Reference Checking and Personality Assessments with Investor Graham Duncan

Graham Duncan (@GrahamDuncanNYC) is a longtime investor and author of a legendary essay on reference checking: https://grahamduncan.blog/whats-going-on-here/ He was interviewed by Village Global co-founder and partner Ben Casnocha (@bencasnocha) during a special masterclass for Village Global founders and friends of the firm. <br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><br />- Be aware of how your own mindset and mood affects your analysis of a candidate as well as how it impacts how the candidate shows up in the interview. For example, you might be anxious and stressed yourself and that makes the candidate nervous — you may end up experiencing them as nervous, but in fact you are the one that has created that dynamic in the interview.<br /><br />- Ask the candidate: “If you were hiring someone to fill this role, what criteria would you use?” When someone is particularly good, they are skilled at capturing the essence of what makes someone good at it. This also lets you see how they respond without initial priming and framing.<br /><br />- The ideal reference check call should take longer than you might think (e.g. 45+ mins). You sometimes need to wear them down over a long period of time before they open up about their real concerns.<br />- If you aren’t aware of or can’t imagine the downside of working with this person, you haven’t done enough reference checking.<br /><br /><br />- Ask: “How strong is your endorsement of Jane on a scale of 1-10? (If they answer 7, say actually sorry 7s are not allowed, 6 or 8? If the answer is an 8, ‘What is in that two points?’)” <br /><br /><br />- When someone comes from a prestigious company, we often fail to control for the weight that the reputation of the company carries when we form our impression of them.<br /><br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.<br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup<br /><br /><br />

00:51:26

Insights on Capital Power Brokers from Hedge Funds to Venture Capital with Sebastian Mallaby, author of The Power Law

Sebastian Mallaby (@scmallaby) is the Paul A. Volcker senior fellow for international economics at the Council on Foreign Relations and a contributing columnist for The Washington Post. He is the author of five books, including most recently The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future. He joined Olga Serhiyevich, head of investor relations, for this conversation.<br /><i> </i> <i></i><br />Takeaways:<br /> <br />- Sebastian wrote a book about hedge funds prior to The Power Law and he contrasts VCs and hedge fund managers by saying that VCs are much more extraverted. VCs and others around the startup world are eager and willing to make introductions and actually follow through where others say they will make an intro and don’t follow through.<br /> <br />- Venture is a fun and exciting business to be in because you’re dealing with bold visions of the future, highly talented and optimistic founders, and you get to see the progress and outcome of each startup that is trying to do something novel and ambitious.<br /> <br />- Sebastian says that bubbles are inevitable in venture capital because of the nature of the business. He says there’s no “off switch” or equivalent of shorting a company. There are also so many connections among venture capitalists that no one is willing to say anything negative about anyone else’s investments.<br /> <br />- He predicts a significant expansion of startup funding outside of Silicon Valley post-pandemic. Being able to deals over Zoom significantly expands the scope of where a VC can invest.<br /> <br />- He is bullish on Europe especially because it has a consumer market that is even bigger than the US and the entrepreneurial mentality is growing among prospective startup founders in Europe.<br /> <br />- Sebastian says that AI is the biggest development on earth since humans first developed the capacity for abstract thought. Some compare it to the printing press and he says it will be way bigger than that.<br /><br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.<br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup<br />

00:51:29

LatAm Digital Transformation Report from Atlantico

Julio Vasconcellos (@JulioV), managing partner at Atlantico, and Ana Martins (@martinsg_ana), partner at Atlantico, join Anne Dwane (@adwane), co-founder and partner at Village Global, to discuss Atlantico’s 2023 report on digital transformation in Latin America. <br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><br />- If Latin America was its own country it would be #3 in the world in terms of population and GDP.<br /><br />- Brazil and Mexico combined make up over half of the population of all of Latin America.<br /><br />- In the US about 60% of public market capitalization is made up of technology companies but in Latin America that proportion is only 1.8%.<br /><br />- Latin America is about 10-15 years behind where China is, which is itself about 5-7 years behind where the US is. There is a ton of catch-up that will happen over the next couple decades and that presents a huge opportunity.<br /><br />- Latin America has some deep scars from hyper-inflation decades ago. They were some of the first countires to quickly raise rates in order to tame the inflation that we've been seeing globally in the last few years. That has paid off with some countries in LatAm starting to lower rates already.<br /><br />Check out the full report here: https://www.atlantico.vc/latin-america-digital-transformation-report-2023<br /><br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. <br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

00:49:16

Opportunities in Public Health Investing with Gurdane Bhutani and Zeshan Muhammedi

Gurdane Bhutani and Zeshan Muhammedi are co-founders and GPs at MBX, a VC firm investing in early-stage bio/healthtech companies tackling major public health threats. Prior to that they co-founded healthcare and life-science venture capital firm FundRx, where they championed the firm's build-out of its community-driven investment infrastructure, modeled on the scientific peer-review process.<br /> <br />Takeaways:<br /> <br />- Pharma companies have realized that it makes sense to develop drugs that will have a population-level health benefit rather than developing drugs for small numbers of people that cost exorbitant amounts.<br /> <br />- Noise pollution is actually a big public health issue that is linked to various diseases. Companies are working on making society less noisy using things like concrete that is quieter when cars drive over it.<br /> <br />- Gurdane and Zeshan have learned from working together for a long time how to engage in productive disagreement well by acknowledging what their respective strengths and weaknesses are and weighing the strength of one person’s enthusiasm against the strength of the other person’s skepticism.<br /> <br />- Genomics has been a huge story in medicine in the last several decades but hasn’t lived up to its promise because we’ve been missing an understanding of how environmental triggers drive diseases that our genes prime us for.<br /> <br />- In the future, given changes at the FDA and EPA, drugs and chemical products will be tested on “organoids on a chip” or high-throughput systems that can give us higher fidelity data than actual tests on living animals.<br /> <br />- Studies are often powered to look for benefits of a drug rather than find rare long tail side effects. It often takes years and years for the downsides of a treatment to become apparent.<br /><br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. <br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

00:52:43

The Future of Retail with Lee Hnetinka

Lee Hnetinka, founder and CEO of Future and Darkstore, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations at Village Global, on this episode. Lee and his companies are building innovative solutions in retail and e-commerce and have worked with world’s most admired brands like Nike, Adidas and Disney where they enabled same-day and 1-hour delivery for customers nationwide. They’ve also worked with tech companies like Snapchat, Shopify and Stripe to enable next generation payments and loyalty program solutions. <br /><br />Takeaways:<br /> <br />- Lee says cities will look completely different in a few decades. Retail has been the backbone of cities for a very long time but as more and more commerces goes online, physical stores will transform into more of a place to go to have an experience.<br /> <br />- In the old days loyalty programs used stamps to provide a potential discount on a future purchase but now provide the customer with more convenience and a better experience.<br /> <br />- Loyalty programs have been transforming into tiered programs where a customer can pay for status. Lee predicts that every single loyalty program will turn into a tiered program with multiple paid options in the future. For example, there may be multiple levels of Amazon Prime in the same way that there are multiple tiers at American Express.<br /> <br />- Dark stores were pioneered in the UK and leveraged existing stores that had excess space to carry products from many different retailers in one place. Lee partnered with companies like Office Depot, Mattress Firm, and Iron Mountain to make Darkstore a reality. Fun fact: 90% of the population of the US lives within 5 miles of an Office Depot, and on average only three people a day walk in to a mattress store.<br /> <br />- FastAF, the consumer-facing brand at Darkstore, provided high-end versions of the products that someone would typically find in a convenience store. A lot of the core value was the curation that went into which products to carry.<br /> <br />- One of the keys to success for a business like Darkstore is to consider unit economics on a per-building basis and to make sure that there is enough population in any one place to support a physical location.<br /> <br />- Running two companies has made Lee better at both of them as compared to running only one. He says that many insights are transferrable between them. Also, when making decisions, Lee asks whether a decision is reversible or not and spends most of his time on the irreversible decisions and errs towards moving quickly on the reversible ones.<br /> <br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /> <br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal. <br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

00:38:00

CIO Series: Wealth Management Platforms, Private Investment Strategies, and the Current (non-Twitter) Macro Outlook with Cameron Dawson

Cameron Dawson, Chief Investment Officer at NewEdge Wealth, joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations, on this episode. Prior to joining NewEdge Wealth, Cameron was the Chief Market Strategist at Fieldpoint Private Securities and a Senior Equity Analyst at Bank of America.<br /> <br />Takeaways: <br /><ul><li>Cameron says that wealth management firms can provide the next chapter of growth for VC. There’s a notion that clients at wealth management firms are less sophisticated but in fact managing their assets is often much more complex than managing money for an institution. At wealth management firms, each client is very different and each one is managing their own money rather than that of other individuals, which adds a new dynamic. </li><li>The law of large numbers is a drag on funds. As they get larger the alpha that they used to be able to get decays into beta when they become less nimble. </li><li>Being a jack of all trades is key to succeeding as a CIO. The last 16 months have been a whirlwind but have also provided a huge amount of learning and have helped Cameron expand an already large skillset. </li><li>Cameron doesn’t expect interest rates to fall anytime in the next six months or so. She says a recession is still a possibility but they usually take you by surprise and people have been expecting one for a long time and it still hasn’t materialized. </li><li>Cameron has done a number of media appearances and says that the key to public speaking is practicing over and over again. She says that she works on distilling concepts down into simple explanations and practices them out loud in the mirror all the time. </li><li>Both Olga and Cameron love ballet and Cameron explains why she loves it and how practicing ballet has helped her career. She says that there is a powerful artistry, history, and beauty to it and that the gruelling training regime prepared her well for other pursuits in her life. </li></ul>Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.<br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup<br />

00:39:48

Opportunities at the intersection of software and hardware in national development projects with Prescott Watson

Prescott Watson (@prescottwatson) joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), head of investor relations at Village Global, on this episode. Prescott is co-founder of Port Power, a software platform that aims to de-risk commercial fleets’ adoption of electric vehicles by ensuring their charging infrastructure functions flexibly and reliably. Takeaways:<br /> <br />- With gas or diesel-powered vehicles, drivers take the car to the energy source (the gas station). With electric vehicles, that paradigm doesn’t work for fleets of commercial vehicles that need to be charged up overnight. This means that a fleet operator needs to build charging infrastructure to charge 30, 50, perhaps 100 vehicles simultaneously.<br /> <br />- Building the charging infrastructure requires huge efforts by multiple players and right now the grid can only support a small fraction of the power that is required. Full support all of the charging that needs to happen is many years away.<br /> <br />- Prescott says there are real “sticks” coming for fleet operators. As early as 2026, there will be restrictions on the ability of fleet operators to buy diesel vehicles.<br /> <br />- Moving to electric vehicles requires a huge effort on the part of the government as well as private operators who build and co-fund the infrastructure required. Prescott says that there has been a significant brain drain from government. It needs to attract many more talented people in order to solve these challenges.<br /> <br />- Access to electricity will play a key role in commercial development and real estate in the future. This provides a significant opportunity for capital allocators.<br /> <br />Links mentioned in this episode:<br /> <br />Abundance Agenda: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/01/scarcity-crisis-college-housing-health-care/621221/<br /> <br />Green Police Ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ml54UuAoLSo<br /> <br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /> <br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.<br /> <br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

00:56:03

Mark Cuban on Disrupting Healthcare, Trends in AI, and Randomness

Mark Cuban (@mcuban) joins Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), head of investor relations at Village Global, on this episode. Takeaways:<br /><br />- In the US healthcare system the interests of patients, providers, and payers are not aligned. This drives many of the problems in the system today and is part of what inspired Mark to get involved in trying to disrupt the system.<br /><br />- Mark started Cost Plus Drugs to try to address some of the pricing issues with prescription drugs in the US. The company's pricing is completely transparent and shows their costs along with the exact fees they charge. He says that they do zero marketing and their growth comes from earned media and referrals from their existing patient base.<br /><br />- Mark advises founders not to try to optimize the current healthcare system but rather to work outside of the system to bring about real change. Working within the system can bring change around the edges but commits you to working inside a system that is already broken in the hopes that an incumbent player might buy you.<br /><br />- Every pitch deck that Mark sees now has an AI angle to it. He’s gone deep on the field over the last several years and says that when a person digs into many of these pitches the companies are using off-the-shelf large language models and have little defensibility.<br /><br />- Precision medicine is one of the most exciting and scary emerging technologies. Mark says that in the next 50-100 years we will be able to compile all the variables that drive how our bodies and minds work and AI will be able to create a precise simulation of our bodies and how to treat them to improve our health.<br /><br />- One of Mark’s favourite sayings is that “life is half random.” The conditions around a person are continually changing and contribute greatly to a person’s success.<br /><br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.<br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

00:54:27

Disrupting VC Benchmarking and Closing The LP-GP Information Gap with Eric Woo and Spencer Tyson

Eric Woo (@ericjwoo), co-founder and CEO of Revere, and Spencer Tyson (@SpencerGTyson), Head of Investment Ratings at Revere, join Olga Serhiyevich (@olgaserhi), Head of Investor Relations at Village Global. Revere has pioneered the world’s first rating system for venture capital funds.<br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><br />- Venture has changed a lot over the last couple decades and continues to evolve quickly. In the last decade emerging managers has become its own sub-category, and venture as an asset class has bifurcated into specialist and generalist investors.<br /><br />- Revere has found through their extensive data analysis that funds that are diverse outperform, funds with a female GP outperform, solo GPs outperform, and career operators outperform those with a fund management background.<br /><br />- Fund benchmarking requires more scrutiny. The same data can be presented in very different ways depending on the use case. For this reason, Revere uses a standardized rating system to equip allocators with the tools to evaluate funds.<br /><br />- At the median, first funds do reasonably well, second funds do worse than the first, but third funds shoot up in terms of performance.<br /><br />- Revere looks at data, process, and repeatability when they are evaluating managers. They consider sourcing, qualifying deals, winning deals, value add, as well as whether firms stick to their stated portfolio construction.<br /><br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.<br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

00:48:35

Investing Across Cycles, Tech Transformation, and Partnering Effectively with Entrepreneurs with Jon Korngold

Jon Korngold joins Olga Serhiyevich, Head of Investor Relations, on this episode. Jon is the Global Head of Blackstone Growth (BXG) and Co-Head of Technology Investing at Blackstone. Prior to joining Blackstone, Jon was Head of General Atlantic’s Global Financial Services and Healthcare sectors.<br /><br />Takeaways:<br /><br />- The vast reach of Blackstone, as one of the biggest asset managers in the world, allows them to apply their huge base of operational infrastructure to “make the winning company, not just find the winning company.”<br /><br />- Entrepreneurs have accepted that we are not going back to 2021 valuations. There will be many casualties on the road ahead. Jon worries that VCs are doing certain complex deals to protect their marks and that there will be a number of zombie portfolios coming out in the next few years.<br /><br />- The correction has a silver lining: lots of tech transformation comes out of a downturn. This is a healthy thing, like a brush fire in a forest. Also, startups have more and more talent available to them as the cost of leaving an existing job has never been lower.<br /><br />- When Jon meets founders he pays attention to how often they let the people around them speak. Great founders are humble and surround themselves with people who challenge their thinking.<br /><br />- Jon recommends that people spend time working and living abroad if they can. He says that his time spent overseas has informed his thinking on markets and given him a competitive advantage at work.<br /><br />- The sign of a good board member is that they never show up to a board meeting and learn something they didn’t already know. They sit on a low number of boards, are actively keeping up to date on the company, and are deeply involved with the company. <br /><br />Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform.<br /><br />Check us out on the web at www.villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.<br /><br />Want to get updates from us? Subscribe to get a peek inside the Village. We’ll send you reading recommendations, exclusive event invites, and commentary on the latest happenings in Silicon Valley. www.villageglobal.vc/signup

00:46:49