Saar Gur
Venture capitalist at CRV and former entrepreneur.
Discussion
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saar gur
@saarsaar · CRV
Hi – I am Saar Gur, investor at CRV and former entrepreneur. I have invested in a number of companies at the idea stage and/or within weeks of launching and love working hard to help my founders succeed. I have seen a lot of ups and downs from getting involved so early. Ask me anything about startups, company building, financing, product, customer acquisition, or fatherhood. I hope I can help you and the Product Hunt community. Psyched to participate.
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Harry Stebbings
@harrystebbings · Podcast Host @ The Twenty Minute VC
@saarsaar thanks so much for joining us today Saar. Big fan of yours, my question is; how important do you think individual VC personal branding is? What methods do you enact to ensure that your brand is as public and recognisable as possible? P.S Would love to have you on @twentyminutevc and share your story!
Max Mathys
@pakkojuoda
@harrystebbings Related to this question: What do you think of Tobias van Schneiders personal branding?
@harrystebbings Great question. To be a great VC you have to do a few things well...and two of those things are (1) sourcing great investment opportunities and (2) winning competitive situations. Investing in your personal brand helps tremendously with those two things and so it is definitely important. There are plenty of ways to build brand. In my case, historically I have actually not tried to build a public brand as it isn't in my nature to blog/tweet/etc. - it really doesn't feed my ego to be a public "internet" celebrity and so I invest in efforts that work for me. I like being behind my entrepreneurs not in front of them. As an example, I really try to invest in my entrepreneurs and stand out in my service to them relative to others...and my current entrepreneurs have been my biggest source of leads for new investments and for winning new projects. This strategy can hurt me when I am cold calling founders who don't know me, relative to the VCs who have more internet fame, and that is definitely a weakness to my strategy. As such, I am trying to do a better job with some more public exposure like this AMA. :-)
@pakkojuoda @harrystebbings I honestly have not followed Tobias van Schneider long enough to have a POV about his branding strategy. If you have a POV of here I would love to hear it and I will try to pay more attention to him and his branding actions.
kickme444
@kickme444 · Former reddit, CEO of Imzy
@saarsaar Hey Saar, what is your best source of deal flow and how did you get to a point where it was valuable?
@kickme444 thanks for the question! My best source of deal flow has always come from my network and the entrepreneurs I work with. I have always LOVED helping entrepreneurs - even when I knew nothing and had no experience...and that has been consistent through my life and led me to try VC. Over time...I think if you are actually helpful and treat entrepreneurs well....they introduce you to other entrepreneurs...and it builds... For a long time I did this without being an investor and at some point I think I realized that my network was actually valuable and I might want to try venture capital.
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@saarsaar What is the craziest thing you've seen in a pitch?
@bentossell I was trying to think of crazy physical products or stunts I have seen...but I can't remember anything too crazy. Often the ideas sound crazy (e.g, Asteroid mining) but the teams either make us think they are believable markets/outcomes...or we leave thinking they are a bit delusional in their view of the future....(and often we are proven wrong). Also - we often see stuff that is really new and have to figure out whether a market will evolve...but at the time the pitches seem pretty crazy. To give you a specific answer: I was looking at Bitcoin when it was just getting started and I wish I had taken some pictures of some of the founder houses/apartments I visited and the founders themselves. Many of them were not blue-shirted slack-wearing entrepreneurs. :-) I won't say more. But we love emergent technologies and ideas, and love digging into nascent communities when they are funky and the people around them tend to be quirky hobbyists...
Cobby Amoah
@cobbyamoah · CEO, Obaa
@saarsaar What are your thoughts on digital health and have you (or plan to) invest in any digital health companies at the early stage?
@cobbyamoah Thanks for the question. We are fascinated by changes in digital health and are actively looking to invest. We also know what we don't know around biotech and medical devices (primarily regulatory risks and FDA risks). So anything that doesn't have a ton of those risks are more in our sweet spot. We don't know how to evaluate product development risk in pharma for example. But digital health is exciting to us!
Porsche Tysk
@porsche_tysk
Hi Saar, 1. would you invest in single founders and assist putting the dream team together, rather than perhaps settling for an average team. 2. How long do you prefer an idea pitch to be and topics to include?
@porsche_tysk I am open to investing in a single founder company if I have deep conviction that the person will be able to attract great talent and build a great team. An awesome early team is a great signal of things to come...and taking on the risk that a founder won't be able to recruit great folks around them is a huge risk. In terms of the pitch - Ideally a founder can succinctly articulate the problem they are solving, and the unique insight they have into how to solve that problem... Ideally they should also find a way of communicating who they are...why they are working on this problem area, etc.
Emily Hodgins
@ems_hodge · Community and Marketing, Product Hunt
@saarsaar thanks for being here today! What is one piece of advice that you often find yourself giving out to early stage or idea stage founders you work with?
@ems_hodge @ems_hodge thanks for the question Emily. First I will say that the best advice is delivered at the right time and ideally gets a person/founder to think differently about a situation...changing a person's POV about the world or about a situation is where we often have huge impact. That being said...there are a lot of pieces of advice that I consistently offer to early stage founders. Some of them include:
On hiring/culture:
Hire for culture fit over resume fit.
You will never look back and say that you fired someone too soon.
Culture will get formed whether you invest in it or not from Day 0. But it becomes very hard to change later. Easy to ignore as you are trying hard not to die...but worth investing in.
The first hires matter for both talent and diversity. Your first few hires will either help you or hurt you tremendously in getting the hiring flywheel going.
Doh! I just realized there are a number of other questions...so I may have to come back to this later...
:-)
Max Mathys
@pakkojuoda
@saarsaar What are your words of wisdom when it comes to being successful? What is something that you think not enough founders are realising?
@pakkojuoda thanks for the question Max. There are so many ways to define success and I think many founders get singularly focused on one success metric...such as financial success. I think the really special companies can look at a number of factors and feel great about what they have accomplished through their journey and the company they go to work at every single day. Some of those factors include: Have you built a product that people really love? Have you solved a meaningful problem for them and is their life better as a result? Have you defined a new standard/disrupted a status quo? Have you realized your own potential and been stretched? Have you built a foundational company that will be around for 30+ years? Have you treated your customers well? Have you helped your employees realize their full potential and treated them well? Did you win as a team? Have you built a company culture that you are proud of? Have you created economic value for your shareholders? Have you done business in a way that you can be proud of? etc., etc., etc.
ilan abehassera
@ilan · Founder, CEO at Insensi
@saarsaar Hey man :) How would you summarize your experience funding Hardware startups so far?
@ilan hey Ilan! Great to hear from you and thanks for the question! As you know, we have invested in a number of hardware startups at CRV including Ring (my investment), Pebble, Jibo, Rethink Robotics (Enterprise), WonderWorkshop, Light (camera), etc.. I wish I had deep conviction to tell you one way or another how they are doing (going to be massive or huge failures) but most of them are just launching or within a couple years of launch. So the honest answer is that the jury is still out on these investments as we don't have any realized returns from any of them. I feel great that we have backed some awesome entrepreneurs who are building some very innovative and disruptive products....and we invested in most of them at the idea stage so it is exciting to see that some of them are putting huge sales numbers on the board (an indicator of success) and many of their value propositions seem to be resonating. But let's revisit in a few more years when we have more data. :-)
Ben Tossell
@bentossell · Community Lead, Product Hunt
@saarsaar What would you recommend to someone who wants to advise startups?
@bentossell Thanks for the question. The question is pretty open-ended...and there are tons of ways to advise startups... I think you should bring something valuable to the table and my suggestion is that if you want to get started.....before you ask for equity...prove your value. Before I got into VC, I ended up getting adviser shares in a number of companies...but it was often after I had already been helping the companies a lot and the CEOs wanted to keep me engaged/involved.