20VC: Scaling from a $4M Angel Fund to $900M, Why Seed May Be The Best priced Asset Class and Not Overpriced At All & The 3 Stages of Fund Scaling and What it Takes To Build a Firm with Aydin Senkut, Founder and Managing Partner @ Felicis
Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Partner of Felicis. An original super angel turned multi-stage investor, he has been named on the Forbes Midas List for the past nine years (2014-2022). Felicis has been an incredible 16-year journey starting with a $4M Fund I back in 2006, their most recent fund in 2021 was $900M. Along the way, Felicis has invested in over 45 unicorns including Adyen, Canva, Shopify, Notion, Opendoor, and Plaid. Prior to starting Felicis, Aydin was a Senior Manager at Google where he spent an incredible 6 years.
In Today's Episode with Aydin Senkut:
1.) The Founding of Felicis:
How did Aydin transition from a successful angel to the first $41M institutional fund with Felicis?
How did Aydin's mindset change moving from investing personal to LP capital?
What does Aydin know now that he wishes he had known when he started Fund I?
2.) Fund Mechanics: Building a Portfolio
Why does Aydin believe portfolios need to have 40-50 positions to be diversified enough?
Given Aydin being multi-stage, how important is ownership on first check for Aydin and Felicis?
Does Aydin believe it is possible to really concentrate capital into your best performers?
How does Aydin think through outcome scenario planning? What is his biggest takeaway from this?
3.) Aydin Senkut: The Investor
What have been the biggest changes in Aydin's style of investing over the last 16 years?
What was Aydin's biggest miss? How did it impact his mindset moving forward?
What is Aydin's biggest insecurity as an investor today? How has it changed?
Where does Aydin still believe he is weak as an investor? What is he doing to combat it?
4.) The Venture Landscape:
Why does Aydin believe that despite the pricing, seed is the best risk-adjusted asset class?
How does Aydin evaluate where crossover funds will move with the death of many growth rounds?
What segment of the market will be hit hardest by the crunch? What worries with this?
What would Aydin most like to change about the venture landscape today? Why?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Aydin Senkut
Aydin's Favourite Book: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
SaaStr 502: Why Founders Should Prioritize Personal Development with Shopify President, Harley Finkelstein
There are countless ways for founders to learn how to build strong teams, strengthen go-to-market processes, and focus on growth and customer success. But a topic that's becoming more important, especially after such a challenging year, is founder well-being. Shopify President Harley Finkelstein shares insight on how successful entrepreneurs approach personal change, coaching, and ongoing development to achieve work-life harmony. Harley will be joined by Felicis founder and Managing Partner Aydin Senkut and Felicis' Head of Founder Success Dasha Maggio. They will discuss what founders should ask for and how focusing on personal development can lead to stronger teams and better outcomes for the business.
Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/why-founders-should-prioritize-personal-development-with-shopify/
SaaStr 285: Adyen CCO Roelant Prins and Felicis Ventures Partner Aydin Senkut on How to Build a $18B+ Success Story Far Far Away from Silicon Valley
Hear about Adyen's journey from a Dutch payments startup to a global public company with more than 15 offices around the world working with large global companies like Facebook, Spotify, Uber, and Microsoft. CCO Roelant Prins shares lessons from the company's own global growth path and will be giving practical tips for companies who are thinking about expanding their business globally. Roelant is joined by Felicis Ventures Founder, Aydin Senkut, who shares the commonalities he sees in successful companies...starting with culture.
Find the video and full transcript on our blog.
20VC: Felicis' Aydin Senkut on Scaling Felicis From $4m to $120m, Doing Venture Differently and Why Being A VC Is Like A Jamaican Bobsled Team!
Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures. An original “super-angel” investor, he was named to Forbes’ 2014 and 2015 Midas List and previously appeared as one of the top 15 tech angels by Businessweek. Aydin is well-known as an early backer of a number of iconic companies including Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), Adyen, Clearslide, Credit Karma, and Rovio. More than 55 Felicis companies such as Brightroll, Climate Corp, Dropcam, Twitch, and Meraki, have been acquired by industry leaders such as Google, Amazon, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Yahoo and Ebay. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Aydin made his way into the world of VC from being a Senior Manager @ Google?
2.) What does Aydin suggest to all those looking to make the move into VC who have potentially, an unconventional background??
3.) What caused Aylin's shift from angel investor to VC ? What was Aydin's investment strategy look like at the beginning and how has that evolved over time? How does Aydin look to differentiate Felicis from the plethora of seed funds?
4.) How does Felicis' stage agnosticity work in practicality for Aydin and the fund itself? How much of a role does valuation play in Felicis' investment decision making?
5.) Question from Rob Hayes @ First Round: How did the Rovio investment come about? Why do you say you are most proud if it?
6.) Question From Hiten Shah: How do you approach the topic of growing the organisation, whilst still supporting founders with the same time and quality?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Aydin's Fave Book:
Anti-Fragile
Aylin's Most Recent Investment:
Diffbot
As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Aydin 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!
