# How to Raise a Venture Fund from Deck to First Meetings to Final Close Why Venture is a Young Person's Game and Why Multi-Stage Funds Have Not Ruined Seed with Rob Go, Co-Founder @ Nextview 20VC · Jun 23, 2023 · 55 min · 12,221 words Speakers: Rob Go, Harry Stebbings Source: https://www.996.fm/episodes/20vc--ep-fdcb9e75/ ## Cold open **Rob Go** [0:00]: The number one factor in whether an LP says yes or no is just timing. Are they expanding their program? Are they looking for whatever box or category they put you in? Do they have the bandwidth to be able to do it within the time frame they're trying to raise a fund? **Harry Stebbings** [0:13]: This is 20 VC ## Intro **Harry Stebbings** [0:13]: with me, Harry Stebbings. And oh my gosh. I love doing the show today. This was so much fun to do. And for all emerging managers and any managers raising today, get your pen and paper out. This is a masterclass with Rob Go, cofounder at NextView, one of the leading seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Attentive, Devoted Health, Whoop, and many more. And prior to cofounding NextView, Rob was an investor at Spark Capital and held product and product marketing roles at eBay. But before we dive into the show today, ## Sponsor read **Harry Stebbings** [0:41]: over 50% of your day is filled with tedious tasks. What would you do if you got that half a day back? Now you can with Coda, the all in one platform that changes the way your team works together. And Coda just introduced an AI powered work assistant to take the busy out of work. With Coder, your team's important workflows and content already live all in one place. Encoder AI helps each team member focus on the highest priority work even as priorities shift across the team. 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Fund managers can focus on making great deals, while AngelList handles reporting, taxes, compliance, and more. So if you're ready to scale your startup or fund with the platform at the center of it all, visit angellist.com/20vc to get started. **Rob Go** [3:14]: 3210. You have now arrived at your destination. ## Conversation **Harry Stebbings** [3:22]: Rob, it has been seven years since our last show. It shows that we've got incredible facial routines because we don't look a day older. But thank you so much for joining me today. **Rob Go** [3:31]: It's an honor to be here. Thanks for having me back, Harry. **Harry Stebbings** [3:34]: Not at all. But before we do dive into the show, I love to start with some context. And so tell me, how did you make that first foray into the world of Venture and come to found NextView? **Rob Go** [3:43]: This is gonna sound ridiculous. I got into venture because I got a cold call from a VC firm when I was in business school. And I got an email from a partner at Spark Capital because they were looking at the team with a digital media background. And at the time, everyone had a very narrow definition of whatever they were looking for. It was like top business school, worked at eBay, Google, or Yahoo, and lived in the local market. So went in for an interview and then proceeded to get tortured for six months before I finally got my offer. But that's how I got into the business. **Harry Stebbings** [4:10]: I love that. And then what was the founding of NextView? What was that, uh-huh, I can actually do this on my own with my own firm? **Rob Go** [4:15]: It was a lot of naivete. I saw the rise of seed funds that were starting to happen. Baseline, Harrison Metal, First Run Capital were starting to have these models where they're investing specifically in seed stage companies. Most of the successful early stage funds were getting bigger and bigger, and you saw the writing on the wall for some of those firms. And I figured there's gonna be a seed stage specialized fund that's not based in the Bay Area. You know, why not give it a shot? And so at the same time, my partners David and Lee, they were all thinking about the same thing. We decided somebody's gonna take advantage of this opportunity, may as well be us. **Harry Stebbings** [4:46]: You've now been in the industry for close to a decade, over a decade. I have to ask, what do you know now that you wish you'd known when you entered? **Rob Go** [4:54]: Venture is a young person sport. Going in, we were very sensitive to the fact that we were inexperienced and we were young. We have this funny joke actually at NextView where every time we raise a new fund, we get backpacks for each other. And the reason was the first time we went into an LP pitch meeting, Lee and I showed up with backpacks because that's what we used to travel. And our partner David was like, dude, you can't show up with backpacks. People already think we're young. And now we're gonna, like, show up like school kids. Are you kidding me? And so we always remember that. And so after we closed our first fund, Lee got a gift for the two of us, which were NextView logo backpacks. And since then, that's been the tradition. But I really believe venture is a young person's game. The amount of, like, energy and hustle that you're able to deploy as a young person is truly a competitive advantage. Like, there's a lot to learn from people who've been in the industry for a long time, but you can actually get that kind of knowledge if you're resourceful. And what you can't really replicate is the energy of you. **Harry Stebbings** [5:49]: A funny story. When I was raising my first fund, I was in a restaurant in The US and they started serving wine. And then they looked to me and said, do you have an ID? And I said, I do, but it won't pass your test because I'm 20. And so And then the endowment fund at the time was like, oh my God, he's 20. I want to start though. We're going to demystify a lot of the fundraising process today. I wanna start on you. What's the fund size today and why did you decide that was the optimal size? Let's start there. **Rob Go** [6:18]: Yeah. So we're currently investing out of our fifth fund. In fact, we have two. We have a seed fund and we have a opportunity fund. The seed fund is 135,000,000. The opportunity fund is 65,000,000. Why those sizes? Our portfolio construction has been pretty consistent since we started the firm. We make roughly 30 core investments per year. We reserve roughly half the fund for follow ons, and we have a sense for what the ideal average check size is for the stage that we invest in. And so today, we try to write checks between a million to $3,000,000 into pre seed and seed rounds. If you kinda do that math and multiply that out, that leads you to about a 130, 100 to $40,000,000 fund. **Harry Stebbings** [6:53]: Okay. So you essentially have, like, $32,000,000 checks, which takes you to 60,000,000 initial, 60,000,000 for, like, subsequent and follow on financing, and then the investment fees. And then the opportunity fund, talk to me about that being 65. **Rob Go** [7:05]: That was a little bit less precise. We have a sense of how many investments we think we ought to have in that fund, and that was actually with some guidance from our LPs in terms of the level of concentration that was appropriate. And then we thought through, like, realistically what our allocation levels might be for the things that were coming down the pike, did some fuzzy math, and and landed at a number. We didn't want something that was too big. And the other thing that we thought about was the ratio between the seed fund and the opportunity fund because we stapled the two in our last fundraise. So all of our LPs were basically investing two to one from the seed fund to the opportunity fund. And we thought that that was fair because folks got to know us primarily as a seed fund, and so most of their money is in the seed fund. But we think we have access to these great opportunities downstream, and so having a third of their capital into those investments made sense to us. **Harry Stebbings** [7:49]: I have a couple of things. And we're friends, so I can just kinda go off schedule. But, you know, you mentioned the reserves element. I Rob, I hate reserves because I don't think I'm that good a picker on trajectory. If I had picked on strategy, I would have gone into a load of hyped companies. Blunting, they would not have been good in sustainable investments. And so I actually prefer no reserves model. How do you think about, like, bluntly picking sustainable winners, not hyped companies just because they're faster to grow with trajectory? **Rob Go** [8:15]: I have a couple answers to this. One, I think we have a similar perspective because we think that our most important investment is actually the first investment. That's when we need to buy most of our ownership. And when I think about reserves, you know, we're doing pre seed and seed, and and in this market, right, sometimes you're make taking a couple bites of the apple. So we wanna make sure that we can support founders that we invest in really early with some additional capital to get them to Series A. So there's there's a piece of it that's that. But for the most part, we're trying to buy our our ownership upfront. This isn't really a strategy of let's sprinkle some dollars in the beginning and, like, pile in at the end. That's kind of one thought. We have a process internally in handling follow on financings. We basically do a ranking of the portfolio every quarter from a perspective of where we wanna deploy our follow on capital. We do that because we want to make the decision apart from a financing opportunity. Right? Because what ends up happening is when some fancy firm comes in, wants to lead a series b, you convince yourself that this is the best opportunity in the world. But then if you look back and say, like, well, a quarter ago, this was not necessarily a company that we were as bullish on. Like, you gotta make some really convincing argument why that makes sense. So that's one of the mechanisms we have to be able to do that. **Harry Stebbings** [9:19]: And how do you determine between reserves versus opportunity fund in terms of where the dollars come from? **Rob Go** [9:24]: It's a little bit of a stage mismatch. The seed fund goes pretty heavy in the seed, usually does our pro rata or a little bit less than our pro rata than our Series A, and then kinda stops from there. The opportunity fund comes in at the B or C stage. So there's almost this, like, period where NextView is actually investing a little bit less than our capacity just to create a little bit of separation between the two funds. So it's not truly a barbell, but it's a little bit more like a barbell than if we raised one fund and just, like, followed on at every stage. **Harry Stebbings** [9:50]: I'm gonna be a bit of a dick. I speak to a lot of LPs, and they're always like, oh, we hate opportunity funds. Did they hate opportunity funds with you too? **Rob Go** [9:59]: You know, when we raised opportunity funds, it looked pretty darn good. Brief moment in time where the numbers were quite strong, so there was a lot less pushback. I think that LPs also like the idea that most of their dollars were going into the seed opportunity fund. I think there are other firms where the balance was different. Right? It was like two to one the other way. LPs didn't love that. The third is there's an alternative, which is we can just raise a bigger fund overall. But I think everybody kinda loses in that case. Right? Because, you know, it's harder to deploy that much money. The fees effectively are higher because our our opportunity fund has somewhat discounted fees. And so I see this as kind of a win win for everybody who's doing this. **Harry Stebbings** [10:34]: If we link back to fund one, what was that size? **Rob Go** [10:37]: Fund one was a $21,000,000 fund. Weirdly, it was not that different. Right? So still roughly 30 companies in the portfolio. Initial check sizes were lower, but seed rounds at that time, like a million dollars, was a pretty big seed round. And so we were writing three to 400 k checks and doing roughly 30 investments per fund and reserving some capital for follow ups. So it kinda was the same. **Harry Stebbings** [10:58]: I miss those days, Rob. This good. And you could buy, like, 10% of the company in some cases for, like, 500 I mean, **Rob Go** [11:06]: ownership relative to fund size was quite nice. Out And of a $21,000,000,000 fund, you didn't need that much to to move the needle. **Harry Stebbings** [11:11]: So we're gonna go into the fundraising process today because there's like a lot of unknowns that I think need to be addressed. If we think about like chronologically speaking, we decide on this fund size that we just touched on. Now we need to do some docs. What docs did you prep for the raise, and how would you advise on preparation in terms of documents? **Rob Go** [11:30]: Pick a really good law firm. They will help you set up, basically, the agreements with your partners, which I think is really, really important. Like, this is sort of nothing to do with the LPs. This is everything to do with, like, how you run the fund and and how you how the management company operates. But then going to the actual fundraising documents, we basically had a deck, a few spreadsheets that had our track record. I think we had a a bunch of slides around, like, case studies and that sort of thing. But for the most part, we didn't have that much documentation. It was mostly focused around our deck. **Harry Stebbings** [11:56]: What do you advise founders going out today in terms of those materials that they have going on to raise from those first LPs? **Rob Go** [12:03]: Yeah. So what I found is most LPs care about deck track record are the are the main two things that they care about. Everything else is just fodder for them to use as ammunition to sell into their investment committees. You think about, like, what are the assets that you have at your disposal? Right? If you have a great media company that is powering the fund, you put tons of stuff about the media company, right, and tons of stats about that. If you have other assets that are you're just supposed to put other things there that that matter for that purpose. But, really, I think most LPs, they spend, like, 90% of the time on the deck and the track record, and that's all there is. **Harry Stebbings** [12:36]: I have to ask. You mentioned about kind of the agreement between your partners. It's a big sticking point for a lot of LPs. You have an equal partnership at NextView? **Rob Go** [12:44]: We do have an equal partnership. **Harry Stebbings** [12:45]: And tell me, is that across carry and salary? Because sometimes you see differences there. **Rob Go** [12:49]: That is carries and salary and ownership and governance. **Harry Stebbings** [12:52]: How important is that having that equal split? **Rob Go** [12:55]: For us, it has been really, really valuable and important. We're very aligned in our life goals and our career, and so it was kind of easy to be able to say, like, hey. We're in this together long term, and we felt like if it wasn't equal, there'd be too much of an incentive to renegotiate depending on, like, how things are going in the fund. And, thankfully, my partners have this long term view around the downfalls of not having an equal partnership, and and we're willing to to structure it this way, and I was very happy to do that. **Harry Stebbings** [13:21]: So now we've got this kind of doc preparation stage. We've got the deck. We've got the track record. They look fantastic. Now it's time to go out and raise. Rob, do we wanna get an anchor first and then get more friendlies around them, or do we want friendlies and then anchor? What's that strategy? **Rob Go** [13:36]: I think both are viable strategies. We tried the first and ended up doing the second. So typically, an anchor is usually an institution, usually somebody who has some strong relationship with you, who is willing to be the first yes, write a meaningful check, and you can build the rest of the the fund around them. That usually requires a pretty long process, usually, to get the anchor over the finish line. But then because that process was so robust, other institutions and folks who wanna be a part of this, it makes it very easy for them to say yes. The other approach, which is what we ended up doing, was sort of a bottom stop strategy. Right? It's a little bit more of a, like, lean startup of venture funds. You basically find the people who are willing to say yes and just trust you. You try to tally up as much as possible, preferably enough to do a minimum viable first close, close that capital, get into business, and allow yourself time to be able to cultivate the slower moving institutional LPs to come alongside you, hopefully, by the end of the first round. We ended up taking the second strategy. **Harry Stebbings** [14:31]: Why did the first not work for you? **Rob Go** [14:33]: Because LPs said no. **Harry Stebbings** [14:35]: Why did they say no? **Rob Go** [14:36]: So we had a couple LPs that showed very positive signs early on, and we went down a process with them. And I don't exactly remember what happened. At some point, they just got some pushback and started to get cold feet, and we saw the Jenga tower start to crumble. It was easy to say no to us. Right? We were new. We didn't have that much of a track record. It was a time when folks said, well, if you weren't in Silicon Valley, like, why bother doing venture? Venture returns generally were really, really bad. So, like, it was easy to say no. They just, like, got cold feet, and we were back to the drawing board. **Harry Stebbings** [15:06]: I'm super opinionated on this one. I think unless you have, like, an anchor who's, like, you know, giving you money forcefully, go to your friends, use them for social validity, go for the big names, and with every friend, ask for three subsequent LP intros that they can make and put as a reference for themselves. Like, hey. I'm investing in Rob's fund. I love Rob. Meet x, y, and zed. Then you build the flywheel. And, actually, as you said, when you get to minimum viable, like, first close, I find all LPs want is to know that you're actually in business. There's no risk of it not happening. **Rob Go** [15:35]: That's the strategy I would recommend for most folks that are raising seed or early stage funds. I think there's certain funds where it's just not practical. And I have a friend who is raising a growth fund. It's just tough to do a minimum viable close. Or you do your first close, but you say, hey, you know, we might end up doing a slightly different strategy because what if we only close at, like, half or a third of our ultimate target. Right? I think in those type of strategies, you kinda need to have meaningful anchor or some really big dollars behind you to be able to feel good about closing the capital. **Harry Stebbings** [16:01]: So when you think about that anchor, one, do you have to have an anchor? Two, can they be 50% of your fund? What do you think about concentration of capital to the anchor? And are there different qualities of anchor? **Rob Go** [16:13]: I actually don't mind concentration that much. Especially for a small fund, you're gonna have concentration one way or the other. **Harry Stebbings** [16:18]: What's concentration? Is that 25%? Is that 50%? Is that 10? **Rob Go** [16:22]: Some funds don't want an LP to be more than 10% or 15%. Like, we've had situations where you've had more than 20% of the fund with one LP. I think 50% is kind of extreme. I think it's probably unusual that an LP would be willing to do that without some special controls or economics. That I would recommend probably steering away from for the most part. If you have an LP that's 20% of your fund, 25% of the fund, that's not ideal. But, hopefully, by the time you get to your next fund, you can start to dilute their influence. **Harry Stebbings** [16:47]: We're okay with concentration. Probably do need one. Are there different qualities in terms of the types? We've got corporates, family offices, endowments, foundations. Is there a snootiness and exclusivity of anchor of LP? **Rob Go** [17:00]: I think there are some LPs that are more influential than others. So if you have a really fancy endowment or foundation, that tends to be a stronger signal for other LPs that wanna come alongside them and essentially outsource the due diligence or help them feel better that, you know, they're not making a stupid mistake. But frankly, I actually don't care that much. You get the partners that you like. There was a time when folks used to say that, like, endowments and foundations are the most robust long term partners that exist on the planet. It is just not true. I've heard so many cases where markets turn, things change, and the first ones to leave are the endowments. So it's hard to overthink it. What's more important is the individual who's there. You want somebody who is empowered, not at the very end of their career because there's a risk that they're gonna leave, and then you're gonna be adopted by somebody else. And somebody who's really committed to whatever it is you're doing, like, whatever your strategy is, whatever segment of the market you're in. And as long as that person is still around when you raise your next fund, I think you have a pretty good chance to get that firm back over the finish line. And it doesn't really matter what kind of institution they're in as long as you have that kind of champion with internally. **Harry Stebbings** [17:59]: So one, I totally agree with you. Like, multi thread super early. It is a nightmare when you have a champion leaving, then you're kind of the orphan child. Two totally agree with you in terms of, like, not being as stable as you think with some of the biggest institutions. I would say it's worth really being snooty though for subsequent LP acquisition. I find when you get the Harvard, MIT, Stanford, instantly, it just gives so much credibility to other LPs. For subsequent LP acquisition, it makes such a difference. **Rob Go** [18:28]: There's also extra risk if they drop you, things that really, really hurt. So you better not lose them. We had a pretty influential institution drop us in our third fund. They did it the ninth hour. Most of the private equity team turned over, and they just didn't give us the attention needed to make that concrete decision early on. That was a pretty devastating event for us. It goes both ways. Luckily, all of our existing LPs had the wherewithal to stick with us, everybody else, some of which actually increased their their allocation to fund, and we were able to get through it. But that experience is an important one in my mind because it made me realize that influence kinda goes both ways potentially. **Harry Stebbings** [19:04]: How did you respond? **Rob Go** [19:05]: This was before our first close for that fund. We basically went back to all of our existing LPs who had committed and said, hey. Here's what happened. The rationale, I actually think made sense because that institution was so large and our fund was so small that it really didn't make that much sense for them to be in funds like us unless they had a dedicated strategy. And because they had turned over their leadership within the private equity and and the CIO as well, they had just shifted the strategies. Thankfully, one of our other LPs that was gonna be sort of a co anchor in this fund was super rock steady, and I think that gave other LPs a lot of confidence that they could move forward. Shout out to Michael Kim at Sandana for, for helping us navigate that and being a really great partner. **Harry Stebbings** [19:43]: Yeah. Michael was the first ever LP meeting I ever had. In terms of, like, getting them over the line, that anchor, a lot of times the anchor says, hey. We'll do it, but we'd like to buy part of the GP or we'd like part of the carry discount on fees. How do you think about concessions to get the anchor over the line? **Rob Go** [20:02]: I wouldn't do it. I think it's a sign of strength not to take that deal. It's not very typical in venture. And so if you're talking to an LP that's very used to anchoring hedge funds, like, they're more likely to ask for this. But I think for the most part, it is to your benefit to show some strength and say no to that. And especially with our first fund, I remember every other LP asked, well, do any of the early folks in the first close have special economic, special governance? And everyone is relieved when you say no. And so you think about, like, the long game here. You really don't wanna get stuck with somebody who has extra power within your organization unless you really believe they're a long term partner, but I think that's very rarely the case. And I think there's a question of, like, what did you do this for? Right? Most people who start funds, many people came from funds or, you know, could be doing other things. Like, the reason you did this probably is to have independence and control and do what you wanna do. And so once you have somebody who has, you know, additional governance, you kinda start to to seed some of that. We actually had a situation where shortly after our busted anchor, you know, situation, we had a couple billionaires whose name I won't share, who basically said, we kinda like what you're doing. We were thinking about starting a fund too. Why don't we just, like, merge? We'll create our own firm. We'll raise, like, a couple $100,000,000 for you guys. We'll just do it together. We had a couple conversations about this, and it was very enticing. Right? It was, like, get into business. These were very high profile, you know, entrepreneurs and and investors. You know, this was a time when, like, a couple $100,000,000 early stage seed fund was, like, unheard of. We were like, man, we can, like, get into the game in a big way. I remember my partner, was very decisive about this. He was like, you know, if you guys wanna do this, you should do it. I'm not gonna be part of it. Because the reason I left my job to start a firm was because I wanted to do things my way with you guys, and that matters a lot to me. And if we take this offer, we're just gonna be employees. Like, don't listen to anything they say or what they promise. We are gonna be employees. I do not want that. That was a very decisive conversation, and he really convinced us that we need to go on our own path. **Harry Stebbings** [22:05]: When we reflect though on, like, the meeting processes itself, for fun one, how many meetings did you have? **Rob Go** [22:11]: Must have been hundreds. We, like, stopped counting. **Harry Stebbings** [22:13]: You had hundreds. How did you get in touch with them? What was that entry point for that relationship? **Rob Go** [22:18]: Thankfully, we had been in venture for a few years, and so we had relationships with GPs at our firms and other firms who are willing to to make introductions to us. What I found actually very useful, though, was not necessarily our closest relationships as much as other funds that were sort of like us that had raised recently. And it was just amazing, Harry, how generous people were in sharing their insights in the process, their lead list, giving us background intel on everybody who they spoke to. I remember one person always sticks in my mind. There were there were a few, but Bryce Roberts, was doing OA TV at the time, I barely really knew him. I remember him sharing me his entire spreadsheet and talking me through every single LP and saying, like, here's how they think. And I didn't understand, like, half the words he was saying, and he just, like, was so gracious and was able to explain to me what the situation was, how we should be thinking about it in our process, and can't think of enough for that generosity early on. **Harry Stebbings** [23:12]: So I've made many LP intros for Bryce. It's funny you said that. And the reason I do and I do actively for other early stage managers is because when you find a great manager, they're gonna raise with or without your help. You get brownie points for helping them, and then you get brownie points from the LP for providing great leads. It's like a net win win to do it. **Rob Go** [23:33]: Mhmm. At the time, I thought that folks would be very protective about LP relationships. You don't realize that a lot of the market has this win win perception. I gotta tell you though, some firms don't. I think it's a little bit of a scarcity mindset, and I would argue that this is a little bit of the function of the time. Part of why the Boston venture market at the time was not thriving the way the West Coast market was is there's a little bit of a scarcity mindset here, a little bit more of a protective attitude towards everything, which frankly was part of why we started wanted to start a fund. Right? We wanted to buck that trend, and I actually think that many of the funds that exist today don't behave that way. There are certain ecosystems where I think that that is definitely the case. **Harry Stebbings** [24:10]: When we think about those LP intros that we have, did you send them the deck, the track record beforehand? There's often a question of whether to send before or after. **Rob Go** [24:19]: You can go either way. I actually don't think it's a bad thing to send the deck. It's like, people want the information, just give it to them. Sometimes we'll send, like, a pretty detailed blurb so that there's some enticing information, but we don't have everything. I actually don't mind that because I think part of your job is to qualify and to try to manage your time well. And so having an obvious next step that is out there is kinda helpful for that qualification process. But I don't know. For the most part, I think sending a deck's not the worst thing. **Harry Stebbings** [24:45]: I agree with you. I prefer the more detailed blurb. I find that people find a reason to say no in the deck quite often ahead of time. But you mentioned qualification there. I do wanna touch on that because I think there's questions that managers can ask to qualify LPs early in the call or the meeting. What questions do you think managers can and should ask to better do LP qualification? **Rob Go** [25:04]: Yeah. This is something that I didn't realize when we started the first fund. The number one factor in whether an LP says yes or no is just timing. Are they expanding their program? Are they looking for whatever box or category they put you in? Do they have the bandwidth to be able to do it within the time frame they're to raise a fund? Like, those are the main factors. And so you wanna try to figure out what the answer is to those questions. So LPs usually will share, like, what percentage of their portfolio is private equity or venture? You wanna get a sense for, like, is that growing or shrinking? You wanna get a sense of has this LP invested in something that looks like you, and what is their general strategy around that category of product? Right? Because within venture, presumably, you're raising a first fund, you fit into some small bucket. Right? So when we started, it was, like, institutional seed funds, not in the Bay Area. Few years ago, it'd be crypto. Most LPs hopefully have some strategy of, like, we wanna have x number of managers that look like you. We've invested in two or three of them, and so we have another four or five to go. Right? Like, whatever the numbers are. Trying to get that that feel, think, is really, really valuable. And whatever questions it takes to to answer that, I think, is is what you're looking for. **Harry Stebbings** [26:07]: I always ask about geography. I find if you're the first in the new geography, it's probably very unlikely. I always ask, like, on check size. Like you said, they're about the ones that are massive checks. Like, they write $25,000,000 checks and you're raising a $3,040,000,000 fund. Pretty much qualified out straight away. And you check size geography, existing portfolio for them. What was the best ever LP meeting you had? **Rob Go** [26:28]: I'll tell you, the LP meetings I most enjoy are ones that focus a lot on the human beings, the nature of the team dynamic, the why behind what we do, the touchy feely meetings. There is a class of LPs, I think a lot of folks who who have this approach have a heritage at Yale. So I really enjoy those meetings. Another meeting I remember was with Horsely Bridge. They're not LPs in our fund, but I remember actually a follow-up where we were talking about portfolio construction, and one of the folks there said, the best portfolio construction in the world is to invest in one company and put all your money into the first round and be right. And every derivative from that basically is allowing for uncertainty and risk. And I always kind of remember that. I kind of enjoyed their, like, probing, taking ideas to an extreme just to stretch your thinking because I felt like I learned something from that. And, obviously, that's not what anybody does, but I kind of appreciated that point of view, and it it changed the way that I sometimes think about portfolio construction myself. **Harry Stebbings** [27:27]: What was the worst LP meeting you've had? **Rob Go** [27:29]: The worst LP meetings are just when it's clear the person doesn't wanna be We actually very rarely have those meetings now. And for the most part, it's because we don't fight that hard to get a meeting. Like, in the beginning, I was like, oh, I just need to get in the room. And if we can get in the room, we can convince somebody that they want us. If they somebody doesn't want you, they don't want you. I'm not that great of a salesperson. So, like, it does me no good to walk in to somebody who's already, like, leaning way back. Like, life's too short. There's other opportunities out there. And so I would almost say, like, you wanna scrape and fight really hard to get great introductions. But if somebody doesn't wanna take a meeting, like, there's not that much value in, like, forcing it. **Harry Stebbings** [28:06]: If we think about that post meeting process, though, we have that meeting. We have that call. What's the right subsequent follow-up? What do we send them? When do we send it? What do you advise there? **Rob Go** [28:16]: Marc Sister had a post years ago, and one of the takeaways was, to paraphrase, like, always leave something more. Always leave something out so that there's some reason to have a follow-up. That's sort of why a blurb is kinda nice because then it gives you the opportunity to follow-up with the deck. So it it with one of our fundraisers, we had a data room. For the first time, we actually had a data room. And we were so liberal about saying, like, well, here's the data room. Have a look. We have since changed that. We do have a data room, but the data room is a preliminary data room, and it is intentionally incomplete. And the reason it's intentionally incomplete is if we offer the data room, I wanna know they looked at it, which you can. Like, lot of times, there's tracking for these things. But then if they actually, like, prosecuted it, it'll be obvious there's some other stuff that they would want to see. And so we have, like, a subsequent data room that we offer for folks who actually dig in and and care to care to look at it. So I like having these kind of gates that are out there just to assess whether or not LPs are serious, and it's sort of like a video game. Right? Like, let them go on quests and, you know, pass the level and move on to the next one. **Harry Stebbings** [29:16]: I totally agree with you. So let's talk about the next level. You send them the deck. You send them the follow-up something, the data room. They don't respond. What do you do then? **Rob Go** [29:24]: I have a basic belief that it never hurts to ask twice, but I never ask three times. Right? So if there's an email that doesn't get responded to, I don't feel bad about asking again. After I'm ignored twice, that's okay. I just move on. That doesn't necessarily mean they're dead, by the way. It's just that I'm not going out of my way to proactively seek them out. But fundraising processes are long. You never know. Right? You might see them at a conference in three months from now, and they'll be like, oh yeah, you know, the times have changed, like, let's have a follow-up. And like, that's fine. I I I they're not dead to me. I'm just not gonna to proactively reach out anymore. So **Harry Stebbings** [29:56]: that's my general rule. I remember there was one with my first fund and it was fuck it. I know LPs of mine. Okay. The insurance provider. And they didn't respond after a great first meeting. Every single Monday for fifty weeks, I emailed them. Fifty weeks. Which shows that it took a year to raise a fucking fund. And then on the fifty first week, they responded, sorry, been slammed, love to engage. And you were like, really? And what'd you do with that? And so we followed up and we're like, we would love to engage too. Yes, please. You know, we only need some 50 fucking emails to get this one. But so I totally agree with you, but I think, yeah, there is a certain time when you probably should stop. **Rob Go** [30:35]: It seems like you've had maybe a different experience where because if you've sent 50 emails, that means for somebody else, you sent 10 emails and it did work. So do do you actually think that the two email rule is not correct? **Harry Stebbings** [30:45]: Oh, yeah. A 100%. No. You're technically right, but the cost of it is so little. Like, just checking in, one of our portfolio companies just raised a huge up round by Sequoia. It's very low. Actually, the cost is low and the benefit is high. So fuck it. Keep going. And I'm always more and more humorous with everyone. So I'm like, Rob, you probably think I'm as persistent as your, you know, wife or husband, and I am. I'm worse. So if you wanna get rid of me, it's much easier than divorce. Just let me know. And then they're like, Great. **Rob Go** [31:16]: Actually, I really like that approach. Right? The thing not to do is the do you wanna take a next step? Do you wanna take a meeting? Asking for something without offering something, I think that is really hopeless. **Harry Stebbings** [31:26]: All the entitlement elements. I think it's really bad that you haven't responded, blah blah blah. It's not bad they haven't responded. They just don't like you in a lot of cases. I think that and then the other thing I think is, like, invest in lines, not DOS. So I meet two new LPs every single week when I'm not fundraising. Mhmm. At the end of each meeting, I ask for two new LP intros. They make them, so I have a flywheel of four new LPs per week. I'm not fundraising. And then every quarter, when I send out my quarterly update, I send it to them, Rob, I hope you and the family are well. I hope Boston's great this time of year. Personal copy, like, personal bit at the beginning, and then copy and paste with the they love it. The lines not dots going to your sister comment and building that relationship over time works so well. **Rob Go** [32:07]: I agree with that. So I would say when I say don't ask twice, I would not be shy about sharing good news, but I certainly wouldn't ask without offering something over and over again. **Harry Stebbings** [32:19]: You're not gonna share bad news, are you? Oh, my partner laughed and I hate him. Yeah. **Rob Go** [32:23]: No. **Harry Stebbings** [32:23]: That would be too funny. Tell me that the hard thing is, like, just creating a sense of urgency even in ones that do respond. So how do you advise managers on getting people over the line and what works and what doesn't? **Rob Go** [32:34]: Tricky thing about this business, as you know, where most LPs have the incentive to be the second to last yes because it's not like you have that much benefit in being or or any benefit in being the first yes to to a fund. So I have a couple of thoughts here. I think for a first fund, there is no shame in closing a very small amount as long as your strategy can support it. I always remind people, like, first fund was a $7,000,000 fund, and they're pretty well known folks in the industry. So I think there's something about, like, just do a close, and then that allows you to, like, have a very concrete timeline of, like, what a final close looks like. Once you're done and you're in business, just do what you need to do, and then you can create more urgency in your next fund when you you have more demand and more points on the board. I also think that there's some LPs that pride themselves in being in a first close. Some fund of funds, some endowments, it's meaningful to them that they're known for being the first yes. And so you can basically use a close date as a forcing function. If clearly that's not gonna work, then then at least you know they're not really serious or at least they're not serious within that time frame. But I don't know, like, what have you done, Harry? **Harry Stebbings** [33:35]: Well, I think it's really important on the timeline basis to set a timeline that's not too short where it forces them to a no, but where it's short enough where actually they need to do the work fast, but they actually have time. So I always say fourteen to twenty one days. Actually, if someone's gonna do it, fourteen to twenty one days gives you time to shit or get off the can as we say in The UK. I don't think that's arrogant. It's not unreasonable. A couple of weeks to internalize. They can say subsequently, hey, that's our decision, and then we need to approve with IC. Fine. But actually, we need to have some form of declarative decision within fourteen days because we do have allocations that are filling up. I think it also shows confidence and progression by doing that. **Rob Go** [34:12]: Yep. I think that's right. I think that as you get further along in the fund, it's easier to be able to say, hey. You know, our last one is x size. New fund is this size. Most of our LPs wanna do you know, wanna increase their allocation. We probably have room for one or two more LPs, and we're trying to be very selective about who that looks like. We think that we'd love to work with you, but here's our timeline and try to figure out if they can meet that. **Harry Stebbings** [34:33]: They should never be surprised by your timeline on subsequent funds. Like, I've built a relationship with many LPs that I want in subsequent funds ahead of time. They know exactly when they're coming, So they're presold to plan for that internally. I think that's really important. You gotta think about their planning cycles and their deployment cycles because otherwise, if you're like, hey, Rob. I'm raising. Oh, shit. I I kind of did like you, but now we're a little bit up shit free. **Rob Go** [34:55]: Yeah. That's a great point. So, typically, if I think about, like, our timing, if we're looking to do a a first close in, say, q one of of a given year, we are probably giving pretty clear indication of what our time frame is at least, like, eighteen, if not twenty four months before that. And then we remind people, hey. Like, this is what we said. You probably don't remember. Here it is again. Some LPs are very good at keeping track of this kind of thing. Some folks tend to forget, and so we just remind folks. And like you said, it's not a surprise when the time comes that you're looking to close at a certain time. And I think LP is actually kind of even those who pay attention, they appreciate the consistency of how you've operated. Right? So knowing that you're a fund that is delivering on exactly what they said, they're hitting the timeline that they projected to earlier is, like, very reassuring because a lot of the existing managers don't do that. Right? So, you know, when the markets were hot, what LPs always said was like, oh my gosh. So and so fun has come back, like, a year or two years ahead of expected, and it's throwing off our entire planning strategy. Like, there's actually something comforting in knowing that they're operating as predictably, if not more predictably, their existing portfolio, and you're great to work with from that standpoint. **Harry Stebbings** [36:02]: I I think also going to your point now on kind of calendars, it's really important to know that there are strategically better times of year to raise for certain institutions. A lot of endowment funds get fresh buckets of allocation in the start of any year. And so q one is actually optimal. Q three is probably the worst, and actually end of q four when they might have, like, a spare little stipend left can actually be the best as well. But I think knowing that there's, like, strategic moments of best capital availability is important. **Rob Go** [36:31]: Yeah. I wonder if that's gonna change though because I feel like what you've described, I feel like maybe everybody has figured out. And so I noticed that everybody basically starts their fundraise at the latter half of the year so that they can target a beginning of the year close unless they catch somebody who has end of year allocation. That is the most logical timing to capture the large part of the market. But then I hear everybody's doing that, so I don't know if there's a way to zig when others are zagging. Probably not, but, yeah, that's something that I've thinking about, actually. **Harry Stebbings** [36:58]: Well, I just have a problem with that there too because it just shows this, like, strategic manipulation of relationships aligned to fundraisers. And it's like, I've been speaking to 30 LPs who are not in my fund. Honestly, Rob, because they're also really freaking smart. And I learned from them on the point of So there's no like, oh, I'm gonna engage with them again with q one in mind. I'm kind of chatting to them on a weekly, quarterly basis on WhatsApp anyway. And I think that's what managers need more of, which is just the natural relationships. Whereas, oh, meet my friend Rob. He's raising now, and he's great. I'm not raising. **Rob Go** [37:30]: I think there's some GPs, though. They don't have the constitution of always fundraising. I feel like this is true for founders too. There's some founders who are just so great at always having investor conversations and other founders that are just not good at that. Right? And they're better off, like, running a concentrated process, simultaneous process in in big bursts. And so I think to some degree, like, that's sort of the same for cheapies too. Some folks are very, very good at keeping a lot of LP relationships and LP cultivation going, and I think some are just not as good at that. **Harry Stebbings** [38:00]: How much in terms of, like, LP check size? A lot of people I meet have minimums, and it really pisses me off because I think that they're very dangerous. Some of my best LP instructions, founder instructions have come from 25 k checks from heads of product. How do you advise on minimum LP check sizes? **Rob Go** [38:16]: I would say for individuals, I'm usually pretty loose. For institutions, we try to enforce some sort of a minimum, but the minimum's typically pretty low. Because, like you said, sometimes you get great introductions from LPs. Sometimes it's our model to start really small, but they can actually upsize quite considerably. Like, we've certainly seen that in our portfolio. I try not to be too snooty about that. I generally am a believer in, like, building an antifragile LP base. Like, even though I said earlier, I really I don't mind concentration. I also don't mind a lot of small checks if you can handle it from a timing standpoint. A bunch of small checks is very, very antifragile. I'm not too snooty about that sort of thing. Like, as long as folks are good to deal with and they're not, like, a huge time sink, I'm I'm happy to engage. **Harry Stebbings** [38:56]: Can I ask you on, like, different types of LP knowledge there? Did you find that one type of LP converted better for you than the others in terms of corporate fund of funds, you know, but **Rob Go** [39:07]: Different types of LPs convert better at different times in your life cycle. So fund to funds are in the business of one of two things. They're either in the business of access, get whatever institution into these fancy names, and so they're very focused on brand. The other job of fund to fund sometimes is to execute on a particular strategy and get folks into something new. And so if you fit the category of, like, the new thing in the new category, some fund to funds are really, really great at converting. Weirdly, when you're in the middle, you're neither new nor are you so well known that you have, like, a great brand. Fund of funds are not as good. What I found is that, like, funds two to three, it's actually harder to get a new fund of funds engaged because you're neither of the two. There are some groups that are very, very large LPs, and they just want stability. They will never invest in a fund one or a fund two, but they love the idea of investing in fund three, four, five, a plot or or more with a team that's been together for a long time, that has executed the same strategy for a long time that, you know, just has shown that great level of stability, and, like, that's what they want. Right? I think pension funds tend to like that. I think some endowments like that, and I think they tend to convert great towards the the middle, later stages of of the fund cycle. **Harry Stebbings** [40:18]: Where would you say you are? You're fund five, but respect is not Sequoia of forty years or k b. Where are you in terms of that fund life cycle, would you say? **Rob Go** [40:27]: I would say that we are not the new product, but we have a lot of stability. We don't have the biggest brand, but our track record is pretty strong. LPs that don't care so much about the brand, that like smaller managers and believe in early stage and kind of like a no frills, less flash, but great performance kind of partner that they can trust for a long period of time tend to like, NextView. Who **Harry Stebbings** [40:51]: is the new thing? **Rob Go** [40:51]: Well, it was crypto. That's not the case anymore. Probably, if you're an AI specific fund that can very credibly tell a differentiated story, That could be a new new thing. Although, it's so crowded, perhaps not. **Harry Stebbings** [41:04]: Can I ask you, in terms of, like, management of the process, how tightly should it be managed? I don't find emerging managers manage them well at all, bluntly. How tightly should it be managed? **Rob Go** [41:13]: I think you wanna be organized, especially the first couple times you do this. I think you wanna be very organized, but don't try to manage it too tightly. Because you actually don't know enough to be able to manage it like a fine oiled machine, and you have to allow for some serendipity. I'm, like, a little zen about this kind of thing. Like, I try to stick to my timelines. I try to be very transparent with our LPs. I always say that if you're not for us this time, maybe next time. And who knows? When I started, I had so much urgency around, like, we need to hit this date. We need to close this amount by this amount of time, like, trying to jam people into a framework. And now I'm just much more laissez faire about it. We had one experience with one of our funds where we closed most of it, frankly, right before the the lockdown happened with COVID. And we're like, we've hit our target. Should we just, like, stop fundraising and and just, like, focus on on investing? I was like, yes, but you never know what might happen. Nine months later, one LP that frankly is a relationship I'd cultivated since since fund one decided to come in at the very, end. It was a 100% about their own timing. Were they ready to say yes to us early on? No? Like, literally, with, like I sent an email, and I think they either ignored me or they said no, like, just just by the email. And then nine months later, they were ready. Because I chatted with them in fund one, like, they had the sense that they tracked us for a long, long time, and they were ready to to say yes to us. And so I was like, okay. Great. This is this is gonna work. So I'm much more relaxed. **Harry Stebbings** [42:33]: What was the easiest fund to raise, and what was the hardest fund to raise? The last fund was the easiest to raise, so that was the fifth fund. And that was just because of DPI and cashback? **Rob Go** [42:41]: Yeah. It was a DPI story. **Harry Stebbings** [42:43]: Yeah. DPI story. **Rob Go** [42:44]: And then the hardest? The hardest was the first fund because we didn't know what we were doing. **Harry Stebbings** [42:48]: Other than the first, which was the hardest? **Rob Go** [42:50]: Probably the third fund. Why **Harry Stebbings** [42:52]: do you think that is? **Rob Go** [42:53]: Because we lost an LP. **Harry Stebbings** [42:54]: Can I ask a final one before we just do touch on the market? Is there anything you know about fundraising now that you wish you'd known at the start? I'm sure there's many things. But, like, what do you wish most? **Rob Go** [43:04]: Like I said, I've become so much more zen about this. In their first fund, every time someone said no, I took it personally, and I felt like it was a waste of time. Now looking back, it is amazing. Like, this one LP that I mentioned, it's actually our biggest LP now. This is the one that I talked to them in fund one. They didn't actually engage very much, but they always took a meeting or two and then passed. And then I think fund three or fund four, they didn't even take a meeting. And then fund five, they came in. And I was like, how much of a waste of time was that? Not much. Right? There's, like, a handful of meetings over the course of however many years, some email updates, and they're great partners with us. And they're a pretty large LP for us. And if that has kind of changed my thinking, we're like, you just don't know. People are in the business of meeting managers. You're in the business of meeting LPs, and you just don't know how relationships are gonna evolve. People are gonna go to different platforms and at a new platform, maybe you become a really great fit for them when they weren't before. So just like allow serendipity to happen and do your job, and I feel like things will work out. **Harry Stebbings** [43:57]: I think mine is just be human. You know, we started this call with me asking you advice on, you know, children and relationships and managing life. When you get on an LP call, you put on a shirt and tie and get the deck up ready. That's just the same as you. Why didn't you ask them those questions and actually build a real relationship? **Rob Go** [44:15]: Totally. That's why you bring backpacks. **Harry Stebbings** [44:17]: That's that's why you bring backpacks, baby. Couple of final ones before we do a quick fire. Now I have this theory. Well, not theory, but many people have said on the show before that multistage funds have destroyed seed. They've turned the bloodbath with 5,000,000 on 25,000,000 seed rounds. Do you agree? And is seed harder than ever now? **Rob Go** [44:34]: I think the degree of difficulty is relatively high. I don't think that it will persist because at some point, the multistage funds will say, hey. It's not really worth our time and effort to invest at this stage, and they'll turn their attention to later stage rounds where you write bigger checks again. But for now, it's pretty difficult. But there have been other times where it's been difficult as well. And when we started, seed was a cottage industry. It wasn't that it it was a lot easier. Today, it's harder, but we didn't get into this to do something easy. **Harry Stebbings** [44:59]: Do you not think seed pricing is immune to macro cycles? When you look at it, I think it will just continuously stay actually at very high levels because of all the multistage funds moving earlier. **Rob Go** [45:09]: I think it's a bifurcated market. Prices are very high for certain types of companies. But if you're contrarian, there are lot of companies that don't get any love as well. I also think that part of the complaint is that seed funds are looking for what effectively used to be a Series A investment. And I say, like, why don't you do a pre seed? Because pre seeds are still pretty cheap, especially if it's not a super proven founder. By the way, like, when we started, we were doing seed seed rounds, and there were cases where it was a very, very proven founder. They would skip the seed stage altogether and raise a series a. I feel like that's kind of the same thing that's happening today. It's just the labels are different. **Harry Stebbings** [45:38]: If you come out of a Figma, a Stripe, a Notion, you don't raise the 500 k to a million pre seed round. **Rob Go** [45:44]: Yeah. You never know. I I don't know if that's necessarily true. Do you see them? Yeah. We see them. I spoke to a founder yesterday who had been part of a company that had a very successful exit, then joined a unicorn company before it was unicorn, led growth. And he did a pre seed, and it was pretty reasonably priced. Like, the seed will probably be pretty expensive, but the pre seed wasn't bad. **Harry Stebbings** [46:01]: What do you see today in the seed market that you think not enough people are talking about or spending enough time on? **Rob Go** [46:08]: Related to your last question, I think there's actually a lot of opportunity out there for non consensus thinking. I think there are a lot of companies that aren't getting very much love because they're not AI. The teams aren't fancy founders that came from well known companies that are just having a really tough time raising. And I think that there's gonna be many diamonds in the rock that come out of that. I think there's a lot of, like, doom and gloom and, like, disgruntled chatter amongst seed investors right now, and I'm like, there are a lot of companies out there. Go ahead and do it. And by the way, if the founders are really that great, like, just go ahead and pay a higher price. Like, that's okay too. **Harry Stebbings** [46:40]: I've just put down a term sheet for a Series A to lead it, and I think the price was half what it would be last year, but I just think the capital supply is not there for an enterprise software company in London. **Rob Go** [46:50]: Right. No. I saw that tweet. Right? It's like a a good old fashioned enterprise software series a with good metrics that isn't doing AI or not pretending to do AI. Like, that's great. **Harry Stebbings** [46:58]: And everyone's like, AI is gonna kill it. You're like, really? It's not. This is so ugly and old. Trust me. It's not that easy, guys. Listen. I wanna do a quick fire round, Rob. So I say a short statement. Okay. So if you were to invest in one seed firm other than NextView, what would it be and why? **Rob Go** [47:14]: It would be in DVC. So this is Bryce's fund. They have a completely different model focused on a completely underserved different segment of the early stage market with a unique investment product. That's, like, different on four or five dimensions with a great guy, and I can't wait to invest in this fund. **Harry Stebbings** [47:30]: He just is such a good person. I'm totally with you. If you were to invest in a Series A firm, who would it be and why? It would be **Rob Go** [47:35]: Benchmark. Persistent success over time, successful generational transition, quite disciplined, amazing brand, great people, hard to beat. **Harry Stebbings** [47:44]: If you were invest in a growth firm, which would it be? **Rob Go** [47:47]: I would probably say Summit Partners. They're the OG of the classic growth cold calling machine. Like, they invented that model. They execute it like nobody else. If I could, I would specifically invest in their smaller fund. They have a bunch of different funds. I think they have a small 4 or $500,000,000 classic growth fund. That's probably what I would do. **Harry Stebbings** [48:04]: What have you changed your mind on in the last twelve months? **Rob Go** [48:08]: I was skeptical of AI. I am, like, all in on it. What like, what caused the change? I see something happening in AI that's very similar to the early days of the Internet. There are teams that I see that are clearly trying to become AI native, and that doesn't necessarily mean that you're like an ML researcher or have a PhD in the space. It's just that you are, like, approaching building every software product with a expectation that AI and AI driven tools can massively create efficiencies or to enable new capabilities. And there are other teams that are just like, this is probably the next new fad. I don't know. I'm gonna put it aside. This is very similar to the Internet, right, or or cloud. Like, there was a time when, like, you would talk to a founder and you just knew. Like, is this person, like, Internet native? Is this person just, like, native to the types of products and tools that are out there and available to them or not? I kinda see the same dynamic happening, and it's not that every company would invest in be an AI company, but every team we invest in, I'd like them to be very, very AI native. **Harry Stebbings** [49:01]: What's your biggest miss, and how did it change your mindset? **Rob Go** [49:04]: My biggest miss was DraftKings. I was actually Jason Robbins' teaching assistant in college. I knew he was special. He walked into our offices to pitch DraftKings along with two other extraordinary cofounders. We passed not because of, like, regulation, but because we misunderstood the market size. And ever since then, I've been very careful to not say no to an investment just because of market size without thinking very deeply about whether or not we are misunderstanding the market, misdefining it, or just underestimating the the growth that's on the other end. **Harry Stebbings** [49:37]: What's the biggest hit, and how did that change your mindset? **Rob Go** [49:40]: One of our biggest hits is Attentive, and we invested in an uncapped note. And that changed my mind because we never would have done before. It's not like we're looking to do uncapped notes left and right, but it made me realize you just wanna get into the best companies. In in a power law business, you just wanna get into the best companies. **Harry Stebbings** [49:59]: What would you most like to change about the world of venture? **Rob Go** [50:01]: I think venture is very one size fits all. Even though there are a lot of different managers, a lot of different funds, there's just, like, so much similarity in the ways that they approach it. That's why I love what Bryce is doing with Indy. Like, it's completely different. There's so many vectors. When I got into venture, I remember there was this very hard and fast rule about, like, you have to own 20% as a venture fund. One of Union Square's big innovations was they were willing to own 15%. And I remember people were pooh poohing up for own 15%. Like, why is that wrong? There's just so much one size fits all in the venture. I would love that to change around, like, the types of people who get into it, the types of companies that can raise venture, the type of economics maybe that could allow different types of companies to work. Don't know. I think in a lot of different ways, we're not thinking creatively enough. **Harry Stebbings** [50:42]: Tell me, next five years for you and for NextView, what does that look like when we chat in 2028? **Rob Go** [50:48]: My vision and our team's vision is for NextView to be I think of Benchmark and YPO had a baby and focused on seed, that's what I'd love NextView to be. From on the Benchmark side, it's a very partner driven model, equal partnership, a lot of stability, best in class, best in class investor, very concentrated model. YPO, an ethos of founder vulnerabilities support communal excellence. Folks are able to have, like, lifelong relationships that they think is one of the most important things in their lives. Like, I would love that to be what founders say about being part of the NextView portfolio. So if we can marry those two things, I would love that. **Harry Stebbings** [51:25]: Rob, I've so enjoyed this. This has been such a great discussion. Thank you for putting up with my very vocal interview style this time around, but I've loved it, man. **Rob Go** [51:33]: Awesome. I really appreciate it. Thanks so much, Harry, for having me. ## Sponsor read **Harry Stebbings** [51:38]: So much fun in that episode with Robin. If you'd like to see more from us behind the scenes, of course, you can on YouTube by searching for 20 VC. That's two zero VC. But before we leave each day, over 50% of your day is filled with tedious tasks. What would you do if you got that half a day back? Now you can with Coda, the all in one platform that changes the way your team works together. And Coda just introduced an AI powered work assistant to take the busy out of work. With Coda, your team's important workflows and content already live all in one place, and Coda AI helps each team member focus on the highest priority work even as priorities shift across the team. 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Fund managers can focus on making great deals while AngelList handles reporting, taxes, compliance, and more. So if you're ready to scale your startup or fund with the platform at the center of it all, visit angellist.com/20vc to get started. As always, I so appreciate all your support, and I cannot wait to bring you an incredible episode on Monday with Attentive at TripleLift.