148. New Founders, New Stages, New Offerings-- The Only Constant in Venture is Change (Vic Pascucci)

Vic Pascucci of Lightbank joins Nick to discuss New Founders, New Stages, New Offerings-- The Only Constant in Venture is Change. In this episode, we cover:

• Where'd you get your start in venture and how'd your path lead to Lightbank?
• Can you walk us through the Lightbank backstory... before you joined?
• What's the current thesis and investment focus for the firm?
• How active a role do you play with portfolio companies?
• What, if anything, do you think the team at Lightbank can do a better job of going forward?
• Do you think your approach is different than Eric and Brad's?
• Recently spoke w/ Semil Shah about the multiple stages, within seed... pre-seed, seed, inst seed, post seed, seed extension. WTF is going on with the seed round?
• There's been an explosion of seed funds... do you think this is a problem? Is there a bubble at seed or, w/ the way barriers to startup have come down, is the influx of capital warranted?
• I'm noticing entrepreneurs moving away from SAFEs and Convertibles... are you seeing the same? If so, why do you think that's the case?
• How have you seen startup capital raises change over time and do you think it's moving in the right direction?
• What should every founder be thinking about, during a fundraise, that most often they're not even considering?
• Are you seeing a difference in the makeup of founding teams and their capabilities? From personal experience, I certainly notice a difference in the style and approach of a early-20's tech founder vs. a mid-30s founder w/ domain knowledge.
• So, you're a blockchain guy... I see you on various blockchain boards and I know that you invested in Coinbase in 2015... and, on the record, you were very bullish on cryptocurrency's at the time, when many were not. But what's the deal w/ all these token offerings and ICOs? I'm a relative novice here... can you explain to me what's going on and where you see it going?

 

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