August 4, 2025 • 50 mins
In this episode, Eugenio Gonzalez from Plug and Play Ventures joins Joel Palathinkal to discuss his journey from law to venture capital and his role at Plug and Play's unique platform. Eugenio shares insights on key attributes and strategies for VC candidates, emphasizing the importance of branding and culture in the industry. The conversation covers career transitions for legal professionals and explores trends in tech, entrepreneurship, and Insurtech. Eugenio discusses assessing risk in startups, traits of successful founders, and the impact of new technologies on insurance. The episode concludes with audience Q&A on VC career paths, advice on developing an investment thesis, and guidance for aspiring venture capital analysts.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
But it's not going to be the established folks.
More often than not, those guys have securedtheir funding.
They're going to go to their existing orprevious investors.
Those guys are set.
You want to make sure that you get to know thenew founders, right?
So those guys found a wedge, are brandingthemselves as the go to guys when you want to
talk about Gen C founders.
(00:21):
They're referring deals already to VCs.
Find myself saying that if you want the job,you need to do the job before.
So you do the job before you get the job, andthat's how you're going to be able to break
into venture.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I,Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the
(00:45):
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
Then we'll we'll do this.
Livestream.
(01:06):
Yeah.
Maybe you weren't ready for that.
Was not.
It's all good.
Let's do it.
Yeah.
We'll just do it.
That way we we don't have to do any editinglater.
That's why I've been know, ever since I startedthis, I just tried to save as much time as I
can and try not to say something stupid.
(01:27):
But if I do, hopefully people look over it.
But anyways, Eugenio, thanks for joining theshow.
Thanks for taking time out.
I know there's just a lot of complex stuffgoing on at home with family and everybody just
trying to get back to work.
So I appreciate you balancing that andbalancing in your schedule.
But for the audience here, we've got differentpeople that are working in tech and also
(01:50):
breaking into venture capital, a couple ofpeople that are emerging managers.
So excited to learn a little more about you,your career, how you broke into VC and all the
amazing things that Plug and Play is doing.
So welcome to the show.
We on the show again, we've got EugenioGonzalez from Plug and Play.
So happy to have you here.
(02:11):
Maybe we can start by just you talking a littlebit about your background and how you broke
into VC and Plug and Play, we'll just take itfrom there.
All right.
And thanks for having me, Joel.
So, yeah, let's start from the very beginning,I guess.
So I'm originally from Chile.
I'm a recovering lawyer, so I spent the firstsix years of my career working in M and A.
(02:37):
Very, very interesting.
Spent a good time working on cross borderdeals, but ultimately realized that I didn't
wanna I was sitting at the wrong side of thetable and we'll get back to that later within
venture capital.
But when you're a lawyer, everything is sort oflinear, right?
(02:59):
And there's not a ton of upside the way thatventure capital creates for you and where
you're able to partner with and invest inamazing entrepreneurs.
The downside is limited.
You can lose one time your money.
The upside is infinite, right?
Being a lawyer doesn't provide that sort ofoptionality.
Everything is very linear.
Everything is sort of tied to the amount ofhours that you spend at the office.
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The only way to deleverage or to leverageyourself is by employing more people.
That's why a lot of other lawyers hire morelawyers to work more hours for them.
Venture capital, I think, has this uniqueability that has two leverages, which is one
money, so you can deploy capital in differentventures.
By that, you can start doing more things.
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And then at the same time, technology, which isanother lever.
Once I realized that I was sitting at the wrongside of the table, I went to MIT where I got my
MBA.
I spent two years in Boston at MIT Sloan.
Realized that I want to be in investing.
I want to do something, but I wasn't quite surewhat to do with it.
(04:09):
Far too old to do investment banking, not quitethe right background to do private equity, and
really fell in love with early stage venturecapital.
I also realized that in order to break intoventure capital, you needed to have either
operating background or investing background.
I hadn't either.
(04:29):
So I charted a little path to be able to breakinto venture.
So while you're at MIT, which it's a greatbrand, everyone knows the school, you're not
able to circumvent the fact that you don't havethose two things.
If you don't have an operating background orinvestment background, it's a little bit harder
(04:51):
to start.
So I joined a startup I think on my secondsemester.
I was helping a founder raise capital.
We raised 300 ks from the first institutionalinvestor who ended up hiring me as a summer
associate.
That founder went on his own way to build hisstartup, and I really wanted to be on the
investment side.
So I joined Mass Ventures as a summer associatewithin a number of deals.
(05:15):
Then I went and worked at one of theirportfolio companies called Spiro, where I spent
some time with Adam and the rest of the folksdown there, which are an awesome team, to get
more operating experience.
And then I joined Accomplis as a MBA associate,I guess, to work a few months alongside Jeff
and the rest of the team over there.
(05:36):
So after the span of two years, I was able tospeak the language, if you will.
I was able to have that operating background,the investment background, be able to source
deals, be able to understand what reallymattered in venture capital as you're trying to
break into that industry.
(05:57):
And then the opportunity to join Plug and Playshowed up.
And Plug and Play is a really interesting placebecause it has this unique platform that once
you realize what venture capital is about, whenyour venture capital at the earlier stages is
about selling money.
And so you need to make sure, and as moreemerging fund managers approach and then
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there's more funds that keep basically raisingmore money and everyone comes in here, you need
to have a differentiation.
You need to if you're selling money, which is acommodity, how do you make yourself different?
Plug and Play has a network of five thirty fivecorporate partners, companies like Panasonic,
Nintendo, PepsiCo, Progressive, etcetera.
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All these big folks come to us because theywant innovation, which is another way to say
that they want an edge over their competition.
And we help them by sourcing the latest andgreatest products that are out there.
When you're able to match an entrepreneur withone of the people at this corporate
partnerships, at this large incumbents, you'reable to help them in a way that you can shorten
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their sales cycle.
You can lower their cost of acquisition.
You can effectively provide them with traction.
And that turns out to be the milestone thatthey need to achieve whatever comes next,
right?
That is fairly unique.
And I don't know any other firm that has thenetwork of corporate partners that we do that
has the scale that we do.
(07:28):
We have offices in China, Japan, Singapore,Indonesia, France, Germany, The Netherlands,
Spain, The UK, South Africa, North Of Africa.
We have a number of new offices.
We opened recently in Brazil, offices in Canadanow and all across The US.
That level of scale gives us a verydifferentiated approach when partnering with
early stage entrepreneurs.
(07:50):
So I plug and play.
I have the good fortune of leading the Fintechand SureTech enterprise and health teams.
Our investment team, we're close to 24 folksacross seven different locations.
We do a number of different investments.
Our average check size is roughly 150 ks, andwe do a number of different investments.
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Last year, we finished the whole organizationwith a two ten investments.
We commonly get mistaken with accelerationprograms.
We are not one of those folks.
We don't take equity if you leverage ourbusiness development programs.
You can't really apply to it.
It's an invite only program to be in front ofeveryone that's someone within a specific
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industry, and Plug and Play has the broadestnetwork of corporate partners by industry.
That's pretty much it.
So hopefully I was able to cover everythingfrom breaking into VC to what's point of point.
No, no, yeah.
And I'll help you guide the discussion.
So going back just real quick for some of theaudience here and other people that are trying
to break into VC, What do you think some of theattributes were that you had to land that first
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role at Mass Ventures?
Because obviously, really at the interviewstage, you have to outperform in the interview
to be the top candidate.
So what are some things that helped you?
It sounded like you had some operationalskills, and then I'm assuming MIT gave you some
of the academic background as far as theterminology and the buzzwords.
But what do you think really helped you to getpushed over the fence to land the job offer?
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Was it deals?
Was it You need to first understand really wellthe type of firm that you're interviewing
right?
And so if you're trying to do, you'reapproaching someone at the growth equity stage
and you're just networking with early stageentrepreneurs, that's never gonna be a good
(09:47):
fit.
And so you're just wasting each other's time.
Once you realize that you bring somethinginteresting to the table, you have a good
network in a school, you're hustling becauseyou're going to all the events, you become
their like eyes and ears on the ground, and youhave a differentiated deal flow than what they
have, then it becomes interesting.
(10:10):
More often than not, I find myself talking tofolks that are thinking about breaking into
ventures and trying to create decks and pieces.
But when you realize that you're spending onthis less time than the average person within
venture, what is it that you're going to teachthem, right?
So you're showing them that you can do the jobeventually or a piece of it, but you're
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probably not going to have a much moredifferentiated approach or a more nuanced
vision of a specific sector than the folks thatdo this full time.
So you either go really deep, really specializein something, or you bring something to the
table that they don't have and that's why theywanna bring you in.
Yeah, so what are some things that people thatare not in BC can do to do that?
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I guess it's obviously to your point, right?
Like the deck or the memo that needs to besuper targeted to what the fund is looking for.
Right?
But I'm sure you've hired a lot of people andlooked at talent.
What are some things that have really been avalue add that was different?
Did somebody come up with some type of reallycool financial model?
(11:23):
I've seen people be super creative where nowyou can build these cool analytics and notion
tables.
I saw something recently from a candidate wherethey actually mapped out a market, but it was
cool.
It was like a dynamic website where you canmove sliders back and forth.
So that was really creative.
But what have you seen as far as just hiresthat don't come from the traditional background
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of doing the MBA or coming from a banking or PEbackground?
Maybe some trends that you've seen as far asjust great candidates.
I would say that great candidates stand outbecause of the consistency that they bring to
the table.
I keep saying the same thing and not everyonelistened.
The few folks that listened for some reasonkeep getting VC jobs, which is it's impossible
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for someone to get to know you if you don'ttell them what you do, right?
And unless you're writing about it, unless youare branding yourself with those deals, unless
you're known in that space, it's very difficultto stand out from, again, someone else within
the industry that's doing this full time.
So if I'm a VC and I have to pick betweensomeone that has been two years in the industry
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that has already developed a network that worksin the Valley, or someone that's fresh out of
school, doesn't have the background, then thatcandidate is obviously at disadvantage.
But the beauty of early stage venture capital,at least, is that you don't have to have a
specific background, as long as you show to therest of the folks that you are the right person
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because you have that specific background,because you're an expert in that field, because
you've written extensively about it, becausethe founders are contacting you.
So let me give you an example.
I was in the phone recently with two folksfresh out of Yale.
They're about to graduate, but these guys havebuilt a good pipeline of Gen C startups.
That's the niche that they're tackling.
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We write a newsletter, they religiously send itout every week.
So there's consistency.
They write about a theme or a topic about aspecific target that I think it's overlooked by
some VCs and it's obviously gonna be thefuture.
Like we don't invest in the companies that aregonna be working for, or to better say it, I
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guess, we invest in the founders that are gonnabe working and building the companies of the
future, right?
And those guys are sometimes fresh out ofschool.
But it's not gonna be the established folks.
More often than not, those guys have securedtheir funding.
They're gonna go to their existing or previousinvestors, and those guys are set.
You want to make sure that you get to know thenew founders, right?
(14:07):
So those guys found a wedge, are brandingthemselves as the go to guys when you want to
talk about Gen C founders.
They're referring deals already to VCs.
I find myself saying that if you want the job,you need to do the job before.
So you do the job before you get the job, andthat's how you're going to be able to break
(14:29):
into venture.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a lot of those things you can do withoutgoing to Yale.
You can create a newsletter, you can go towhere do the VCs go?
They go to the startup events.
So you can go to the startup events, you can doyour own research and build that proprietary.
I know proprietary is such a overused buzzwordas well.
(14:49):
So I'm kind of Well, let's call it a
proprietary network, right?
Like the fact that you're known within thatspace, the fact that you can immediately talk
to investors, say, hey, they're looking intoenterprise, fintech or health.
Oh, here's five companies that you need to lookat that.
I spoke with the founders last week.
These guys are amazing.
I hear that they just got into Y Combinator.
(15:10):
Like that kind of ability to put the dotstogether and make everything work easy for them
while you're making someone's life easier andthen they can see the value of bringing you in,
then it's easier to break into an edge.
I mean, was a person that has a like 1,500person community based on a certain sector and
(15:34):
this person just raised the fund.
And I'm like, okay, that makes sense.
Because they have the meetups and they have thecommunity already and they have a new, I don't
know they have that
robust Can make Mankovich of this?
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, it's just, when you see it,you're like, okay, who else would probably do
that?
Because they already have all the people at theevents.
(15:55):
So they have that community.
And you don't need to have an MBA or go to Yaleor Harvard to do that.
You could really just do that as long as youhave the internet, you can do that.
So I think that's really
fail on the consistency side, Like Nick didn'twake up to that 15,000 people within Fintech
community.
Like he started building that organically andstarted meeting and adding value and getting to
(16:18):
know entrepreneurs and connecting entrepreneursto different VCs.
He grew that more work.
And now he has his own fund.
You don't need to join a firm to break intoventure.
You can raise your own fund, right?
There's so much capital out there, especiallyfor emerging fund managers that I think it's
easy to get started with a micro fund now morethan ever.
Yeah.
When you think about it, when you look at thedata, most of the emerging fund managers, their
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LPs are angels.
And that's why I posted recently that the angelinvestor is also investing in funds because
it's almost essentially an index of differentdeals.
You can either invest in the S and P 500 orinvest in Tesla directly.
If there's a fund, if you're interested infintech and you don't want to deal by deal try
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to source them on your own because you don'thave or the team.
The fund is kind of a great way to meet peopleto get the connectivity.
And then also if there's co investment rights,you can kind of get both.
You can invest in the S and P five hundred, butthen also invest in Tesla as well.
So I think there's kind of some interestingoptionality with doing both.
(17:28):
And so that's interesting.
What else have you seen as far as talentedcandidates?
I don't know.
Feel like people often are so focused onbreaking into venture that they forget that it
is also very important to be a culture fit.
And what I mean by that is you really want toget to know the people that you'll be working
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with because this job is 20 fourseven.
Like your portfolio doesn't sleep.
The requests from everyone keep coming.
I wake up texting with founders.
I go to bed thinking about decks andfundraising and doing that kind of stuff.
So if you're not in it, you don't love thepeople that you work with it or on it, you're
just going to have such a bad time that I thinkwhy focus so much on breaking into venture only
(18:17):
to like, alright, you got into a fund and thenoh my god, these people suck or like they're
backing deals I have no interest in.
Their values are not aligned with me.
We do completely different things.
I only like I appreciate this founders and notthis other guys that these guys are backing.
So like, people don't spend enough time gettingto know the other folks that they're going to
(18:39):
be working with, and you're going to be workingwith them a lot of hours.
So I would say that that's where I wouldsuggest spending some time on.
Yeah.
No, and I mean, I would say venture in additionis also a lifestyle.
So it's not a nine to five job.
And I think if you truly enjoy what you'redoing, you're okay just responding to an email
at 6PM, 7PM.
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The challenge I think is also having a familythat's supportive as well and having that work
life harmony as Jeff Bezos says.
So, we're living in a world where that justkind of blends together.
And as long as you can kind of balance thatwith the lifestyle, because it is demanding,
especially at a firm like plug and play that'sglobal, you probably support founders all over
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the world.
So, it's super demanding and interactive whereyou're kind of supporting them.
So, it's not for the people that are lookingfor a nine to five, I would say.
But it's really part of your lifestyle.
Let's double click a little more on just thelegal industry.
And I think there's other cascading trends withlike the great resignation.
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People are quitting their jobs.
They wanna do what's interesting to them.
Obviously, you wanted to do something that wasexciting and meaningful to you, but the legal
professionals that are kind of not happy oroverwhelmed, what do you see them pivoting to?
Do you see them pivoting to joining a bigcompany or maybe joining a venture fund as
(20:08):
their compliance officer?
I guess what have you kind of seen with thatcareer?
And I have some cousins that are in the legalspace too, I can share what they've done too.
Yeah, I don't know.
To be honest, I feel like everyone that startedas a lawyer, most of my friends are no longer
lawyers.
They've been in the service industry.
It's a tough one.
(20:28):
It's a very sure way to create wealth, but it'sa very linear path, as I said.
And after you've seen that amount of effortbeing put into something that doesn't, no
matter how many hours you put into it, whetherit's a $200,000,000,000 transaction or a 200 ks
deal, the amount of upside is the same.
Most of the people that I went to law schoolwith are becoming founders, and they're
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starting their own ventures, whether it's on, Idon't know, restaurant side of things, or
they're building their own startups, technologystartups.
Funny enough, that's what I'm seeing.
But I don't know, legal professionals are wellpaid but somewhat exploited, I guess.
And it's a interesting industry where not a lotof change happens.
(21:18):
If you've seen what happened with Atrium JustinKahn's take on building a new law firm from the
ground up based on technology, that didn't goso well.
There's a few reasons why professional servicesdon't really scale and why the lawyers don't
want to have bots combing through theircontracts and you want to be sure that you're
(21:43):
paying attention to the minutiae because that'swhat you're paying for and that's where your
liability comes from.
Yeah, no, it's really helpful.
And look, I don't think it's just the legalindustry, it's every industry.
Was in tech and then I pivoted into productmanagement first.
It's the same thing.
At some point you hit a ceiling as far as theincome you make, I would say, and this is me
(22:07):
just going on a limb, but I would say productmanagement, the hours are definitely probably
better than the law industry because mostpeople get done at 6PM.
Maybe you have a release or something you haveto work on that might take you into the
weekend.
The lifestyle is pretty good as a productmanager and you can move up and be a director
of product, a head of product.
But at some point, there's a maximum salarythat even the biggest hottest FinTech firms
(22:34):
will pay.
And then that could be kind of frustrating.
And then what happens?
You try to do side gigs.
People are trying to do side hustles wheremaybe they teach somewhere or they launch maybe
an app that generates revenue on the side.
But again, you're balancing that with thelimited amount of hours in the day.
So, you're selling your time for money, butthere's only a limited amount of time.
(22:56):
And there's a ceiling for like what that hourlyrate could be.
So, when you model that out, it's a finitenumber, which could be not as attractive to a
lot of people.
But what are some other trends that you'reseeing just with friends that are not in the
legal space that work in tech?
Mean, you have all these founders and friendsthat are working at big companies.
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Are you seeing people, especially with pandemicand with the great resignation, are you seeing
a lot of people just leave their jobs and tryto build something or build a blog or a
coaching business or something like that?
I think that now more than ever, with so muchcapital on the sidelines and just waiting to
deploy so much dry powder, it's never been abetter time to actually become a founder.
(23:45):
Yeah.
I get why venture capital is sexy in a way, butI don't understand why people don't want to
become founders themselves.
Yeah.
Most of the folks I see that are living bigtech or any other sort of job are becoming
like, if you've had a few years of experienceof working on a firm or in a company and you
(24:09):
know how things work, what doesn't work, whatthe needs are, why those companies Like no
organization is perfect by any means.
But if you think that you can tackle something,that you have a unique idea, that you can Now
building a product, a technology product that'snever been easier, hosting it on AWS easier
than ever.
Launching startups, it's I would say that a lotof people are doing it instead of becoming
(24:33):
someone else's employee.
Why not be your own boss and have so muchequity and stake in it that you can actually
create meaningful generational wealth for youand your family?
That's the kind of thing that I'm seeing.
A lot of people are doing it, which I think isinteresting.
I don't know how it's going to end.
I think everyone likes to be an entrepreneurwhen it's 2021 and there's so much capital
(24:56):
going to this year, we don't know.
March 2020, everyone was very happy about beingan employee and knowing where your next
paycheck is going to come from.
So we have that sort of thing where over thepast ten years, I think the market has been
very generous.
The money printing has been very generous aswell.
And a bull run, everyone wants to be anentrepreneur in a bear market TBD.
(25:20):
Sure.
I mean, look, I mean, in 2020, in the peak ofthe pandemic, I mean, there are so many exits
because of the printing of the money and thenjust the opportunity that was there with the
markets, even though there was a pandemic.
So I think it did stimulate people doing thingsmore virtually, being more lean.
And some people are just not ever going to goback to the office.
(25:40):
So that provides opportunity for people tobuild more businesses just completely remote,
remote first.
Have you seen any founders that came in as anentry point into plug and play that started out
as a side hustle?
Because I think a lot of these businesses too,you could launch an app or a platform slowly
(26:01):
and probably use your income to fund it in thebeginning and bootstrap it.
So, don't know if you've ever seen that or anysuccess stories.
I don't think I have actually.
And the reason I think it's fairly commonwithin venture capital is you don't want to see
someone that is half in, half out.
Halfway in.
Yep.
(26:21):
You're either all in or you're all out.
And we don't back founders or like have apsychotic and they're not doing like, we do
this full time.
We expect the founders to be doing it fulltime.
At some point, think it's more of a friends andfamily round where you're like, hey, I want to
raise maybe a few 100 K to figure out if I canlaunch this and do it full time.
(26:47):
And if we get traction, I'll leave my job.
Yeah.
But at the stage where we're coming in andinvesting, ideally, already have a product and
we can actually give them an unfair advantagethrough the network of our partners.
But to your point, I don't really see a lot ofthose folks.
(27:08):
Yeah.
One of my favorite stories, I think it was thefounder of Okta.
There's a blog about this, but he put togethera pitch deck for his wife and pretty much and
it was a really thoughtful pitch deck though,because he modeled out like, Hey, you know
what?
I think he worked at Salesforce, but he waslike, Look, here's what I think.
(27:29):
I think I can build this business.
And as we know, I think Okta had a massiveexit, but they have Okta Ventures now as well.
So, Okta actually has a corporate VC.
I think what he did initially was he was like,Look, these are my options.
The economy is really bad.
So, I'm either gonna get laid off.
But if I start this company, maybe the companydoesn't work out.
(27:52):
I can still go to Salesforce and work at a bigcompany because I do have those transferable
skills, but there's a really uniqueopportunity.
So, I think also weighing out the outcomes.
I think to be honest, in some instances, it'sjust as risky to work for a company because you
could get laid off and things could happen.
(28:13):
And I don't know if this is super provocative,but it could be just as risky to start a
business and go through the uncertainty of thatversus being at a company where they are having
layoffs and there's uncertainty as well.
So, I think if you're in that situation and youhave like some type of unique solution to a
problem, then there's some product market fit.
I think the risk at the end of the day makessense.
(28:36):
Look, I was always afraid of getting laid offat some point, even when I was at like big
companies.
So that was something that I always thoughtabout too, you know?
So I'm not sure what other people think, butthat was just, you know, looking back, I'm
like, look, it's just as risky, you know?
The markets, people change, organizationschange, there's reorgs.
So that's definitely a trend that I've seen.
(28:59):
So switching gears, I'd love to dive a littledeeper into your thesis, kind of what you look
for in founders, the founders that do getaccepted into your program, because it sounds
like it's invite only.
What are some things that you look for infounders?
Obviously you do have a thesis and a sectorfocus, but do you mind sharing a little bit of
(29:23):
that and kind of how you look into the sourcingprocess?
Sure.
So when it comes to assessing founders, a fewof the traits that we look for are, do they
have a unique take on one of the markets thatwe're pretty knowledgeable of?
So we work very closely with our corporatepartners.
(29:46):
That gives us a unique ability to understandwhat the trends are in the market.
We leverage those insights to make betterinvestment decisions.
But unique founders have this insight into amarket and how it's either going to change or
evolve.
And we like being told that we're wrong,especially when there's a big shift in the
(30:08):
market.
But we love founders, repeated founders,founders that have this ability to explain to
you why you're wrong.
And more importantly, I think that this issomething that gets overlooked is, as a
founder, you need to be very skilled atselling, whether it's that you're selling to
(30:29):
customers, you're selling to investors so thatthey'll invest in you, or that you're selling
your company to employees, selling the dream ofwhy they should join you.
That is some of the things that we look for.
So that unique insight, the repeated experienceof being a founder, and then that unique
ability to sell.
(30:51):
Yeah, similar to the founder of Okta and alsoMark Benioff, a lot of those founders that have
launched very successful cloud businesses havebeen in industry for a long time.
And you talk about that as well.
Have you seen a lot of the entrepreneurs comingin become like very seasoned technologists that
have that huge industry experience?
Because I feel like that ties also into whatyou're saying as well, really knowing the
(31:14):
market.
Yeah, it's always Well, when you have thatseasoned experience, It's easy to miss on first
time founders.
We make sure that we're not that we put ourbiases in check when it comes to dealing with
folks that have not had that previous exit or asuccessful exit.
(31:36):
But we do want to see that someone has theability to materialize any of the things that
we said.
You're if you're good at selling, which is theskill set that I recommend, especially if you
want to break into venture, you also want to begood at selling because you're going to be on
the phone a lot, you're going to be competingfor deals, and you want to make sure that
you're selling your firm appropriately to winthose deals.
(32:00):
The founders are able to materialize the nextround of funding because they're able to sell
properly to investors.
The founders that have the ability to selltheir company, meaning that they can attract
the best talent that's out there.
The founders that are able to sell to customersand attract the recurring dollars or the money
that really matters, which is not from VCs,it's actually from customers.
(32:23):
That I think is no matter where at what stateyou are, you need to work on it.
And if you don't have the ability to do allthree of those, quickly identify where your
gaps are and bring in someone that complementsthat skill set.
Yeah, no, that's helpful.
It looks like a question popped up here forRukh.
You wanna ask that question?
(32:46):
Sure.
Hi, thanks for being on here and sharing yourexperiences.
I just wanted to maybe pose a question withregards to your MBA experience in terms of how
it helped you get into a VC role and were youinvolved in the VC startup clubs or did the
curriculum have technical details about venturecapital or any sort of modeling related nuance
(33:08):
for really early stage companies where sort ofmultiples don't really apply or have to be
applied very on a deal by deal basis?
Yeah, yeah, happy to.
Thanks for that question.
So at the MBA level, I think it gives you theability, not a particular skill set that you
(33:29):
won't be able to learn anywhere or even inYouTube, but the ability to pause and think
critically about what you want to do in thefuture, and then spend some time getting to
develop a network in an area that you don'thave.
So the way that I leveraged the MBA program wasto be able to work with a startup, to be able
(33:50):
to get in front of other investors.
Obviously took all the venture capital classesthat I could take.
Funny enough, the best one I would say that wasnot entirely related to venture capital, but
was taught by an executive in residence andgeneral catalyst who had sold his company
previously.
(34:12):
That was a class in sales.
And that was a pretty interesting one as youstart leveraging all these things that we just
talked about.
But you get to develop an interesting networkthrough the program.
Fortunately, at MIT, we had the good fortune ofseeing a great deal of speakers.
We saw Jeff Fagman from Accomplisce come in.
(34:35):
And I approached him after a class and I said,hey, we'd love to work with you if there's
anything that I can do at the firm.
I just he put me in touch with Sarah Downeythere, who used to be an operating partner.
Those kind of opportunities happen becauseyou're there.
I joined the clubs, think.
(34:56):
As I said before, I'm originally from Chile.
And Latins don't really pay too much attentionto clubs.
To my detriment, I realized that Americans tendto pay a lot of attention to clubs.
I joined fairly late to the game, to all thedifferent clubs.
I did join the VCP club.
I was a VP of something.
I organized a few tours of different firms to,again, broaden your network, get to know the
(35:17):
different players.
Most of them, once you're doing those tours,it's great, but it's not I've never seen
someone getting like, oh, here's a resume.
Please hire me.
And they're like, yep, on the spot, you got thejob.
Rarely happens, if not ever.
But it's a great way for you to startdeveloping that network.
And I think that the one takeaway is I zeroedin on the one industry that I wanted to break
(35:47):
into, and I stopped hedging anything else.
I didn't go into consulting.
I didn't want to go into big tech.
I knew exactly when I wanted to go and what Ineeded to do to get there.
And I did four internships at the program,whereas the majority of the folks would just
have a summer internship.
I had worked at a startup before I joined aventure firm.
Then I joined another startup before I joinedanother venture firm.
(36:10):
So I did four internships by the time that twoyears had passed.
And that ties back to what I said, that you canstop, you can think about what you need to do,
and then you have the time to do it.
Yeah, no, that's helpful.
Guys, feel free to chime in if you havequestions.
I'll try to call it out.
I'd love to dive in a little deeper Eugenio onjust the trends that you're seeing in Intritech
(36:35):
and some of the other sectors that you'refocusing on maybe at a macro level.
And what are you seeing the companies doingthat are innovating the most in Insurtech?
Wow, that's funny because Insurtech is such abroad concept.
It is.
Where I sit.
(36:56):
But from the outside, it feels fairly narrowjust as a sector within FinTech.
So I'll start with what I like about it.
So the first thing is insurance is a hugeindustry.
So it's 5,800,000,000,000 in gross writtenpremiums a year.
And it touches everything that we do, right?
So from the moment that we buy our first car orthat we rent our apartments, buy a home when
(37:21):
you have kids, first job, everything that we dois touched by insurance.
So there is so much to do, or so many thingsthat need there's room for improvement.
If you look at the NPS score of the insurancecompanies, it is pretty bad across most of the
(37:41):
lines of business.
I think health care or health insurance has thelowest one, which is like 19% on an NPS score.
That gives you a sense of how much room forimprovement is within the industry, given that
it's so important as we established before.
There's a ton of innovation happening at everysingle point.
Across the whole value chain of insurance,across different stages, risk evolves and new
(38:06):
things happen.
Like you have COVID, there's a ton of thingshappening within healthcare.
When you see that there's a massive shift ofhow people are working from home, then
homeowners insurance or renters insurance getsa lot more interesting.
How people are how just lives are changing thatdefinitely affects the whole insurance
industry.
(38:28):
Leveraging new sources of data we're seeingwith climate change, how much of an impact it
has on the severity and frequency of differentevents.
So So you went from having a drought inCalifornia to then having storms and high heat
in North Of Canada, record heat that hadn'tbeen recorded in one hundred years, to then
floods everywhere, hurricanes, devastatingcities, that kind of thing is creating a
(38:52):
massive shift on the property and casualtyindustry.
When you look at what is happening with COVID,what happened with fertility rates, mortality
rates, People within a recession, people tendto have less kids.
How is that impacting life insurance companies?
How that's impacting asset managers, which arepart of life insurance companies with interest
(39:16):
rates being so low and now the Fed wanting toraise interest rates, how that affects the
whole ecosystem of money is also veryinteresting.
So again, to us, and I can ramble about thisfor hours, is the whole Insurtech ecosystem is
so broad and changing so rapidly that's alwaysan interesting place to start investing and
(39:37):
keep investing in.
Yeah, I think also just new types ofbusinesses.
So on demand, cloud kitchens, there's foodsafety.
There's new businesses that I think have openedwith the pandemic that all probably need some
type of product that wasn't there before.
So I think that also has a gap and maybesomething that isn't there yet.
(40:01):
There's a business that I saw recently wherepeople are just on demand delivering stuff to
try out, whether it's in the clothing industryor retail.
Those products all need to be insured.
So I think it also opens up new creative waysof providing some type of policy for that
software.
I mean, have you seen anything?
(40:22):
Are there innovations in just policy generationbeing more dynamic using data?
Because that can probably be something thatbecause the legacy way is obviously you do a
credit score and you answer some questions, butI'm wondering if there's opportunities to be
able to issue policies more dynamically withmaybe people's social profile or anything like
(40:43):
that.
I guess the tech enablement of some of thelegacy workflows, I can imagine a lot of that
is getting automated.
Yeah, there's a lot of discussion whether ornot you can leverage social profiles to better
underwrite people.
I don't know.
I think that there's a huge wave to your pointon how to provide embedded insurance solutions.
(41:07):
So if you're a delivery person, how you protector cover that risk.
If you are buying something online, if you'rereturning it, that is a huge cost on the e
commerce platform.
How do you protect yourself against that?
To the point that people are just basicallyallowing folks to keep the products that they
purchased, which is kind of crazy, right?
It's creating so much waste, but then there's anew form of risk that's evolving there that
(41:33):
needs to be protected for that downside orhedged against.
So yeah, interesting.
There's no shortage of new things are happeningin the industry and new products that are being
catered and tailored to the needs of howdifferent risks sets are evolving.
But see a lot of One area that we loveinvesting in is new products.
(41:56):
Because as you mentioned, with new platforms,with new ways of doing things, whether it's
dark kitchens, cloud kitchens, whether it's thegig economy, whether it's the creator economy.
We love making sure that everyone is sort ofprotected from the risks that they have in
their day to day, and that is an opportunity tobuild new insurance products.
(42:18):
Yeah, another thing I'm thinking about when youthink about products and climate change, there
could probably be a lot of interesting sensorsthat can give real time data.
Because a lot of times when data comes in, it'sa data feed, right?
So it's ingested overnight because there's somuch data.
But if you've got sensors that are kind ofdynamically tracking different characteristics
that can give you kind of more real time dataas well to kind of give a policy in real time.
(42:44):
But thanks for correcting that.
So it sounds like the terminology is embeddedinsurance.
That's kind of integrating it into theworkflows more seamlessly.
So it's good to be aware of that.
So I appreciate that.
And then it looks like Wendy's got a questionand Wendy, feel free to chime in, you're
looking for just some advice on building abetter investment thesis.
(43:05):
So Wendy's actually at Wharton right now andshe's in the process of kind of just building
her thesis.
Any tips she should, I think the consistencyone was a really good thing.
So I think possibly like publishing somecontent around a certain sector and just
getting that out, I think is one thing.
(43:27):
Any other tips you have as far far as just thethought process and the mental models on
building an investment thesis?
Yeah, I would say, first and foremost, congratson your MBA, Wendy.
Amazing school and being at Wharton.
I would say, to add to what you just said,Joel, spend a lot of time in a specific niche
(43:51):
or a zone where you can actually build adifferentiated knowledge in that space and to
get to know the entrepreneurs in that space.
Otherwise, as I said before, you're never goingto outcompete someone that's already in that
industry doing this full time.
It's super hard to develop that level ofknowledge if you're not actually spending more
(44:12):
time in it.
But once you pick a niche and you actually getto talk to a lot of folks in that niche, you
can actually become an expert more so than therest of the people that are traditionally
spending time in the venture industry.
Yeah, that was really helpful.
Great.
Any other questions, guys?
All right, well, feel free to chime in if youguys have any questions while they're thinking
(44:35):
of maybe their last one or two questions.
I always ask this Eugenio, any life advice thatyou have to share?
You shared a lot of really helpful nuggets, butanything that you want to pass on to us, maybe
from a mentor or a friend or a family member,doesn't have to be about getting into VC.
So any piece of wisdom that you maybe sharewith your friends and family?
(44:58):
No, I would say that I think mentors areimportant, but I feel like people put way too
much weight on them.
It's just there's so much informationavailable, so many good opportunities to learn
from.
YouTube is arguably the best school that's outthere.
And people wait.
I don't like the concept of waiting to breakinto venture to becoming a VC back to what we
(45:21):
spoke before.
You can actually start doing it.
You can start angel investing and crowdfundingplatforms.
You can start doing your own things before evenbreaking into a firm.
What I would hate is for people to miss out ontheir opportunity of being an investor and
creating that level of wealth and have theleverage that we spoke about and having an
(45:45):
impact on all of these because they're waitingfor mentors because they told them not to do
stuff or first you needed to get a job.
What I've learned is you don't need to youshouldn't wait on something to actually go do
it.
And back to what we said before, do the jobbefore you get the job.
(46:05):
Don't wait on someone to give you anopportunity to do the job before you can become
a VC.
Yeah, no, that's super helpful advice.
And that's also what helped me.
It looks like you got a question.
You got a second for maybe one more question,Eugenio?
Sure thing.
Great.
So Manveer, you want to shout out your questionhere?
Yeah, I can share it out loud.
(46:27):
Hi, good afternoon.
Thank you for your time.
My question is to touch base on something youmentioned a little bit earlier in the
conversation in regards to doing the job.
For someone that's trying to come in at theanalyst level, what would you say are some
things they can do to showcase that they'redoing the job?
Obviously, it'll be different from someone atthe partner or principal level.
(46:47):
So what are some key examples that someonecould do at the analyst level to showcase that
they're trying to do that before applying for aposition?
So at the analyst level, I don't expect peopleto come in and know more than there are other
folks at the firm.
But I do expect to see a level of passion andinterest, and ideally a level of insight that
(47:10):
is uncommon.
So what I mean by this is I can pretty muchteach everyone to do the job that we do.
What I can never teach to someone is to wake upon a Saturday morning and listen to a podcast
about investing.
Or are you spending your evenings reading aboutthis?
Are you following the right people on Twitter?
(47:31):
Can we have a conversation out of the bluethat's interesting and nuanced about this
sector because you've spent hours reading aboutit, or you're listening to the latest podcast,
or you've got excited because you found out aninteresting substack of this very niche market
segment that you're passionate about.
That's the kind of thing that I think makes ananalyst stand out from the crowd, even though
(47:55):
you might not have the background, even thoughyou might not have the necessary experience.
But I would say one of the most prominentanalysts that we just hired is a guy that comes
from a cooking background.
He was a chef.
Love his passion for getting to learn more andmore about it.
Don't have to tell him to do things.
(48:16):
He's already out competing the rest of hisanalyst class because he wakes up every day
thinking about this.
He has a sourcing record for companies.
He's doing everything where you're not able tomeasure him on like, oh, he went to Yale, he
went to this school, but he's outperformingeveryone on the amount of passion that he's
(48:38):
putting, the amount of companies that he'ssourcing, the amount of insights, the amount of
presentations, the amount of things that he'sdoing, to the point that I feel like he's going
to burn out soon.
So that's one of the things that we try toprotect him from.
But again, I can't teach him that.
That's what he brings to the table.
And that's the kind of thing that we lovehiring for.
(48:59):
Got it.
Thank you for that clarification.
And just one brief follow-up.
Was that apparent?
Was his passion apparent in the resume or wasit apparent in the interview process?
Good question.
It's only in the interview process.
There's a few ways that you can highlight itobviously.
And we took a deliberate approach ofinterviewing someone that apparently didn't
(49:21):
come from a venture background, but he hadshown in his resume that he had enough
entrepreneurial spirit that we could actuallyhave an interesting conversation.
And then when you talk to him, it like heexudes this energy that he wants to do more,
and that he's passionate about it, and thathe's eager to meet more entrepreneurs, that he
wants to learn more about this space, that ifhe's not knowledgeable about something, that
(49:45):
he'll go and spend hours research it.
Didn't come from, as I said, had a chefexperience and a cooking background, is now
doing and trans presentations on distributedinsurance, for instance.
Sure.
Thank you.
Sure.
Well, those are great.
Thanks so much, Eugenio.
(50:05):
And what's the best way for people to get aholdof you?
LinkedIn?
LinkedIn, Twitter, and my email is EugenioPNPTCdot com.
So feel free to send me an email.
Great.
All right.
Well, hey, thanks so much Eugenio.
I'll let you get back to it and excited tocollaborate.
But it's not going to be the established folks.
More often than not, those guys have securedtheir funding.
They're going to go to their existing orprevious investors.
Those guys are set.
You want to make sure that you get to know thenew founders, right?
So those guys found a wedge, are brandingthemselves as the go to guys when you want to
talk about Gen C founders.
(00:21):
They're referring deals already to VCs.
Find myself saying that if you want the job,you need to do the job before.
So you do the job before you get the job, andthat's how you're going to be able to break
into venture.
Welcome to The Investor, a podcast where I,Joel Palafinkel, your host, dives deep into the
(00:45):
minds of the world's most influentialinstitutional investors.
In each episode, we sit down with an investorto hear about their journeys and how global
markets are driving capital allocation.
So join us on this journey as we explore theseinsights.
Then we'll we'll do this.
Livestream.
(01:06):
Yeah.
Maybe you weren't ready for that.
Was not.
It's all good.
Let's do it.
Yeah.
We'll just do it.
That way we we don't have to do any editinglater.
That's why I've been know, ever since I startedthis, I just tried to save as much time as I
can and try not to say something stupid.
(01:27):
But if I do, hopefully people look over it.
But anyways, Eugenio, thanks for joining theshow.
Thanks for taking time out.
I know there's just a lot of complex stuffgoing on at home with family and everybody just
trying to get back to work.
So I appreciate you balancing that andbalancing in your schedule.
But for the audience here, we've got differentpeople that are working in tech and also
(01:50):
breaking into venture capital, a couple ofpeople that are emerging managers.
So excited to learn a little more about you,your career, how you broke into VC and all the
amazing things that Plug and Play is doing.
So welcome to the show.
We on the show again, we've got EugenioGonzalez from Plug and Play.
So happy to have you here.
(02:11):
Maybe we can start by just you talking a littlebit about your background and how you broke
into VC and Plug and Play, we'll just take itfrom there.
All right.
And thanks for having me, Joel.
So, yeah, let's start from the very beginning,I guess.
So I'm originally from Chile.
I'm a recovering lawyer, so I spent the firstsix years of my career working in M and A.
(02:37):
Very, very interesting.
Spent a good time working on cross borderdeals, but ultimately realized that I didn't
wanna I was sitting at the wrong side of thetable and we'll get back to that later within
venture capital.
But when you're a lawyer, everything is sort oflinear, right?
(02:59):
And there's not a ton of upside the way thatventure capital creates for you and where
you're able to partner with and invest inamazing entrepreneurs.
The downside is limited.
You can lose one time your money.
The upside is infinite, right?
Being a lawyer doesn't provide that sort ofoptionality.
Everything is very linear.
Everything is sort of tied to the amount ofhours that you spend at the office.
(03:23):
The only way to deleverage or to leverageyourself is by employing more people.
That's why a lot of other lawyers hire morelawyers to work more hours for them.
Venture capital, I think, has this uniqueability that has two leverages, which is one
money, so you can deploy capital in differentventures.
By that, you can start doing more things.
(03:45):
And then at the same time, technology, which isanother lever.
Once I realized that I was sitting at the wrongside of the table, I went to MIT where I got my
MBA.
I spent two years in Boston at MIT Sloan.
Realized that I want to be in investing.
I want to do something, but I wasn't quite surewhat to do with it.
(04:09):
Far too old to do investment banking, not quitethe right background to do private equity, and
really fell in love with early stage venturecapital.
I also realized that in order to break intoventure capital, you needed to have either
operating background or investing background.
I hadn't either.
(04:29):
So I charted a little path to be able to breakinto venture.
So while you're at MIT, which it's a greatbrand, everyone knows the school, you're not
able to circumvent the fact that you don't havethose two things.
If you don't have an operating background orinvestment background, it's a little bit harder
(04:51):
to start.
So I joined a startup I think on my secondsemester.
I was helping a founder raise capital.
We raised 300 ks from the first institutionalinvestor who ended up hiring me as a summer
associate.
That founder went on his own way to build hisstartup, and I really wanted to be on the
investment side.
So I joined Mass Ventures as a summer associatewithin a number of deals.
(05:15):
Then I went and worked at one of theirportfolio companies called Spiro, where I spent
some time with Adam and the rest of the folksdown there, which are an awesome team, to get
more operating experience.
And then I joined Accomplis as a MBA associate,I guess, to work a few months alongside Jeff
and the rest of the team over there.
(05:36):
So after the span of two years, I was able tospeak the language, if you will.
I was able to have that operating background,the investment background, be able to source
deals, be able to understand what reallymattered in venture capital as you're trying to
break into that industry.
(05:57):
And then the opportunity to join Plug and Playshowed up.
And Plug and Play is a really interesting placebecause it has this unique platform that once
you realize what venture capital is about, whenyour venture capital at the earlier stages is
about selling money.
And so you need to make sure, and as moreemerging fund managers approach and then
(06:20):
there's more funds that keep basically raisingmore money and everyone comes in here, you need
to have a differentiation.
You need to if you're selling money, which is acommodity, how do you make yourself different?
Plug and Play has a network of five thirty fivecorporate partners, companies like Panasonic,
Nintendo, PepsiCo, Progressive, etcetera.
(06:43):
All these big folks come to us because theywant innovation, which is another way to say
that they want an edge over their competition.
And we help them by sourcing the latest andgreatest products that are out there.
When you're able to match an entrepreneur withone of the people at this corporate
partnerships, at this large incumbents, you'reable to help them in a way that you can shorten
(07:07):
their sales cycle.
You can lower their cost of acquisition.
You can effectively provide them with traction.
And that turns out to be the milestone thatthey need to achieve whatever comes next,
right?
That is fairly unique.
And I don't know any other firm that has thenetwork of corporate partners that we do that
has the scale that we do.
(07:28):
We have offices in China, Japan, Singapore,Indonesia, France, Germany, The Netherlands,
Spain, The UK, South Africa, North Of Africa.
We have a number of new offices.
We opened recently in Brazil, offices in Canadanow and all across The US.
That level of scale gives us a verydifferentiated approach when partnering with
early stage entrepreneurs.
(07:50):
So I plug and play.
I have the good fortune of leading the Fintechand SureTech enterprise and health teams.
Our investment team, we're close to 24 folksacross seven different locations.
We do a number of different investments.
Our average check size is roughly 150 ks, andwe do a number of different investments.
(08:13):
Last year, we finished the whole organizationwith a two ten investments.
We commonly get mistaken with accelerationprograms.
We are not one of those folks.
We don't take equity if you leverage ourbusiness development programs.
You can't really apply to it.
It's an invite only program to be in front ofeveryone that's someone within a specific
(08:35):
industry, and Plug and Play has the broadestnetwork of corporate partners by industry.
That's pretty much it.
So hopefully I was able to cover everythingfrom breaking into VC to what's point of point.
No, no, yeah.
And I'll help you guide the discussion.
So going back just real quick for some of theaudience here and other people that are trying
to break into VC, What do you think some of theattributes were that you had to land that first
(09:00):
role at Mass Ventures?
Because obviously, really at the interviewstage, you have to outperform in the interview
to be the top candidate.
So what are some things that helped you?
It sounded like you had some operationalskills, and then I'm assuming MIT gave you some
of the academic background as far as theterminology and the buzzwords.
But what do you think really helped you to getpushed over the fence to land the job offer?
(09:27):
Was it deals?
Was it You need to first understand really wellthe type of firm that you're interviewing
right?
And so if you're trying to do, you'reapproaching someone at the growth equity stage
and you're just networking with early stageentrepreneurs, that's never gonna be a good
(09:47):
fit.
And so you're just wasting each other's time.
Once you realize that you bring somethinginteresting to the table, you have a good
network in a school, you're hustling becauseyou're going to all the events, you become
their like eyes and ears on the ground, and youhave a differentiated deal flow than what they
have, then it becomes interesting.
(10:10):
More often than not, I find myself talking tofolks that are thinking about breaking into
ventures and trying to create decks and pieces.
But when you realize that you're spending onthis less time than the average person within
venture, what is it that you're going to teachthem, right?
So you're showing them that you can do the jobeventually or a piece of it, but you're
(10:34):
probably not going to have a much moredifferentiated approach or a more nuanced
vision of a specific sector than the folks thatdo this full time.
So you either go really deep, really specializein something, or you bring something to the
table that they don't have and that's why theywanna bring you in.
Yeah, so what are some things that people thatare not in BC can do to do that?
(11:00):
I guess it's obviously to your point, right?
Like the deck or the memo that needs to besuper targeted to what the fund is looking for.
Right?
But I'm sure you've hired a lot of people andlooked at talent.
What are some things that have really been avalue add that was different?
Did somebody come up with some type of reallycool financial model?
(11:23):
I've seen people be super creative where nowyou can build these cool analytics and notion
tables.
I saw something recently from a candidate wherethey actually mapped out a market, but it was
cool.
It was like a dynamic website where you canmove sliders back and forth.
So that was really creative.
But what have you seen as far as just hiresthat don't come from the traditional background
(11:46):
of doing the MBA or coming from a banking or PEbackground?
Maybe some trends that you've seen as far asjust great candidates.
I would say that great candidates stand outbecause of the consistency that they bring to
the table.
I keep saying the same thing and not everyonelistened.
The few folks that listened for some reasonkeep getting VC jobs, which is it's impossible
(12:15):
for someone to get to know you if you don'ttell them what you do, right?
And unless you're writing about it, unless youare branding yourself with those deals, unless
you're known in that space, it's very difficultto stand out from, again, someone else within
the industry that's doing this full time.
So if I'm a VC and I have to pick betweensomeone that has been two years in the industry
(12:39):
that has already developed a network that worksin the Valley, or someone that's fresh out of
school, doesn't have the background, then thatcandidate is obviously at disadvantage.
But the beauty of early stage venture capital,at least, is that you don't have to have a
specific background, as long as you show to therest of the folks that you are the right person
(13:03):
because you have that specific background,because you're an expert in that field, because
you've written extensively about it, becausethe founders are contacting you.
So let me give you an example.
I was in the phone recently with two folksfresh out of Yale.
They're about to graduate, but these guys havebuilt a good pipeline of Gen C startups.
That's the niche that they're tackling.
(13:24):
We write a newsletter, they religiously send itout every week.
So there's consistency.
They write about a theme or a topic about aspecific target that I think it's overlooked by
some VCs and it's obviously gonna be thefuture.
Like we don't invest in the companies that aregonna be working for, or to better say it, I
(13:46):
guess, we invest in the founders that are gonnabe working and building the companies of the
future, right?
And those guys are sometimes fresh out ofschool.
But it's not gonna be the established folks.
More often than not, those guys have securedtheir funding.
They're gonna go to their existing or previousinvestors, and those guys are set.
You want to make sure that you get to know thenew founders, right?
(14:07):
So those guys found a wedge, are brandingthemselves as the go to guys when you want to
talk about Gen C founders.
They're referring deals already to VCs.
I find myself saying that if you want the job,you need to do the job before.
So you do the job before you get the job, andthat's how you're going to be able to break
(14:29):
into venture.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And a lot of those things you can do withoutgoing to Yale.
You can create a newsletter, you can go towhere do the VCs go?
They go to the startup events.
So you can go to the startup events, you can doyour own research and build that proprietary.
I know proprietary is such a overused buzzwordas well.
(14:49):
So I'm kind of Well, let's call it a
proprietary network, right?
Like the fact that you're known within thatspace, the fact that you can immediately talk
to investors, say, hey, they're looking intoenterprise, fintech or health.
Oh, here's five companies that you need to lookat that.
I spoke with the founders last week.
These guys are amazing.
I hear that they just got into Y Combinator.
(15:10):
Like that kind of ability to put the dotstogether and make everything work easy for them
while you're making someone's life easier andthen they can see the value of bringing you in,
then it's easier to break into an edge.
I mean, was a person that has a like 1,500person community based on a certain sector and
(15:34):
this person just raised the fund.
And I'm like, okay, that makes sense.
Because they have the meetups and they have thecommunity already and they have a new, I don't
know they have that
robust Can make Mankovich of this?
Yeah, Yeah, I mean, it's just, when you see it,you're like, okay, who else would probably do
that?
Because they already have all the people at theevents.
(15:55):
So they have that community.
And you don't need to have an MBA or go to Yaleor Harvard to do that.
You could really just do that as long as youhave the internet, you can do that.
So I think that's really
fail on the consistency side, Like Nick didn'twake up to that 15,000 people within Fintech
community.
Like he started building that organically andstarted meeting and adding value and getting to
(16:18):
know entrepreneurs and connecting entrepreneursto different VCs.
He grew that more work.
And now he has his own fund.
You don't need to join a firm to break intoventure.
You can raise your own fund, right?
There's so much capital out there, especiallyfor emerging fund managers that I think it's
easy to get started with a micro fund now morethan ever.
Yeah.
When you think about it, when you look at thedata, most of the emerging fund managers, their
(16:41):
LPs are angels.
And that's why I posted recently that the angelinvestor is also investing in funds because
it's almost essentially an index of differentdeals.
You can either invest in the S and P 500 orinvest in Tesla directly.
If there's a fund, if you're interested infintech and you don't want to deal by deal try
(17:04):
to source them on your own because you don'thave or the team.
The fund is kind of a great way to meet peopleto get the connectivity.
And then also if there's co investment rights,you can kind of get both.
You can invest in the S and P five hundred, butthen also invest in Tesla as well.
So I think there's kind of some interestingoptionality with doing both.
(17:28):
And so that's interesting.
What else have you seen as far as talentedcandidates?
I don't know.
Feel like people often are so focused onbreaking into venture that they forget that it
is also very important to be a culture fit.
And what I mean by that is you really want toget to know the people that you'll be working
(17:52):
with because this job is 20 fourseven.
Like your portfolio doesn't sleep.
The requests from everyone keep coming.
I wake up texting with founders.
I go to bed thinking about decks andfundraising and doing that kind of stuff.
So if you're not in it, you don't love thepeople that you work with it or on it, you're
just going to have such a bad time that I thinkwhy focus so much on breaking into venture only
(18:17):
to like, alright, you got into a fund and thenoh my god, these people suck or like they're
backing deals I have no interest in.
Their values are not aligned with me.
We do completely different things.
I only like I appreciate this founders and notthis other guys that these guys are backing.
So like, people don't spend enough time gettingto know the other folks that they're going to
(18:39):
be working with, and you're going to be workingwith them a lot of hours.
So I would say that that's where I wouldsuggest spending some time on.
Yeah.
No, and I mean, I would say venture in additionis also a lifestyle.
So it's not a nine to five job.
And I think if you truly enjoy what you'redoing, you're okay just responding to an email
at 6PM, 7PM.
(19:02):
The challenge I think is also having a familythat's supportive as well and having that work
life harmony as Jeff Bezos says.
So, we're living in a world where that justkind of blends together.
And as long as you can kind of balance thatwith the lifestyle, because it is demanding,
especially at a firm like plug and play that'sglobal, you probably support founders all over
(19:24):
the world.
So, it's super demanding and interactive whereyou're kind of supporting them.
So, it's not for the people that are lookingfor a nine to five, I would say.
But it's really part of your lifestyle.
Let's double click a little more on just thelegal industry.
And I think there's other cascading trends withlike the great resignation.
(19:46):
People are quitting their jobs.
They wanna do what's interesting to them.
Obviously, you wanted to do something that wasexciting and meaningful to you, but the legal
professionals that are kind of not happy oroverwhelmed, what do you see them pivoting to?
Do you see them pivoting to joining a bigcompany or maybe joining a venture fund as
(20:08):
their compliance officer?
I guess what have you kind of seen with thatcareer?
And I have some cousins that are in the legalspace too, I can share what they've done too.
Yeah, I don't know.
To be honest, I feel like everyone that startedas a lawyer, most of my friends are no longer
lawyers.
They've been in the service industry.
It's a tough one.
(20:28):
It's a very sure way to create wealth, but it'sa very linear path, as I said.
And after you've seen that amount of effortbeing put into something that doesn't, no
matter how many hours you put into it, whetherit's a $200,000,000,000 transaction or a 200 ks
deal, the amount of upside is the same.
Most of the people that I went to law schoolwith are becoming founders, and they're
(20:53):
starting their own ventures, whether it's on, Idon't know, restaurant side of things, or
they're building their own startups, technologystartups.
Funny enough, that's what I'm seeing.
But I don't know, legal professionals are wellpaid but somewhat exploited, I guess.
And it's a interesting industry where not a lotof change happens.
(21:18):
If you've seen what happened with Atrium JustinKahn's take on building a new law firm from the
ground up based on technology, that didn't goso well.
There's a few reasons why professional servicesdon't really scale and why the lawyers don't
want to have bots combing through theircontracts and you want to be sure that you're
(21:43):
paying attention to the minutiae because that'swhat you're paying for and that's where your
liability comes from.
Yeah, no, it's really helpful.
And look, I don't think it's just the legalindustry, it's every industry.
Was in tech and then I pivoted into productmanagement first.
It's the same thing.
At some point you hit a ceiling as far as theincome you make, I would say, and this is me
(22:07):
just going on a limb, but I would say productmanagement, the hours are definitely probably
better than the law industry because mostpeople get done at 6PM.
Maybe you have a release or something you haveto work on that might take you into the
weekend.
The lifestyle is pretty good as a productmanager and you can move up and be a director
of product, a head of product.
But at some point, there's a maximum salarythat even the biggest hottest FinTech firms
(22:34):
will pay.
And then that could be kind of frustrating.
And then what happens?
You try to do side gigs.
People are trying to do side hustles wheremaybe they teach somewhere or they launch maybe
an app that generates revenue on the side.
But again, you're balancing that with thelimited amount of hours in the day.
So, you're selling your time for money, butthere's only a limited amount of time.
(22:56):
And there's a ceiling for like what that hourlyrate could be.
So, when you model that out, it's a finitenumber, which could be not as attractive to a
lot of people.
But what are some other trends that you'reseeing just with friends that are not in the
legal space that work in tech?
Mean, you have all these founders and friendsthat are working at big companies.
(23:17):
Are you seeing people, especially with pandemicand with the great resignation, are you seeing
a lot of people just leave their jobs and tryto build something or build a blog or a
coaching business or something like that?
I think that now more than ever, with so muchcapital on the sidelines and just waiting to
deploy so much dry powder, it's never been abetter time to actually become a founder.
(23:45):
Yeah.
I get why venture capital is sexy in a way, butI don't understand why people don't want to
become founders themselves.
Yeah.
Most of the folks I see that are living bigtech or any other sort of job are becoming
like, if you've had a few years of experienceof working on a firm or in a company and you
(24:09):
know how things work, what doesn't work, whatthe needs are, why those companies Like no
organization is perfect by any means.
But if you think that you can tackle something,that you have a unique idea, that you can Now
building a product, a technology product that'snever been easier, hosting it on AWS easier
than ever.
Launching startups, it's I would say that a lotof people are doing it instead of becoming
(24:33):
someone else's employee.
Why not be your own boss and have so muchequity and stake in it that you can actually
create meaningful generational wealth for youand your family?
That's the kind of thing that I'm seeing.
A lot of people are doing it, which I think isinteresting.
I don't know how it's going to end.
I think everyone likes to be an entrepreneurwhen it's 2021 and there's so much capital
(24:56):
going to this year, we don't know.
March 2020, everyone was very happy about beingan employee and knowing where your next
paycheck is going to come from.
So we have that sort of thing where over thepast ten years, I think the market has been
very generous.
The money printing has been very generous aswell.
And a bull run, everyone wants to be anentrepreneur in a bear market TBD.
(25:20):
Sure.
I mean, look, I mean, in 2020, in the peak ofthe pandemic, I mean, there are so many exits
because of the printing of the money and thenjust the opportunity that was there with the
markets, even though there was a pandemic.
So I think it did stimulate people doing thingsmore virtually, being more lean.
And some people are just not ever going to goback to the office.
(25:40):
So that provides opportunity for people tobuild more businesses just completely remote,
remote first.
Have you seen any founders that came in as anentry point into plug and play that started out
as a side hustle?
Because I think a lot of these businesses too,you could launch an app or a platform slowly
(26:01):
and probably use your income to fund it in thebeginning and bootstrap it.
So, don't know if you've ever seen that or anysuccess stories.
I don't think I have actually.
And the reason I think it's fairly commonwithin venture capital is you don't want to see
someone that is half in, half out.
Halfway in.
Yep.
(26:21):
You're either all in or you're all out.
And we don't back founders or like have apsychotic and they're not doing like, we do
this full time.
We expect the founders to be doing it fulltime.
At some point, think it's more of a friends andfamily round where you're like, hey, I want to
raise maybe a few 100 K to figure out if I canlaunch this and do it full time.
(26:47):
And if we get traction, I'll leave my job.
Yeah.
But at the stage where we're coming in andinvesting, ideally, already have a product and
we can actually give them an unfair advantagethrough the network of our partners.
But to your point, I don't really see a lot ofthose folks.
(27:08):
Yeah.
One of my favorite stories, I think it was thefounder of Okta.
There's a blog about this, but he put togethera pitch deck for his wife and pretty much and
it was a really thoughtful pitch deck though,because he modeled out like, Hey, you know
what?
I think he worked at Salesforce, but he waslike, Look, here's what I think.
(27:29):
I think I can build this business.
And as we know, I think Okta had a massiveexit, but they have Okta Ventures now as well.
So, Okta actually has a corporate VC.
I think what he did initially was he was like,Look, these are my options.
The economy is really bad.
So, I'm either gonna get laid off.
But if I start this company, maybe the companydoesn't work out.
(27:52):
I can still go to Salesforce and work at a bigcompany because I do have those transferable
skills, but there's a really uniqueopportunity.
So, I think also weighing out the outcomes.
I think to be honest, in some instances, it'sjust as risky to work for a company because you
could get laid off and things could happen.
(28:13):
And I don't know if this is super provocative,but it could be just as risky to start a
business and go through the uncertainty of thatversus being at a company where they are having
layoffs and there's uncertainty as well.
So, I think if you're in that situation and youhave like some type of unique solution to a
problem, then there's some product market fit.
I think the risk at the end of the day makessense.
(28:36):
Look, I was always afraid of getting laid offat some point, even when I was at like big
companies.
So that was something that I always thoughtabout too, you know?
So I'm not sure what other people think, butthat was just, you know, looking back, I'm
like, look, it's just as risky, you know?
The markets, people change, organizationschange, there's reorgs.
So that's definitely a trend that I've seen.
(28:59):
So switching gears, I'd love to dive a littledeeper into your thesis, kind of what you look
for in founders, the founders that do getaccepted into your program, because it sounds
like it's invite only.
What are some things that you look for infounders?
Obviously you do have a thesis and a sectorfocus, but do you mind sharing a little bit of
(29:23):
that and kind of how you look into the sourcingprocess?
Sure.
So when it comes to assessing founders, a fewof the traits that we look for are, do they
have a unique take on one of the markets thatwe're pretty knowledgeable of?
So we work very closely with our corporatepartners.
(29:46):
That gives us a unique ability to understandwhat the trends are in the market.
We leverage those insights to make betterinvestment decisions.
But unique founders have this insight into amarket and how it's either going to change or
evolve.
And we like being told that we're wrong,especially when there's a big shift in the
(30:08):
market.
But we love founders, repeated founders,founders that have this ability to explain to
you why you're wrong.
And more importantly, I think that this issomething that gets overlooked is, as a
founder, you need to be very skilled atselling, whether it's that you're selling to
(30:29):
customers, you're selling to investors so thatthey'll invest in you, or that you're selling
your company to employees, selling the dream ofwhy they should join you.
That is some of the things that we look for.
So that unique insight, the repeated experienceof being a founder, and then that unique
ability to sell.
(30:51):
Yeah, similar to the founder of Okta and alsoMark Benioff, a lot of those founders that have
launched very successful cloud businesses havebeen in industry for a long time.
And you talk about that as well.
Have you seen a lot of the entrepreneurs comingin become like very seasoned technologists that
have that huge industry experience?
Because I feel like that ties also into whatyou're saying as well, really knowing the
(31:14):
market.
Yeah, it's always Well, when you have thatseasoned experience, It's easy to miss on first
time founders.
We make sure that we're not that we put ourbiases in check when it comes to dealing with
folks that have not had that previous exit or asuccessful exit.
(31:36):
But we do want to see that someone has theability to materialize any of the things that
we said.
You're if you're good at selling, which is theskill set that I recommend, especially if you
want to break into venture, you also want to begood at selling because you're going to be on
the phone a lot, you're going to be competingfor deals, and you want to make sure that
you're selling your firm appropriately to winthose deals.
(32:00):
The founders are able to materialize the nextround of funding because they're able to sell
properly to investors.
The founders that have the ability to selltheir company, meaning that they can attract
the best talent that's out there.
The founders that are able to sell to customersand attract the recurring dollars or the money
that really matters, which is not from VCs,it's actually from customers.
(32:23):
That I think is no matter where at what stateyou are, you need to work on it.
And if you don't have the ability to do allthree of those, quickly identify where your
gaps are and bring in someone that complementsthat skill set.
Yeah, no, that's helpful.
It looks like a question popped up here forRukh.
You wanna ask that question?
(32:46):
Sure.
Hi, thanks for being on here and sharing yourexperiences.
I just wanted to maybe pose a question withregards to your MBA experience in terms of how
it helped you get into a VC role and were youinvolved in the VC startup clubs or did the
curriculum have technical details about venturecapital or any sort of modeling related nuance
(33:08):
for really early stage companies where sort ofmultiples don't really apply or have to be
applied very on a deal by deal basis?
Yeah, yeah, happy to.
Thanks for that question.
So at the MBA level, I think it gives you theability, not a particular skill set that you
(33:29):
won't be able to learn anywhere or even inYouTube, but the ability to pause and think
critically about what you want to do in thefuture, and then spend some time getting to
develop a network in an area that you don'thave.
So the way that I leveraged the MBA program wasto be able to work with a startup, to be able
(33:50):
to get in front of other investors.
Obviously took all the venture capital classesthat I could take.
Funny enough, the best one I would say that wasnot entirely related to venture capital, but
was taught by an executive in residence andgeneral catalyst who had sold his company
previously.
(34:12):
That was a class in sales.
And that was a pretty interesting one as youstart leveraging all these things that we just
talked about.
But you get to develop an interesting networkthrough the program.
Fortunately, at MIT, we had the good fortune ofseeing a great deal of speakers.
We saw Jeff Fagman from Accomplisce come in.
(34:35):
And I approached him after a class and I said,hey, we'd love to work with you if there's
anything that I can do at the firm.
I just he put me in touch with Sarah Downeythere, who used to be an operating partner.
Those kind of opportunities happen becauseyou're there.
I joined the clubs, think.
(34:56):
As I said before, I'm originally from Chile.
And Latins don't really pay too much attentionto clubs.
To my detriment, I realized that Americans tendto pay a lot of attention to clubs.
I joined fairly late to the game, to all thedifferent clubs.
I did join the VCP club.
I was a VP of something.
I organized a few tours of different firms to,again, broaden your network, get to know the
(35:17):
different players.
Most of them, once you're doing those tours,it's great, but it's not I've never seen
someone getting like, oh, here's a resume.
Please hire me.
And they're like, yep, on the spot, you got thejob.
Rarely happens, if not ever.
But it's a great way for you to startdeveloping that network.
And I think that the one takeaway is I zeroedin on the one industry that I wanted to break
(35:47):
into, and I stopped hedging anything else.
I didn't go into consulting.
I didn't want to go into big tech.
I knew exactly when I wanted to go and what Ineeded to do to get there.
And I did four internships at the program,whereas the majority of the folks would just
have a summer internship.
I had worked at a startup before I joined aventure firm.
Then I joined another startup before I joinedanother venture firm.
(36:10):
So I did four internships by the time that twoyears had passed.
And that ties back to what I said, that you canstop, you can think about what you need to do,
and then you have the time to do it.
Yeah, no, that's helpful.
Guys, feel free to chime in if you havequestions.
I'll try to call it out.
I'd love to dive in a little deeper Eugenio onjust the trends that you're seeing in Intritech
(36:35):
and some of the other sectors that you'refocusing on maybe at a macro level.
And what are you seeing the companies doingthat are innovating the most in Insurtech?
Wow, that's funny because Insurtech is such abroad concept.
It is.
Where I sit.
(36:56):
But from the outside, it feels fairly narrowjust as a sector within FinTech.
So I'll start with what I like about it.
So the first thing is insurance is a hugeindustry.
So it's 5,800,000,000,000 in gross writtenpremiums a year.
And it touches everything that we do, right?
So from the moment that we buy our first car orthat we rent our apartments, buy a home when
(37:21):
you have kids, first job, everything that we dois touched by insurance.
So there is so much to do, or so many thingsthat need there's room for improvement.
If you look at the NPS score of the insurancecompanies, it is pretty bad across most of the
(37:41):
lines of business.
I think health care or health insurance has thelowest one, which is like 19% on an NPS score.
That gives you a sense of how much room forimprovement is within the industry, given that
it's so important as we established before.
There's a ton of innovation happening at everysingle point.
Across the whole value chain of insurance,across different stages, risk evolves and new
(38:06):
things happen.
Like you have COVID, there's a ton of thingshappening within healthcare.
When you see that there's a massive shift ofhow people are working from home, then
homeowners insurance or renters insurance getsa lot more interesting.
How people are how just lives are changing thatdefinitely affects the whole insurance
industry.
(38:28):
Leveraging new sources of data we're seeingwith climate change, how much of an impact it
has on the severity and frequency of differentevents.
So So you went from having a drought inCalifornia to then having storms and high heat
in North Of Canada, record heat that hadn'tbeen recorded in one hundred years, to then
floods everywhere, hurricanes, devastatingcities, that kind of thing is creating a
(38:52):
massive shift on the property and casualtyindustry.
When you look at what is happening with COVID,what happened with fertility rates, mortality
rates, People within a recession, people tendto have less kids.
How is that impacting life insurance companies?
How that's impacting asset managers, which arepart of life insurance companies with interest
(39:16):
rates being so low and now the Fed wanting toraise interest rates, how that affects the
whole ecosystem of money is also veryinteresting.
So again, to us, and I can ramble about thisfor hours, is the whole Insurtech ecosystem is
so broad and changing so rapidly that's alwaysan interesting place to start investing and
(39:37):
keep investing in.
Yeah, I think also just new types ofbusinesses.
So on demand, cloud kitchens, there's foodsafety.
There's new businesses that I think have openedwith the pandemic that all probably need some
type of product that wasn't there before.
So I think that also has a gap and maybesomething that isn't there yet.
(40:01):
There's a business that I saw recently wherepeople are just on demand delivering stuff to
try out, whether it's in the clothing industryor retail.
Those products all need to be insured.
So I think it also opens up new creative waysof providing some type of policy for that
software.
I mean, have you seen anything?
(40:22):
Are there innovations in just policy generationbeing more dynamic using data?
Because that can probably be something thatbecause the legacy way is obviously you do a
credit score and you answer some questions, butI'm wondering if there's opportunities to be
able to issue policies more dynamically withmaybe people's social profile or anything like
(40:43):
that.
I guess the tech enablement of some of thelegacy workflows, I can imagine a lot of that
is getting automated.
Yeah, there's a lot of discussion whether ornot you can leverage social profiles to better
underwrite people.
I don't know.
I think that there's a huge wave to your pointon how to provide embedded insurance solutions.
(41:07):
So if you're a delivery person, how you protector cover that risk.
If you are buying something online, if you'rereturning it, that is a huge cost on the e
commerce platform.
How do you protect yourself against that?
To the point that people are just basicallyallowing folks to keep the products that they
purchased, which is kind of crazy, right?
It's creating so much waste, but then there's anew form of risk that's evolving there that
(41:33):
needs to be protected for that downside orhedged against.
So yeah, interesting.
There's no shortage of new things are happeningin the industry and new products that are being
catered and tailored to the needs of howdifferent risks sets are evolving.
But see a lot of One area that we loveinvesting in is new products.
(41:56):
Because as you mentioned, with new platforms,with new ways of doing things, whether it's
dark kitchens, cloud kitchens, whether it's thegig economy, whether it's the creator economy.
We love making sure that everyone is sort ofprotected from the risks that they have in
their day to day, and that is an opportunity tobuild new insurance products.
(42:18):
Yeah, another thing I'm thinking about when youthink about products and climate change, there
could probably be a lot of interesting sensorsthat can give real time data.
Because a lot of times when data comes in, it'sa data feed, right?
So it's ingested overnight because there's somuch data.
But if you've got sensors that are kind ofdynamically tracking different characteristics
that can give you kind of more real time dataas well to kind of give a policy in real time.
(42:44):
But thanks for correcting that.
So it sounds like the terminology is embeddedinsurance.
That's kind of integrating it into theworkflows more seamlessly.
So it's good to be aware of that.
So I appreciate that.
And then it looks like Wendy's got a questionand Wendy, feel free to chime in, you're
looking for just some advice on building abetter investment thesis.
(43:05):
So Wendy's actually at Wharton right now andshe's in the process of kind of just building
her thesis.
Any tips she should, I think the consistencyone was a really good thing.
So I think possibly like publishing somecontent around a certain sector and just
getting that out, I think is one thing.
(43:27):
Any other tips you have as far far as just thethought process and the mental models on
building an investment thesis?
Yeah, I would say, first and foremost, congratson your MBA, Wendy.
Amazing school and being at Wharton.
I would say, to add to what you just said,Joel, spend a lot of time in a specific niche
(43:51):
or a zone where you can actually build adifferentiated knowledge in that space and to
get to know the entrepreneurs in that space.
Otherwise, as I said before, you're never goingto outcompete someone that's already in that
industry doing this full time.
It's super hard to develop that level ofknowledge if you're not actually spending more
(44:12):
time in it.
But once you pick a niche and you actually getto talk to a lot of folks in that niche, you
can actually become an expert more so than therest of the people that are traditionally
spending time in the venture industry.
Yeah, that was really helpful.
Great.
Any other questions, guys?
All right, well, feel free to chime in if youguys have any questions while they're thinking
(44:35):
of maybe their last one or two questions.
I always ask this Eugenio, any life advice thatyou have to share?
You shared a lot of really helpful nuggets, butanything that you want to pass on to us, maybe
from a mentor or a friend or a family member,doesn't have to be about getting into VC.
So any piece of wisdom that you maybe sharewith your friends and family?
(44:58):
No, I would say that I think mentors areimportant, but I feel like people put way too
much weight on them.
It's just there's so much informationavailable, so many good opportunities to learn
from.
YouTube is arguably the best school that's outthere.
And people wait.
I don't like the concept of waiting to breakinto venture to becoming a VC back to what we
(45:21):
spoke before.
You can actually start doing it.
You can start angel investing and crowdfundingplatforms.
You can start doing your own things before evenbreaking into a firm.
What I would hate is for people to miss out ontheir opportunity of being an investor and
creating that level of wealth and have theleverage that we spoke about and having an
(45:45):
impact on all of these because they're waitingfor mentors because they told them not to do
stuff or first you needed to get a job.
What I've learned is you don't need to youshouldn't wait on something to actually go do
it.
And back to what we said before, do the jobbefore you get the job.
(46:05):
Don't wait on someone to give you anopportunity to do the job before you can become
a VC.
Yeah, no, that's super helpful advice.
And that's also what helped me.
It looks like you got a question.
You got a second for maybe one more question,Eugenio?
Sure thing.
Great.
So Manveer, you want to shout out your questionhere?
Yeah, I can share it out loud.
(46:27):
Hi, good afternoon.
Thank you for your time.
My question is to touch base on something youmentioned a little bit earlier in the
conversation in regards to doing the job.
For someone that's trying to come in at theanalyst level, what would you say are some
things they can do to showcase that they'redoing the job?
Obviously, it'll be different from someone atthe partner or principal level.
(46:47):
So what are some key examples that someonecould do at the analyst level to showcase that
they're trying to do that before applying for aposition?
So at the analyst level, I don't expect peopleto come in and know more than there are other
folks at the firm.
But I do expect to see a level of passion andinterest, and ideally a level of insight that
(47:10):
is uncommon.
So what I mean by this is I can pretty muchteach everyone to do the job that we do.
What I can never teach to someone is to wake upon a Saturday morning and listen to a podcast
about investing.
Or are you spending your evenings reading aboutthis?
Are you following the right people on Twitter?
(47:31):
Can we have a conversation out of the bluethat's interesting and nuanced about this
sector because you've spent hours reading aboutit, or you're listening to the latest podcast,
or you've got excited because you found out aninteresting substack of this very niche market
segment that you're passionate about.
That's the kind of thing that I think makes ananalyst stand out from the crowd, even though
(47:55):
you might not have the background, even thoughyou might not have the necessary experience.
But I would say one of the most prominentanalysts that we just hired is a guy that comes
from a cooking background.
He was a chef.
Love his passion for getting to learn more andmore about it.
Don't have to tell him to do things.
(48:16):
He's already out competing the rest of hisanalyst class because he wakes up every day
thinking about this.
He has a sourcing record for companies.
He's doing everything where you're not able tomeasure him on like, oh, he went to Yale, he
went to this school, but he's outperformingeveryone on the amount of passion that he's
(48:38):
putting, the amount of companies that he'ssourcing, the amount of insights, the amount of
presentations, the amount of things that he'sdoing, to the point that I feel like he's going
to burn out soon.
So that's one of the things that we try toprotect him from.
But again, I can't teach him that.
That's what he brings to the table.
And that's the kind of thing that we lovehiring for.
(48:59):
Got it.
Thank you for that clarification.
And just one brief follow-up.
Was that apparent?
Was his passion apparent in the resume or wasit apparent in the interview process?
Good question.
It's only in the interview process.
There's a few ways that you can highlight itobviously.
And we took a deliberate approach ofinterviewing someone that apparently didn't
(49:21):
come from a venture background, but he hadshown in his resume that he had enough
entrepreneurial spirit that we could actuallyhave an interesting conversation.
And then when you talk to him, it like heexudes this energy that he wants to do more,
and that he's passionate about it, and thathe's eager to meet more entrepreneurs, that he
wants to learn more about this space, that ifhe's not knowledgeable about something, that
(49:45):
he'll go and spend hours research it.
Didn't come from, as I said, had a chefexperience and a cooking background, is now
doing and trans presentations on distributedinsurance, for instance.
Sure.
Thank you.
Sure.
Well, those are great.
Thanks so much, Eugenio.
(50:05):
And what's the best way for people to get aholdof you?
LinkedIn?
LinkedIn, Twitter, and my email is EugenioPNPTCdot com.
So feel free to send me an email.
Great.
All right.
Well, hey, thanks so much Eugenio.
I'll let you get back to it and excited tocollaborate.
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