Eric Liaw is a General Partner @ IVP, one of the leading later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms of the last decade with $8.7 billion of committed capital and a 40-year IRR of 43.1%. At IVP eric has led investments in Datadog, Github, Klarna, Robinhood and UiPath to name a few. Prior to joining IVP, Eric was with Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and was actively involved in originating, executing and managing investments, including Netflix, Zillow and eHarmony. As a result of his investing success, Eric was recognized by GrowthCap as one of the Top 25 Software Investors of 2021 and 2020.
In Today's Episode with Eric Liaw You Will Learn:
1.) Origins into Venture:
- How did Eric make his way into the world of venture way back over 20 years ago?
- What were some of Eric's biggest lessons from his early years at TCV?
- What are the most significant changes in venture over the last decade?
2.) Eric Liaw: The Investor:
- How has Eric changed as an investor over the last decade? What caused those changes?
- How does Eric reflect on his own relationship to price? How does he determine when to pay up vs when to remain disciplined?
- What has been Eric's biggest miss? How did it alter his style of investing?
- From UiPath to Supercell, what has been Eric's favourite story of travelling around the world to win a deal?
3.) The Market: Venture
- How does Eric expect IPO markets to behave as we move further in 2022?
- How does Eric expect large M&A to play out for the rest of the year?
- With the public markets crashing; how does this impact the large growth rounds of 2021?
- What does Eric expect to happen to early stage pricing with the crash at late stage?
- How does Eric expect crossover funds to behave in this new environment?
4.) Eric Liaw: The Person
- How does Eric think about being an awesome Dad and also not losing an inch on being a world class investor?
- How does Eric reflect on his own ego when having such large investing wins? Where does he feel he is most insecure?
- How did having children really impact his mindset towards investing and working with founders?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Eric Liaw
Eric's Favourite Book: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
Eric's Most Recent Investment: Aiven