20VC: The Implications of a Biden vs a Trump Administration on Venture and Startups, How The Rise of Rolling Funds, SPACs and Solo Capitalists Will Impact Venture & What We Can Do To Swing the Race Pendulum in VC with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Ligh

Barry Eggers is a Founding Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners and currently Chair of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) Board of Directors. Lightspeed is one of the premier funds of the last decade with homeruns including Snapchat, Affirm, Mulesoft, Nutanix and Stitch Fix. Prior to LSVP, Barry spent close to 6 years as @ Cisco developing Cisco's initial M&A program and leading the company's first wave of acquisitions and integrations. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Barry made his way into the world of venture over 20 years ago and how he came to found one of today's leaders, Lightspeed? 2.) What are the implications of a Biden administration? How does this compare to a Trump administration? What can be done to mitigate the tax concerns around Biden's policies? How does Barry think about each candidate's stance on immigration? What are the challenges here? 3.) How will SPACs change the world of venture? What will it take for them to be viewed in the same class as IPOs? Why are they often better than direct listings? How does the rise of solo capitalists change the state of venture? What does Barry make of rolling funds being born? 4.) What does Barry believe we can do to swing the race pendulum in venture? What were Barry's biggest lessons in taking the Lightspeed partnership from 1 to 10 female partners? How can this be done with ethnic minorities also? What advice does Barry give to his counterpart GPs? 5.) How would Barry describe his own style of board membership? How has it changed over time? How does Barry keep his head in boards with many around him are losing theirs? What advice does Barry give to new board members adopting board seats for the first time? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Barry’s Favourite Book: Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

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

• 0:00Harry Stebbings?

  We are back on the 20 minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and today with the election tomorrow, we could not have a more aptly timed show as we are joined by something of a Silicon Valley pioneer, discussing how a Biden versus a Trump administration would look, climate change, the rise of SPACs, and so much more. I'm thrilled to welcome back to the show Barry Eggers, founding partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners and currently Chair of the National Venture Capital Association, or the NVCA. For those that do not know, Lightspeed is one of the premier funds of the last decade, with home runs including the likes of Snapchat, Affirm, MuleSoft, Nutanix, and Stitch Fix, to name a few. Prior to Lightspeed, Barry spent close to six years at Cisco, developing Cisco's initial M&A programme and leading the company's first wave of acquisitions and integrations.

• 0:41Harry Stebbings?

  I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Jim Lim at Greenspring, Jeremy Liu, Alex Towson, and Nicole Quinn, for some amazing question suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we move into the show today, I want to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive $230 million. Check out hellosign.com/20vc to join the thousands of companies and founders who value fast, secure, and simple e-signatures. And speaking about turning complex processes into beautiful experiences there with HelloSign,

• 1:26Harry Stebbings?

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• 2:10Harry Stebbings?

  Beautiful products. The team over at Pendo, the product cloud company, is expanding rapidly throughout Europe and recently released a version of their product, which is designed and priced specifically for startups. So no matter whether you're an operator or you're an investor in Europe or the US, Pendo has you and your portfolio's products covered, showing you how your product stacks up against your peers, analysing over a thousand software products and creating a benchmark for startups, scale-ups and enterprises across five different categories. You can find out more at pendo.io/products-benchmarks. That's pendo.io/products-benchmarks. But that is enough from me. So now I'm very excited to hand over to Barry Eggers, founding partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

• 2:58Speaker 01

  You have now arrived at your destination.

• 3:01Harry Stebbings?

  Barry, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show once again. What can I say? A lot has changed since we last spoke, especially with the new role at NVCA. So thank you so much for joining me again today, Barry.

• 3:09Speaker 02

  Happy to be here for the second time, actually. So is this like starting it live, but if you post it five times, you get a jacket or something like that?

• 3:15Harry Stebbings?

  That's exactly it. Now you just get a medal for putting up with my terrible British accent.

• 3:20Speaker 02

  Perfect.

• 3:20Harry Stebbings?

  But tell me, and let's start with, for those that missed the first episode, how did you make your way into the world of venture? And how did you come to find Lightspeed?

• 3:26Speaker 02

  I'm sort of an unlikely VC. I didn't really know that I wanted to do VC until I was in my mid 30s. I went through college and business school not thinking about VC. I didn't even take the VC class in business school because I just thought it was something I didn't want to do. I wanted to be an operating person. But one thing led to another. I was working at Cisco and started doing acquisitions for Cisco and really enjoyed that and bought a few companies. And all of a sudden, one of the VCs that I had gone to school with, business school, reached out and said, hey, have you thought about being a VC? And that's when I took a few months and really looked at the opportunity. And one thing led to another and I joined VC industry in January of 1997, which was a great time to join because it was right in the beginning of the telecom boom. So I went through the initial boom of 97 to 2000 and then the bust. And that was a really quick cycle.

• 4:07Speaker 02

  And sort of in the early 2000s, I looked around at my partners and there was a subset of partners I felt like we could create a different firm with. We could take and create more of a firm that's based on more of an equal footing firm. We had some hierarchy in the current firm I was in. We felt like there's a Some set of us that could sort of splinter off and start Lightspeed. And it's funny because many VC firms are started by groups splintering off from existing firms. And so Lightspeed's no different. The four of us splintered off and started Lightspeed and started from scratch, really. We had no LPs. We had a track record, which was helpful, but we had no portfolio, no fees coming in. So we raised a fund and started from there and then started hiring out the team. It took us two or three funds, really, to get to critical mass.

• 4:42Harry Stebbings?

  It's been an incredible journey to see, and especially to see the institution that's Lightspeed today. I mean, you must be very proud.

• 4:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's been a great fun ride with a lot of interesting twists and turns along the way. I've learned a ton about building a firm and feel fortunate that we're where we're at today. And hopefully, we can continue to evolve as the industry evolves.

• 4:59Harry Stebbings?

  Got to ask Barry before we dive in, what's the hardest thing about building the firm?

• 5:02Speaker 02

  So many elements of building a successful firm, but I think the people element is the one that people often overlook. And that is bringing in great people, retaining and motivating great people and creating a culture and sort of working through all the people dynamics that you get in a firm. And it's not something that anyone teaches you in any school. And so you have to learn it on the job. Partnerships are way different than corporations. Corporations at least have some formal hierarchy. Partnerships are supposed to be flat. And so there's sort of this unusual element of sort of lack of hierarchy and it sort of finds its way over time. But the people element is really hard. And obviously, you have good people situations and bad people situations that you have to manage through. But the best VC firms have great people and they work together well as a team.

• 5:41Harry Stebbings?

  In terms of kind of people and the state of play today, I do want to start on the political environment. It's probably more interesting slash shocking than ever before. And so if we start on that, when we look at the current administration, tell me, what are the implications of a Biden administration on our industry? And I guess, how does that compare to a Trump administration, diving straight in at the deep end?

• 6:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a great question. And I get to look at this both through my Lightspeed lens as well as my lens as I'm chairman, current chairman of the NBCA. And so I get a lot of exposure to politics and policy that affects both startups and VC. So we've done a lot of analysis on which way it could go and what the implications are. I think we know what we're going to get with the Trump presidency if he's reelected. One of the downsides of that, I think, is it's really been difficult on immigration policy, which I think has had some negative effect for sure on our industry. With a Biden administration and assuming more of a democratic Washington, I think there's some pros and cons. From the pro side, I think. He's going to invest a lot in infrastructure, including high-speed internet. So I think it's going to continue to enable our industry and also potentially create opportunities for our companies to make money. He's definitely more friendly towards immigration.

• 6:41Speaker 02

  And so things like the startup Visa, and that is where someone comes to our country and they create jobs, a company that creates jobs. We let them stay for an extended period, and I think that should just be automatic. But it's something that was started with the Obama administration and it sort of got off track with the Trump administration. So hopefully if Biden wins, we can get that back on track. Climate change, I think that's going to be a real important part of the Biden administration policy. We've got real issues, we have fires out here everywhere, we've got hurricanes on the east, we've got massive tornadoes, we've got flooding. I think it's hard to ignore the impact of climate change. And so I do think that climate change is going to be solved by technology largely and by people changing their daily routines. But technology is key and I don't think it's going to be necessarily solved by the big companies. I think the solutions are going to come from small companies and startups.

• 7:22Speaker 02

  And so I expect that the Biden administration will provide some incentives and work with the startup and VC community to try to enable that to happen fast. And of course, jobs, jobs, jobs, right? We've lost a lot of jobs all throughout the world. We've got to do something about that. And so the job creation engine of the United States is venture capital and it's startups. And so we've got to find a way to extend ourselves, not only on the coast, but also in the middle of the country. Really make up for some of those lost jobs that we have during COVID. On the negative side, there'll continue to be pressure on foreign investment, which has started with the Trump administration. But I think that's going to continue. We're sort of in a trade war and that's going to be a negative for our industry. And then on tax policy, I think there's going to be increased taxes on capital gains. I'm not talking about carried interest, I'm talking about capital gains for everybody. And so employees that are working in startups and going there because the equity can be meaningful to them.

• 8:07Speaker 02

  When they get that equity, it becomes valuable, they're going to be potentially taxed at a higher rate. So there is an impact on venture capital and startups if the general capital gains rate goes up for everybody. And so we're going to try to lobby against that because we think it's an important incentive to get people to move from larger companies to startups.

• 8:22Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask a really tough one? And it is off schedule. It's like, how does one think about voting with their wallet versus voting with their heart? And one's heart would probably go to Biden and one's wallet in some cases would maybe go to Trump. How does one think about voting with each?

• 8:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, it's a great question. I think we all have different answers for that. I like to think about voting for the person that's going to be the best for our country. But each person has to make that individual decision. I think there are a lot of pros and cons to each candidate. But generally, I think that there can be some real positives that come out of a Biden administration. And there's been some positives out of the current administration, but not as many as we had in the past. And so I'd ask people to sort of think about the long term impact of the presidency on the country versus your own individual short term impact.

• 9:01Harry Stebbings?

  One other thing that I'm thinking about a lot is like Bill Gurley said on the show recently that his biggest challenge is the oversupply of capital. But when I look at the macro stat, I'm like, I'm not seeing interest rates going up anytime soon, especially not for the next two to three years. And I think we'll continue to see this inflow of capital into the venture market, making the market ever more frothy than it's been for the next two to three years, even more so than today. Am I missing something on the macro and how that will affect the inflows into the venture market? Or do you think that's kind of spot on?

• 9:24Speaker 02

  Yeah, the oversupply of capital venture is a problem. I agree with Bill Gurley on that. And what it does is it drives prices up at every round. And so when prices go up typically, returns go down. Unless you can somehow compensate with a high priced liquidity market, which we have in some places, but not everywhere. The idea of venture capitalists to buy low and sell high, in some cases, we're buying high and selling higher. But there's only a matter of time while that works.

• 9:45Harry Stebbings?

  Kind of latching on to that buying high and selling higher, I do want to touch on some pretty big financial changes that we've seen in the ecosystem over the last couple of years. But especially on the first one year, and it's SPACs. It's such an interesting financial instrument. But how do you think SPACs will fundamentally change, I guess, the venture landscape over the coming years?

• 10:01Speaker 02

  I mean, SPACs have all of a sudden become a really important factor in our portfolio of companies liquidity options, right? So what are SPACs and why should we worry about them? There's actually going back to Bill Gurley, he wrote a blog in August on SPACs and different options for companies to go public. And I think it's worth reading for anybody. Great pros and cons of each of the different options, and I'll just walk through them real quick. The IPO is the traditional option, right? But some of the issues with IPO are the underpricing that happens. People believe we're leaving money on the table because we have to factor in a large increase on day one trading and also limited access, right? The average person doesn't get access to IPOs. It's spared for the best clients of a investment bank. So direct listings try to deal with that a little bit, right? And direct listings try to have better pricing mechanisms. So try to assimilate to market pricing. They try to provide better access to Main Street investors and the problem with direct listings.

• 10:44Speaker 02

  So typically today cannot do primary capital, right? The company can't raise additional capital through a direct listing. Although that can change over time. So hence you come up with SPACs. And SPACs are sort of like a hybrid between an acquisition and IPO, right? Because the SPAC is created, it's a vehicle. That vehicle then goes off and looks for a company to merge with, like an acquisition dance. And once it finds a company to merge with and they set the terms, then all of a sudden that company becomes a public company. And there's usually a pipe associated with it that is to provide some additional funding. So it doesn't have the same issue that direct listings do today. So better pricing and more flexibility on sort of terms than you would in a IPO. You have the pipe so you can raise capital, so it's better than a direct listing. It's typically faster than an IPO. You can put a SPAC together in two to three months in terms of the acquisition part

• 11:27Speaker 02

  and going public versus taking six, seven, eight months to really get a company ready for an IPO. The challenge with SPACs is a sort of a lower profile, right? People, I think, given the option today, people would prefer an IPO as more straightforward and sort of a higher profile than a SPAC. But I think that's going to change over time because there's a lot of SPAC vehicles out there. And so a lot of opportunity for liquidity for companies to go public via SPACs. I think SPACs are here to stay and we're going to see a lot of companies using that as an alternative to IPOs and direct listings over the next several years.

• 11:57Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, when I look through the different kind of constituents in the kind of chain, so to speak, for founders, it's additional source of liquidity. For VCs, it's additional source of liquidity. And for LPs, it's again additional source of liquidity. Is there anyone it's bad for?

• 12:08Speaker 02

  It's really hard to say. I don't feel like it's bad for anybody. You could compare, I guess, the outcome to what an IPO outcome could be. And someone could argue, gee, you're going to get a lot more bump off an IPO initial trading than you will off a SPAC. And I don't know whether the data is there or not. And do people view IPOs as the higher quality companies versus SPACs as lower quality companies? So that's the only negative that I could see. But I'm not sure the data is there yet to support those positions. And I think over time, as we see more companies choose SPAC, more high quality companies choose SPACs as an option, that whole reputational issue will evolve.

• 12:40Harry Stebbings?

  I do want to touch on another kind of financial evolution that we've seen over the last kind of year. Again, especially, and that's the rise of solo capitalists from your Josh Barclays, your Lucky Grooms, your Orange Eves, Ray Tom Sings even. I guess, what do you make of this rise of the solo capitalist?

• 12:52Speaker 02

  Well, again, I think it's an opportunity that was Created by sort of structural issues within venture capital, as you said, there's lots of money in our industry and a lot of funds are raising larger funds. And as they do that, they tend to move a little bit upstream. I know when we refer to seeds today within Lightspeed, they look a lot like what we used to call Series As 10 years ago. We've just almost shifted everything to the right one. So Series As now look like Series Bs in some cases. So it creates an opportunity. If these seeds start to get larger and they start to account for a larger percentage of the cap table, creates an opportunity for people to come in and swoop in below the institutional VCs and get meaningful share of ownership. And that's what's driven this. And we also have a lot of really good entrepreneurs out there that have become VCs or solo capitalists,

• 13:32Speaker 02

  and they can be really helpful to entrepreneurs. So I like the trend. I think it's something that we as a venture firm have to embrace and learn how to work with the solo capitalists. We have a really close relationship with Samuel Shah. I think he's been on your show. He's a great dude. He's got a really nice track record and very thoughtful about early-stage investing. He's an example of someone that we've got to embrace and learn how to work with. I like the trend and I think it's also good for entrepreneurs to have someone like that, that they can work with closely and develop a nice relationship with.

• 13:55Harry Stebbings?

  Do you think this is a game of the 1%? This is what I'm thinking through a lot, where it's like your Lucky Grooms, your Samuel Shahs, your Josh Buckleys. It's kind of the 1% in many respects. Do you think we'll see this kind of generation of solo capitalists where many, many more will be created? Or do you think it will be kind of restrained to that top tier?

• 14:10Speaker 02

  Well, I think there'll be solo capitalists that use their own capital and there'll be solo capitalists that raise outside capital. I mean, Samuel has his own fund now. So I don't think it's just a game of the 0.1%. I think if people have been successful as operators or as investors and they want to go on their own, they can be solo capitalists and they can raise funds from the outside because there's a lot of LPs out there that are looking for that alpha and are trying to find the next big fund and get in early so they can get good allocation to it.

• 14:34Harry Stebbings?

  The other kind of really interesting kind of structure that's risen over the last year is the element of rolling funds. We've seen an explosion of them recently. What do you make of rolling funds?

• 14:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think, you know, rolling funds are also, I mean, hey, it's convenient not to have to raise capital every time you raise a new fund, right? So if you can have a set of LPs or an LP that's willing to continue to fund you over time, I think that's an interesting option. I think we'll see more of rolling funds and if you can do it, it's great.

• 14:56Harry Stebbings?

  What do you think the impact will be on the venture ecosystem? Because I'm concerned that suddenly rolling funds bring in this wave of even more capital in sometimes with less disciplined investors. And I'm worried that Actually, it just forces pricing higher and forces rounds to be done faster. And I think that's a concern for me. How do you think about that and the impact on the venture ecosystem?

• 15:12Speaker 02

  I mean, listen, we've got a lot of venture funds out there. I think there seems like there's five new funds a day. I mean, there's a lot of funds out there. Every time I read about it, it feels like our industry is really expanding. The question is, what is the capacity longer term of the industry? And I think over time, we're going to have a consolidation that capital is not going to be as plentiful coming into our industry and the best funds will survive and some won't. So I think that having a good long-term strategy and building a long-term platform is really important for early funds.

• 15:35Harry Stebbings?

  I'm with you in terms of some not surviving. My challenge to that is just purely, it takes 10 years to die in venture. It's such a long-term game. How do you think about like the fund structures associated and how that impacts kind of mortality rate of funds?

• 15:47Speaker 02

  Well, it takes 10 years to be out of business, but I think once you're not able to raise a new fund, it's a slow death. And it's hard for you to be active in the market because entrepreneurs know that you're having trouble raising capital. So it's sort of a death spiral if you can't raise your next fund. So I think it's a faster death than you're portraying.

• 16:04Harry Stebbings?

  No, I think you're probably right in terms of the speed of that death. In terms of kind of the raising the funds, you raised multiple funds with the Lightspeed partnership, an incredible partnership it is. You've got this kind of unique perspective that having started and run your own firm and then having been part of the partnership. What are your biggest takeaways from experiencing both of these? And I guess associated to that, what are the biggest challenges?

• 16:21Speaker 02

  Well, I mean, starting and running a fund is like running a business. And so it's not just the investment piece, it's the people piece, as we talked about, it's the LPs piece. It's managing all the stuff around the business. It's making sure you have a long-term strategy. Where are you expanding to? How are you bringing in people? How are you building out your back office? How are you building out your front office? There's all sorts of elements of building a real business. We have a hundred employees at Lightspeed. You know, we started, we had four. So it was definitely much simpler back then when we were just focused on investing and it takes a lot more to really build a platform that moves forward. So, you know, they're just very different things. Being in a partnership and focused on investing versus building a business are two very different things. We're more like the entrepreneurs we work with in terms of building a firm is more like building a company.

• 17:02Harry Stebbings?

  Can I ask, do you enjoy that people management element? It's something that I think about when I think about my career and how I think about building the funds that I have. And it's like, I fundamentally don't actually love people management. I love investing, I love working with companies, but internal infrastructure and people management, honestly, it just. Doesn't excite me. Do you enjoy that? How do you think about that?

• 17:17Speaker 02

  Well, I think VCs are notorious for being poor people managers. That's why they become VCs and not operating people. But having said that, I like that aspect of the job and the business. I like working with our team and I like working with other VCs and the relationships that you develop and some of the challenges and opportunities that come along with it. So I really like that part of the job. It takes a lot more EQ than IQ to do that part of the job.

• 17:35Harry Stebbings?

  For sure. Absolutely. I do want to touch on one final kind of big element of change though in the show. And it's really the social change that we've seen over the last year. You know, one particularly striking element is that the racial inequality inherent within Bencher. And I guess now with your NBCA hat on, sure, this is top of mind for you. So talk to me here about like, what can we do to swing the race pendulum in Bencher? Other than writing very nice manifestos?

• 17:56Speaker 02

  Yeah, and this is an area that I feel really strongly about, both with my Lightspeed hat and my NBCA hat. And I'm making it a priority for both organizations. The bottom line is we need more black and Latinx entrepreneurs, VCs, board members, LPs and cap table investors. So how do we make that happen? We've had some programs in place for diversity and inclusion over the last four years. We have one female investor four years ago. We have 10 now, which I think might be the highest in the industry. Great investors on our team. I want to do the same with black and Latinx. There's an opportunity. They're underrepresented, which means there's some great people out there that should join our industry. What we're doing actually, and we haven't really talked about this publicly, but we have a scout program where you have scouts that are out looking for deals for Lightspeed. Sort of sprinkling a lot of different small investments, 25, 50K in a lot of places.

• 18:37Speaker 02

  And as those investments sprout up, then they become relevant to Lightspeed. And so it's a way for us to extend our network to reach a lot more entrepreneurs. And we've been doing this program for about three or four years. For 2020, we decided that our entire Lightspeed Scout program would be 100% racial minorities. And so we put the word out in our network informally that we were going to do this. Within two weeks, we had 350 people apply for 25 spots. And we decided because we had so many fantastic people, we increased it to 42 spots. Because that was the cap of what we think we could accommodate without starting to degrade the experience. So we took 42 scouts, 50% women, 50% men, a mix of black, Latinx, Pacific Islander and Indigenous. And we've already started to kick it off. We've already had a handful of investments be made by these scouts.

• 19:16Speaker 02

  So my hope is that we're helping to seed the industry with a next generation of VCs from underrepresented racial minority backgrounds.

• 19:24Harry Stebbings?

  The ecosystem because you know you've brought in as you said that 10 female partners incredible I've had many of them on the show including Mercy and Janet who I absolutely loved by the way but you know you've brought on in 10 incredible female partners and 10 incredible females to the team you've brought on the scout program which is amazing to see that kind of take force in terms of advising dominant white male partnerships today in the venture ecosystem just from a purely kind of nice and friendly perspective like what would you advise them to do to really embrace this and move forward with it wholeheartedly what can they do?

• 19:52Speaker 02

  Well, you got to understand the business reason for doing this, right? You shouldn't do it just because it feels good and it gives you good PR. You should do it because there's a business reason for doing it and we believe the business reason is by having a more inclusive team, we reach a broader set of entrepreneurs and if you reach a broader set of entrepreneurs, you're going to see a higher quality set of deals and if you see a higher quality set of deals, you're going to do better deals and you're going to have better performance. And so as you think about extending your network to underrepresented groups, ideally you reach everybody. And so we believe there's a huge business reason it's going to result in better performance for us longer term. It's going to take some time to develop it, but as you see with the fact we have 10 females on our team now, it can happen fast and it can make a huge difference in the near term for venture firms. I've talked to a lot of my peers and a lot of my peers have different programs that they're putting in place internally and I think generally the industry wants to collaborate and we want to learn from each other as peers to accelerate the industry faster versus treating this as an area of competitive differentiation between firms.

• 20:47Speaker 02

  So I expect to see a lot more collaboration among peer firms on this.

• 20:51Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, speaking of kind of other firms that are not on this topic, but speaking of other firms, I spoke to a mutual friend of ours before the show in terms of Tom Tungus, who I know you've worked with before. And when I spoke to him about you, he said many great things, but he said Barry is one of the best board members that I've worked with because of his long-term views and his calmness. One that I'd love to touch on is the word calmness bluntly is something that I not struggle with, but often have to think very carefully on. How do you keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs in a portfolio company in a board meeting? How do you retain that calm, Barry?

• 21:20Speaker 02

  Yeah. Maybe it comes with age, but I think when I first started in VC, you get into your board meetings and you hear good and bad news and you get super excited for the good news and you get super depressed about the bad news. And I was a lot more excitable when I first started in VC. And I think you learn over time that every company is a journey. You have a lot of ups and downs with companies. You have to take a long-term view, not a short-term view. And the more you can work with entrepreneurs to work through the difficult times and have a plan, the better the partnership's going to be when things are good. And so there's no reason to overreact with short-term news because all of these investments are long-term journeys.

• 21:52Harry Stebbings?

  Totally with you there. Can I ask a final one for the quickfire?

• 21:55Speaker 02

  Sure.

• 21:55Harry Stebbings?

  In terms of advice for me and also for kind of new board members kind of embracing the role for the first time, what advice would you have, having seen so many different boards and seen so many different founder temperaments?

• 22:04Speaker 02

  The best advice I give for someone that's a new board member is just try to put yourself in the entrepreneur's shoes and the founder's shoes. Understand what are their issues and concerns? What keeps them up at night? What are their motivations? What are their blind spots? And instead of focusing on your issues and your perspective, try to work from their perspective. And so how do you help them? How do you provide leverage for them in their job versus creating overhead? And there's a fine line. So that's the most important thing, I think, is really putting yourself in the entrepreneur's shoes.

• 22:29Harry Stebbings?

  You said leverage and overhead there. How do you determine between the two? Because I'm sometimes stuck and it's like, I've got customer interest to make, but I don't want to actually distract them from product or distract them from, you know, the hiring process. How do you determine between?

• 22:39Speaker 02

  Leverage is helping a founder or CEO get something done faster than they would have without you. And overhead is making them get it done slower than without you. A lot of people like to make introductions to CEOs and CEOs oftentimes will have to take them because they feel obliged to do that. But the introductions don't lead anywhere. And I think you have to be careful taking up CEOs valuable time for those kind of introductions. You've got to focus on the stuff that really matters to the business. That's why I say you've got to put yourself in their shoes.

• 23:03Harry Stebbings?

  Yeah, no, I really like that in terms of that kind of empathizing with them through the shoes. I do want to dive into a quickfire round there, Barry. So essentially, I say a short statement. As you know, you give me your immediate thoughts in about 60 seconds or less. Does that sound good?

• 23:13Speaker 02

  Sounds great.

• 23:14Harry Stebbings?

  Okay, so COVID is a time when I wanted to read more. I haven't quite succeeded in that. But what's your favorite book and why?

• 23:20Speaker 02

  I have a lot of favorite books, so let me talk about one of them I'm reading right now. It's called Channel Kindness, written by the Born This Way Foundation. So Lady Gaga, her mother, Cynthia Germanotta, and the Born This Way group. And it's basically just A bunch of stories about random acts of kindness that have impacted people. And I don't know about you, but there's a lot of negativity in the world right now. You turn on the news and all you see is negativity. So I just needed a little bit of positivity. And when you pick up and read this book, it gives it to you. So I'd recommend it to anyone who's looking for some positivity in their life right now. And also look into the Born This Way Foundation, they're a fantastic group.

• 23:51Harry Stebbings?

  Listen, I love that and I'm totally sold on bringing positivity to our lives today. Tell me, the rise of impact investing, what are the thoughts?

• 23:57Speaker 02

  You know, it's funny because people think about impact investing and they assimilate it with reduced returns because you're somehow doing something socially good. And I just, I reject that. Impact investing can produce even better returns than non-impact investing. So when I think about impact, I think about there's a bunch of stakeholders in a company, right? You have your investors, you have your employees, you have your customers, and you just add the community as a fourth stakeholder and what's the impact on the community? And we have a lot of big problems to solve in the world. Beyond the pandemic, we have a lot of big problems. We have climate change, we have social unrest, we have all sorts of issues around health and wellbeing of people. So we're going to solve some huge problems in the world over the next 10 to 20 years. And those are impact problems, right? And so I think people are going to make a lot of money for the companies that get it right and solve these big problems.

• 24:39Harry Stebbings?

  All right, tell me about an inflection moment in your life that's changed the way you really see the world.

• 24:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's funny, I like to tell this story. I grew up in the Bay Area, in Sunnyvale. And when I was growing up in Sunnyvale, it was mostly cherry trees and orchards. And there wasn't no Silicon Valley yet, it was just really starting to emerge and a lot of land and farmland. And, you know, as a kid, you'd go out and play, that's what you did all day, right? Go out and play football or baseball or whatever outside. And, you know, the court next to me, there were four boys. And so I spent a lot of time over there at their house, hanging out and playing sports and stuff. And their dad actually worked for Fairchild. And I was at their house one time in the kitchen and he had this big device sitting on the kitchen table. And it was plugged into the phone line and it looked like a big copier, paper copier. And I asked him what it was and he said, well, this is called a modem. I said, what does it do? And he goes, well, you plug it into the phone and it'll actually send this piece of paper to another location. And I was totally blown away by that.

• 25:28Speaker 02

  It was the first time I'd ever seen technology since, you know, I was eight years old, so this was 1970. It really changed my perspective on what technology could mean to the world. And it sort of woke me up a little bit and took a while, but obviously growing up in the Silicon Valley, you get exposed to so Much technology over time. That was my very first.

• 25:43Harry Stebbings?

  I love that as a story. That's awesome to hear. And the ultimate one, will clean tech come roaring back in the 2020s?

• 25:48Speaker 02

  Yeah, I think it will, especially if we end up with a Biden administration, I think it will. Listen, I mean, we've talked about the issues, right? Climate change is a problem and you sort of look at what happened in the mid 2000s with clean tech investing that wasn't very successful. That's because clean tech deals take a lot of capital to get off the ground before you even have a chance to take the product out to consumers. And usually you're going into markets that are filled with legacy commodity vendors. And so it's a very difficult set of markets. I do think that startups are going to need some help from state and local governments and federal government in terms of dealing with some of that funding gap. So I think there's big problems to solve. I think we'll see a resurgence of technology applied to those problems and hopefully get to work hand in hand with the government to actually accelerate some of these solutions.

• 26:27Harry Stebbings?

  And then the final one, and this is probably the toughest of all of them, definitely the deepest, Barry, but what's your biggest Netflix recommendation?

• 26:35Speaker 02

  I love binging on Netflix. Right now, and you know, I've gone through Succession. I'm a big Succession fan. Ozark, all those kinds of shows. Right now I'm watching a show called Ratchet and it's based on a character Nurse Ratchet from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, which is one of my favorite movies. Basically goes back before that and it follows this person Ratchet who becomes a nurse. And it's quite good actually. So I'd highly recommend folks that are looking for a new show to watch to watch Ratchet.

• 26:58Harry Stebbings?

  I mean, Ozark is probably one of my favorites ever. That ending to the last season was, that was explosive.

• 27:03Speaker 02

  It's crazy. It's crazy.

• 27:05Harry Stebbings?

  But Barry, we've wanted to do this for a while. So I'm so pleased we could make this happen today. And thank you so much for being so open. I really do appreciate it.

• 27:10Speaker 02

  Thanks, Eric. Great chat with you.

• 27:14Harry Stebbings?

  Always so love my chats with Barry and he's always been there for me and always been incredibly supportive of my career. So I want to say a huge thank you to him for that. And if you'd like to see more from Barry, you can find him on Twitter at Barry Eggers. Likewise, it'd be great to welcome you behind the scenes here. You can do so on Instagram at H Stebbings 1996 with two Bs. I always love to see you there. But before we leave you today, I want to take a moment to mention HelloSign, a great example of a company that found success in building a product focused on user experience. HelloSign is an effortless e-signature solution used by millions to securely send and request legally valid digital signatures and agreements. They raised a total of $16 million in funding and recently got acquired by Dropbox for an impressive Of $230 million, check out hellosign.com/20vc to join the thousands of companies and founders

• 27:58Harry Stebbings?

  who value fast, secure and simple e-signatures. And speaking about turning complex processes into beautiful experiences there with HelloSign, has anyone tried to send a business payment recently? Ugh, it's a nightmare. You have reviews and never-ending back and forth between colleagues. It's a lot of work that continues to pile up, and that's where Rootable steps in. Rootable not only focuses on digital business payments, but the time it saves on both the accounting and operations sides as well. Plus, Rootable automatically updates your accounting records, making your finance team's lives easier. Request a 15-minute demo and start managing your B2B payments electronically at rootable.com for free. That's no transaction fees and no seat fees for one full month. Join Rootable in building the best platform for businesses to manage their workflows and

• 28:42Harry Stebbings?

  send and receive money digitally at rootable.com today. And last but by no means least, and staying on the theme of amazing, beautiful products, the team over at Pendo, the product cloud company, is expanding rapidly throughout Europe and recently released a version of their product which is designed and priced specifically for startups. So no matter whether you're an operator or you're an investor, in Europe or the US, Pendo has you and your portfolio's products covered, showing you how your product stacks up against your peers, analyzing over 1,000 software products and creating a benchmark for startups, scale-ups and enterprises across five different categories. You can find out more at pendo.io/products-benchmarks. That's pendo.io/products-benchmarks.

• 29:25Harry Stebbings?

  As always, I so appreciate all your support and I can't wait to bring you an incredible episode with Zach Weinberg this coming Thursday.