ANGEL: Freestyle’s Jenny Lefcourt on nailing non-consensus bets and avoiding hype | E1704
Jenny Lefcourt of Freestyle VC joins Jason for an insightful conversation. They delve into the mission of All Raise and the importance of diversity in venture capital (2:04). Jenny shares her thoughts on embracing non-consensus bets and her experiences investing in Narvar and Discord (20:04). Additionally, they discuss the value of strategy meetings in comparison to traditional board meetings (59:10).
(0:00) Jason kicks off the show
(2:04) Co-Founding All Raise: Promoting Diversity in Venture Capital
(9:53) Prenuvo - Save $300 on Full Body Scans at http://prenuvo.com/twist
(11:23) Biases Towards Certain Business Models
(15:05) Identifying and Avoiding Unsuccessful Business Models
(18:54) LinkedIn Jobs - Post Your First Job for Free at https://linkedIn.com/angel
(20:04) Embracing Non-Consensus Bets
(22:53) Jenny’s Investment in Narvar
(28:16) Understanding the Economics of a Seed Fund
(35:14) Comparing Hype: Generative AI versus Web 3.0
(40:47) Miro - Collaborate with Unlimited Team Members for Free at https://miro.com/startups/
(42:28) Insights from Jenny's Investment in Discord
(47:05) Attaining Product-Market Fit and Making a Significant Impact
(56:56) Exiting Deals: When to Move On
(59:10) Strategy Meetings Compared to Board Meetings
(1:04:04) Jenny's Ideal Timeline for Committing to Investments
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Special episode: How to pitch a Series A (TechCrunch Live Podcast)
This week, the Equity team is spotlighting one of our sister podcasts: TechCrunch Live. Matt Burns hopped on the mic with Jenny Lefcourt from Freestyle Partners and Guillaume de Zwirek, CEO and co-founder of WELL Health, to talk all about raising a Series A and specific steps for founders to follow.
As you’ll hear from Lefourt and de Zwirek, there are notable differences between raising a seed round and a Series A round. Investors look at different aspects of the company, and the founder must prepare for the fundraising differently. Rather than selling a story, they’re selling a company. To help even more founders, Lefcourt prepared a blog post to go along with her TechCrunch Live appearance that goes even deeper into raising a Series A.
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Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
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Jenny Lefcourt - The Go-to-Market Motion - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 245]
My guest today is Jenny Lefcourt, an equal General Partner at seed-stage venture firm Freestyle Capital, where she manages $450 million in seed investments. Jenny has been engrained in the tech world since the early days of the internet. She dropped out of her Stanford MBA program to co-found online wedding registry startup WeddingChannel.com with classmate, Jessica Herrin, which was subsequently acquired by The Knot. During our conversation, we cover Jenny's investment frameworks, why she believes a deep understanding of the customer is key for founder success, and what makes great go-to-market strategies. We also touch on some of Jenny's favorite market themes around technology for the aging population, the future of work, and the growing low-code/no-code market. Please enjoy my conversation with Jenny Lefcourt.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to the best content to learn more, check out the episode page here.
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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, Inc. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.
Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.
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Show Notes
[00:03:24] - [First question] - Her background and some formative experiences that lead her to where she is today
[00:08:38] - Common patterns of desirable founders when it comes to customer focus
[00:09:50] - Her investing framework for evaluating and deciding which companies to invest in
[00:15:11] - The biggest jobs to be done in this space currently today
[00:17:33] - Cultural differences in how the West views and treats their elderly
[00:21:02] - Business model options for turn-key apartments offered by UpsideHoM
[00:22:48] - Other categories and potential opportunities in tech geared towards the elderly
[00:24:59] - What you need to do differently when building products for the elderly
[00:27:32] - How she learns about a new prospect’s go-to-market approach and reverse engineering an action plan to execute it
[00:32:03] - Founders, You Want to Sell Viagra
[00:33:33] - Selling transformation and an overview of this idea with BetterUp
[00:36:30] - Her thoughts on how the world and the future of work might change
[00:43:24] - The emerging movement of low code/no code tools
[00:46:58] - How she as an investor adjusts as the world becomes more digitally connected
[00:49:02] - Ways her life has most dramatically changed over the past few years
[00:51:33] - Lessons learned from her time at All Raise
[00:53:40] - Outstanding and remaining barriers to inclusive and diverse teams
[00:58:47] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for her
20VC: How Startups Should React To Today's Funding Environment & Why Big Markets Are More Forgiving with Jenny Lefcourt, Partner @ Freestyle.vc
Jenny Lefcourt is a Partner @ Freestyle where she invests in early stage tech companies. Prior to Freestyle, Jenny was the Founder of Weddingchannel.com and Bella Pictures which were both acquired. During this time, Jenny raised funds from titans of VC including Kleiner Perkins, Trinity Ventures, Amazon and more. Jenny has also angel invested and advised some incredible entrepreneurs with the likes of Minted and Style Seat. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jenny made his way into VC from founding and exiting 2 startups?
2.) What were the differences in raising money as a founder and as a VC? What learnings as a founder did Jenny have that have helped her move into VC?
3.) How have the large macro-economic changes affected Jenny's investing style? Has she seen a change in her investment cadence? Does Jenny place more emphasis on burn reduction now?
4.) Why does Freestyle not invest with a thesis? What are the benefits of this? How does Jenny make investment decisions going forward without a thesis?
5.) What does Jenny mean when she says that VCs suffer from duck syndrome? What can VCs do to make them the best and their founders life easier?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Jenny's Fave Book: Dreamland, Blinkist (Harry's Suggestion)
Jenny's Most Recent Investment: CREXi
As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jenny on Twitter here!
If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!