logo
episode-header-image
Dec 2018
33 m

20VC: A Framework For Approaching Risk a...

Harry Stebbings
About this episode

Ted Wang is a Partner @ Cowboy Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's leading early-stage funds with the likes of Philz Coffee, Dollar Shave Club, Brandless, DocSend, Accompany and Brit + Co all in their portfolio. As for Ted, prior to VC, Ted spent X years as a leading Silicon Valley lawyer with Fenwick & West where he worked with some of the most notable companies of our times including Facebook, Dropbox, Twitter, Square and Spotify just to name a few. Ted also created the Series Seed Documents - a set of open-sourced financing documents posted on Github used by thousands around the world today.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Ted made his way from one of the most renowned lawyers in the valley with Fenwick & West to partner @ Cowboy alongside Aileen Lee?

2.) How does Ted fundamentally approach risk today? Given this mindset, how does this impact Ted's thinking on optimizing portfolio construction? On the flip side, how has Ted seen many founders wrongly approach the theme of risk? What is the question they need to be asking? What is Ted's story about risk related to his time working with Jet?

3.) What is it that makes Ted believe that "advice is often oversimplified"? If so, how can VCs provide tangible advice to their portfolio companies today? How can founders determine what is the right advice to accept and integrate vs listen and disregard? How does this lead Ted's thinking on the 2 core value adds a VC can provide? What advice did Dropbox Founder, Drew Houston give Ted on when to accept advice?

4.) What does Ted mean when he says "there are 4 parts to venture"? How does Ted think about the theme of learning and self-improvement when assessing founders? How does he look to do this pre-investment? What questions reveal the most? Applying it to himself, where will Ted place his biggest efforts on learning within the realm of venture over the next 12 months?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Ted’s Fave Book: 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

Ted’s Most Recent Investment: Fullcast

As always you can follow HarryThe Twenty Minute VC and Ted on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Much like how Carta changed how private companies manage their cap tables and 409A valuations, Carta are now doing the same for fund administration. With Carta’s new, modern fund administration software and services, you get a real-time dashboard of your general ledger, can securely share info with your LPs, and issue capital calls–from the same platform, you accept securities and request cap table access. So essentially, Carta simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, fund administration, and valuations. Go to carta.com/20VC to get 10% off.

Up next
Today
20VC: Atlassian CEO on Why Everything is Overvalued & Are We in an AI Bubble | Do Margins Matter & Does Defensibility Exist in an AI World | Is Per Seat Pricing Dead & The Future of Vibe Coding with Mike Cannon-Brookes
Mike Cannon-Brookes is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Atlassian, the $50BN software giant behind products like Jira, Confluence, and Trello. Since founding the company in 2002, he has scaled it to over 300,000 customers globally, generating more than $5BN in annual revenue. Atlassi ... Show More
1h 3m
Oct 10
20Sales: Scaling Snowflake from $0-$3BN in ARR | Snowflake vs Databricks: My Biggest Lessons | Why Customer Success is BS and What Replaces It with Chris Chris Degnan
Chris Degnan is the former Chief Revenue Officer at Snowflake, where he was instrumental in scaling the company from less than $1M in ARR to over $3B in annual revenue. He joined as the first sales hires and built Snowflake’s go-to-market engine from scratch, growing the team fro ... Show More
1h 2m
Oct 9
20VC: OpenAI's Multi $BN Deal with AMD | Polymarket, Vercel and Supabase Raise Mega Rounds | Does King Making Really Work in Venture Capital: Harvey vs Legora | Chamath is Back: The SPAC is Back
AGENDA: 03:29 OpenAI and AMD's Major Partnership 07:35 Microsoft Have F***** Up the OpenAI Partnership 17:08 OpenAI's Developer Day Announcements 20:45 Why VC is the Most Forgiving Asset Class on Price and Valuation 29:10 What Does it Take to IPO in 2025: Why Snyk Will Not IPO 42 ... Show More
1h 24m
Recommended Episodes
Jun 2019
Advice for Entrepreneurs from a Leading Venture Capitalist
Scott Kupor, managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz, says there's a lot about navigating the venture capital world that entrepreneurs don't understand. Some can't figure out how to get in the door. Others fail to deliver persuasive pitches. Many don't know how the deals and rela ... Show More
24m 21s
Jul 2023
Secrets of Successful Startups, Changing The World Through Charitable Giving, And Getting Free Access To Stanford Education | Adam Nash
This Millionaire Mindcast episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/MINDCAST and get on your way to being your best self. Today, we have a wonderful guest, Adam Nash who imparts a lot of value from his entrepreneurial journey, tips for succes ... Show More
53m 10s
Feb 2023
Dan Rose - How Stunning Founders Operate - [Invest Like the Best, EP.316]
My guest today is Dan Rose. Dan is the chairman of Coatue Ventures and has one of the most interesting collections of experiences of anyone I’ve talked to. He spent 20 years at Amazon and Facebook in their early days, working closely with Jeff Bezos, Andy Jassy, Mark Zuckerberg, ... Show More
1h 13m
Jun 2023
The Life Plan vs Business Plan - Using The 4 C's To Build Real Wealth, Legacy, and Impact As An Entrepreneur | Brad Pedersen
This Millionaire Mindcast episode is sponsored by BetterHelp. Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/MINDCAST and get on your way to being your best self. Today, we have an incredible guest, Brad Pedersen who shares a lot of wisdom, his entrepreneur story, having a life plan ... Show More
52m 26s
Jun 2022
Gokul Rajaram on designing your product development process, when and how to hire your first PM, a playbook for hiring leaders, getting ahead in you career, how to get started angel investing, more
Gokul Rajaram serves on the executive team at DoorDash, where he leads the Caviar product line. Previously he worked at Square, where he was also on the executive team and led a number of key product lines, and as a product director at Facebook, where he helped the company transi ... Show More
1h 2m
Jun 2023
Double Trouble: How the Dot-Com and Tech Bubbles Compare
In today’s episode, Jack Shannon, equities strategies senior analyst for Morningstar Research Services, talks about why active fund managers seemed to repeat the same mistakes.Why did you decide to analyze these two investing periods?Examples of the market chasing companies pursu ... Show More
16m 24s
Jun 2024
TIP639: Buffett's Favorite Business Book w/ David Fagan
On today’s episode, Clay is joined by David Fagan to discuss Don Keough’s book, The Ten Commandments of Business Failure.  Don Keough was the President and COO of Coca-Cola. During Keough’s and Roberto Goizueta’s leadership, Coca-Cola’s stock compounded at 27% per annum from 1981 ... Show More
1h 6m
Oct 2022
What’s the TAM of the 1%?
AUDIOHello and welcome back to Equity, a podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. Before we get into this week’s show notes, some programming items:First up, use code “EQUITY” for a special listener discount for Disrupt ... Show More
35m 26s
Jul 2022
The future of investing is already upon us, ft. SixPark's Pat Garrett
Pat Garrett is the CEO and co-founder of SixPark. Pat Garrett joins Owen Rask on The Australian Investors Podcast to talk about robo investing, the rise of ETFs, asset allocation puzzles, the future of investment advice and so much more.Some of the questions I -- Owen -- asked Pa ... Show More
1 h