Venture Studio with
David Lerner
Two-Part Interview on Venture Episodes 33 and 34
Ep33 Part 1 “The hard part’s not writing the check. The hard part is getting a bigger check back at the end.” Listen Here
This week’s guest is Jerry Neumann ’88, ’90SEAS, early stage angel investor at Neu Venture Capital and longtime New York VC. Neu invests in seed-stage companies developing cutting-edge technologies for use in large markets. Neu makes five or six new investments a year and only invest in companies where they can make a difference.
Ep34 Part 2 with Jerry Neumann Listen Here
Remember – all of our shows are available on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher, TuneIn and Google Play. Make sure to subscribe on iTunes and follow us on twitter @venturestudio.
__________________________________________________________________________
October 20, 2016
Listen here.
This week, Dave interviews Paul Martino, founder and General Partner at Bullpen Capital, one of the pioneers in post-seed round funding.
Remember to subscribe to Venture Studio on iTunes so you never miss an episode. As always, you can find us on twitter @VentureStudio and you can listen to prior episodes at venturestudio.org or on iTunes, Soundcloud, Stitcher or TuneIn.
Paul founded Bullpen in 2010 and has led several of its key investments including FanDuel, the leader in daily fantasy sports. Prior to starting Bullpen Capital, Paul was the founder of four companies and an active angel investor in companies such as Zynga, TubeMogul, uDemy, and PayNearMe.
In today’s episode, Paul discusses how the herd mentality of most venture investors presented a huge opportunity for Bullpen, how to effectively manage a board and what its like to be coached by Bill Campbell.
__________________________________________________________________
David Lerner’s Blog
Updated June 9, 2016
Resilience
Most of the readers of this blog know by now the importance I place on resilience as a quality that entrepreneurs need to possess. I’m always preaching it to my students at Columbia and to any founders I mentor. I remind them too, that no one can be resilient if they are working on something they do not care deeply about. It is simply not something one can manufacture.
As an investor I’m of course always trying to determine how resilient founders are before I even consider investing- in fact I go so far as to call my investment vehicle Rugged Ventures™ so that people have an idea of the type of founders I’m looking for. I’ve also written here about just how much I relate to the “war-time” CEO paradigm Ben Horowitz described in his terrific book as a result of my own experiences as a founder. And yet when I talk about this quality- I always try to talk about it in the larger context of “life” – not just in the context of startups.
I winced many times when I read Ben’s book. I think that’s why I learned so much from it. He suffered immensely and took one battering after another. And endured.
And I winced earlier this week also, much moreso- when I learned of the passing of a personal hero of mine, the legendary Grandmaster Viktor Lvovich Korchnoi.
You may never have heard of him- but Korchnoi was a colossal figure who bestrode the stage of grandmaster chess throughout the 20th century and amazingly- well into the 21st. He took on and beat all of the greatest players in the world from as far back as Levenfish, who was born in 1889, to the current world champion, Magnus Carlsen, who was born 101 years later in 1990. He maintained this high performance level well into his 80’s, whereas most grandmasters see their skills begin to recede in their 40’s. He was the a four-time champion of the Soviet Union, played in ten Candidates tournaments, qualifying to play for the World Championship final twice, and defeated nine world champions multiple times during his life. His achievements in chess were simply spectacular.
Yet he is also known as perhaps the strongest player in world history never to be world champion. His life and career were full of bitter and devastating disappointments, immense sacrifices, enormous suffering and endless struggle. Read More
Past Entries
Past Entry: February 11, 2016
The Woman Who Runs the
Largest Seed Fund in World History
I learned a lot from my recent conversation with Ming Yeh. Ming is a long-time veteran of venture capital and is now co-founder and managing partner of CSC Upshot Ventures, the largest fund dedicated to financing seed-stage startups, ever.
This launch was a big deal indeed. CSC Upshot is a $400MM venture fund created to invest primarily in US seed-stage technology startups via AngelList. It’s biggest LP is CSC Group, one of China’s 3 largest private equity firms, with $12B under management.
Now that the words “$400MM” and “AngelList” have sunk in, lets dissect this a bit. Read more.
Past Entry: Dave Lerner’s Blog
August, 2015 focus: “Wartime CEO”
Dave was appointed Director of Entrepreneurship at Columbia University after seven years running Columbia’s Venture Lab where he spun out 70+ technology startups based on university research. He is also an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship at Columbia Business School where he teaches the Greenhouse Accelerator Program and the Launch Your Startup class.
By background he’s an entrepreneur (2 exits) and angel investor in 50+ companies. His personal blog, www.davelerner.com/blog, explores the worlds of university entrepreneurship, angel/venture investing, and startups and he’s a frequent contributor to many other publications, including Business Insider, whose SAI group recently named him both one of the “top 100 most influential New Yorkers in the digital business community” and “one of NYC’s top 100 early stage investors”.
Dave serves as a mentor at TechStars and serves on the Board of New York Tech Meetup .