20 VC: David Tisch @ Box Group on The Future of Consumer Mobile, Developing Pattern Recognition and FOMO

David Tisch is the Managing Partner of BoxGroup, one of New York most prolific seed investors with investments in over 120 seed-stage technology companies including Vine, Sunrise Calendar, Warby Parker, Harry’s, Oscar, Meerkat, and Zady. As of 2014, David is also the Co-Founder of Spring, an app that allows the worlds best brands to sell directly to consumers on mobile, with his brother Alan who is the CEO. Prior to Box and Spring, David co-founded TechStars NYC, and was named to NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s Advisory Council on Technology. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here! Click To Play In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How David made his way into the world of startups and investing? 2.) Having started Box in 2008, how has David seen the NY venture and startup scene develop over the last years? Matt Hartman @ Betaworks: how has that impacted the type of investments you make? Has it changed your thesis, theme, or any other aspect of how you invest? Kanyi Maqubela @ Collaborative: Does an ecosystem need anchor companies to be great? What are New York's anchor companies? 3.) What is the vision with Box? Is this a fund that lasts through the ages? Last year I heard you made 3 hires, is this a sign of a desire to create the NYC fund? At Box you have a weighting towards mobile consumer tech, how do you respond to Fred Wilson’s post about the mobile downtown and the difficulty in attaining and maintating traction for mobile apps? 4.) What was the motivation behind moving into the world of entrepreneurship with Spring? What aspects of Alan's and Box as a product has contributed to it’s massive success? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: David's Fave Productivity Tools: Captio David's Most Recent Investment: Nucleus: The Smart Home Wireless Intercom As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and David 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 Instagram here!

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  You're listening to the 20 Minute VC with your host, Harry Stebbings, and today we are returning stateside, and I'm so excited to introduce today's guest, someone I've looked up to and admired in the industry for the last few years now. Therefore, I'm thrilled to welcome David Tisch. Now, with David's incredible career, it's tough to think where to start. He's the managing partner of Box Group, one of New York's most prolific seed investment firms, with investments in over 120 seed-stage technology companies, including Vine, Sunrise Calendar, Warby Parker, Harry's, Oscar, Meerkat and Zedi. Now, for most people, running New York City's most active venture fund would be time-consuming

• 0:42Harry Stebbings?

  enough. Well, not for David. As of 2014, he co-founded Spring, an app that allows the world's best brands to sell directly to consumers on mobile, with his brother Alan, who is the CEO. And prior to Box and Spring, David co-founded Techstars New York City and was named to New York City Mayor Bloomberg's Advisory Council on Technology. And in today's episode, you'll hear some stats and analysis discussed regarding Box's incredible portfolio. And I'd like to say a huge thank you to Matamark for providing the data. And for all of you looking for some amazing reading material, definitely sign up for Matamark Daily by the fantastic @thinker on Twitter. It's absolutely awesome

• 1:23Harry Stebbings?

  and a must-read for us on a daily basis. But without further ado, I'm so delighted to welcome David Tish, managing partner at Box and co-founder at Spring.

• 1:43Harry Stebbings?

  David, a legend of the industry, I'm hugely excited to have you on the 20 Minute VC. Thanks so much for joining us today. Thanks so much for having me, Harry. I'm excited to be here. Now, can you get the ball rolling by telling us a little about you and how you made it into startups and the investing industry?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  Sure, I uh, I have a quirky story like most people probably do and um, I was a nerd my whole life and I, you know, able to code when I was a kid and then lost my way and sort of stopped programming computers but kept using the internet and so I've had an internet obsession. Uh, I think from, you know, the day I got my first modem which was a 2400 baud modem. Um, and, and used AOL and it sort of grew from there and so AOL for me was this, this entryway into the internet and uh, how the internet was just gonna take over the world in software and, you know, wherever that's, that's extended to. I never thought about it as an investor and so it was always about, you know, what's, what's the next thing? And so, in reality, that is the perspective that an investor has is trying to predict

• 2:42Speaker 01

  the future and guess what's next and uh, more importantly, be part of a, an amazing team that's building what's next. And so, I went to college, I ended up uh, going to law school, after that became a lawyer. After law school, I joined a real estate firm and I was sitting there for a year doing uh, real estate finance and, and mergers and acquisitions in New York. It wasn't what I felt, it wasn't what I wanted to do and uh, at the time in, in 2006, uh, the startup scene was super nascent in New York and just started going but uh, there was a lot of activity bubbling in the West and that was mainly uh, from Facebook, right? And, and the emergence of Facebook and uh, this next wave of internet startups was really at the, the sort of early stages. And I started reading and obsessing over it and I just dove in and uh, really took it on and ended up quitting uh, a sort

• 3:27Speaker 01

  of safer and uh, more normal career in, in real estate and, and law and left to try to start a company. I did that for about a year uh, with a friend. Uh, we sucked, we had no idea what we were doing. Uh, I ended up selling myself to this bigger company called KGB, uh, where I worked for about two years. Um, and really got to experiment. I got to experiment hiring and building and uh, working with engineering uh, organizations both at a, at a large scale from a bigger company and then at a very small scale from our small team that we were building, uh, separate from the organization. So, uh, I felt like I got a really good two years of learning there. Um, ended up leaving there and joining uh, Techstars and that happened about six months after I left KGB.

• 4:08Speaker 01

  And when I joined Techstars to launch and run the New York program, the job was an investor. And so at that point, I'm like, I'd made, I think, three or four angel investments before Techstars. And at that point, I said, okay, I'm signing up to join an organization where my role is an investor. So I better take it more seriously overall. And at that point, I sort of married myself to the VC world.

• 4:31Harry Stebbings?

  And then how have you seen the New York venture scene and the startup scene develop over the last few years since those Techstars days?

• 4:39Speaker 01

  You know, New York's my home. It's where I grew up. It's a place I'm gonna raise my kids and live for the rest of my life. And so I'm passionate about this city. It means a lot that just overall that I'm connected to this city. I think if you look at the startup scene here, it's incredible. There's a lot of activity. There's a lot of incredible people that are building things in New York. I think the negative of what's happened here in the past seven years is you haven't seen the true emergence of a destination company, right? We have incredible companies that are building incredible foundations. Here's some of when public already, some will go public in the future. But you don't have your Apple, Facebook, Google that was started here.

• 5:23Speaker 01

  That is this worldwide phenomenon that hundreds of people are applying to work at after college every year. And I think that what will cement this ecosystem is the emergence of that company. And so hopefully, over the next couple of years, you start seeing the emergence of a company that's that transformative, that can really capture the hearts and minds of a really big city with a lot of incredible activity going on in it.

• 5:49Harry Stebbings?

  And that was a very similar question from fellow NYC investor Kanye Macchibella, who said, does New York really need an anchor company with the blossoming startup scene? Does it really need it? And how has the lack of it affected the community?

• 6:05Speaker 01

  Does it need it? No, right? There's incredible companies being built here. So I think on one hand, you you could easily argue it doesn't need it. Does it want for it? I think so, right? A big company of that scale is an incredible magnet for talent. New York's already a magnet for talent. It's a magnet for the smartest people in the world who come here to win in every industry. So you have aggressive, incredible-thinking, creative talent here. What you don't have is destination technology talent that is is coming here in droves. And that's what a big anchor company does. It can recruit a thousand engineers here, two thousand, four thousand engineers to a city. Those engineers, those product people, those, you know, every level of organization experience starts leaving,

• 6:51Speaker 01

  and that helps the ecosystem here. What's what's been nice, and I think on one hand, good, on one hand, just sort of nice to have, that all the big companies from the West Coast have set up product offices here over the past five years. And I think that that might, on one hand, prevent the emergence of a standalone New York monster, but it but it also brings more talent here. And so you've seen what used to just be Google get joined by an incredible office at Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest, Uber all have offices here. And I think you're going to continue to see that trend happening as well.

• 7:26Harry Stebbings?

  And do you think it's just a matter of time before that rocket ship emerges from New York? Or is there something that needs to happen within the ecosystem, do you think?

• 7:33Speaker 01

  I don't think there's anything systematic. I think, you know, these are once-in-a-a couple-decade-style companies. So it's it's insane to expect it to happen or assume it's just going to happen. I think on one hand, you can focus on this, right, and and hope and expect it to happen. On the other hand, you can celebrate what the city has, which is incredible companies being built across such a diverse amount of industries. You see technology penetrating so many different components of what used to be the core New York industries, right? Finance, fashion, publishing, media. These are industries that are deeply disrupted by technology only in the past handful of years. And then you see, you know, retail and even just

• 8:15Speaker 01

  The way the city works, you're seeing this this landscape be a a test case for new ways of running a city, for new technologies that can penetrate what clearly is a global shift towards urban environments. And I think that that's a powerful differentiator that New York's able to to bring to the table that, you know, other cities, the breadth and the depth of what New York has, it's hard to match.

• 8:40Harry Stebbings?

  And I'd love to talk more specifically now about Box. And and so let's start off with, what's your vision for Box?

• 8:46Speaker 01

  So Box was named, Box Group was named after uh the first investment I made, which was into Boxi. And at the time, there was this uh underground, like, cool nightclub called The Box in New York, which I thought was a cool name. I've actually never been there. And so I didn't assume, I didn't assume this was this.

• 9:04Harry Stebbings?

  Have you still not been there?

• 9:06Speaker 01

  I I've still not been there.

• 9:07Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, next time I'm in New York, I'll take you to the Box.

• 9:10Speaker 01

  I think it's still open. Um but uh I assumed it was a single investment entity. I never expected to invest in the amount of companies we have and continue to do this uh at length. And so it sort of is just evolved. I think the day I joined Techstars is the day I committed to to grow Box Group as well. Uh and when I ended up leaving Techstars to focus on Box, you know, we have more of a vision. I think the vision is to be consistent and patient and to take a much longer term view of our world, mainly because the investment timelines that we invest on are so ludicrously long that it's it's hard. The minute to minute of being a VC is not all that exciting, right? You have to figure out how to create some perspective. And I think that that's the vision that we have is to

• 9:54Speaker 01

  uh sort of just take a really long term look and iterate as we feel and uh hopefully be consistent and patient. And so if we look at the past five years and uh the number of investments we've made, the stage that we play at, uh it's been consistent. And I think that that's really important to me. Um and when I started out in this uh sort of attacking the the early stage, seed stage venture world, I spent a lot of time asking questions and asking for advice. And those were the two words that resonated with me, were patience and consistency. And so I've tried to stick with those.

• 10:26Harry Stebbings?

  And do you find the the feedback loop um associated with that patience and consistency quite tough then?

• 10:32Speaker 01

  It's insane. It's totally insane.

• 10:35Harry Stebbings?

  Do you get used to it?

• 10:36Speaker 01

  I don't know. I think I'm too new. You know, you have a company that looks like it's an amazing company and so you immediately change in some way. You have to. It's illogical not to. You're thinking because you assume that that company is great. And if another company isn't doing great, or if this profile of team, or if this approach to to growth or marketing isn't working somewhere, you try to build those patterns in your head. And that's the job of a VC is some form of pattern recognition. But if you talk to the people who've been doing this forever, who are legends, what they say is that takes a really long time to develop pattern recognition. And so I think what I feel, and people who are, you know,

• 11:21Speaker 01

  under ten years doing this probably feel is a lot of what you see is just new. And you're trying to build that pattern recognition, but trying to sort of assume you have it and have figured it out this soon, I think is probably a mistake.

• 11:35Harry Stebbings?

  How are you trying to build your pattern recognition?

• 11:39Speaker 01

  Again, right, it's that long term. You try to, you try to look at everything. And so it's really hard because there's no, there's no great data, right? You can't listen to the media. The media is not going to tell you what's really going on in a company. And you only have a limited insight either, you know, especially into companies you're not involved with, and that's just sort of hearsay. And the companies you are involved with, you're closer with some than not. And the way that we invest, we you know, invest in about forty companies a year. There are certain companies that we're going to have a closer and tighter relationship with. And there are other ones where, you know, we try to be helpful when they ask us to do something, but our sort of day-to-day knowledge of how things are going is less. And so you're trying to build from an insane amount of signals,

• 12:24Speaker 01

  something that cuts through the noise and becomes a pattern recognition.

• 12:27Harry Stebbings?

  And talking about the companies within your portfolio there, how do you allocate your time according to maybe the rocket ship companies that are taking off? And then sourcing new deals? What's your split between them?

• 12:39Speaker 01

  You know, I think in It's hard to sit here and take credit for anything. I think what we do is ideally work with incredible entrepreneurs. And so if a company's taking off, the odds are they actually need you less than the companies that are struggling. And the idea that we're responsible for a company taking off is silly, right? The 20th employee at a company is exponentially more valuable than a seed-stage investor when a company's taking off. It's that team that they're building and the entrepreneur's in charge. So what we try to do is be helpful. And what does that mean? It means every single person, every single company, every single stage of that company is different in terms of what the entrepreneurs want or need or ask from you. And so we try to be responsive.

• 13:21Speaker 01

  And so that means the typical VC, the BS, which is make introductions and try to provide some advice. And that's, to me, the advice part should take shape more as friendship and trying to be on the side of the entrepreneur and there for them when they have a hard question and one that isn't sort of an up-down hierarchical ask, but instead can, you know, the entrepreneur can come to you with some real hard problems that they're trying to solve. And it might be personal, right? And it might be culture, it might be team, but at least being there for them to vent, I think, is one of the more important values you can have.

• 13:57Harry Stebbings?

  And is it difficult for you and for Box to differentiate yourself as a VC fund in a sea of supposedly founder-friendly VC environments?

• 14:08Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, and that's why I try not to speak in, you know, hyperbole's and claim we do this better. I think what we try to do is communicate honestly, be transparent about what we look for and who we are and what will add value on. My partner Adam gets mad at me all the time when entrepreneurs in a meeting ask us, you know, what value do we add? My initial response is always, investors don't add value and that's what we'll promise you. And it's not a lie, right? I think that the idea that our money's better than somebody else's or that we're going to explain to you this, you know, nuanced reason why we're... It's a clique, right?

• 14:51Speaker 01

  There should be some chemistry that an entrepreneur feels with us and we feel with them. So there are companies that we'll pass on that are probably going to be great companies, but we just don't... Uh have that chemistry with an entrepreneur and I think vice versa. Hopefully there's entrepreneurs that meet us and don't like us. That's an okay thing. And so I think what you're really looking for is founders that you wanna work with. This is a five, seven, ten year relationship in in the good ones. And so you wanna work with people that you can see yourself talking to in five or seven years and not getting burnt out on or not sort of having a lack of communication.

• 15:31Harry Stebbings?

  Do you have a timeline then for investing? Do you like to see them several times before the investment?

• 15:36Speaker 01

  I mean, I think at the stage we invest and the way we invest, it's hard to have um structure. And so what we do again is is it's deal by deal. There are some deals where we're writing a little bit bigger check or we're getting involved much earlier and they don't have, you know, experience beforehand where we wanna get to know them. And that might be, you know, three, four, five interactions with a team uh before we're e- even close to making a decision. There are other deals that, you know, will get an introduction to super late in the process. They have, you know, one point nine out of two point one million dollars in their round uh closed. And so we know normally going into that, we got about, you know, sixty minutes here to make a decision. And if we don't make the decision by the end of this phone call,

• 16:20Speaker 01

  we're probably not gonna get into this deal if we want it. Um and so I think the market controls timelines a little bit more than uh we can, given the way and sort of uh the pace that we invest at.

• 16:31Harry Stebbings?

  As an investor, do you get affected by by FOMO, fear of missing out?

• 16:35Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Um but I don't get, it's less on the things that I see um than the things that I don't see. I have a big FOMO about not seeing something that I like have been thinking about for a long time that I I would love to see. Uh so um you know, and then the deals we pass on that are incredible companies, uh you just. You have a regret or you try to figure out and look back and say, you know, is that a a bad decision? Was there something in our process that led us to make a bad decision? Or was there something emotionally that we're feeling that week? Whatever it is. So I try to to reflect and correct on things and mistakes that we make.

• 17:19Speaker 01

  But again, you go back to that that first conversation we had, the the pace of sort of results here makes it hard to know when you made a mistake until it's it's pretty far out sometimes, or you judge quick growth as a mistake. And then sometimes, you know, two years later, you look really smart for passing on that deal. So it's hard to judge mistakes until the timeline's pretty far out, at which point the market's changed, right? And the way that we're making investment decisions has changed, and the types of deals we're doing has changed. And so trying to build, again, that pattern recognition is tricky. So so I try to just, again, tons of data points and ideally see through that matrix.

• 18:00Harry Stebbings?

  And and then talking of data points, when taking a deep dive into your portfolio now, Box, you've got a bit of a weighting towards mobile consumer tech, I believe thirty seven percent, according to Massamark.

• 18:12Speaker 01

  They they know everything.

• 18:13Harry Stebbings?

  They know everything, exactly, biblical. So how do you respond then to Fred Wilson's post about the mobile downturn, downtown, sorry, and and the difficulty in attaining and maintaining traction for mobile apps? What are your thoughts on that?

• 18:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, hard to argue with that, right? Like, distribution's harder than ever. The biggest companies are dominating your time on the phone, and they're dominating the consumer experiences, and they've, you know, been as good as they've ever been. You look at the strength of Facebook today, it's a marvelous company. It's it's hard to not admire the products that they build and the constant iteration that they go through. So if you're, you know, three people with an idea who can code and design and do a little marketing, good luck. It's really hard to break through. That said, on the totally flip side, you know, we're about three, two, three years into everyone in the world, basically, having a smartphone.

• 19:09Speaker 01

  You have three billion people that are looking at this thing, an absurd amount every day, that are opening it. I think the number was 249 times a day. You're, you're opening your phone to do something. To think that, that we're this short in, and all the experiences and all the innovations done, uh, I think is, is crazy, right? What there is, is there's a higher expectation because there are no more early adopters. You can put an app in the apps, or anybody downloads it, it goes as wide as it goes, and you basically have one shot, right? You download an app, you open it, you make a decision pretty quickly, like, am I ever gonna open this again? Am I gonna delete this? And do I have a really negative feeling about this thing?

• 19:52Speaker 01

  It's hard to avoid that feeling in any user the first time they open your app. So the barrier, uh, I think to be successful is you, you need to be great from the minute somebody gets you. And that could be either this magical utility, it could be this magical happiness you bring to a user, uh, or it could be an incredibly polished product with a clear path as to where you're going. So I don't necessarily believe you need to launch a complete product, but you need to launch a, a finished product. And that is different from the early days of mobile. And I think you'll see new companies emerge. Is it gonna happen this year? Is it gonna happen next year? It's gonna happen soon. It hasn't happened since Snapchat, right?

• 20:34Speaker 01

  They're the Snapchat, Tinder are the last big consumer companies to emerge. Those are four years old. So we're, we're due for something.

• 20:41Harry Stebbings?

  We're waiting.

• 20:42Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 20:43Harry Stebbings?

  Well, talking about innovation in the mobile space, uh, the, the company that I'm probably most excited about as a storyteller is, is yours and Alan's Spring. Um, so, so talk to me about the motivation there, moving to the entrepreneurial side. What was that for you?

• 20:58Speaker 01

  Thank you. Um, yeah, it's uh, it's thrilling because you know, the exact opposite of a VC where you're sitting above the clouds and uh, making long-term decisions is, is being inside of a startup a- at any level where you're making uh, minute-by-minute decisions in incredibly quick-paced environment and navigating uh, through a, a series of dependencies that are just incredibly complicated. Spring's that, and so I get this incredible view of the other side by being able to work with my brother uh, and the incredible team that, that we have over there. And so, uh, the vision behind Spring is uh, we're a mall on your phone. So, if you wanna go shopping on your phone, click Spring. We deliver over twelve hundred brands uh, directly to your phone. You're buying directly from those brands.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Uh, the boxes are coming with their story. They're able to tell their product story. And you know, you see a, a company like Etsy, which is able to tell the maker's story. A, a story about the individual who made it. The companies that you're giving your money to, the bigger companies, more than ever, the consumer cares about their story as well. And so, uh, what we're trying to do is give brands a way to communicate directly and do the things that they do best uh, with consumers. And so, for consumer, what the, what the value prop is, is you're coming to a single mobile experience where you can shop from all your favorite brands in one easy-to-use experience. And the promise that we're making is we're gonna build uh, great technology to continue to make that experience better and great services. And so,

• 22:24Speaker 01

  uh, as a company, we launched free shipping and free returns across all of our brands uh, in two thousand fifteen, which is an incredible accomplishment uh, for a marketplace, to be able to do that and to get all of our, our brand partners to work with us on, on that initiative. We have loyalty, we have VIP, we have personal shopping, and, and we take on customer service for the brands. And so, what you're getting as a customer is this single experience to shop across such a diverse uh, set of, of products. And I think that as we expand, uh, you'll see more and more of that.

• 22:55Harry Stebbings?

  And, and listening to that, it's, it's immensely impressive. But I heard when Alan suggested it to you, uh, you said the famous, uh, it, it's stupid. Uh, at what

• 23:06Speaker 01

  No, I, I told him not to launch a company. He said he had an idea and I said, please don't. Uh,

• 23:10Harry Stebbings?

  Is that it?

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I never, so the

• 23:13Harry Stebbings?

  I was about to say, cause I heard it on Y C with uh, Aaron Harris, who was on the twenty-minute VC.

• 23:19Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:19Harry Stebbings?

  Uh, a- and I'm so sorry.

• 23:21Speaker 01

  No, no, no. I, I just told him. He came and he said he had an idea. I go, please don't, right? Like, Because starting a company and building something is the hardest thing in the world and the respect that you have for the people who are able to do it. And so to encourage your brother to just jump in and do what I think is really the hardest thing in the world, my inclination was like, don't, like, hold up, make sure you're confident. And then as he shared the idea and we dove in more, it became apparent that the opportunity that we'd all identified was just sitting there. And I still, I'm still, I think today, sort of three years, probably a little bit under three years after we had that first conversation, I look at the opportunity that we're attacking

• 24:04Speaker 01

  and it's so, it's so exciting to me. I think there's just nothing out there that's solving this problem in the way that we're trying to solve it. And to build, you know, again, what I think is a really important category in the consumer experience on your phone, which just hasn't been fully built out yet.

• 24:22Harry Stebbings?

  And as you, as you kind of alluded to there, Spring has done immensely well. And obviously, part of that is to you and part of that is to Alan. And you've said before that Alan's the perfect leader for the company. So what do you think it is about Alan's character and Boxer's products that's contributed to the massive success that it's turned into?

• 24:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I think what Alan's done and, you know, what the company's done is build an amazing group around him. And I think that's the most important thing at every one of these companies is to build a depth of a quality team. And so it's not the first person, it's not the second, it's the, you know, every single person you bring into your company in those first couple of years has to be able to do things outsized and sort of, you know, better than expected because they're carrying so much weight. And as a startup, you have limited resources, limited headcount, and you're expected to do so much. And so what Alan's done is build a great team around him and given them the ability to solve problems and build software and build the business side out.

• 25:26Speaker 01

  And I think his style as leader is very different than mine. He's much more reserved from like an outwardly, I'm up and down and erratic and spew nonsense.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  And I think Alan's more careful and Alan Alan's a lot more thoughtful with his approach. And I think what that's done is enabled him to empower his team to do some amazing things. And so as I look across our organization, our engineering team run by our co-founder Vivi, incredible. I think they've built an incredible amount of talent within the team, the way they communicate. We have an office in Krakow, Poland, as we brought on the team over there. They just integrated in and I think that's leadership and the quality of the people that we're bringing on to the team. I think if we look at our business side and what a woman named Catherine Prime has built on the business side. And April Uchutel, who's brought the brands on to the platform. If we look around our organization, you see individuals that are are building incredible teams and accomplishing

• 26:22Speaker 01

  things across their areas that I just think are awesome. And so I think that's the the key to me is to empower and and build a great team around you.

• 26:31Harry Stebbings?

  Well, immensely exciting times ahead for spring and and I'd love to dive into a quick fire round now.

• 26:36Speaker 01

  Sure.

• 26:37Harry Stebbings?

  So your favorite book and why?

• 26:39Speaker 01

  Well, it's not Good Night Moon, which I read to my my daughter, I just had a daughter. And the first the first book we read to her was Good Night Moon and I was I was stunned.

• 26:48Harry Stebbings?

  How many months is she?

• 26:50Speaker 01

  She's six weeks.

• 26:51Harry Stebbings?

  Huge congratulations there.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Thanks.

• 26:53Harry Stebbings?

  But but so not not that.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  I have to give you an answer now. A cheesy answer is when I read a book, I tend to like it because I'm really I rarely read sort of front to back books. I watch an extraordinary amount of television and I think it's an underrated way to learn.

• 27:10Harry Stebbings?

  And then very very early on, and I'm sure there are many more, but career highlights so far?

• 27:14Speaker 01

  Career highlights, I think the key to being an early stage investor is that every day and every company you invest in, you need to be more excited about than the last one. Otherwise, it's hard to keep your energy up. And so I try not to look back and and sort of highlight things. I think probably finding my partner Adam when when he joined at Techstars and realizing that we were going to work together for a long time because we just clicked and and we understood sort of what both of our goals were and and how we were going to work together. Probably probably the highlight of my career.

• 27:48Harry Stebbings?

  And then what are your must read blogs or newsletters?

• 27:51Speaker 01

  I read a lot of online content. I have um I have my feed leads incredibly filled.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  You know, other than the cheesy stuff i- in the tech world that probably everybody else cites, um, I think it's finding those angles that you find interesting. So I read a lot of design blogs and those design blogs are like, uh, you know, beyond the, the UX and the UI of, of internet sites, but physical product design and architecture and, um, sort of city design and anything that strikes the angle that you see the world at, I think is, is more interesting than just the industry stuff you're consuming.

• 28:25Harry Stebbings?

  And then when I say a successful VC, who's the first person that comes to mind and why?

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Uh, Fred Wilson, I think, and, um, you know, he's the, he's the icon in New York, I think, what he's built both, uh, personally from, from his content and his, his blogging, uh, to the firm that they've built. I think, uh, his partners, Andy Albert, uh, Brad and John, um, equally as impressive. Fred's the, the face of the organization and so he just pops to mind.

• 28:52Harry Stebbings?

  And then productivity tools, what are your must haves?

• 28:55Speaker 01

  Uh, there's a little tool I use called Captio, which, uh, sounds stupid, but, uh, it's an app. It sits on the front, like sort of primary spot on my home screen and it just, uh, opens up a window. You type something, you hit a button and it sends that to yourself, uh, via email. And so I use my inbox as my to do list. I use it as sort of a router, uh, and it's insane. Uh, if you don't use something like Captio, it takes you about seven clicks to send yourself an email.

• 29:21Harry Stebbings?

  And then finally, your most recent investment and why you said yes.

• 29:25Speaker 01

  Um, yeah. So, so I invested in, I, I have, I funded a company called Smart Things, which sold to Samsung a couple of years ago and it was a smart home, um, platform and, uh, it's today being built into all the Samsung products. And so watching what's happened to them is awesome. Haven't really made a smart home investment since, but I, I have a deep affinity for the space. I think about it a lot. And so, uh, recently we invested in a company called Nucleus and Nucleus is building, uh, it sounds crazy, but an intercom, uh, a video screen intercom system for houses that lets you call from one room to another. So, you can call down to the, the kitchen from your bedroom, but more importantly, and why I'm so excited about it, um, Is it allows you to call out as well. And so what it to me is, is you know, a way

• 30:09Speaker 01

  for families to communicate that uncomplicates the phone. I don't believe the phone is your remote control. I think there's other input methods that are going to allow you to interact with technology beyond walking around with your phone, opening up, opening up a specific app and doing something. And so what Nucleus is doing is using the primary thing that's worked on your cell phone, on your smartphone, which is communication, text, voice, messengers, all these things, and bringing it into the house and bring down the noise to sort of height family friends communication. So check out Nucleus Life. They're announcing some cool stuff at CES. I think the angle they're thinking about the smart home with is super compelling.

• 30:53Harry Stebbings?

  I think it's fantastic. I'm writing it down now. It has so much usage in my house. Save me going downstairs.

• 30:58Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 31:00Harry Stebbings?

  So David, thank you so much for coming on the show. I've so enjoyed chatting with you and I really appreciate it.

• 31:04Speaker 01

  Thank you so much for having me.

• 31:07Harry Stebbings?

  What an amazing episode that was with David. And I would like to say again, a huge thank you to him for giving up his time today to be on the show. Really was a highlight for me. And if you're loving the 20 minute VC, do not forget to sign up to our newsletter on the20minutvc.com or follow us on Twitter at 20minutevc, both of which all in letters. As always, thank you so much for your support and I look so forward to bringing you Wednesday's episode with a VC I'm identifying as the rising star in the industry. So stay tuned for Wednesday's episode.