20VC: Semil Shah on Why The Most Important Thing An Investor Can Do Is Attract Follow On & The Fundamentals of VC Branding

episode

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch not yet transcribed

▲ 0

Transcript

This episode hasn't been transcribed yet Upvotes decide what gets transcribed next — 0 so far. Sign in to upvote

More from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: $1BN ARR in 18 Months; The Untold Story of Higgsfield | Spending $4M Per Month on Models | Why Moats in AI are BS | Scaling a Content Team to 150 People with Alex Mashrabov 1h 9m · 28 Sep 2026

20VC: Five Predictions for a World of Agents | The Ads Business Model Will Die | Biggest Lessons from Working with Elon Musk at Twitter with Parag Agrawal, Parallel 56 min · 26 Sep 2026

20VC: Meta's Muse Hits No. 1. ChatGPT Finally Has a Rival | Menlo Sounds the AI Bubble Alarm | Factory Triples Its Valuation to $5 Billion | Keith Rabois vs Airwallex: Who is Right? | Crusoe's $3.9 Billion Round. Is the Data Centre Trade Overheating? 1h 20m · 24 Sep 2026

20VC: Why AI Cannot Replace Humans in Enterprise | Why Work Processes Not Models Will Be The Most Valuable Asset in AI | Why Europe Has Lost and Building in the US vs EU with Daniel Dines, UiPath 1h 11m · 21 Sep 2026

20VC: "Anti-Data Centres is a Chinese Psyop" | How Many Planned Data Centers Will Actually Get Built? | Is Energy AI's Biggest Bottleneck? With Thomas Sohmers, Co-Founder @ Positron 1h 11m · 19 Sep 2026

20VC: Why "Pacing the Frontier" is BS | Instinct Raising $1BN at $10BN & Meta Launches Muse | Miro Sells for $1.35BN After a $17.5BN Valuation | Mistral Raises €3BN & Could Sam Bankman-Fried Win His Freedom? 1h 15m · 17 Sep 2026

All episodes from The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch →

Report any issue

Source

Recorded25 Jul 2016

Publisherthetwentyminutevc.libsyn.com ↗

Handlerec:352253

Show notes

Semil Shah is the founder of Haystack, an early stage investment firm now investing out of it’s third fund, with previous investments being Instacart, DoorDash, Managed by Q. In the past he has also been a consultant to some of the leading funds in the valley including the likes of Kleiner Perkins, DFJ, General Catalyst and more. If that was not enough, Shah also has an extensive career in media having been a contributor for both TechCrunch and the Harvard Business Review in the past. Due to all of this Shah was listed by Marc Andreesen as one of his '55 Unknown Rockstars in Tech'. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Semil made his way into VC? How did he come to create Haystack? 2.) What were the challenges and concerns for Semil in raising and establishing his own fund? 3.) Question from Michelle Tandler: How does Semil send deals through to Series A? What is his 'cool' process? What are the commonalities of those that make it to Series A and those that do not? 4.) How has Semil approached the aspect of personal VC branding? How does he evaluate the rise of the personal VC brand in the last few years? 5.) Why does Semil believe he is not 'founder friendly' in the conventional sense? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Semil’s Fave Book: Burmese Days by George Orwell Semil’s Most Recent Investment: AquaCloud As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Semil on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here! This episode was brought to you by DesignCrowd, the online marketplace for custom graphic, logo and web design that helps startups, entrepreneurs, web developers and agencies outsource design projects to designers from around the world. How Does It Work? Once you have launched your brief, designers will begin submitting quality designs for you to review. With some constructive feedback, you can quickly generate a large gallery of designs that really do fit your needs. You can have exactly what you need within just three days. Once you have selected your favourite design, you will be sent all the files you require to update your branding. If you don’t like any of the submitted designs, then DesignCrowd offers a money back guarantee. So checkout designcrowd.com/VC and enter the promo code VC100 to get an astonishing $100 off your next project.

Ask this episode

“What did the council decide on item 42?” — answered with the speaker and the moment.