On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:

• David Goldberg
• Ben Sun
• Tsune Shirota
• Amy Nauiokas

Each investor describes the most unusual situation or pitch that they've encountered as an investor.

Did you miss our guest's full-length episodes?

David Goldberg Episode #272

Ben Sun Episode #287

Tsune Shirota Episode #288

Amy Nauiokas Episode #286

For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!

Jonathan Hung of Unicorn Venture Partners joins Nick to discuss Why Sales Cycle Determines Success, the Challenges of International Deal Diligence, and Fractional Hiring in a Post COVID World. In this episode we cover:

• Jonathan's background and path to VC
• The launch of Unicorn Venture Partners
• The thesis at Unicorn Venture Partners
• Deal volume Unicorn Venture Partners is doing each year
• Jonathan's role as Senior Venture Partner and head of due diligence at Expert Dojo
• Thesis and workings of Expert Dojo
• What due diligence entails when targeting companies all across the world and at super early stages
• How to deal with teams that have different cultural backgrounds when trying to get the psychology of the team and figure out if it's a team that has the ambition and the capability to win and win big
• Jonathan's role as an LP in over 22 VC funds and the common success factors across those funds?
• Things that funds do that lend themselves well to success and or failure
• How Jonathan's decision process is different on the fund side versus the startup side
• Generally underappreciated metrics that are critical to assess before making an angel or pre-seed investment
• How to help founders recruit talent and any tips or advice for startups out there to help their portfolio increase their talent without just hiring recruiters
• Best approach to networking
• When is it best not to take VC money and just build a great business model?
• Buyer or seller on NFTs?
• Jonathan's quick take on SPACs versus Direct Listings versus Traditional IPO.
• If Jonathan thinks valuations are at an all-time high?
• Out of the top 10 most valuable companies, five years from now, Jonathan's three that are currently in the top 10 and won't be in the top 10.
• What do you know, you need to get better at?
• What's the best way for listeners to connect with Jonathan and follow along with his investment efforts.

Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:

• Brendan Wallace
• Tim Guleri
• Dharmesh Thakker
• Brian Hirsch

Each investor illustrates a critical lesson learned about startup investing and how it's changed their approach.

Did you miss our guest's full length episodes?

Brendan Wallace Episode #276

Tim Guleri Episode #267

Dharmesh Thakker Episode #283

Brian Hirsch Episode #265

For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!

Dayna Grayson & Rachel Holt of Construct Capital joins Nick to discuss Competing with Amazon, Combatting 60% Talent Attrition, and Driving Transformation of Foundational Industries. In this episode we cover:

• Can you each give us the two-minute background and path to VC?
• What is the thesis at Construct?
• How do you define series A? 
• Is there a geographic scope in which you'll invest?
• Why have you chosen to focus on these sectors and categories?
• How have you seen the current environment issues affect sales cycles and velocity over the past year?
• How do you deal with inertia, slow sales cycles, and tech aversion amongst these buyer and user groups?
• Is there any concern that the skills gap will broaden over time?
• Will capital intensity, timing of financing rounds, timing to exit, size/scale of exits, valuation multiples, etc. look different for a legacy industry portfolio vs. a standard SV SaaS portfolio?
• Investment philosophy has shifted from being much more decision-maker focus and top-down startups versus more user bottom-up focus solutions. Is that something that's part of your lens or is it case by case, depending on the startup?
• There seems to be a lot more VCs/Investors focused in these spaces, so why the need for Construct in this market where so much capital is flowing?
• What was it like pitching this narrative in the thesis?
• You raised your inaugural fund during the pandemic — what did you learn from that experience?
• There are two different philosophies on firm building. One approach is more of an independent/individual sport, the other a team sport. Which do you employ?
• If one of you wants to do the deal and the other thinks it's not a good way to deploy capital, what happens in that circumstance?
• How do you think about scaling your efforts and getting more leverage out of your time?
• What's the post-investment relationship with the founders look like at Construct?
• What do you know, you need to get better at?
• What's the best way for listeners to connect with each of you and follow along with Construct?

Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:

• Nikhil Basu Trivedi
• Janet Bannister
• Sach Chitnis
• Guy Perelmuter

Each investor discusses sectors, drivers and/or trends that may have significant impact in the future and are potentially positioned for outsized-returns.

Did you miss our guests full length episodes?

Nikhil Basu Trivedi Episode #246

Janet Bannister Episode #255

Sach Chitnis Episode #269

Guy Perelmuter Episode #280

For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!

Brian Luerssen of Long Jump joins Nick to discuss The Rise of Low-Code/No-Code, How Tech is Changing Developer Roles, and the Launch of Founder-Led Venture Funds. In this episode we cover:

• Walk us through your background and path to Draftbit.
• Tell us about the customer market and who you're targeting with Draftbit.
• Are there good comps or parallels in the non-mobile space?
• Will the user of Draftbit still be a developer, or do you have cases where it's the application product manager or others?
• Is it just web apps and native apps covering the spectrum?
• There's this principled group of developers, that don't want to use App builders. They want to build the ground up themselves. How do you deal with that objection?
• Have you guys achieved product-market fit? Yes or no? 
• What's the biggest challenge to getting product-market fit and hitting huge growth numbers?
• Where do you go now? How do you see the business evolve? What's the end-all large market opportunity for Draftbit?
• Does it stay a platform that you build on and it exports code or does it end up becoming kind of its own place you build within, like a WordPress, or maybe even a Webflow?
• Any thoughts or advice for founders out there that are early-stage builders taking on something ambitious?
• Tell us about the origin story of Long Jump and why was this fund founded?
• So $100k, across the board for all investments is or is there some discretion to move up or down?
• Is this kind of like an application accelerator program?
• What happens if you come upon an opportunity where they're raising an early round. It's coming together quickly. It's something that hits home with one of the GPs. Can you jump into that or does it have to go through your formalized process?
• I imagine a lot of the LPs are founders, former founders that have been through this. Is that a bad assumption?
• Do you have some back office or operations support or somebody that's kind of focused on connecting these dots?
• How have you thought about other established models and kind of taken best practices?
• Why not direct them to an accelerator program?
• How do you handle the criticism from investors that claim you should focus on the business Draftbit and not running a fund?
• What is the future look like for Long Jump?
• YC vs TechStars. Go.
• I'm curious as YC is scaling, I think it's like 700 companies a year now, the density and power of the network, is it the same as it once was? I don't know, does the signal decline or not?
• Have they architected a hub and spoke network or a mesh network? Can the spokes or the nodes get a lot of value out of each other as it expands, or is it overly reliant on the hub for value?
• I'd be curious to get your comparison advantages, disadvantages, to the Bay Area versus a second-tier ecosystem and how you've seen that change over time.
• What do you know, you need to get better at?
• What's the best way for the founders out there to get in touch with Long Jump? What are you looking for? What should they come with to get accepted?

Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:

• Ed Sim
• Lanham Napier
• McKeever “Mac” Conwell II
• Mike Smerklo

Each investor highlights a situation where they decided not to invest, why they passed, and how it played out.

Did you miss our guests' full-length episodes?

Ed Sim Episode #266

Lanham Napier Episode #248

McKeever “Mac” Conwell II Episode #277

Mike Smerklo Episode #278

For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!

Ali Tamaseb of DCVC joins Nick to discuss Data on the Key Traits of Billion-Dollar Startups with the Author of Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups. In this episode we cover:

• Founders' history of building
• Second-time founders and their larger chance of being unicorns
• Super Founders bouncing to different industries isn't detrimental to their success
• Having domain experience does not correlate to success
• How non/technical founders partner with the same
• How proxy metrics do not define a good founder
• Painkiller or Vitamin Pill? Which holds success?
• How geography may be a dying metric for success
• How Super Founders tend to secure investment even in the opening rounds
• Which type of competition defines the unicorn
• Timing remains the most difficult thing to crack

Missed a recent episode? Go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!

On this special segment of The Full Ratchet, the following Investors are featured:

• Farooq Abbasi
• Ty Findley
• Lo Toney
• Monique Woodard

Each investor discusses a portfolio company that did not survive and why it was that they failed.

Did you miss our guests' full-length episodes?

Farooq Abbasi Episode #251

Ty Findley Episode #250

Lo Toney Episode #249

Monique Woodard Episode #273

For other great episodes, go to The Full Ratchet blog and catch up! Also, follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter.

The host of The Full Ratchet is Nick Moran, General Partner of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in the exceptions.

To learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our Website and LinkedIn and be sure to follow us on Twitter.

Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and tell us about your business. We’ll send a list of possible investors right to your email’s InBox!