BRAVE: How VCs Actually Think About Founders, Unicorns & Growth - E658
episode
BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
20 min
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 16 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the overall framework VCs use to evaluate founders and startups?
From a judgment perspective, it was a terrible product. But from a founder perspective, I knew what they were doing, which was they'd rather just release a product that is good enough, release it to the market, try to sell it to me, and if I don't like it, they're gonna change the product over and over again. And that's something to be thoughtful about, which is a judging mindset versus a founder mindset. Welcome to Brave. Learn from Southeast Asia's best tech leaders. Build the future, learn from our past, and stay human in between. No BS on success. I'm Jeremy O, venture capitalist, Sarah founder, Harvard MBA, science fiction nerd, and dad of two daughters. Every week, we debate startup news, interview change makers, answer listener questions, and share personal insights.
Join our movement of over 40,000 members and get transcripts, resources, and community at www.bravesea.com. Stay well and stay brave. But today we'll be talking about the deal making component, failed patterns, and the value addition component, how VCs believe that they can actually help these companies achieve those things. And so it's important for us to be thoughtful about some of this that we're thinking about. Every great VC has to source great companies, attract them, be compelling, then they'll select their company. We'll eventually talk about them also having to do the deal making necessary to achieve it, supporting them, creating that value over time, and very much eventually exiting. uh are selling their stake to realize those perceives and issue them to the LPs.
You know, we talked about how at the end of the day, when a VC meets a startup, the question is, will you become a unicorn in ten years? Is there a way for you to double this year, double your next year and so forth? This morning I was looking at another company, strong founder. Great AI space. After some consideration, we felt like the growth rate wasn't there historically, but we also didn't really believe that it could accelerate faster. We eventually decided to say no, even though I have many friends who have already invested or will continue to invest in this person. Obviously, it's a difficult conversation, but for us we just couldn't see how the differentiation was against the other AI startups.
I think the tricky part is that VCs are looking for founders that will build that unicorn over the next 10 years. We look at Mark Zuckerberg. We look at the various founders today and we look at how amazing they are, and they seem like no-brainers, right? Because oh, it's an MIT dropout. And Therefore he did this and that these incredible stories that happen. But these are stories looking back.
How do VCs compare a founder’s current abilities with their long‑term potential?
The tricky part is they look forward in the future. Uh one hundred MIT dropouts. Which one of them will be the one that succeeds? Because most of them are dropping out to build startups. I think there's a tricky component, which is there's a gap between who they are today versus their ability to build that Unicorn in the next 10 years. And that's something that is both a function of time, their grid, their perseverance, perhaps the support of the VC, perhaps luck, perhaps macro timing. So all those things play a role with that. And so The tricky part is that again, how do you choose that unicorn founder out of the 40 top founders who were all scrambling for that VC check? For example, you look at the founder of Canva.
She very much was from Australia at that point of time. At that point of time, there were very few Australian startups that were ever unicorns. It was quite rare for them to also move to Silicon Daddy to fundraise. And you took some contrarian bets by those people. to eventually invest in what would become Canva today. Now obviously it's a little bit more known. So there are many American and regional funds that are looking at Australia and New Zealand startups. But because people are looking at those startups, then perhaps some of the information asymmetry has been arbitraged away, for example, to the detriment of some VCs, for example.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the overall framework VCs use to evaluate founders and startups?
0:00–2:29
2
How do VCs compare a founder’s current abilities with their long‑term potential?
2:29–4:06
3
Why is learning speed considered a decisive competitive advantage for startups?
4:06–6:03
4
How can a seemingly non‑problem become the seed of a successful startup?
6:03–7:58
5
What steps do founders need to take to commercialize breakthrough scientific tech?
7:58–9:51
6
Why does the product often stay the same while the target customer changes?
9:51–14:04
7
What are the two main VC mind‑sets (hero founder vs. business fundamentals) and how do they differ?
14:04–17:10
8
How do network effects, scale and unit economics drive VC decisions on growth?
17:10–20:40
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from BRAVE Southeast Asia Tech: Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Thailand & Malaysia Startups, Founders & Venture Capital VC (English)
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