Kanyi Maqubela - Dawn of the 21st Century - [Invest Like the Best, EP. 219]
My guest today is Kanyi Maqubela, co-founder of seed-stage VC firm Kindred Ventures, which he started with his partner Steven Jang in 2019. Before founding Kindred Ventures, Kanyi was a general partner at Collaborative Fund. In our conversation, we discuss the parallels between today and the Roaring ’20s of the last century, the misunderstood risk curve of seed investing, and dive deep into how Kanyi evaluates founders and businesses at the earliest stage of company formation. We also discuss Kanyi’s experience teaching the Design Your Life class at Stanford and how some of those principles convinced him to take the leap to start his own fund. I hope you enjoy my conversation with Kanyi Maqubela.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
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Show Notes
[00:04:11] - [First question] - Understanding the roaring 20s and their potential resurgence
[00:06:14] - Seed-stage investing today compared to a few years ago
[00:09:02] - Lessons learned from studying the 1920s
[00:11:52] - Supply chain infrastructure in the 21st century
[00:14:49] - His investment philosophy and what influenced it
[00:17:47] - Defining the risk curve and early-stage divergence
[00:21:31] - Assessing risk in seed-stage investing
[00:23:32] - Other moments that influenced Kanyi’s investment philosophy
[00:26:50] - Assisting early-stage companies as a VC
[00:29:31] - How he approaches VC differently than traditional US VCs
[00:31:55] - Non-consensus ways and unique views when evaluating founders
[00:35:19] - Domain insight and its importance
[00:36:53] - What he looks for in a company when considering investing in them
[00:38:17] - Assessing a team in whether or not they have characteristics of longevity
[00:40:59] - Questions he most enjoys asking people
[00:42:24] - What makes for a good problem space
[00:44:26] - Early-stage crypto investing
[00:47:27] - How the crypto space and NFTs will change and influence other sectors
[00:50:37] - Emerging trends that are catching his attention
[00:54:20] - The potential for upward mobility in the coming decade
[00:56:30] - Teaching the Design Your Life course
[01:01:21] - Advice for modern investor-operators
[01:03:26] - If he could change one major thing in the industry
[01:06:57] - The biggest lesson learned from Obama’s campaign
[01:07:44] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him
Lauren Loktev, Kanyi Maqubela, & Craig Shapiro - Watching a Venture Fund at Work - [Invest Like the Best, EP.19]
This week’s episode features the partners of the Collaborative Fund, a venture-capital firm based in New York City. This is a unique, group interview with Lauren Loktev, Kanyi Maqubela, and Craig Shapiro that explores all aspects of their search and investing process, including how they identify thematic change in the world and then build a portfolio around those themes. The quality of a team is crucial to success in investing and this is a great example of a team with chemistry on a singular mission. They all offer great advice on how to operate a business, build a team, and find interesting new investments.
Also, stay tuned to the end for a bonus segment captured while the tape was still rolling.
Please enjoy!
For comprehensive show notes on this episode go to investorfieldguide.com/collaborative/
For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.
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Episode 50: Kanyi Maqbuela
Kanyi Maqbuela is a partner at Collaborative Fund. In this episode, we discuss Kanyi’s personal story going from Stanford drop out to VC, how he’s navigated failures, built mentor relationships, and we also go broad: We talk about tech and the intersection of education, academia, non-profit, government, culture, philosophy, and much more. Edited by @Alexkontis Praise to @Km Constructive Criticism to @eriktorenberg
20 VC 094: Kanyi Maqubela @ Collaborative Fund on Rocketships, Feedback Loops and Turning Lemons Into Lemonade!
Kanyi Maqubela is a Partner at Collaborative Fund, who have made investments in AngelList, CodeAcademy, AltSchool, Reddit, Task Rabbit just to name a few. On a more personal note, and a little background on Kanyi, he is originally from Johannesburg South Africa, and was a founding employee at Doostang, a venture-backed peer-to-peer career marketplace, he attended Stanford University and as Kanyi states his most meaningful and difficult work done so far is his work on the Obama Campaign in 2008. You can checkout Kanyi's blog here! I would like to thank Mattermark for providing all the data and analysis for this interview and you can check them out here!
CLICK TO PLAY
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Kanyi made the move into VC and tech from South Africa?
2.) Was the decision to leave Stanford tough? Why would Kanyi advise others to say in school? What was so tough about the startup experience for Kanyi?
3.) What is the investing thesis at Collaborative Fund? What stage do you prefer? Average cheque size? Sector preference? Does specializing in themes result in higher returns?
4.) How is it being such a young partner in the industry? What are the challenges Kanyi has face? Does Kanyi think his age acts as a disadvantage when it comes to attracting older founders?
5.) What are Kanyi's personal marketing strategies that he uses to establish his own personal brand? What platforms are most effective?
6.) How effective does Kanyi find demo days and hackathons as source of deal flow? Are there any tips Kanyi would suggest to maximise their utility? What is Collaborative's most effective form of deal sourcing today?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Kanyi's Fave Book: The Brothers Karamazov
Kanyi's Most Recent Investment: CircleUp
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Kanyi 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!
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