[Array] Podcast

Roland Reynolds started one of the early fund of funds investing in emerging managers in 2007. He then joined forces with Industry Ventures in 2009 to land their fund of funds initiative. Industry ventures as a firm started in 2000 now manages $3.5B in assets under management. They invest across the entire stack of the venture capital ecosystem in secondaries, hybrids, directs and fund of funds. Roland dives deep into their investment criteria, how they decide to work with their investments, and where the market is today compared to 1999.

Shruti Gandhi's twitter: https://twitter.com/atshruti

Array Ventures website: www.array.vc

Roland Reynolds bio: http://www.industryventures.com/team/roland-reynolds

Industry Ventures website: http://www.industryventures.com

Blye Faust is an academy award winning producer of the movie Spotlight about the Boston Globe investigation of the Catholic church for allegations of abuse. She has also co-produced The Queen Latifah Show and started an interior design firm byblye

With her co-founder Nicole Rocklin, Blye started a one of a kind women-led production company, Rocklin/Faust. Her company focuses on “Telling transformative, entertaining true stories that engender a collective social dialogue, inspire change, and celebrate innovation.” In this episode we discuss her journey as she transitioned from practicing law into founding a successful production company, how she came about producing and spearheading the creation of the academy award winning movie Spotlight. She also shares her thoughts on the lack of diversity and culture of harassment within the entertainment industry. Listen in to hear a story of a founder creating a company in Hollywood which is very different than our typical tech podcast. We thought this unique founding story was definitely worth sharing.

Blye Faust's twitter: https://twitter.com/byblye

Shruti Gandhi's twitter: https://twitter.com/atshruti

Array Ventures website: www.array.vc

Rocklin/Faust website: http://www.rocklinfaust.com/

About Spotlight (Oscar Winning Movie)

In 2001, editor Marty Baron of The Boston Globe assigns a team of journalists to investigate allegations against John Geoghan, an unfrocked priest accused of molesting more than 80 boys. Led by editor Walter "Robby" Robinson (Michael Keaton), reporters Michael Rezendes (Mark Ruffalo), Matt Carroll and Sacha Pfeiffer interview victims and try to unseal sensitive documents. The reporters make it their mission to provide proof of a cover-up of sexual abuse within the Roman Catholic Church.

A Canadian implant in SV Jonathan Abrams is now a founder of 4 SV startups: Socializr, Friendster, HotLinks and most recently Nuzzel with backing from Marc Andreesen, Naval Ravikant, Homebrew, SoftTech and Lowercase just to name a few. Jonathan has first hand experience on how timing matters for companies, how to differentiate in a crowded market to rise above the competition, and how execution is as important as the initial idea for the company to succeed. Jonathan is also a prolific angel investor counting AngelList, Docker, Front, Instacart, and Slideshare amongst his portfolio. I love my interactions with Jonathan because he is outspoken about supporting and opening doors for women founders. He is also on the board of Girls in Technology. 

Thank you Jonathan for being with us today. Follow us on twitter @abrams and @atshruti

Listen to some other [Array] podcasts: Ryan Hoover founder of Product Hunt, Justin Kan who sold his company Twitch to Amazon for $1B.

Today on our podcast we have Rory O’Driscoll, cofounder and partner at Scale Venture Partners. Scale Venture Partners just raised their 6th fund of $400m managing over $1.5 billion in assets under management. Scale had interesting beginnings as a firm; they were an in-house VC fund inside Bank of America and spun out as a separate firm in 2007 by Rory Driscoll and Kate Mitchell. Scale is one of the few model VC funds in SV with a woman founder and many women investing partners . 

Scale has been a helpful partner to Array since our early days and one of the few firms such as Array that focuses in enterprise investing. Rory has led investments and sits of the boards of companies such as Box, DocuSign, Pantheon and many more where Scale invested in these companies around Series A or B until they go public. I wanted to sit down with Rory and learn how to build a long lasting firm and how his views on the enterprise sector have evolved over the years. In this episode, Rory discusses the typical lifecycle of an enterprise startup and there path to IPO, his views on ICOs, how to pick an investment strategy, when/if to consider changing your investment strategy and much more.

Rory  O’Driscoll's Twitter: https://twitter.com/rodriscoll

Shruti Gandhi's Twitter: https://twitter.com/atshruti

Scale Venture Partner: https://www.scalevp.com/

Array Ventures: http://www.array.vc/

Tim Draper is the founder of venture capital firms Draper Fisher Jurvetson (DFJ) and Draper Associates. He also built the Draper University built to empower entrepreneurs take risk and build confidence. He is author of the book How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs. 

He is an early investor and proponent in bitcoin and investor in companies such as Skype, Theranos, Tesla, and Hotmail. His original suggestion to use viral marketing as a method for spreading a software application from customer to customer was instrumental to the successes of these companies. Today he talks about why bitcoin will be at $250k by 2022, how VC can stay relevant in the world of crypto, why California needs to be broken into 3 states, and other fun gems. Tune in to starting your learning, for some good advice, and secrets of his success.

Tim's twitter handle: TimDraper

Shruti's twitter handle: atShruti

Tim's book: How to Be the Startup Hero: A Guide and Textbook for Entrepreneurs and Aspiring Entrepreneurs

Ryan Hoover is a founder of Product Hunt, place to discover your next favorite thing. Product Hunt was funded by investors like a16z, Greylock, Slow Ventures, and Alexis Ohanian. Product Hunt was recently acquired by, Angellist a company where the world meets startups. Ryan is one of the most genuine founders I know in Silicon Valley. He’s built quite a brand for himself. In this podcast we talk about how Ryan build one of the largest communities on the web for Product Hunt, some of his favorite launches on the website, and his decision to sell to Angellist. 

Shruti's Twitter: @atShruti

Ryan's Twitter: @rrhoover

After founding several successful start-ups, Paul Martino (https://twitter.com/ahpah), Duncan Davidson (https://twitter.com/duncandavi), and Rich Melmon (https://twitter.com/RMelmon) decide to start a different kind of company, a venture capital fund - Bullpen Capital (http://bullpencap.com). Starting a successful VC firm requires differentiation. They found a gap in the market allowing them to start a fund with differentiation based on “stage" vs “lifecycle” approach. Bullpen successfully takes a “stage” focus approach creating a "post seed” category. Bullpen truly gives attention to contrarian “vice” markets and founders that many VC firms are unable to or written-off based on their experience and pattern matching. I’ve been as an advisor with Bullpen for a few years and I’ve seen their approach in action. I’ve seen how a perfect Bullpen deal comes about with a combination of math and art together. Let’s hear Paul Martino’s personal journey, and how a VC firm continues to stay competitive as it grows. I have particularly enjoyed this conversation, because hearing my friends journeys accelerates my learnings that I can apply right away as I grow my own fund Array Ventures (www.array.vc) Shruti's Twitter: https://twitter.com/atshruti

Roy Bahat is one of the founder of Bloomberg Beta. I met Roy through my friend Shivon Zilis who is also a partner at Bloomberg Beta. Shivon was in one of our earlier podcasts on Array talking about AI. Bloomberg Beta is one of my favorite firms to work with and not only because they are also an LP in my fund Array Ventures but because I respect how they have built their firm and constructed their portfolio in a thoughtful way. They are the only firm I know that sends a survey to their companies asking for feedback on what they can do better. Bloomberg Beta was born out of Roy's frustration when he was raising money for his own startup. That's when Roy saw a need to start a fund with transparency, focus on their experience with the founders, and clear thesis on future of work. With so many VC firms being formed in last few years differentiation is important to be able to attract the right entrepreneurs. Let's dive into how Roy thought about building a new VC firm from scratch and how he thinks about the VC industry today with all the changes in recent years.

Shruti's twitter: @atShruti

Roy's twitter: @roybahat

Bloomberg Operating Manual: https://github.com/Bloomberg-Beta/Manual

Array VC: www.array.vc

Brad Feld is a legend in the venture industry. Brad started out as a founder of Feld Technologies then became an angel and institutional investor and recently also expanded his firm, Foundry Group, into fund investments. Amongst the many things he is known for Brad started Techstars and was an early investor in well known public companies such as Zynga, and Fitbit. He has been one of the few investors bringing transparency to this opaque industry by blogging about his perspectives. In this podcast Brad shares his thoughts on what it takes to be a good investor and fund manager.

You can follow us on twitter at @bfeld and @atShruti

It’s amazing how Cloudflare a company that was a mere dream 8 years has become core part of the internet infrastructure today making websites more secure and scalable. Cloudflare sees all kinds of traffic and attacks from Neo Nazis, largest phasing attacks, political campaigns before you know about it. Tighten your seat belts to get on a roller coaster with Cloudflares's co-founder, Michelle Zatlyn, and her journey to becoming a fast unicorn from her early days of starting Cloudflare at Harvard Business School with her cofounder Matthew Prince and Lee Holloway. Follow Michelle Zatlyn on twitter @zatlyn and your host Shruti Gandhi @atShruti