done, um, Could you, could you share some of the things that Campbell might have shared with you that impacted you, that that he suggested, or other mentors, and venture that —
Rebecca Kaden 36:24
Yeah, I mean, I’m lucky. I feel like I have so many awesome mentors. And venture both kind of explicitly, but also who I’ve been lucky enough to see on a board and watch how they work. And just, there’s so many opportunities for learning broadly in this which I just think is such an awesome thing. I mean, the biggest ones for me and my partners, right? Because I get to see that time. And, you know, I always say that the biggest blessing to me is that I work with these fantastic investors, and I get to learn, you know, not from all of their great things they’ve done, of which there are many and I learned from, but mostly from their mistakes. And they’re so willing to be the first one to tell you all the ways they, you know, messed up before that, you know, hopefully, can be shortcuts for me. And so that is, I think I am a huge believer that venture can be in really, really great apprenticeship business, and that working for people that have done it and seen it and can teach you really, really, can go a long way. It’s not the only way to do it. We can all point to many other examples, but it’s one that I really enjoy, and I think is effective. So my partners are high on the list, Bill Campbell, you know he, he really was the master of tell it to you straight, but with a big heart. And I think about that a lot. That’s a real USV thing as well, where we don’t believe our role on boards are just cheerleaders. We think you have to cheerlead CEOs and founders that that’s important, that that’s super hard and super lonely, and you need to be there for them, pick them up, but that if that’s all you’re doing, you’re not doing your job, and that we also serve the company. And so figuring out the balance of how to lead with empathy and have that big heart and really sympathize with where they are and how hard it is, but also be willing to have the hard conversations and push and say the hard truths. And you know, I think Fred or Albert are about as good as that you get, but Bill Campbell was really, really good at that, and not in an FVC capacity, but in his capacity as a coach. And so I super — I admire that, and I think about it all the time, and definitely try to take pieces of that and make it, you know, my own.
Steve Brotman 38:33
Does USV? Is it? Do you see? Do you see guys being mostly a lone wolf venture firm, or you collaborate a lot with other VCs.
Rebecca Kaden 38:45
Collaborate a lot with each other. Our deal processes and our kind of thinking thesis investment processes is super collaborative internally. We’re very, very non kind of individual driven, but we also collaborate a lot with other firms. We’re actually huge believers in the syndicate. We always have been. There have been many, many examples, including in some great outcomes where we could have kind of gotten more of the deal and taken more of the pie, but instead chose to work with other firms, or also where they’ve chosen to work with us, and that’s been to the benefit of us and the company and the outcome. We’re just believers that these are never straight lines, and that it’s a myth that, you know, a company works, and it just scales, that none of the great stories actually look like that. There are so many hiccups along the way, and having the right combination of aligned thinkers around the table to support and that really does matter. So we work collaboratively a lot and value it.
Steve Brotman 39:46
What would you say, like, if, if you’re talking to a junior VC, and we have a lot of junior VCs on our team, you talked to one earlier before we started. Um, what would you have any um, you know. Sort of touchdowns that you think about a lot. You mentioned one earlier, in terms of having the big heart and talking about it straight, that is great. Any other touchdowns that you would point to.
Rebecca Kaden 40:17
I mean, there are a lot I think, be comfortable going slow. I think there’s an impetus sometimes when you’re getting into VC and building your career, to think about the goal is getting the deal done. I always think like, as soon as you write the check, you’re in the red, right? And then your goal is to, you know, not only get in the green, but really get in the green. And so go slow. Be patient on on the deal side, take the time to learn and to gain perspective and think about the objective as working with great companies versus getting deals done. Very hard to do, because we all feel impatient to kind of get moving, but try to find ways to do that. I think, spend a lot of time in early days thinking about what it means for you to help that. It’s very trite. It’s become a little cliche to talk about, you know, VCs helping. So think about where your center of gravity is there. Are you a great recruiter? Are you a great closer? Are you great at, you know, helping raise money or, like, what is the thing that can kind of kickstart you and that you can kind of gain some comfort ground in? And similarly, I’m a big proponent of even if you’re a generalist, pulling some threads, picking some areas where you can have deep perspective and come to a conversation and not just say, pitch me a company, but let’s have a conversation around alignment, around ideas. It’s a very different dynamic with a founder to do those things, and I think you learn a lot from it. And it also gives you confidence early in kind of honing. What does it mean to feel conviction, and how do I know what I’m looking for. So those are some things I think about when I talk to junior VCs.
Steve Brotman 42:05
Oh, that’s great. Rebecca, this has been an awesome chat. Thank you so much for joining us today. Lot to think about, a lot to chew on, and you know, appreciate. Appreciate you joining us today. You know, look forward to seeing you soon.
Rebecca Kaden 42:23
Thanks for having me.
Steve Brotman 42:25
Thanks a lot. Rebecca,
Outro 42:29
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