Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers

Today, I sat down with Victor Lazarte, a Benchmark partner who transitioned from founding a billion-dollar mobile gaming company in Brazil to becoming a venture capitalist in Silicon Valley with Benchmark in 2023. Victor shared Benchmark's unique investment philosophy, which focuses on deep, meaningful partnerships with entrepreneurs, with each partner doing only 1-2 deals per year.

We also spoke about the equal partnership Benchmark has, and what that means in practice day to day from a decision making and culture standpoint. This was a fun one so hope you enjoy!

Throughout our conversation, Victor provided a...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Had a great conversation recently with Tomasz Tunguz Founder and General Partner at Theory Ventures. We dug into how AI is reshaping venture capital and everyday life, from the rapid advancements in the space to what it all means for startups and the broader market. We covered everything from the declining cost of training AI models to the open vs. closed-source debate and how enterprises are starting to adopt AI in real ways. A really insightful...

Follow me @SamirKaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We recently had the pleasure of hosting Zal Bilimoria, Co-Founder of Refactor Capital. Zal has had a fascinating career from building products at Microsoft, Google, Netflix, and LinkedIn to making the leap into being a VC. His story is one of relentless curiosity and a deep passion for technology, something that started early in his life while working in his family’s computer business.

In our discussion, Zal walked us through his transition from pr...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Today I had the pleasure of speaking with Brian Ascher, a veteran venture capitalist at Venrock, a firm with a storied history dating back to 1969 as part of the Rockefeller family office. Brian, with nearly 30 years in the industry, shared his journey from product management at Intuit to becoming a key partner at Venrock. We dove into the firm's evolution, investment strategies, and decision-making processes, highlighting how Venrock maintains its edge as it evolves.

...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

In this episode, I have the pleasure of conversing with Gaurav Mathur, Partner at Pinegrove Capital Partners. Together, we dive into the evolving venture capital landscape, focusing on liquidity solutions and the rise of secondary markets. Gaurav shares insights from his extensive experience, discussing the growth in assets under management, the trend of companies staying private longer, and the changing dynamics for limited partners. We explore mechanisms for generating liquidity, such as continuation funds, strip sales...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Today I’m excited to speak with the founding team of Chemistry, a new venture firm led by Kristina Shen, Ethan Kurzweil, and Mark Goldberg, who recently spun-out of blue chip firms Andreessen Horowitz, Bessemer, and Index Ventures, respectively. The firm just announced a significantly oversubscribed $350MM debut fund. 

As a new entrant to the market (in the toughest time to start a new firm in over a decade), I wanted to ask them abo...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

In this episode, Sam Heshmati and Vince Timoney from Citizens Private Bank stop by to talk about all things venture banking and how the industry is recovering from the 2023 regional banking crisis.

Sam and Vince, both of whom have extensive experience in the banking sector, share their insights on the challenges faced during this period, including the impact on startups and venture funds. They also discuss the significant changes in the banking industry since the cris...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

This week we welcome the three co-founders of Saga Ventures: Ben Braverman, Thomson Nguyen, and Max Altman. Saga Ventures is a seed-stage investment firm that recently closed its first fund of $125M.

The conversation dives into their experiences in raising their first fund, building a team, and navigating a competitive seed-stage market. The co-founders bring unique skill sets from their previous roles in operating and investing, and this episode sheds light on how they...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Today we're thrilled to be joined by Glenn Solomon, managing partner at Notable Capital. Along with Granite Asia, Notable Capital was one of two groups to emerge from GGV Capital, which recently split into two groups with Notable based in Silicon Valley, New York, and covering companies in the U. S., Israel, Europe, and Latin America.

Glenn brings nearly 30 years of venture experience to the table, and it was great to draw from his...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

In this episode, we are thrilled to be joined by Ben Sun, co-founder of Primary, a seed-stage fund based in New York. Ben shares his journey from investment banking to startup founder, and eventually to co-founding Primary, which has backed companies like Coupang and Jet.

Ben provides deep insights into venture math and the intricacies of completing a GP-led secondary. He discusses his background and the inspiration behind starting Primary in 2015. Ben talks about...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

This week I'm excited to sit down with Lindel Eakman from Foundry. Lindel has been an investor in funds and companies since the early 2000s when he started at UTIMCO.

In our conversation, Lindel talks about being one of the first investors in Union Square Ventures, his preference for smaller partnerships, and the art of conducting quality reference calls on GPs. Having known each other for a while, our chat felt like a fun...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Tom Loverro, General Partner at IVP is our guest as part of our Venture Unlocked Shorts series intended to go deep on a single topic.

We revisit Tom’s Twitter post from early 2023, which spoke to the market shift that was in motion and the difficulties start-ups would face in a capital-constrained market. Specifically, he spoke about 2024 as being a time of reckoning for many companies that were built with growth at all costs me...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We're re-joined by Mike Maples, Jr. of Floodgate, this time to discuss his just released new book "Pattern Breakers."

Mike was first on the pod in 2021 and it was great to catch up again, this time to discuss the importance of identifying founders who are true pattern breakers. We spoke about how his observations on the last 14 years at Floodgate inspired him to write the book.

We went through concepts such as f...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We're joined by TX Zhuo, Co-Founder and General Partner of Fika Ventures. His tech career began in college when he started an online textbook marketplace.

After working at McKinsey and as a CFO at an operating company, TX joined Innovation Endeavors. He then co-founded Karlin Ventures, which was backed by a single family office. In 2016, he co-founded Fika Ventures, which now has a 10-person team and has raised three funds.

During the...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We are back with another LP-focused episode with Michael Kim, Founder of Cendana Capital. Michael shares how he started Cendana around his thesis (at the time very early) of backing small, emerging managers. This led to early investments in firms such as IA ventures, Forerunner, and Lerer Hippeau.

During our discussion, we chatted about what qualities he’s seen in great emerging managers as well as his thoughts on portfolio construction.

We al...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We are back with Amy Saper, partner at Uncork Capital. Amy shares her journey from Silicon Valley operator at Twitter and Stripe to venture capitalist. She talks about Uncork’s strategy, including its recent $200 million seed fund and $200 million opportunity fund, and how the firm balances growth with specialization.

Investors will find her perspective on non-consensus investing particularly compelling, as she outlines how she evaluates technical teams and market potential. Successful founders attract and de...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Today we have another version of Venture Unlocked shorts, and this time it will be focused on topics within the GP/LP world.

Joining me again is Meghan Reynolds, who leads capital formation at Altimeter Capital. 

This time we discuss the significant liquidity challenges in the venture capital market, focusing on the concerns of LPs about funding future capital calls and the longer wait times for returns. With a decline in public o...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

This week we're doing another special roundtable discussion with a focus on the seed stage market. Joining us are Jenny Fielding of Everywhere Ventures, Kirby Winfield of Ascend, and Nate Williams of UNION Labs.

This whole conversation was focused on seed stage investing. We spent most of our time discussing how the market reset affects seed-stage decision-making, fund sizing, and reserve strategies. We also touched on what they are seeing and hearing from LPs...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We are thrilled to bring you a conversation with David Sacks, Founder and Partner of Craft Ventures. Based in San Francisco, Craft was founded in 2017 and currently has over 3 billion in assets under management.

Across the last three decades, David has been incredibly influential as an investor, entrepreneur, and public thought leader. When starting Craft, he was able to draw from his deep operating background, having worked as an early leader at PayPal, and...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

This week we are pleased to be joined by Adam Bain of 01 Advisors, a San Francisco-based firm with nearly $1 billion under management.

Adam and his partners, including Dick Costolo, have taken a very different approach to the venture model, drawing from their experiences as operators. While Adam was COO and Dick was CEO at Twitter, they helped the company scale from zero to in revenue as fast as any consumer tech company in history...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We have a conversation with Mitchell Green, Founder and Managing Partner at Lead Edge Capital. 

With offices in New York and Santa Barbara, the firm has over $5B in Assets under management and specializes in helping growth-stage companies scale.

The firm has an interesting model that combines elements of PE, growth, and an active network of over 700 LPs to build a very powerful moat.

I was really interested in several b...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Today we have another version of Venture Unlocked shorts, and this time it will be focused on topics within the GP/LP world.

Joining me for this around-the-water-cooler recurring series is Meghan Reynolds, who leads capital formation at Altimeter Capital. 

Meghan recently attended iConnections in Miami, one of the biggest global capital intro summits in the world, which served as inspiration for this episode. We discussed what she observed during the summit, i...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We have a conversation with Samir Kaul from Khosla Ventures. 

Founded in 2004, Khosla is one of the largest and most well-known venture capital firms in the world and led by legendary investor and entrepreneur Vinod Khosla. The firm is known for investing in companies that are solving very large and complex problems. The firm currently has over $15B in AUM investing in companies such as Square, Doordash, Stripe, OpenAI, and Impossible Foods.

D...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

This is our second episode of Venture Unlocked Shorts where we highlight a specific point of view of our guest. These points of view may come through a tweet, an article, or an offline conversation, and our goal is to unpack these interesting views in a short conversation. 

In this week’s Venture Unlocked Shorts, we’re joined by Aileen Lee of Cowboy Ventures. Aileen wrote a now famous article in 2013 where she coined the t...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

As we continue to grow Venture Unlocked, we are now going to release short conversations highlighting a specific point of view of our guest. These points of views may come through a tweet, an article, or conversation, and our goal is to unpack these interesting views in short form. 

Our first guest in this format is Ed Suh Founder and Managing Partner of Alpine VC.

Ed recently penned a tweet that I t...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We are excited to bring on Brendan Wales and Kellan Carter, Co-Founders and GPs of FUSE. 

Founded in 2020 with a thesis centered around the growth of the Pacific Northwest ecosystem, a geography both of our guests know well. With its just-announced close of a $250MM Fund 2, FUSE has a total AUM of just over $420MM. 

During our conversation, we covered the strategic nature of LP composition and how venture funds should think ab...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

On this special meet the expert episode, we are discussing the venture debt market with Matt Trotter, a Managing director within Stifel Bank’s Venture division.

Stifel Bank was established in St. Louis, MO in 1890 and is an independent investment bank with the mission to help individuals pursue financial goals, businesses and organizations raise and protect capital, and communities offer a higher quality of life.

Given the dislocation of the regional banking ma...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

This week we are thrilled to be joined by Pejman Nozad, Co-Founder and GP of Pear VC. Founded in 2013, Pear has scaled to over $800MM in AUM with a powerful engine to help early-stage companies. 

As many regular listeners of the show know, we often like to highlight managers who have different backgrounds and stories leading to their careers in VC. I think of all of our guests, Pejman epitomizes how someone can overcome ma...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We're excited to welcome Paul Kwan, Managing Director at General Catalyst (GC). Established in 2000, the firm currently has just under $25 billion in assets under management. GC has made a significant mark in the venture capital landscape, funding dynamic technology and life science startups including Stripe, Coinbase, Livongo, Samsara, and Gusto.

Paul is at the helm of GC's Global Resilience team, concentrating on upgrading key societal infrastructures in the defense, intelligence, and industrial sectors. Before h...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We're thrilled to have Alex Pall, general partner at Mantis VC, a seed and an early stage fund based in LA.

Alex is a great example of someone who has made a significant crossover from another industry—he is one half of the award-winning duo of the Chainsmokers, a group that has found mainstream success by breaking boundaries between pop, indie, electronic, alternative, and rock.

We discuss how Alex and the team th...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We're thrilled to bring on Brad Gerstner, Founder and CEO of Altimeter Capital. 

Altimeter was first founded in 2008 during the GFC with an initial fund of only $3 Million which Brad raised from friends and family. Today the firm employs both private and public strategies.

Altimeter takes an incredibly focused and high-conviction approach to investing and has backed companies such as Snowflake, Unity, Gusto, and Modern Treasury. And now manages a variety of v...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We are excited to bring you our latest episode with Mamoon Hamid, Partner at Kleiner Perkins. As many know, Kleiner Perkins, founded over 50 years ago is one of the most storied franchises in the history of venture capital, having backed companies companies such as Genentech, Sun Microsystems, Amazon, Google, and Uber. 

After stints at USVP and Social Capital (which he co-founded), Mamoon joined Kleiner in 2017 as part of a generational succession process. As part o...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We're thrilled to bring back three experienced institutional venture LPs with Chris Douvos of Ahoy Capital, Beezer Clarkson of Sapphire Partners, and Guy Perelmuter of GRIDS Capital. 

When we last convened, it was almost exactly two years ago in October of 2021. We had an inkling of the changes to the market on the horizon, but what a two years it has been.

Given the dramatic shift in the market, we had a l...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

On this week’s show, we’re excited to have Ben Lerer and Graham Brown, Managing Partners at Lerer Hippeau. The firm was founded in New York in 2010 to back early-stage entrepreneurs. Today the firm manages $1.2B and has invested in over 400 companies including Oscar, Buzzfeed, Mirror, Warby Parker, and Casper. 

Ben’s background prior to investing was as Founder and CEO Thrillist, while Graham came over in 2015 from Softbank. 

During our chat, we...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We're excited to be joined by Chris Farmer, Founder and CEO of SignalFire, a firm that was founded nearly a decade ago with the goal of disrupting the way Venture Capital is done.

Unlike traditional VC firms, SignalFire has been built more like a company than a traditional asset manager, as it leverages a robust purpose-built data platform to augment its unique service model to entrepreneurs.

During our conversation, we spent a...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

Today we’re excited to bring Mark Suster back on the pod. Mark is the managing partner of Upfront and also a frequent contributor of great content for the venture ecosystem through his blog, Both Sides of the Table, which I’d highly recommend you subscribe to. 

Mark and Samir were recently talking about venture funds raising in this market, and we thought it would be timely to record a session on what we are s...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

On this week’s show, we’re excited to have Hernan Kazah, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Kaszek, one of the largest Latin American firms with nine funds under management. The firm launched in 2011 and over time they’ve made early-stage investments in companies such as Nubank, QuintoAndar, Kavak, Creditas, and Nuvemshop.

Before becoming an investor, Hernan Co-Founded MercadoLibre in 1999, an online auction and e-commerce platform that later went public in 2008. At a market cap tod...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

On this week’s show we’re excited to have Tomasz Tunguz, Founder of newly formed Theory Ventures. Tomasz spent nearly 15 years at Redpoint Ventures, before recently spinning out to start Theory Ventures. Earlier this year, Theory closed a $230MM fund to back early stage entrepreneurs.

Those who have followed Tomasz’s writing, know that he is incredibly analytical and thoughtful in his approach to business. This conversation was no different as we went deep i...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

On this week’s show, I’m thrilled to be joined by Sunil Nagaraj, Founder of Ubiquity Ventures. Sunil started Ubiquity in 2017 to focus on backing technical founders at the pre-seed and seed stages around a thesis he calls “nerdy and early.” Before starting Ubiquity, Sunil spent just over 6 years at Bessemer Venture Partners, and began his career as a founder of a startup. 

With so many solo-GP firms emerging, Sunil took us through us his le...

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

We’re pleased to welcome Oren Zeev, Founding Partner at Zeev Ventures. 

Without a doubt, Oren is one of the titans in venture investing with nearly 30 years of experience and one of the most unique. Unlike traditional firms that have achieved scale, Oren remains a solo-GP, and has an authentic and refreshing view on venture investing. Today, he manages over $2B in Assets under management and has backed companies such as   Houzz, Audible, Chegg, TripA...