Seed to Scale Eniac Ventures

Renaud Visage, cofounder and CTO of Eventbrite, the leading global ticketing and event technology platform.  In the episode Renaud talks with Hadley about moving to San Francisco, joining his first startup and the early days of starting Eventbrite.  Renaud details his experience when the financial crisis hit in 2008, which we feel will be especially useful for founders to consider when the next downturn happens.  

Renaud speaks to his experience spending time in both the US and European tech ecosystems.  

Finally, in the lighting round Renaud talks about why most startups fail, his interest in the travel and AR sectors, what he’d like to see changed in venture capital and his favorite tech company.

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Josh Kopelman, Founder and Partner at First Round Capital, a seed-stage venture firm that has invested in some of the biggest names, including Uber, Square and Flatiron Health. First Round aims to help early-stage companies build a strong product-market fit and offers some of the industry’s first and best tools from their custom-built software to sharing their deep industry insight with their publication First Round Review.

In this episode, Josh speaks with Eniac Co-founding Partner Nihal Mehta on his journey from being one of the first students at Penn to get an email address to how he leveraged his early experience on the Internet to founding his first three companies - Infonautics, Half.com, and TurnTide. Josh then seized the opportunity to start First Round with Chris Fralic and Rob Hayes when the cost to start a company was decreasing, but the average venture firm tripled in size. 

Josh speaks to his advantage of living in Philadelphia, why they are placing big bets in New York and his perspective why it has never been easier to build a company outside of Silicon Valley. He also addresses scaling teams and the regional talent gap.

He speaks to why First Round operates like a startup, continuing to improve and find new products that better serve their founders and community. He also shares why their fund size has remained consistent and how they view fund model vs fund size.

Josh also shares why they left Twitter, DropBox, and Zynga on the table.

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Jake Saper, Partner at Emergence Capital, a leading venture capital firm focused on world-changing enterprise cloud technology, including Salesforce, SalesLoft, Veeva, and Zoom. Jake serves on the boards of Textio, Guru, Drishti, and DroneDeploy. 

In this episode, Jake speaks with Eniac Co-founding GP Tim Young about the firm’s thesis on Coaching Networks and how they believe the under-explored side of machine learning is how to apply that same technology not just to automate tasks away, but to help augment workers that remain and make them better at their jobs.

Jake also sheds light on a very important topic for all seed-stage founders and investors - something he and Tim Young refer to as Series A Signaling Effect. He breaks down his belief and experience on why founders should not take Series A funds during Seed and if so, all the ways it can impact the round, the board and the subsequent investments.

Jake also shares his experience supporting the firm’s investment in Zoom and how he has been humbled by Eric Yuan’s incredible vision and leadership. He even shares a story about how Emergence found some surprising results when they dug through the company’s data.

He also talks about how his entrepreneurial family and early experience operating in India has inspired his love of venture and supporting founders. He also speaks to his deep relationships with his founders, his time allocation and how he aims to balance work.

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Rich Wong is a General Partner at Accel, a global venture capital and growth equity firm. Rich’s investment focus is on software, internet services, and mobile technologies and he currently serves on the Boards of Atlassian, Checkr, Instabug, Osmo, Qwilt, ServiceChannel, Tune and UiPath. 

In this episode, Rich speaks with Eniac Founding General Partner Nihal Mehta on his thesis of picks and shovels and why he placed early bets across mobile with Admob and MoPub.

Rich shares his experience supporting Accel’s investments in Facebook and Slack as well as why he believes the reigning technology companies today are not immune to another generational disruption. He also speaks to opportunities in enterprise why companies are expanding globally faster than ever before. 

As an investor in UiPath, Rich speaks to Enterprise Automation and why with the increasing pressure for companies to be digital-first it has become one of the fastest-growing industries.

He also talks family; The lessons of grit instilled in him by his immigrant parents as well as his approach to his own family and finding balance between being there for his children and the CEOs during critical moments.

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Beezer Clarkson is the Managing Director at Sapphire Ventures, leading Sapphire Partners‘ investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago and has held various direct and indirect venture investment roles, including Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide, as well as operational roles in software business development.



In this episode, Beezer speaks with Eniac Partner Nihal Mehta on the genesis of OpenLP, a community effort she spearheaded to foster greater understanding in the entrepreneur-to-LP tech ecosystem, as well as the fundamental role of an LP in venture, their relationship to partners and how they want to ensure they are bringing value to the funds beyond just capital.



Beezer also discusses the recent string of IPOs and her perspective on how it impacts the ecosystem, as well as how staying private longer impacts employees and how equity/liquidity is viewed.



She also gives advice to funds just starting out - what she looks for, expectations and opportunities.



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Brian Feinstein is a partner at Bessemer Ventures. Since joining in 2008, has focused on investments in early and growth-stage vertical SaaS, including Procore, Restaurant365, and LiveAuctioneers, as well as supported the firm's investment in Mindbody. Brian is interested in founders who are shaping their industries outside of the Silicon Valley mold. 



In this episode Brian sits down with Tim Young, a founding partner at Eniac Ventures, to discuss Bessemer’s thesis around vertical SaaS and their top-down strategy for identifying investments. He digs into how they map out industries by GDP, IT spend and the criteria they look for within a sector.



As a lead investor in Procore - the de facto leader of construction software now valued at more than $3 billion dollars after their December 2018 funding round - Brian discusses how they identified the construction sector and what led them to invest in the company’s Series D. 



Brian also speaks to the fund's interest in SaaS for the public sector. He points out that it is one of the largest verticals from an IT spend perspective and has historically lacked software innovation, but he is optimistic for big changes. 



He also addresses how machine learning with the ability to make predictions and detect anomalies can be a powerful driver in vertical markets.



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@BessemerVP

@timy0ung

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