Adam Besvinick
VC at Deep Fork Capital
Discussion
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
Hi! I'm Adam Besvinick, a seed investor at Deep Fork Capital. I'm based in NYC but spend a fair amount of time in the Bay Area. Prior to joining Deep Fork, I spent time running biz dev at Wanelo. During business school, I worked with Chris Sacca and Lowercase Capital and worked on biz dev for Gumroad. Prior to business school, I worked in finance for a couple years. Aside from my passion for tech and startups, I'm a diehard Philly sports and Duke fan and run a much-too-intense fantasy football league. Happy to chat about NYC vs. SF, business school, the move from finance to tech, etc. Ask away!
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Kevin Siskar
@thesiskar · Managing Director, Founder Institute NY
Adam, I know from talking with you on my podcast (episode is listed on the right rail if your on a desktop 😉 ) that you are a relentless hustler. What advice do you have for people to build and leverage their personal branding? How has it played a role in your journey and career?
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@thesiskar Thanks for the plug! For me, Twitter and blogging have been indispensable. Chris told me that he was "hiring" me to work for him during b-school because he read my Tweets and my blog and didn't feel like he needed to interview me or do a reference check. It continues to be valuable for building a brand and reputation, for building connections with founders and investors, and for my own development. When I put an opinion out there publicly, I better have thought it through and done my homework. And don't worry about having followers or people reading your stuff. Your audience will grow. And when I started writing my blog, I didn't care if people read it immediately. I just wanted it to show up in search results, so people looking me up would get to know me through this archive of content that I had accumulated over time.
Kevin Siskar
@thesiskar · Managing Director, Founder Institute NY
@besvinick Great advice! 👏
For a consumer app is there a base line user number of users you'd like to see to really be interested for a potential investment? In the millions, in the hundreds of thousands, more based on engagement? 📈🚀
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@nivo0o0 What's up, Niv - thanks for helping to set this up! For me, it's all about engagement. Sure, having a ton of users is great, but I like to see strong DAU/MAU, 30-day retention, and multiple sessions per day, ideally. This doesn't guarantee long-term success, of course, but it means that there's something interesting percolating. I also like to see if there's some interesting "offline" component happening (i.e. are people trying to connect outside of the service).
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@blrbalam I don't have one specific mentor but a group of people that I know I go to with questions and ask for advice depending on what's going on in my life. Some people have called it a "personal board," and I think everyone should have one. Learning from Sacca was and has been invaluable, Semil Shah (whom I met 4.5 years ago) has been an amazing resource and reference and 6-time co-investor, my parents (of course!), my girlfriend. And there are a number of other investors that I reference in this post (https://medium.com/@besvinick/fr...) that were incredibly helpful to me.
Dylan
@dylanqian
Hi Adam, thanks for doing this!
I wanted to ask, what is a side project you are most proud of completing and what is your current/next side project?
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@dylanqian Hey Dylan - interesting Q. I view my blog as a continuous side project (and one I need to get better about spending more time on). Without the blog (and to some extent Twitter), I never would have been able to build up a reputation in the startup ecosystem while I was in finance and in b-school.
Alex Hardy
@canthardywait · Former investment banker
If you were an entrepreneur thinking about starting a consumer tech co, what city (in the US or the world) would you choose to build in and why?
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@canthardywait depending on the product / service, I am still very much a fan of LA and NYC. I think they lend themselves well to finding a variety of users to engage and test with. They're huge and diverse. I've written a bit about this in a couple posts:
https://medium.com/@besvinick/50...
https://medium.com/@besvinick/wa...
Andrew Ettinger
@andrewett · Product Marketing, Twitter (ex-PH)
NYC vs. SF ... talk to us :)
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@andrewett Here's a cop out answer on SF vs NYC. I wrote this after 6 months of VC: https://medium.com/adventures-in...
Most of it is still the same, but it may be due for a refresh on its 2-year anniversary
[deleted user]
@deleted_user
Hello Adam,
Thank you for giving us an opportunity to ask you anything.
Question: Approximately how many pitches a week or a month do you guys sift through normally?
Thank you.
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@victorpolyushko I'm usually meeting with or talking to about 20 companies per week
Greg Blotnick
@gregblotnick · Greg Blotnick - Columbia Business School
what made you leave finance during business school to go into venture?
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@gregblotnick Short answer here: https://medium.com/@besvinick/fr... - this explains my path from finance to startups which started before b-school
Greg Blotnick
@gregblotnick · Greg Blotnick - Columbia Business School
@besvinick thanks!
Alex Hardy
@canthardywait · Former investment banker
Currently, what areas of consumer tech overhyped, underhyped, accurately hyped?
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Adam Besvinick
@besvinick · VC at Anchorage Capital
@canthardywait I think bots are overhyped. I don't think that there isn't something there in the long term. I just think that the love went too far earlier this year. I think the same can be said for VR to some extent. I don't think enough attention is being paid to enterprise applications of VR, as I mentioned in another answer here. I think mobile, social products are underhyped at this point. Mainly because people don't think that there's room for any. I am skeptical of that. To the extent that autonomous vehicles are consumer, I think they're accurately hyped.
Generally, I think if a sector is overhyped, it's because it's too early.