Divya Dhulipala
@DivyaDhulipala
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The @haystackvc team is proud to announce our newest fund, Haystack VI. Immensely grateful to my colleagues, @semil and @aashaysanghvi_ for having me along for the ride.
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My colleague @semil's fourth @twentyminutevc episode with @HarryStebbings is out. This is a revealing glimpse into the sort of conversations we have at Haystack every day. Salient points on investing, fundraising, and the state of the market below:
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@aashaysanghvi_ is a keen strategist, a thoughtful partner to founders and investors alike, and a wonderful friend and colleague - not to mention a rising star ⭐️ congrats, AS!.
NEW: @BusinessInsider's annual list of the rising stars of #VentureCapital is here! These 71 investors are the up-and-coming dealmakers landing hot term sheets with big name startups that you should keep on your radar in 2023:
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At my 2017 summer internship, this one sales-trader took me under his wing. Two weeks shadowing him, but I still ask myself "what would Mikey do?" five years later. Idk why today, but feeling a major rush of gratitude. Here's to life's unexpected and wholly unwitting consiglieri.
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My youngest sister and her friends told me they have a gunman escape plan for every classroom they sit in. It was both a relief to hear them thinking this through and a massive punch to the gut. Horrific state of affairs here.
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"I would like to be remembered as someone who used whatever talent she had to do her work to the very best of her ability." -RBG.
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On selecting: VC is about both access and picking. You need access to creative people. It’s really hard to generate that access in a repeatable way. You then need to select from the folks that come your way, and that is very difficult. Both are equally important.
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Founder sins committed: "If you can’t respect the dollars that you’ve taken, and if you can’t give your investors a transparent, brief view into what you’re doing and allow them to guide you in a polite way, then you’re probably not cut out for the journey.".
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On partnering: We’re always trying to co-invest with people that we know, and these are repeated games. It’s better over the long run to pick the entrepreneurs you want to work with and collaborate with syndicates over time, versus trying to box your territory out on each deal.
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VC sins committed: Escalating AUM for fee grab, lowering the bar for financings as true operational checkpoints, deploying capital as speculative real estate, deploying at an irresponsible pace. There are now multiple companies out there with $50M+ cash and no PMF.
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On selecting: There are tons of talented people who are not entrepreneurial. And there are many entrepreneurial folks without the requisite talent. We’re trying to find the overlap - those who have the talent, as well as the entrepreneurial ability.
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On selecting: We are filtering for folks with a history of overcoming adversity, enduring pain, and devoting themselves to their passion. It’s not everything, but it’s important. Especially when making the tradeoff of sophistication in favor of grit and hustle.
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On selecting: Most people who have an entrepreneurial gene in their hard-coding have expressed that in some other way (before they ever go out to raise).
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On selecting: Folks often fawn over traditionally pedigreed founders raising hot seed rounds, believing by default that they’re going to create the next big thing. This sometimes leads to a lack of urgency, of direction, of passion.
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On partnering: Most of the important companies that have gone public have the same 3-4 VC firms on their cap tables, which is not an accident. There are a set of funds that know how to guide a company towards a big outcome/a public offering.
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On partnering: Our job is to coach founders on how to interact with VCs, raise capital over successive rounds, and choose the right investor partners for their companies.
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On raising funds: It just takes one deal to completely change the trajectory of a fund. You can predict or pontificate on fundraising outcomes with some level of precision, but it’s impossible to know who will end up catching a tiger by its tail.
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LP sins committed: going along with fund size escalation, investing in massive, blind pools of capital (versus conventional wisdom that having separate vehicles for separate investment activities is the best governor).
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On partnering: We will lead the deals that we want to lead. In these cases, speed and conviction win. But by having a flexible and collaborative model, we preserve portfolio quality, and we get to optimize foremost for working with the folks we want to work with.
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On LPs: Institutional LPs are predisposed to passing on debut funds. Unless they have asymmetric information on you, they probably don’t think that you’ll raise your first fund or that you’ll deploy it well if you do.
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On raising debut funds: In this day and age, there’s no excuse to lack a track record before you approach an institutional LP. The only way other investors will vouch for you is if they see you work (if you’re an executive in one of their companies or you’re in a deal together).
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