The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Why You Should Not Invest From Patterns, Why No Good Business Was Built As An Analogy Of Another & Why The Rise Of The 'Celebrity Investor' Is Concerning with Emily Melton, Partner @ DFJ
11 Jan 2017
Emily Melton is partner at DFJ, where she focuses on consumer and mobile technology, as well as healthcare technologies and marketplaces. Emily has made investments in the likes of BetterUp, Elation Health, Livongo, Redfin, Shift, and Wellframe. Early in Emily's career, she sourced investments in Box (NYSE: BOX), Meebo (Google), Kudo (Google), RichRelevance, and Flux (MTV Networks). She was also an advisor to Pulse Network (LinkedIn), Healthtap, and Poshmark. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Emily made her way into the wonderful world of VC following her meeting with Tim Draper? 2.) How does Emily view the importance of pattern recognition? Why does Emily believe that you should not invest from patterns? What is the difference between a pattern and an investing fad? 3.) Why does Emily hate analogies? Why does she believe it is simplistic thinking? How can this be mitigated for startup founders in describing their company? 4.) How does Emily view the portfolio approach to risk in venture? What questions need to be asked to determine the potential outcome of the business? 5.) Why does Emily get concerned by the rise of the 'celebrity investor'? How can investors build their brand in the proliferated world of early stage startup investing? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Emily’s Fave Book: Mindset by Carol Dweck, A Theory of Justice by John Rawls Emily’s Most Recent Investment: BetterUp As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner’s sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook. It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don’t have to. It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC
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