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Romeen Sheth

22 Jan, 11 tweets, 3 min read

@avlok

0/ [THREAD] I went deep with @avlok, CEO of @AngelList Venture on the future of venture capital, what he’s learned from @naval and his belief on why we’re just in the first innings of tech

10 Lessons on disruption, rolling funds, startups and angel investing:

1/ Expand the pie

AngelList decided not to focus on the “Founder-Investor” match problem (zero sum game).

Instead, they focused on using software to create more Investors, thereby creating more Founders.

Expanding market can = 10x the impact of resegmenting the market.

2/ Time, not capital is the constraint of the investing ecosystem

# of GPs * GP hours = the total amount of time investors have to meet founders.

⬆️investors + ⬆️investor time (via software) = ⬆️more startups funded = ⬆️likelihood of innovation.

3/ If you believe there are only a finite number of venture backable companies, you have to believe there is a limit on human creativity

Reducing friction in financing creates an explosion of companies.

"We're hitting the limit" is synonymous with "we're out of ideas."

4/ I’m not a businessman. I’m a business, man.

Regulatory changes (506c) + democratization of tools (e.g. rolling funds) is empowering solo capitalists.

Rolling funds are a symptom of a larger tectonic shift - trust is shifting away from institutions and towards individuals.

5/ The internet gives you infinite leverage and by extension infinite possibility.

This is the best time to start a company - markets are larger than they’ve ever been, the ecosystem is highly mature and the “no code stack” allows non-technical people to enter the arena.

6/ Innovation comes from reducing friction

When you remove steps in a process, you remove friction. By eliminating friction you can take on additional workload.

AngelList removed friction from funding + redistributed workload towards increasing funding in the ecosystem.

7/ First principle thinking is over referenced, but underutilized.

Ask what could be, if the existing system did not exist.

“If software built a venture fund today, what would it look like?'' - this question kick started AngelList’s build of rolling funds.

@AngelList

8/ “You can’t create a market” is a myth
More customer value = stronger customer = larger customer = more customer needs = new product/market opportunity.

Repeat cycle.

For @AngelList, ⬆️investment products = ⬆️startups = ⬆️needs = ⬆️AL products.

@ProductHunt

9/ Startups only need to focus on 3 things - (1) Capital, (2) Talent, (3) Customers.

If you’re trying to add value in the ecosystem, align with one of those 3 pillars. AL uses this framework:

Capital - AngelList Venture
Talent - AngelList Talent
Customers - @ProductHunt

10/ We’re only scratching the surface of tech's impact

Early stage startups as a whole are in a recursive loop of being systematically undervalued. There’s 50x room to run in this ecosystem.

Even that may be selling it short.

Never bet against human creativity.

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More from @RomeenSheth

Romeen Sheth

@RomeenSheth

23 Jan

0/ [THREAD] Over the last 4 years, I’ve interviewed 100+ of the most successful Investors, Founders and Executives in the world.

Here are the 20 "must have" lessons that most stuck out to me.

Lessons on life, career advice, entrepreneurship and startups 👇👇👇

1/ Having a billion dollars is great, having a billion seconds is priceless.

Interesting thought experiment: If you had the opportunity to switch places with Warren Buffet, would you do it?

You would be a billionaire, but you would also be 90.

Time > Money.

2/ Always strive to simultaneously be overrated and underrated.

Contrary to popular belief, being overrated is good. It opens doors and gives you credibility.

But don’t let this go to your head. Stay hungry, humble and hardworking.

Read 22 tweets

Romeen Sheth

@RomeenSheth

20 Jan

@DavidSacks

0/ [THREAD] I had @DavidSacks on the podcast today and it was one of the most insightful episodes I’ve done yet. Here were the 10 biggest insights I learned from David today.

Lessons on startups, leadership and operating from building multiple multi-billion dollar companies:

1/ Chaos is exacerbated by growth.

Too many organizations and first time leaders are focused on subduing chaos.

Embrace it.

Ironically, chaos is one of the few startup problems that growth doesn’t solve - in fact, it’s caused by growth.

2/ If you have product-market fit and are scaling from 50 to 500 employees, you have a fan base

Engage this community as quickly as you can. It may only be a few dozen people at the first event, but it will grow.

Dreamforce started small. Now it's the largest tech conference.

Read 13 tweets

Romeen Sheth

@RomeenSheth

18 Jan

0/ Who’s out there building Lambda School for BizOps? I’m super interested in funding the right team to solve this problem.

We have ISA schools / online courses for Eng, Product, Sales, Design, but I haven’t seen anything on BizOps.

This is a big big big opportunity [THREAD]

1/ First, what is BizOps?

BizOps is one of the most critical functions in a fast growing startup. 3 big objectives:

1. Tie the glue together between departments
2. Define and monitor a clear set of universal metrics
3. Tease out the natural tension that sits between teams

2/ But here's the problem.

Right now, EVERY BizOps job posting finishes with “Prefer 2-4 years of experience in Investment Banking or Consulting.”

Ok, so what do you do if you weren't an ex-banker or consultant? And why did we decide that that background makes the most sense?

Read 10 tweets

Romeen Sheth

@RomeenSheth

16 Jan

0/ There’s a multibillion dollar startup waiting to be built in religion.

Large Market: 6B+ users w/ lifetime stickiness
Highly Fragmented: 1M+ communities
Low NPS: Terrible product experience

Let’s talk if you’re building in this space.

If not, here's a free idea. [THREAD]

1/ First, let’s level set. Most articles you read today talk about how less and less millennials adhere to religion.

What these articles miss is how large the existing base already is. Religion contributes $1.2T+ to the US economy.

That’s a ~top 15 global economy on its own.

2/ So how does this break down globally? The top 4 religions alone constitute ~6B individuals.

Christianity - 2.3B
Islam - 1.8B
Hinduism - 1.1B
Buddhism - 500M

Even "smaller" religions like Shinto and Sikhism have 100M and 30M followers respectively.

Read 11 tweets

Romeen Sheth

@RomeenSheth

9 Jan

1/ Last year I invested $1M+ in startups.

I was reflecting on missed deals this past week. Every deal I missed was ultimately because of one of three reasons.

I came up with a framework to dissect these 3 reasons and how they are related to one another. Let’s dig in 👇👇👇

2/ Angel investing can be broken down into three phases

Phase I: Did I see the company? Speaks to my access
Phase II: Did I say yes? Speaks to my judgement
Phase III: Did they say yes? Speaks to my value

You have to hit all 3 to get a deal done. 2 out of 3 isn’t good enough.

3/ Phase I is all about access.

This is your "top of the funnel." You can be the best picker / fit for a company, but if you don't see it it's irrelevant.

Like anything, getting started is tough, but once you start investing and participating in deals, this compounds quickly.

Read 7 tweets

Romeen Sheth

@RomeenSheth

5 Jan

0/ There’s a lot of noise on how to pitch your startup.

Keep it simple. Every good pitch boils down to five ingredients. If you have all 5, you'll get funded. Miss 1 and it can be fatal.

I made a chart describing how the ingredients relate to each other.

Let's dig in 👇

1/ You need 5 ingredients to nail your pitch:

Problem - Is this an issue?
Solution - Do you have the right fix?
Market - Is this big enough?
Business - Can you make money?
Team - Are you the people to do it?

The best pitches hit all 5, good pitches 4 and subpar hit 3 or less.

2/ Ingredient #1 Problem

The problem statement is an explanation of why a defined set of circumstances is painful for a defined set of users.

If you have a problem that’s not painful, your company at best is a vitamin. The best startups are pain killers.

Read 10 tweets

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