Top 5 Podcasts to Understand How VCs Make Decisions
Contrary to popular belief, raising venture capital is not easy. With big money flowing into lucrative startups, it is often easy to think that VCs are sitting with their checkbook ready to sign a check for any founder that walks in through their doors. But that is not the case. Even startups with revolutionary business ideas that have later gone on to become billion-dollar businesses, faced difficulties raising venture capital in their early days.
Take Airbnb for example. Today, Airbnb is valued at $18 billion after securing $1 billion recently. The founders admit that they were rejected by more than 15 investors when they started raising capital in 2008.
So why is it hard to raise venture capital? What are the things that investors look at before investing in startups? No matter how good the business idea is, there are several things that go into deciding the fate of an investment pitch. Every investor has their own investment thesis.
We have curated a list of podcasts that provide a peek inside the mind of a VC: how they invest, what things matter to them, and more. If you’re someone looking to understand more about venture capital, you might want to check these podcasts!
How VCs Do Due Diligence: Metrics and Team with CARMAN CHAN, Founder & Managing Partner of Click Ventures
A veteran in the technology industry, Carman Chan is the Founder and Managing Partner of Click Ventures who has successfully invested in global tech companies including the likes of Spotify and Meetup.
Due diligence is an important part of every investor’s checklist and entrepreneurs looking for funding cannot avoid it. As the due diligence process is a make-or-break moment, it makes it all the more necessary for founders to make sure their business can stand the due diligence test.
But what do VCs typically look for in a company while conducting due diligence? In this episode, Chan shares her insights on how Click Ventures evaluates traction, team, product, as well as what founders should have prepared for investors, the proper plan for companies to work on and lastly the differences in Asia versus the West regarding due diligence.
This episode is highly recommended to any founders wanting to understand how due diligence works.
Listen to this podcast here
How to Make Yourself Visible for Exits with BENJAMIN JOFFE, Partner at HAX
95% of exits are acquisitions rather than IPO. Also, nearly half of them are before Series B.
In this episode, Benjamin Joffe, who is a partner at the leading global hardware accelerator HAX and has made nearly a thousand angel investments, shares his insights about exits. Here you can find out the big differences between exits in China and exits in the rest of the world, how Chinese companies develop the acquisition playbook globally and also for entrepreneurs, how you can plan your exits and the better way to integrate yourself into another corporate body.
Listen to this podcast here
How to Understand Venture Capital in China, with VICTOR CHAO, Partner at SAIF
Victor Chao is the Partner of the RMB fund at SAIF, a leading private equity firm in China. Victor has lived and worked all over the world and brings his global perspective to the VC space.
In this episode, Victor covers some key differences between Venture Capital in China and Venture Capital in the US. He shares his insights on what factors they consider, how the innovation and landscape differ in these countries and how a slowdown in VC funding affects entrepreneurs.
Listen to this podcast here
How Blockchain VCs Do Due Diligence, with ALY MADHAVJI and MANSOOR MADHAVJI, Partners at Blockchain Founders Fund
For a relatively new technology, Blockchain-based projects have risen exponentially. And while retail investors showed early interest, VCs and institutional investors have also got in on the action. With their unique skillset, VCs offer more resources apart from financial ones than retail investors and hence, it is highly pertinent for blockchain startups to understand how VCs in the blockchain space conduct due diligence.
In this episode, Aly and Mansoor, founders of Blockchain Founders Fund, discuss their vetting process and the importance of transparency and trust to them. They also touch upon how product evaluation is done in blockchain companies, measuring traction and evaluating analytics, especially for early-stage projects.
Listen to this podcast here
How VCs Invest in Risks, with PETER MAO, Co-founder of Panda Capital
Peter Mao is Co-founder and Partner at Panda Capital. During his over 12-year experience in the venture capital firms, he has been part of the investment team behind companies like Xiaomi and more recently Mobike, a bike-sharing company where he led Series B and eventually exited it at USD 2.7billion within just 18 months.
In this episode, Peter talks about Panda Capital’s three preferred risky areas for investment, their data-driven investment approach, and how he evaluates both external factors (e.g. market) and internal ones (e.g. team) during the Due Diligence process. He also shares the most common deal-breakers he has seen in the past for Series A companies. We also learn from him the business metric he cares most about and what makes his investment strategy at Panda Capital is different from other VCs.
Listen to this podcast here
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