Minisode: Seed vs Growth Investing - What Changes and What Stays the Same

Origins - Inside Venture Capital, Hosted by a GP and an LP

Nick Chirls, GP at Asylum Ventures, and Beezer Clarkson, LP at Sapphire Partners, unpack their recent conversation with Jai Das, President + Partner at Sapphire Ventures and Mike Maples, Co-Founder + Partner at Floodgate, to answer their burning question: What changes in the way seed and growth investors think, and what stays the same? They discuss the crushing importance of team no matter the stage; the parallels in LP land (at the end of the day, you’re just backing people); the difference between small iterations on a business model vs a radical remaking of a company; and the imperfect information you get at Seed vs the luxury of canvasing an entire landscape at growth via customer calls and key metrics.

Learn more about Sapphire Partners: https://sapphireventures.com/sapphire-partners/

Learn more about OpenLP: https://openlp.sapphireventures.com/

Learn more about Asylum Ventures: asylum.vc

Learn more about Floodgate: https://www.floodgate.com/

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CHAPTERS:

0:00-Intro & Takeaways

1:20-Is This the Team That’s Going to IPO?

4:02-Early Stage Pivots

7:44-How Hard a Pivot is Too Hard?

12:23-LP Strategy for Picking Managers

13:09-The Importance of Timing

15:59-You Need to Call the Customers

18:05-Outro