Mission-Driven Founders, Global Investing, and Canva (with Wesley Chan)
Last month, Ben sat down with Wesley Chan at Web Summit for a quick, 18-minute interview. The conversation was supposed to be about global investing in 2021 as an early-stage VC, but the conversation turned mostly into the origin story of Wesley's (unbelievably good) seed investment in Canva.
Wesley's firm Felicis Ventures invested pre-revenue, leading the seed round, and Canva is valued at $40 billion today. Wesley dives into the details (and why he invested in the first place!) in this interview.
Sponsors:
Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra
20VC: Felicis' Wesley Chan on The Rise of IoT, Getting Recruited by Larry Page & Creating Google's Biggest Success Disaster
Wesley Chan is a Manging Director @ Felicis Ventures where he has led investments in the likes of Canva, Flexport and Luma, just to name a few. Prior to Felicis, Wesley was a General Partner @ Google Ventures. Before Google Ventures he was an early employee at Google, where he founded and launched Google Analytics and Google Voice, resulting in his being awarded Google's Founders Award–the company's most prestigious recognition–for leading the development of Google's early client efforts, which led to the development of Google Chrome. Fun fact about Wesley he is a massive hacker and IOT enthusiast with over 100 connected devices in his home.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Wesley made the transition from Foundering Google Voice and analytics to being a VC?
2.) What were Wesley's biggest takeaways from leading investment at Google Ventures? When looking at his investment in Nest, what makes Nest such a truly phenomenal connected device?
3.) Wesley previously said, 'I look for patterns similar to Google Analytics in how if you build something great.' What are those patterns and what does that thought process lead to in terms of thought outcome? What is a good example of this?
4.) Where does Wesley think we are on the programmable interface element of consumer hardware? What would he like to see change or improve in the space?
5.) How has Wesley seen the investor sentiment to hardware change over the last decade? What have been the rivers in the rising positivity of investing in hardware?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Wesley's Fave Book: The Big Short
Wesley's Most Recent Investment: Luma
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If you are looking to make your move into the world of VC or improve your investing skills, Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing is a must! It is a 2 week crash course at Stanford run by Stanford Professional Development Centre and 500 Startups. You will learn the mechanics of all things Silicon Valley investing, check it out here.
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