20VC: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index's Decacorn Factory | Decision-Making, Investment Process, Biggest Lessons, Biggest Misses | Why Gross Margin is a Fallacy at Seed | Never Turn Down a Deal on Price with Martin Mignot, Partner @ Index Ventures

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) – "Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index's Decacorn Factory"

Episode Details

• Title: 20VC: Figma, Scale, Wiz: Inside Index's Decacorn Factory | Decision-Making, Investment Process, Biggest Lessons, Biggest Misses | Why Gross Margin is a Fallacy at Seed | Never Turn Down a Deal on Price with Martin Mineo, Partner @ Index Ventures
• Host: Harry Stebbings
• Guests: Martin Mineo, Partner at Index Ventures; Doug Leone
• Release Date: August 11, 2025

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1. Reconnecting and Introduction [05:01 - 05:11]

Harry Stebbings welcomes back Martin Mineo after eight years, highlighting Index Ventures' recent successes, including the sales of Wiz and Scale, and the IPO of Figma. The introduction sets the stage for an in-depth discussion on venture capital strategies and lessons learned.

2. Playing the Long Game in Venture Capital [05:13 - 06:03]

Martin Mineo emphasizes the importance of commitment in venture capital, stating, “you’ve got to commit for 10, 15 years at least and focus on not on the outside reward... but very much more on the internal and doing it for the right reasons” ([05:25]). This long-term perspective focuses on investing in great companies and supporting exceptional founders.

3. Industry Landscape: Institutionalization and Committed VCs [05:53 - 06:24]

Discussing the evolution of venture capital, Martin notes the sector's growth and larger fund sizes: “the asset class as institutionalized in the funds have become larger” ([05:53]). He contrasts Index Ventures' approach, viewing venture as a calling rather than just a career pursued for reputation or financial gain.

4. Investment Strategies and Fund Size [06:24 - 07:40]

Martin challenges the dichotomy of mega funds versus boutique shops, proposing a "third way" that Index Ventures embodies. With their seed, venture, and growth funds totaling $300 million, $800 million, and $1.5 billion respectively, Index seeks to balance scale with personalized support for founders ([07:29]-[07:40]).

5. Gross Margin: A Fallacy at Seed [26:53 - 27:53]

A pivotal insight from Martin is to "beware of gross margin in the early days," illustrated by investments in Revolut and Snowflake—companies that initially operated with low or negative gross margins ([26:53]). He advises that early-stage companies should prioritize growth and product development over immediate profitability, as margins can improve over time.

6. Evaluating Founders: Unique Insights and First Principles Thinking [14:01 - 16:22]

Martin highlights that the best founders possess unique insights derived from deep industry knowledge or exceptional problem-solving abilities. He cites examples like Figma’s Dylan and Will, who demonstrate "first principle thinking"—breaking down complex issues into fundamental truths ([15:56]). This approach fosters original ideas and resilient business models.

7. Case Study: Revolut's Success and Strategy [05:01 - 58:10]

A significant portion of the discussion revolves around Revolut, a flagship portfolio company. Martin recounts Index Ventures’ investment decision, driven by multiple touchpoints and strong conviction in the founder’s vision:

• Initial Investment: Martin saw Revolut pitch at SidCamp and recognized its innovative approach ([51:08]).
• Strategic Vision: Revolut's decision to adopt a global approach early on, leveraging EU passporting through a Lithuanian license, facilitated rapid expansion across Europe without market-by-market constraints ([54:03]-[57:25]).
• Founder’s Traits: Nick’s relentless first principles thinking and ambition to create a “global money app” were key factors in their success ([58:10]).
• Lessons Learned: Martin reflects on initial hesitations due to Revolut’s low gross margins and European focus but ultimately validates the decision as Revolut outpaced competitors through strategic foresight ([25:26]-[27:53]).

8. Decision-Making and Overcoming Bias [09:21 - 11:28]

Martin discusses the challenges of bias in investment decisions, particularly when early successes can skew perceptions. He admits missing opportunities by over-relying on comparisons to successful investments like Revolut, illustrating the difficulty in maintaining an objective investment stance ([19:05]-[20:22]).

9. Ownership and Dilution Sensitivity [33:39 - 35:56]

The conversation delves into ownership strategies, with Martin emphasizing the importance of significant ownership stakes to maximize returns: “The goal is to get double digit ownership at exit” ([34:16]). He acknowledges the challenges of dilution in high-growth sectors like LLMs but remains optimistic about generating substantial absolute returns despite potential lower venture multiples ([35:05]-[35:56]).

10. Venture Capital Firm Culture and Team Consistency [11:40 - 12:16]

Martin asserts that team consistency correlates with successful venture returns. Drawing from discussions with peers, he believes that partners recognized on prestigious lists like the Midas List often demonstrate persistent returns, although not all great investors make the list immediately ([11:51]-[12:16]).

11. Market Concentration and Platform Plays [38:29 - 39:56]

Addressing concerns about the concentration of value within a few decacorns, Martin parallels Index Ventures' portfolio diversity with broader industry trends. He notes that a small number of high-performing companies typically drive the majority of returns, a phenomenon consistent over Index’s 30-year history ([38:29]-[39:56]).

12. Liquidity and Exit Strategies [42:44 - 45:37]

Martin outlines Index Ventures’ disciplined approach to liquidity, primarily through systematic selling during IPOs. He acknowledges occasional regrets, such as selling parts of Robinhood at lower valuations but maintains confidence in their overall portfolio strategy ([42:44]-[45:37]).

13. Views on LLM Providers and the AI Market [35:04 - 36:23]

The discussion touches on investments in large language model (LLM) providers like Cohere and Mistral. Martin expresses cautious optimism, recognizing the challenges of high dilution but anticipating substantial absolute returns due to the rapid scalability and transformative potential of AI technologies ([35:04]-[36:23]).

14. Challenges in Scaling European Companies [28:48 - 29:09]

Martin emphasizes Index Ventures’ commitment to a global investment perspective, investing equally in Europe and the US. He advocates for a "global maximum" approach, aiming to support the best companies regardless of their geographic origin ([28:48]-[29:09]).

15. Personal Insights and Final Thoughts [75:47 - 73:24]

Towards the end, Martin shares personal reflections on the importance of people—both the founders he invests in and his colleagues at Index Ventures. He underscores a philosophy centered on technology as a means to alleviate human suffering and enhance quality of life, emphasizing a techno-humanist worldview ([73:24]-[75:47]).

16. Quick Fire Round Highlights [61:36 - 73:24]

In a rapid-fire segment, Martin shares candid insights:

• Venture Career Motivation: “people shouldn’t join venture for the status it brings” ([61:41]).
• Favorite Competitor: Admiration for Union Square Ventures and Fred Wilson for their educational contributions and investment philosophy ([63:26]).
• Most Memorable Founder Meeting: Highlighting Figma’s Dylan for his unwavering product focus and vision ([64:23]-[65:15]).
• Book Recommendation: "The Gambling Man" about Masa from Softbank, praising his boundless ambition and resilience ([65:29]-[67:17]).

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Notable Quotes

• Playing the Long Game:
  “you’ve got to commit for 10, 15 years at least and focus on not on the outside reward... but very much more on the internal and doing it for the right reasons” ([05:25]).

• Gross Margin in Early-Stage Companies:
  “Beware of gross margin in the early days... if that's the only thing that's holding you up in most cases, I would totally ignore it” ([26:53]).

• Unique Insights in Founders:
  “they can come up with a very simple insight, something that sounds very simple but actually incredibly deep and profound and defensible” ([14:01]).

• Rollout Strategy of Revolut:
  “banking is a digital service, meaning a single unified platform can deliver the exact same experience across every market in the world” ([54:03]).

• Ownership Goals:
  “The goal is to get double digit ownership at exit” ([34:16]).

• Venture Career Motivation:
  “people shouldn’t join venture for the status it brings” ([61:41]).

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Conclusion

This episode of The Twenty Minute VC delves deep into the strategic mindset of Index Ventures, highlighting Martin Mineo's philosophies on long-term investing, founder evaluation, and navigating the evolving landscape of venture capital. Through insightful discussions and real-world examples like Revolut and Figma, listeners gain valuable perspectives on making informed investment decisions, fostering meaningful founder relationships, and balancing ambition with practical execution. The conversation underscores the essence of venture capital as a blend of passion, strategic foresight, and unwavering commitment to innovation.

Transcript

[Martin Mineo]

Beware of gross margin in the early days. And I think that's a mistake we've made a couple of times. You have a lot of businesses that in the early days have really bad gross margin. All the LLM providers were very clear examples of that. I think if that's the only thing that's holding you up in most cases, I would totally ignore it. We never pass and we never lose a deal or pass on the deal because of price in the early stage. So we've been around for 30 years. We invested I think $11.5 billion. We, we've returned, I think about close to 30 and we still have 20 plus in holdings. Most of that is concentrated in eight, nine companies and we've invested in close to 400 companies over the years.

[Harry Stemmings]

You are listening to 20 VC with me, Harry Stemmings. Now, I first met this guest nine years ago. Their fund has been flying for the last six to 12 months. I mean, oh my God. They sold Wiz for 32 billion. They sold Scale for 14.9 billion. They IPO'd Figma as the largest investor. Can you guess the fund?

[Doug Leone]

You got it.

[Harry Stemmings]

It's Index Ventures, one of the best performing funds on the planet. I'm so thrilled to welcome Martin Mineo, partner at Index Ventures. And in addition to the crazy success names that I mentioned, they're also the largest or second largest shareholders in. Check this out. Revolut, Roblox, Adyen, Datadog list goes on. Such an incredible conversation here and so.

[Doug Leone]

Much fun to have Martin back on.

[Harry Stemmings]

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[Martin Mineo]

You have now arrived at your destination.

[Doug Leone]

Martin, it's been eight years since our last show. We last did it on Skype.

[Harry Stemmings]

A lot's changed man.

[Doug Leone]

You still look just as young. But thank you so much for joining me dude.

[Martin Mineo]

Thanks for having me.

[Harry Stemmings]

I want to start with a statement.

[Doug Leone]

That you said before and you said it actually in a Kaufman Fellows event. You said venture is about playing the right game. And I love this statement and I wanted to turn it back on you and say what is the right game then for you?

[Martin Mineo]

The way I put it for this particular statement was, you know, very much playing the long game. The fact that if you are to get into this industry and this job, you've got to commit for 10, 15 years at least and focus on not on the outside reward or not on the external progressing as a career, but very much more on the internal and doing it for the right reasons, which is investing in great companies, supporting great founders. That was what I really meant by that.

[Doug Leone]

I think in the last cycle we added a wave of tourist VCs who like the events, who like the idea of being a vc. Do you agree that we have this wave of tourist VCs and has it cleared?

[Martin Mineo]

I don't know if I would say tourist vc, but I would say it's the asset class as institutionalized in the funds have become larger, there's more people in general by and large. And so you bring people who may sometimes want to want to have a career choose it as a career more than as a calling. Me personally, I think us at Index see this job as a calling.

[Doug Leone]

Do you agree Doug Leone said on the show that we've moved from a high margin boutique community to a low margin commoditized industry. Do you agree with that statement?

[Martin Mineo]

Not entirely, no. I know there is a, there is a meme which is the industry is diverging into two camps. You either have the mega funds, the asset gatherers or you have the tiny boutique shops. And I don't truly believe in that. I think there's a third way and Index is in that third way where you need enough scale to help support the founders and we think always from the founders point of view, how can we best serve them? And you need a minimum size to really help them to invest across stages, support them from inception to ipo. You need a minimum size but I also don't think you need a gas size to really support them. I think this push towards larger asset gathering is very, is very good for VCs who do it. You know, it can make a lot of sense financially. It can make a lot of sense for them. I'm not sure it makes so much sense for the entrepreneurs themselves. So I do believe there is a, there's a third way.

[Doug Leone]

What do you think that minimum size.

[Martin Mineo]

Is then exactly where we are.

[Doug Leone]

How big are the latest funds?

[Martin Mineo]

We have $300 million seed fund, 800 million venture fund and one and a half billion growth fund.

[Doug Leone]

That's the latest and that is the minimum for what you need. Perfect.

[Martin Mineo]

I wouldn't say that's the minimum. We see it as the right size to both support entrepreneurs with the right amount of capital and then have enough to pay for the infrastructure that we have.

[Doug Leone]

So my mind has changed on this. I thought that the mega AUM gatherers would see denigration of returns and actually would bluntly just fee accumulators. And actually now when you see the expansion of outcome sizes and more trillion dollar companies than ever and a very few number of people being able to write a bill billion check, I think actually they will do incredibly well investing in your OpenAI's at 300 million and your anthropics at 60 billion and see venture like returns at scale in a way that I really changed my mind on. Do you think I'm wrong to have changed my mind in that way?

[Martin Mineo]

I'm not sure you can have venture like returns at 300 billion. I think you can have amazing returns. Can you have 70x?

[Doug Leone]

You could 5x?

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, absolutely. The math makes sense. Do you need dedicated funds to do that or can you do it in a more ad hoc way? I think a question that is on the later stage side of things, obviously we on the early stage, either seed or early venture or early growth. I don't think you need those mega assets and I think they distract you and they tend to pull you towards the later stage. And if you have so much capital to deploy, obviously you will tend to focus more on the later stage on the very big checks. And I think if you want to help and support at the earlier stage.

[Doug Leone]

It can be an impediment for the Aum gatherers. Is seed simply an entry ticket to the real product which is moving 100 to 500 million at the CED?

[Martin Mineo]

That is not our model. So I don't want to comment on their strategy.

[Harry Stemmings]

That is such a cop out.

[Doug Leone]

I totally think it is. I think I would admit it if I was them as well. I walk around London with my mother and I always say the same thing, which is like I have to give analogies and I'm like, you know when you went clubbing and you have to pay the entry fee at the door, that's like seed for the aum gatherers and the table is the C and.

[Martin Mineo]

The D. This is not how we seed at all. Every check is high conviction. We don't make as many as a result, but we have high conviction checks and we work closely with these founders. Even at the seed stage, it's the same as if it were a Series A. Our goal is very simple. We want to be as early as possible become the largest shareholder and become the most valued and most referenced investors in those companies.

[Doug Leone]

I chatted to Danny before the show and he said that Martin didn't always have this perspective on where funds would win and this could of third path being the middle and being your path today. What did you believe and what caused you to change your mind?

[Martin Mineo]

What I've changed my mind on is if you start from the founder and if you really think through, how can you best help them? You know, what is the most helpful way that you can interact with them at the early stage? Especially how does that help them that you have 10 different products, you know that you do LBO, you do credit. How is that helpful to an early stage founder? It's not. And so if you really think from that first principle of what are the resources you need to be really helpful in those early stages and again in the service for us of building both the biggest ownership and the best reference from those founders, it's not this super large scale multi product. It's a, you know, you need enough again to support them, but you also need to be small enough to kind of keep that interpersonal relationship and that close support where they know they can call 10 people at Index, you know, get help on anything that may happen to them and you don't necessarily actually have that in such a personal and trusted way in a much larger company where people move around a lot more. A lot of our people have been around for 10 years plus even in our strategies team and that creates a level of trust and competency that it's really hard to replicate in much larger organizations.

[Doug Leone]

I love Ebert, dude. Team turnover's been high. There's a lot of team turnover. Surely it's not that you don't have much consistency in the Index team, do you? You've got Shardal, you.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah. If you look at the principal rank, we have a lot of people who've been around for a long time. If you look at the strategist rank, we have a lot of people who have been here for a long time. So there has been turnover in the industry at large.

[Doug Leone]

Interesting question. Do you think consistency of team correlates to venture returns?

[Martin Mineo]

I was chatting with Ilya at QuantumLight about it the other day and they Said the number one factor that they noticed was a good predictor of future returns was whether a partner was on the Midas list. An early stage investor in the company was on the Midas list, which kind of tends to show that there is a persistence of returns in terms of proven investors.

[Doug Leone]

If you buy the Midas list again, you're like, jesus, Harry. I thought this was an easy interview, but I look at the Midas list and none of the people on that did the deals that they said they did. I'm like, guys, come on.

[Martin Mineo]

Two things. One is I didn't investigate I think as much as you did. But my view on the minus list is it's a really good list for who was great investor 10 years ago. That's kind of how I would describe it because if you look at a lot of these companies, they were deals that were made 10 years ago. And so I think it's really accurate to show you who made great investment 10 years ago. Is it very accurate to see who is a great investor today or in the future? I think there is some persistence of returns and there's a lot of studies that have shown that. But it's not definitely. There are a lot of great investors today who are not yet on the list but will be in the future. That should be on it.

[Doug Leone]

Yeah, I'm going to leave some names out. Some I look at and I'm like, really? That's interesting. We have different memories on that one. You mentioned about service and help a lot. Keith Raboy said on the show before, the best founders don't need your help as an investor. Do you think the best founders need your help?

[Martin Mineo]

They don't necessarily need your help. The best founders I've seen are very good at reaching out to investors and people around them on very specific topics. When these people, it's leveraging the right people at the right time, being very specific about that versus going to. I think that's a little bit. A lot of the approach that we see in the market is like it's a one stop shop for everything. I don't think the best founders use their investor or their supporters that way.

[Doug Leone]

Okay, so when we think about like new deals, there's two types of founders. There's ones that come to an industry fresh and with the joys of naivety and open eyes and then there's ones that come to it. As an industry insider, how do you think about which founder type you prefer and lessons from that?

[Martin Mineo]

I don't prefer any of those types the way I think about it is slightly different. What I love in founders is unique insight. And that unique insight can come. So the unique insight can come from two places, is one experience and knowledge of an industry. The other one is just sheer intelligence and ability to break down complex problem into very simple ones. And if you think about all the best founders I've worked with and you have worked with, I think they tend to have this one similarity, which is they can come up with a very simple insight, something that sounds very simple but actually incredibly deep and profound and defensible. And they typically come at it from first principle thinking. I mean, I think first principle thinking gets thrown out a lot, but the very best founders, they have that. And so if you take Nika Treblut as an example of that, a lot of his decisions and a lot of his coincides were just linked to that, that first principle thinking. So he thought about, okay, fx, for example, FX for large corridor, where you have a lot of volume of transfer cost, nothing, so it should be given for free to the market. And then once you have that, that's a really good hook, and then you can build something else. And if you think about most of the great companies, they have one simple insight, but that is very deeply original. That's the core of what I look for in founders, is I want to sit there and then they will teach me something that they have come up with, either thanks to the experience, more usually from that deep thinking that they've done and where they've solved this problem. Look at Will at delivery, for example. His insight was very much the product is the delivery, which sounds obvious, but it's not the digital experience, it's the speed and quality of the delivery. And if it has to come below 20 minutes, if you can get that consistently, that is the product. Everything else is a distraction. That's the core product and that's what we should entirely focus on.

[Doug Leone]

It's funny, I had Misha, the founder of Fiverr, on the show recently and he said a fascinating thing, which is the most important thing that's changed is time to copy how long it takes for someone else to copy your product. When you see a dramatically reduced time to copy, does the value of unique insight go down? You could have a great idea, but I see it and bluntly, with tools that we have available, I can copy it super fast. And I'm better at branding and marketing than you, so I'm going to crush you. Does the value of unique insight go down?

[Martin Mineo]

I think it goes down without great execution that comes with it. I Think that on its own is not enough. I still think it gives you an advantage. But then I agree. I think it's all about execution.

[Doug Leone]

When you think about market timing, risk, it's something where I've got burned before. How willing are you to take market timing risk when you think about unique.

[Martin Mineo]

Insights, what do you mean by market timing?

[Harry Stemmings]

Hey, I believe this.

[Doug Leone]

I don't know how long it's going to take for the market to see what I believe versus, hey, I have a product that's super fucking great right now and it's going to fly off the shelf.

[Martin Mineo]

That's a typical. That's a very common way of making mistakes.

[Doug Leone]

So you could look at Cowboy and say, hey, actually in a world today, everyone appreciates the importance of innovation on transportation, the benefits of cycling in cities.

[Harry Stemmings]

It would be very different five or six years ago.

[Martin Mineo]

So I think, look, market timing is a real thing. You can be right, but it can be that again. If you look at food delivery, it's interesting. People tried to do delivery five or six. There was a French company, I forgot the name, it was doing Deliveroo. But what they didn't have was they didn't have smartphone penetration. So they had to call drivers to tell them where to go and where to deliver. And obviously that didn't scale and there was no efficiency and they would take 50 minutes. It would be very expensive. And so you needed to have not only the invention of the smartphone, but you need to have everyone, including drivers, having smartphones for something like Deliveroo to exist. So clearly here it's a true. The concept was there, but the technology just didn't follow. I think in the case of Cowboy and micromobility in general, I think the timing was absolutely correct. The challenge here in this industry is that if you are selling the hardware, it's mostly a hardware product and hardware is really hard. If you don't sell software on top, you rely on a very complex supply chain which has suffered a lot over the past years. Obviously it's a volume game. You need to have distribution, you need to have relationships. So you need to raise a lot of money to build all of those assets. And the return on that capital is, is not as good as on pure software businesses. If you're selling a service, so, you know, Lime and Bert and those, I think you can have large scale, but it is so operationally complex and you're also competing with a lot of subsidized transportation. So you are charging full price for a service that is, you know, offered at a discount by A lot of municipal services and you're fighting against a lot of regulation. A lot of, you know, a lot of challenges. I still think that some companies will do well actually in that space. I think Lime is doing well. I think DOT is doing pretty well. I think they will be okay at the end, but it's clearly, you know, it's been a really, really difficult space.

[Doug Leone]

Dude. I had the CEO of Lime on and he said that at one point they had a 33% break rate. Every month. One in three break, like every month, like destroyed. I mean, a hard fucking business. We mentioned Cowboy. It's a hard deal being direct. How do you prevent hard deals or losses impact future decision making? So many deals. I've met so many great fintech investors who never did stripe because they're like, I thought it would be commoditized. I thought it was a race to the bottom. They let the past dictate the future. How do you not do that?

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, that's probably the hardest one. And actually, it's funny, it's not only the bad investments or the mediocre. Any investment gives you some form of bias. If it's a great investment, then everything else may look not so great in comparison. And I've suffered certainly from that. On the fintech side, for example, where I was lucky enough to be early in Revolut and then I looked at a lot of other fintech investments, I was like, well, Revolut can do this or Revolut does it better. So I think it goes both ways.

[Doug Leone]

And you've missed out because of that.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, exactly.

[Doug Leone]

What did you miss out on because you thought Revolut was great?

[Martin Mineo]

We could have invested in any. A lot of other neobanks. Conto would be a really good example of that. A lot of remittance and certain corridors. And so there's a lot of.

[Doug Leone]

Do you actually regret. I didn't mean this horribly or to single out any players. I'm not a dick journalist, but it's just like, I just think so much that value accrues to the number one in most markets. I get it, but you're in the number one. Who gives a fuck? I didn't mean it that bluntly, but it's like so demonstrably different in terms of value accretion.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's absolutely our position. There are still some really good companies that we could have invested in, I would say. So going back to your original question, this idea of keeping a beginner's mindset is absolutely essential for any investor and it's really hard to do. The example we always use at Index is Spotify. And to your point, it wasn't because of a bad investment, it was because of a mediocre investment, which is different. We had just invested in Last fm a totally reasonable outcome. We saw how the sausage gets made in that industry and the power of the labels and we're like, gosh, this is impossible to make money. And we really love Daniel and we saw that the product was phenomenal and there was some early traction, but we had. This bias of the music industry is so hard, you know, it's never going to happen. And that's why we passed multiple times. And when we wanted to come back, it was too late. And so I think it was not too late.

[Doug Leone]

I love Danny and I love Daniel and Daniel wanted Danny every freaking round.

[Martin Mineo]

But, you know, so I think the learning here is when you have again, it goes back to the founder when you have. And we knew because, you know, Daniel was working at one of our companies, so we knew the guy was incredible. And so when you have such a unique founder that again does have a unique insight about their industry and has the ability to execute on it, and also in this case, you see real signs of execution, don't overthink it. I think that's a problem that we have and I chat with a lot of VC who say it's kind of pretty widespread in the industry. You think you want to be very smart, you want to be very diligent. And so there is a tendency to overthink. And when something has a fantastic founder and has real movement, then sometimes you just need, even if it's an industry like, oh my God, I've been burnt in the past, don't overthink it.

[Doug Leone]

I'm early stage, like cdna. If I have a world class founder, I don't give a shit what they're doing. Genuinely do not. There's this brilliant curve. I don't know if you've seen it, where you start your career, it's all about team. You then go three, five years in where you're like, oh, I'm smart, I should analyze markets. And then 10 years in you're like, just team again.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, I remember. I think Matt Turk shared that meme at some point. And I'm getting there too. I'm back on the other side of the curve.

[Doug Leone]

Ok, you have team, you have traction, you have market, one through three, most.

[Martin Mineo]

Important team and team. I would say I'm back to that as the number one. But I would say I probably used to think market, team and traction. Now I'm probably the other wrong. So kind of team, traction and market.

[Doug Leone]

Given revenue scalings being so unparalleled today for so many companies, does revenue mean less? Does traction mean less? Given 0 of 10 million, Naira's kind of commoditized now as awful and trite as that sounds, does it mean less?

[Martin Mineo]

I don't think it means less. Finding product market fit is the hardest thing in any business and tons of founders walk around in the desert for years without ever finding it. So I think we shouldn't minimize or trivialize finding real traction and having real revenue traction. I think this is remarkable and it should be celebrated. Obviously if you are talking about AI auditing, the quality of that revenue is critical. That's what we spend a lot of our time doing. Is that revenue long lasting? Is it sticky? The more cohorts you have, the more you can see the numbers. If you don't have that then it's going to be talking to customers and also really trying to understand their use case. If it's something that's more like project based and they want to use it once and then they will switch to something else potentially or is something that, especially if it's inserted inside their workflow cursor is a good example. We've made a bunch of those type of investments then in all like even if the number doesn't show it yet, in all likelihood the stickiness of that product is going to be a lot higher.

[Doug Leone]

Can I ask you, we said about kind of keeping that pure mindset partnerships can help in terms of preventing mistakes on oh, I've done it before and it's lost money which is a very dangerous heuristic. Obviously when you think about decision making internally, how does decision making look on net new deals and how does that differ on size of check?

[Martin Mineo]

We have a different size of quorum depending on the size of the check. So who needs to be there? There are always folks from each. So it's very important because we work as one team across offices and then we vote, we vote 1 to 10. You can't vote 5 and 6 so you have to be 4 against and then it's kind of a. So it's a qualified majority essentially. So if the average is above 6, the deal is approved and so that mechanism is the same. And then there's also some latitude if you have very high conviction on deal at the early stage. I think we have a bias for two action and again going back to Having a beginner's mindset, the person to spend a lot more time with a certain team is obviously better place to make a judgment call on that team. And so there is this kind of collective trust into the partner's judgment.

[Doug Leone]

But if you want to write a $5 million check on the spot, you can do it.

[Martin Mineo]

Not exactly on the spot, but you can definitely make the deal happen.

[Doug Leone]

What was the most controversial deal that got through?

[Martin Mineo]

I'd say Revolut was pretty controversial actually. Of all the deals. Yeah, it's funny in retrospect, it sounds bizarre, but it may end up being one of the most successful or maybe the most successful, but it was definitely one of the most controversial. The reason for that was that was quite a fewfold. The first one is it was a very European product and I think the product made a lot of sense for the European audience. Didn't make as much sense in the US context, where FX frankly is not a big topic. So I think that was one element where I think us based folks were less familiar with the product and didn't resonate as well. The other issue we had is it was, especially in the early stages, it was of negative gross margin business. I mean, they were basically giving away effects that weren't charging for anything else. You had a little bit of interchange, but not that much. And so you had a very low gross margin business. And obviously that wasn't that attractive. And the more they scale, and they scale very fast, all organic and word of mouth, the more they were burning capital. So it wasn't an obvious one. And I think I thought Nick at the time wasn't a natural kind of storyteller and fundraiser. So I think for all those reasons it was, it wasn't an obvious deal. Which by the way, I think that's one of the learning is beware of gross margin in the early days. And I think that's a mistake we've made a couple of times. And I think Snowflake was a similar story.

[Doug Leone]

What do you mean by that?

[Martin Mineo]

Well, it means that you have a lot of businesses that in the early days have really bad gross margins, very low gross margin. So Revolut is an example, Snowflake was an example.

[Doug Leone]

Delivery is an example.

[Martin Mineo]

Delivery was an example. All the LLM providers were very clear examples of that. And I think a lot of the LLMs, a lot of the AI apps have similar characteristics. I think if that's the only thing that's holding you up in most cases, I would totally ignore it because the reality is when you're getting started. Optimizing for high gross margin is the last thing you should be doing. You're entirely focused on growth and building the product. But in most cases, especially in pure software businesses, you will find ways to optimize your gross margins. And the cost, whether it's the underlying cost of technology you're using is going down. I mean the AI apps is a good example of that, where the cost of the price per token keeps on going down. Or you can just optimize your infrastructure a lot better when you have a lot more volume. And that's what happened with Revolut.

[Doug Leone]

It's so funny how you say statements a year ago and you look back now and you're like, what was I saying? And the speed of the industry transition is so significant. When we look at cost of tokens where it was 18 months ago, it's like 99% cheaper and exactly even in conversation.

[Martin Mineo]

So if you judge your, if you made your judgment by based on gross margin at that time, on the price of token at the time, you would have missed on really great companies and great investments.

[Doug Leone]

Honestly, that was my take on Lovable's gross margin, which is like what it is today is not what it will be in the future. European stack rank was what I wrote down here, which is like, if I was in the Europe team, I would honestly be a little bit perturbed by the dual structure of having US people on my decision making. Because I'm stack ranked against the growth of Silicon Valley companies, I'm never going to get a deal done. I'm not saying they're worse, but they grow slower. Their execution speeds are often slower. If you stack rank them, it makes it harder for European teams to get deals done.

[Martin Mineo]

It may. It's not really what we see. We consistently invest about half in Europe and half in the US and we have a global one global bar. And I think that's the way we see the world. And we're not fighting for local maximum, we're fighting for a global maximum. We want to be in the very best businesses globally and be the reference.

[Doug Leone]

Investors in the Is there a culture challenge in presentation? And what I mean by that is like Americans are brilliant at marketing and storytelling and I mean that nicely, not badly, but respectfully to your fellow countrymen, French people, you know, I'll meet them and I'm like, you know, they're like, yeah, we're doing 50 million in ARR. And I'm like, wow, that's amazing. Yeah, it's okay. And I'm like, if this was American, it'd be funny. And so my question is, is there a culture chasm that doesn't count with European founders to your American partners?

[Martin Mineo]

Yes. I think the answer is yes, by and large. So if there's one team that is aware of those differences, I would say it's index. We are very well aware of it and we take it into account when we vote on deals. And that's also why we leave a lot of latitude. Especially when you have data, it's different because obviously data can speak for itself. But I think at the earlier stage, to your point, the presentation matters a lot more. And that's where leaving more latitude to the partners or the investor who is closer to the founder and spend more time with them is super important because. Yeah, I mean, we've had that in the past for sure.

[Doug Leone]

Peter Fanton said on the show that price is a mental trap. Interesting statement. How do you think about your own price sensitivity today?

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, I think he's absolutely right. You shouldn't lose a deal on price especially. I think it's especially true in the early stage. We never pass and we never lose a deal or pass on the deal because of price in the early stage. I think that is absolutely correct. Where does it stop, though?

[Doug Leone]

Is that not a price that's too high? I will ask, are we being paid for the risk that we're taking?

[Martin Mineo]

That's not really how we think, to be honest. This kind of risk reward profile, you don't know because you don't really have a good sense for the size of the reward. And I think in general, by and large, the industry has even underestimated the size of the outcome. You mentioned the scale of the revenue growth, the scale of the market, market caps of these businesses. We didn't think that that would be the case even 10 years ago. So at the early stage, if you had known at the time that the outcomes could be so large, well, then maybe it was a very fair reward for the risk you were taking. So I think in the early stage, I think he's absolutely right. The only question is how far does it extend in valuation? When you're at. You mentioned Perna at 200 billion. Is 1 trillion still a mental trap or. I don't know. So there must be some moment get into a slightly different realm and where the distribution of outcomes becomes narrower and the likelihood of, you know, so you have a better understanding of where the company will act. The closer you get to ipo, the closer you should have a sense for what is the valuation. And so you have a better sense for that risk reward profile that you, that you are mentioning in the early stage. This is so far out, you don't really know. So I think again, if you go back to the first principle of if you have this extraordinary founder and there is real traction, then don't overthink it.

[Doug Leone]

Have you done deals at high prices that in hindsight they were too high price and it negatively impacted the company?

[Martin Mineo]

Oh yeah, for sure, definitely.

[Doug Leone]

And so there is a too high price.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, there is a price, there is the amount raised and there is the maturity of the business. Well, we've all seen these companies that raise tons of capital at a very high price. Before they had proper product market fit, they thought they had it, but a lot of it was subsidized by investment. And when they stopped investing because they realized, well, customers who are acquiring are not profitable so we need to stop it, it doesn't really make sense. Then they realized that having all this money and all this team, they had to spend, especially in Europe where it takes a long time, they had to spend a year or two reducing the size of the team, going back to the basics and so trying to find product market fit after you've grown so much and had so much capital and at such a high valuation makes it really, really tricky. Do you know that is dangerous?

[Doug Leone]

I find that the fault is of investors that were like A is so competitive. I mean someone on our team joked yesterday, said how soon after doing the seed is it okay to preempt the A, like is the next day okay because it's so competitive at A I have to stuff you with cash as soon as possible and like fuck it, I'll take the risk on you getting PMF because if you have it, it's too late.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, we've done it in some occasions. You know again when we found an extraordinary founder with revenue traction or open source traction, we've done that in a couple of open source companies. Then it can totally make sense and you can really, you know, you can get amazing rewards for that.

[Doug Leone]

When you think about ownership, how do you think about ownership internally? Is it kind of the age old 15%? Has times changed around ownership percentages?

[Martin Mineo]

I mean the time has changed for sure. I started 15 years ago and we were all aiming for 20% was kind of the minimum bar. We still have some 20% ownership but it is obviously getting a lot harder for us. The goal is to get double digit ownership at exit. That is typically where if we look, look at the performance of the fund. Most of our returns have been generated by companies where we own close to or more than double digit ownership at exit. And so that's what we're trying to aim for.

[Doug Leone]

Do you have more elasticity on ownership because you're able to do multi stage investing?

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, in the earlier stage for sure. I mean I think for us especially at seed stage, our approach to seed is much more collaborative. The idea is we don't want to compete with people like you and other seed funds and angels. We want to bring them along, we want to work together, together. It's conviction investing and we're going to pull our weights and be super involved. But this is not the stage where we want to maximize ownership and you know, so we are not going to have sharp elbows at that, at that stage later on, you know, especially at, you know, at series and beast. That's where we really want to, you know, because of the time we're going to spend helping these companies and you know, spend time on the board and be, you know, hopefully the reference investor. That's where, you know, we need a minimum ownership.

[Doug Leone]

Do you have investments in any of the LLM providers?

[Martin Mineo]

Is we do.

[Doug Leone]

Which one?

[Martin Mineo]

Cohere and we have a seed investment in Mistral.

[Doug Leone]

Do you think about dilution sensitivity down the road? We mentioned delivery. That's kind of V1 of dilution sensitivity if you want. And LLMs is I guess the latest version. There's a fundamental question of like is it actually a good venture product? Because the dilutive nature of the business is so high.

[Martin Mineo]

We'll see at the end of the journey. I think it's the pure venture multiple will likely be lower, lower than some of the other categories in the past. I think that is clear. The difference is that the size of the outcome and the speed, very importantly the speed at which the size is going to get reached means that you can have, especially if you can deploy a lot of capital, you will still be able to generate a lot of absolute returns. So in terms of performance will still be very high. In terms of pure multiple on early stage investments, maybe slightly lower because of dilution.

[Doug Leone]

Do you worry about the distribution of value in the LLM market? When you think about about the two takeaways obviously being OpenAI and anthropic and what we said earlier about the importance of being number one, how much value accrual actually goes to the long tail with other providers, I really question, do you worry about that?

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, of course, of course I worry about that.

[Doug Leone]

Does Europe need an LLM provider?

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, I think it does.

[Doug Leone]

Can you paint that case for me? I'm not asking as a journalist, I'm asking as a student. Why?

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, well, the notion of sovereignty and tech sovereignty is a real notion, notion. I think it's important. You have to recognize that there's a big part of the economy that has to think that way, where, you know, you have geopolitical realities that matter. And so if you're a government entity, if you are quasi government companies, you may want and. Or even have to use, you know, local providers eventually, you know, at some point. So I do think there is a large part of the market that needs and want local providers, especially, you know, assuming that they are close to the frontier or at the frontier. And so I think there is a real market case for that. There's also a lot of, I think, localization, customization that can and need to happen. And so I think there's going to be a great enterprise market for those providers. So, yeah, I think there is a market. Is it going to be smaller than OpenAI? Yes, for sure.

[Doug Leone]

Do you think we need government intervention in AI? I spoke to Danny, obviously, before the show. He was the only one. He said you should ask him about China. Do you think we need government intervention in AI? Pushing you to use one model over another, shutting off access to certain providers is.

[Martin Mineo]

I do believe that having, you know, government entities or quasi government entities support local innovation is important. I think the way to do it is not necessarily to. I think they should be customers. I think they should buy those products and they should help them as customer rather than as investor, necessarily.

[Doug Leone]

Do you think TikTok should be allowed, though, for example?

[Martin Mineo]

I think it should be allowed, but there should be a bigger conversation about social networks and about. About the openness of algorithms, which don't only apply to TikTok but applies to X, applies to Facebook. I think those algorithms should be public, should be able to be audited by anyone, but also include independent auditors. They are not regular companies, they are utilities. They are critical infrastructure for the economy and for political systems. And as such, I think they require treatment that is different from any random startup.

[Doug Leone]

When we look at the different players today, we're seeing this kind of real concentration of value almost like never before. You mentioned OpenAI are going to be bigger, but your OpenAI's, your anthropics, your cursors, and there's probably five to ten in this kind of ilk. The concentration of value within startup seems to be more prescient or dominant than ever before. Do you worry about this concentration of value at and bluntly the platform play that comes from that, meaning it is just much more concentrated and makes it more difficult for us investing in smaller players.

[Martin Mineo]

I don't think it's that different from before. If I look at index, I was looking at the numbers. So we've been around for 30 years. We invested I think $11.5 billion. We've returned I think about close to 30 and we still have 20 plus in holdings. Most of that is, is basically concentrated in 8, 9 companies and we've invested in close to 400 companies over the years. So it's like so the power low and the concentration of returns in a small number of names. I mean we've experienced it ourselves at our level and so I don't think it's that different than it was before. I mean I don't see anything that indicates that it's going to be that different. And that's why, why making sure you are in those category leaders early enough to have big enough ownership and also earning the reference from the founder, being the reference investor is the most powerful. It's the only thing that really matters.

[Doug Leone]

What did you miss at the early stage that you were like oh fuck it, we just have to be in this. And then came in later.

[Martin Mineo]

That was just before I started. But we did that with Zendesk for example where we passed on the seed and on da, especially if you look at the memo and the version variation at the time. It's quite funny in retrospect. I don't remember exactly where it was, but very different from where it is today as you can imagine. And we came in later with our growth fund.

[Doug Leone]

Do you worry for your companies about the concentration of talent? We are in a war for talent state like we've never seen before. And the compensation packages truly are like we've never ever seen before. I speak to so many of my companies and they're like we're competing against Meta and OpenAI. What do you expect? Do you worry about that for your companies?

[Martin Mineo]

For sure, I mean, you have to worry. I mean, having said that, a big part of the compensation for these early stage companies is around options. That's the only way for startups to really compete with these large established players, whether it's OpenAI or whether it's even Google and Microsoft and the established publicly listed large tech companies. So I think with that, if you can tell a good enough story about this future value creation, there is no amount of package that can compete with that.

[Doug Leone]

Talking of European founders competing. I obviously posted about the importance of working seven days a week in an increased intensity world where we are competing against China and the US and that being the new normal, I think very rightly said the same. And then I got all the blowback and you avoided it all. My question to you is why do you think that we are in a new world of work intensity and that a new caliber of work is required to build a $10 billion business?

[Martin Mineo]

I'm not sure it's changed so much. If you look at the most incredible companies in the past, you know, you look at Revolut, you look at Deliveroo, all of these companies, the amount of work that these founders and these early teams put in was tremendous. I mean it was seven days a week, you know, it was nights and weekends. I mean that's what it was. And I think that's why it takes when you are going in into those hyper growth mode and you go for the venture backed route that is part of the journey. That is kind of in many ways what you're saying for you need to have two things. One is you need to make a lot of experimentation, iteration. And so that typically means the longer you work, the more things you can try. And then you need to have a very high growth curve and be able to learn very quickly from those experimentations. I think the main change to me is how open people are and I think it's good because then there is no mismatch of expectation. You're not joining a company and they realize shit, they're working so hard, I can't do it. This is not for me. There's real alignment between what you're saying and what you're doing. And I think that's actually positive.

[Doug Leone]

When you think about the word liquidity, what are your biggest lessons on when's the right time to sell?

[Martin Mineo]

You talked about market timing and we don't try to time the market at entry and we don't try to time it at exit either. We were not public market investors stores. We tend to have a very standard liquidity program when a company goes public where we sell every quarter over three years in a very recurring, regular, preset way. In many ways we obviously have, we set up exit committee where you have four people on including the partner who led the deal and another partner who didn't lead the deal and is not as close. So we always have kind of healthy debates and we can adjust at the margin. But by and large our view is don't try to be too smart and then it's always the same. Then when things go really well and you've sold to a little shit. But then you also have the opposite where if you hadn't done that very systematic approach, you wouldn't have realized a lot of liquidity. So all in all, what did you.

[Doug Leone]

Sell too early and you're most oshit about?

[Martin Mineo]

I mean we were very large investor in Robinhood. We sold quite a bit at a lower price than where it is today. We still have a large stake, but there's always going to be contra examples. That's the clear one. Given the you talked about their recent price action.

[Doug Leone]

Do you think it is the right strategy to do that to sell in these quarterly increments when they go public? Given all the information that you have, are you not in a place of asymmetric information where you are better placed? And I actually look at like a shopify of the world where shit, you would have lost 98% of the value.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, there are contra examples for sure. When we ran the analysis, and we did run the analysis, obviously we didn't come up with it randomly. It came out. That was a door's decision.

[Doug Leone]

We did it, it works.

[Martin Mineo]

And obviously it's hard to do the counterfactual because you can never sell only at the top. I wish we could, but that's just not going to happen. But we looked at if we had taken different schedules, we would have been worse off. And so we felt that overall if you look across a balance basket, a portfolio and again it's a portfolio approach, so you may be wrong on one or two but if you take a portfolio approach and you do it for long enough and consistently enough, then we realized that was the best outcome.

[Doug Leone]

Does the extension of private markets change that perspective? When you look at say Revolut of the world now I think it's $75 billion in private markets, whatever it is, but it's just an example. The extension means that actually secondaries are so much more real. You have the chance sell much earlier and actually that public profile is delay played a lot longer. Do you engage in proactive selling in secondary markets?

[Martin Mineo]

We may again, you know, we may over time in certain situations, you know, like Revolut, we've been in for for 10 years so that you're kind of getting to the end of a fund cycle. So yeah, we're not entitled.

[Doug Leone]

In Revolut.

[Martin Mineo]

We didn't share that, but we're definitely not opposed to it in general. I think in lots of large we tend to hold pretty much everything until ipo.

[Doug Leone]

Do you think that will change?

[Martin Mineo]

It may. You know, we don't have any taboo. We may have funds that are just, you know, at the end of their life cycle and we want to realize some level of liquidity. I don't think we'll ever sell a lot. And again, it goes back to my first point about the returns being so concentrated in a small number of names. When you're fortunate enough to be a big owner in one of those names, you want to, you know, I think you want to write a it for as long as you can and also get the best price discovery is on the public market and so you want to get access to that price discovery by and large we will keep until IPO and after.

[Doug Leone]

When we think about ownership accumulation across round. The thing that I find hard is Figma is a great example of an incredible business that wasn't maybe obvious for quite a few years. Actually. It took a while for Dylan to actually come out with any product and it just wasn't as it wasn't up until the right from day, day one, let's put it that way.

[Martin Mineo]

But it was nowhere for many years because he was just building the product.

[Doug Leone]

Okay, so there we go. But my point being I do not believe your winners are instantly obvious. Which means that I think you will often misallocate your reserves and your ownership concentration desires. Do you agree?

[Martin Mineo]

Yes, it's inevitable.

[Doug Leone]

So we are not able to accurately predict our winners?

[Martin Mineo]

No, definitely not.

[Doug Leone]

So then we should just do the same.

[Martin Mineo]

It's funny, you know, like Figma is a great example of that. I mean, you picked a really good one where, you know, Dylan always tell his anecdote where he would have his CEO retreat every year and he would come on and he would keep on coming back, you know, year one, year two, year three, year four, and he would still not launch. So like, why are we still inviting him? Like what is. You know, and Danny, you know, to his absolute credit, Danny's level of conviction behind Dylan at Figma is unparalleled. I don't think there are many examples in the business of an investor that has had that level of conviction for some so long we took years, it was like, no, I really believe in, you know, I think this, this founder is really special. I think the product, the, the fact that actually he's not launching, that he wants to build all those, you know, the right features for the good reasons. Not that he doesn't want to launch, that he can't launch, is that he knows that he needs to have that minimum level of feature set to be competitive and for it to work. And then he was, you know, was always a massive supporter, even in that long period where they were. Was just not even a product out there.

[Doug Leone]

With respect, then why let Greylock lead the A?

[Martin Mineo]

It's the same with every company. You don't invest in every single round on every single one of your companies, so I don't think it's any different. But we invested in every round.

[Doug Leone]

Is there one way you really backed up the truck where with the benefit of hindsight, you go, wow, I got a bit ahead of my skis there?

[Martin Mineo]

No, we never felt that way. No, because as soon as the product was launched, the traction was undeniable across the whole portfolio.

[Doug Leone]

Portfolio?

[Martin Mineo]

Oh, you mean. Okay, I thought you meant about Figma.

[Doug Leone]

Oh, no, Figma.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, okay, yeah, no, no, across the portfolio. Yeah, of course, yeah, We've made that mistake before, but again, it evens itself out.

[Doug Leone]

What did you not see that you wish you'd seen? You don't need to say the company.

[Martin Mineo]

But I think there were times, and I think especially in high valuation, kind of frothy time, you have moments where you doubt yourself, where you run your analysis, your own analysis, analysis, and you come up with a valuation and the potential for the business. And then someone comes on and says, well, I'm going to pay 2x the price and I'm going to put, you know, 2x the money that, that we thought we would put and with a incredibly high level of conviction and speed. And you're like, like, did I, you know, do, do they know something I don't. Like, did that. Did I miss something? Also, you know, I think we have a. There is a tendency with. Where sometimes you talk about asymmetry of information, but it goes both ways, where sometimes you're so close to a business, you really see how the sausage gets made and you can end up being more negative or more focused on the negative than the positive. And so having external validation of people who are new to the business, just look at the data, look at the team and say it's worth X and that x is 2x what you think it's worth. So, you know, sometimes you may think, well, maybe I'm being too negative because I see some things, but actually if I were a new investor, I may be willing to pay 2x the price. And so there are some moments where I say, well, let's do operata and be part of it, because maybe we're missing something. It's clearly it's a different trajectory and sometimes that was the wrong call.

[Doug Leone]

Do you do outcome scenario plans? I mean, the biggest mistakes in venture are when we underestimate the size of our winners, which is so common. Do you do outcome scenario plans and is it worthwhile? As an actor, we don't waste cycles.

[Martin Mineo]

Going incredibly detailed into those. I think we focus more on sensitivity analysis. So we focus on what are the few levers that really matter for this business and where do we think they're going to go. But we focus much more on the founder, the funder dynamic, the talent that they bring to the team. Much more than doing in number crunching.

[Doug Leone]

We've mentioned Revolut quite a few times. I do have to ask about just the story. I don't actually know the story. How did you first meet Nick? Can you just take me to this? Who introduced you? Where did you meet him? Just tell me the story.

[Martin Mineo]

I think I saw them pitch at SidCamp at one of the demo day. You know, I think that's one interesting thing is typically when you have exceptional companies, one of the indicator is that you will have multiple touch points about that company. Company over a very short amount of time. So I will see them at SidCamp, but someone will, you know, I will see an ad or I will download the app and someone will mention it to me, a friend and then another. So in general you have three or four touch points and for me that's a big signal. Oh, there is something happening here. If I hear a lot about something in a very short amount of time, like they've caught, you know, they're on the side guys, they've really hit a nerve. I think that's what happened with Revolut where I saw them at Citizens, but somebody else mentioned them to me and I was using the app and one of my partners. So I think it was a multiple. It was multiple signals, but I think the Sitcam one was the first one.

[Doug Leone]

And so then you're paying Nick an ounce for a meeting.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, I think I don't exactly remember how I got introduced. I think I may just have gone to him after the pitch. And also I think we were also, we had been introduced through another source. I think one of my partners had also been introduced. Again, I think typically there are multiple touch points when some of these companies. But the reasons why I had a lot of conviction was I came in with a prepared mind, meaning that I had been looking at the space for a little while. I had looked at a company in the US Called Simple. You probably Were not born then. But you know, it was the first real Neo bank.

[Doug Leone]

It sold to bbva.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, exactly, yeah, dude, there you go.

[Doug Leone]

I'm a student.

[Martin Mineo]

I know, but yeah, so, so, you know, simple had been around and you know, again, interesting, interestingly, going back to beginners mindset, a lot of people who had backed simple were like, well, it doesn't work, it can't work. Look at this. You get bought at best case scenario, you get bought by an incumbent and it will never work because people don't. And the main reasons was people don't want to switch bank accounts. It's a pain. Why would you switch bank accounts? And it's like, oh, it's going to be on mobile, but well, my bank has a mobile app. Why do I care? And so I had met, I looked at Simple, I had met Monzo as well actually. I was looking for a trigger like what would convince people to switch bank accounts, which is such a pain. And what I really love with Revolut was a simple trigger with effects. And like you don't, you know, they didn't sell people, oh, you're going to switch bank accounts, they sold. Oh, you're travel, you're traveling to Portugal for a stag weekend. You know you're going to get fleeced by your bank. Why don't you get a revolution? And I thought that was such a clever insertion point. And then from that point, Nick's view was from the beginning was that he wanted to be the global money app, offer every product. But the insertion point I thought was really effective. And that's how they managed to grow so quickly and organically for the longest time because they had this very clear value proposition that was a lot easier than saying, oh, you need to sign up with a new bank, which no one wants to do.

[Doug Leone]

I remember chatting to Antoine Lanella and he was like, you know, we won in many respects because we offer snacks to start. So don't try and convince you for the main meal.

[Harry Stemmings]

Just have a little snack and you.

[Doug Leone]

Come back for some more and more and then suddenly you want the main meal. Totally agree with you there. Okay. And so you saw that. Do you think Revolut won in large part because of the lack of banking license that allowed them to move so much quicker?

[Martin Mineo]

You know, if you ask Nick, I think he will say the opposite, which is if you were to do it again, he would probably go for a banking license earlier. Yeah, I mean I heard it said that a couple of times because. And you see it today, it's a Lot easier to get a banking license when you are, before you have scale than after you have scale.

[Doug Leone]

But he would have been prohibited from most of his product expansions.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, so exactly. I think that we don't know the counterfactual. So it may have been the case. Look, I think the reality, I think they had the right strategy. It's hard to argue with the, I mean if you look at the outcome and you compare with all of the other players in the space, they clearly had the best strategy based, based on the, based on the outcome. But it is true that it's harder to get a banking license later when you have a, when you have a very large scale. I think what was really interesting with Revolut though, and which I think is more, more important than the banking license is the global approach to, to the business. And I think again, that's something that was very contrarian at time. The same time and again came from his first principle thinking. The conventional wisdom at the time was banking is highly local, massive regulation, and so you have to go very deep in one market and once you've won that market then maybe you'll expand to a second market or a third market. But that was the conventional wisdom at the time and his view was the opposite, was like, look, banking is a digital service, meaning a single unified platform can deliver the exact same experience across every market in the world. There is no different product is required in Indonesia versus in Poland or in Estonia. And the same app can do it all. The regulation, you know, the compliance, the front end, which products you can offer to whom, and so all of that varies. But the underlying principles of storing money, lending money, transferring money, all of that, this is just a software and a data play which is the same. So you can have a single, single piece of code that works across the globe. So that was his vision. And so from the get go he started multi country as well as multi product. We really started multi country. One of the decisive factors in Revolut's success is the ability to passport across the European Union and you know, having a license in Lithuania that you can then export and serve the entire of the European Union without having to go market by market. I mean, they had to go market by market eventually to kind of give local Ibans and go deeper. But they could start offering the basic product across Europe with just that one license. That's what really gave them the scale and the geographical expansion, to kind of keep growing and growing faster and compound over time. And I think that's why is it important. I Think it shows that when you give European founders one unified market to compete on, they can be as big, if not bigger, than anyone in the world. And I think Revolut is probably one of, if not the best neobank in the market. In many ways it's, I think, better than anything in the US right now.

[Doug Leone]

What's the thing I always find quite funny, which is like, the US always laughs at the size of our companies and I'm like, well, banking one of the biggest industries in the world. We shit on your neobanks.

[Martin Mineo]

The European Union should look and really study that example. Okay, what are the ways we could replicate that and really have a unified market? And obviously we're very involved with EU Inc. Which is this initiative to have one single unified status and a super simple way for companies to expand across Europe. And I think that could be an absolute game changer.

[Doug Leone]

Do you think Revolut will win the US? I think the pathway to 500 billion will be largely dictated by US expansion. Do you think they will win the US?

[Martin Mineo]

I don't know what winning the US means.

[Doug Leone]

Gain meaningful market penetration in a way that others haven't in the past.

[Martin Mineo]

I think they will.

[Doug Leone]

My bet is never bet against Nick.

[Martin Mineo]

Exactly.

[Doug Leone]

Nick and Elon are too.

[Martin Mineo]

That's the other way to put it.

[Doug Leone]

What do you think makes him so special? I've interviewed him several times. Not nearly as well as you have done, so I don't mind. Why do you think he is?

[Martin Mineo]

You know, I will say it again. It's the first principle, thinking. It's the fact that he never takes anything for granted. Like he never. He never listened to conventional wisdom. If you tell him, oh, that's how it's done, he will challenge that. Why? And then he will think about it himself, really break it down into small pieces, solve that problem and then he will come up with his own answer. He will use experts to kind of inform his thinking, but he will never just take things at face value. And the result of that is that he then comes up with very original ideas and original ways of working. I mean, he does have some inspiration. I mean, you know, Ray Dalio is obviously one and the way he runs Revolut has a lot of similarity with Bridgewater, but I think that's what's made him so special. And then you add that to an incredible intensity and ability to maintain that intensity over time, over a very long period of time in very difficult situations. That's what really sets him apart. And then the scale of the ambition, I think that's Something that a lot of of founders, they want to win something small and he doesn't. There is nothing that is too big or too complex. Eventually he thinks he's convinced there will be one global money app and that he can be that one global money app that could be better, bigger than when we first met. He wanted to be bigger than JP Morgan. There's still some way to go for sure. But that's how big he thought from the get go. It wasn't something that came over time that that was because he thinks about it rationally. He's like, why wouldn't it? There's no reason. There's no law of physics that says that it can't be as big.

[Doug Leone]

Final one, before we do a quick fire. When you think about your investor self, what tool in the investor armory do you not have or do you feel weak on that you would like to have or be better on?

[Martin Mineo]

That's a great question.

[Doug Leone]

I think about it a lot for myself and for us as a firm. Like why did we hire jc? Because our customers are founders and some founders want people who've scaled products to millions of people and thousands in team members. We didn't have that as a fit in the team before and he brought a very different customer product that we didn't have.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, I'm a generalist in terms of sector focus, but if you going very deep on a specific sector's nuance, that's not my strengths. And also I haven't been an operator and a founder so I won't try to, you know, I will never be on a board, on a board meeting and kind of go super deep on your product. I will try to again go to the level that is generalizable and help share what I've seen in other places instead of just going super deep and owning that one thing.

[Doug Leone]

When has not being deep hurt you?

[Martin Mineo]

I think there are some certain investment decisions that had I known more about a certain industry industry, I probably wouldn't have made the investment. Yeah, Africa has been tough.

[Doug Leone]

Yeah. No one got their money out of Africa except leaders of nations.

[Martin Mineo]

Not yet.

[Doug Leone]

Not yet. Listen, I want to do a quick fire round. So I say a short statement. You give me your immediate thoughts. Does that sound okay?

[Martin Mineo]

Let's do it.

[Doug Leone]

So what one thing do you believe about venture that other people will think is crazy or strange?

[Martin Mineo]

I don't think people should want to have a career in venture. I think that's the wrong motivation. I don't think it is like an investment bank or like a consulting Firm where you join and you can move up the ranks. And that's kind of a well established thing. I think there's a part of.

[Doug Leone]

Do you think I was wrong then? And I don't mean that badly, but like, you know, I watched the Social network when I was 13, saw this intersection of finance and technology that I loved and thought that is something that I have to be a part of.

[Martin Mineo]

No, I think that's exactly the right reason to do it. What I'm saying is not that. What I'm saying is, is people shouldn't join venture for the status that it brings. That's what I mean by that. You didn't do it for the status. You did it because you thought this. You were extremely excited by the technology by working with founders. To your point, being part of it and whether which titled and which fund and which didn't matter to you. What mattered to you was working with the founders and being part of that movement because you couldn't think of anything else to do in your own life. That's the right motivation to do it.

[Doug Leone]

Dude, 11 years ago, Europe, it was not like a status game being invented. Exactly, exactly.

[Martin Mineo]

It was the same for me 15 years ago.

[Doug Leone]

Totally agree. Okay. You can choose one partner. Who is the best picking partner in index? Who is it?

[Martin Mineo]

I don't want to hurt anyone's feeling.

[Doug Leone]

You won't hurt anyone's feelings.

[Martin Mineo]

No, I think I'd say Jan is probably the strongest. If you look at his track record, the consistency and some of the incredible winners that he has, I think he's a great picker.

[Doug Leone]

Which competitor do you most respect and why them? So like, for me it would be 0.9 with Kristoff. I think the discipline, the focus, how incredibly articulate they are around what is and isn't that type of deal.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah. You know, historically, I've always admired usv. Fred Wilson's blog is the reason why I joined Ventura. To be honest. I think what he did there in terms of educating people, explaining how venture works, explaining how entrepreneurship works, his level of sophistication in understanding and explaining business models, in picking the right themes early. So I think historically I would say Fred and usv, they were huge inspirations. And you know, I spent time with them now that I'm in New York and the way they operate, very unique way, very collegial. The way that they've decided to stay small, against the grain end of the industry, always being against the current. I really admire them.

[Doug Leone]

Yeah, you can invest in one seed fund. Which seed fund? Do you invest in.

[Martin Mineo]

I like Niko at Adjacent a lot. I invested personally and I think he's a very unique. I think he's a very unique investor.

[Doug Leone]

I totally agree. I love Niko. What's the single most memorable first founder meeting and why?

[Martin Mineo]

I still remember meeting Hanno at first on you that first meeting. And I think it's actually the case with most investments where it's a yes. Immediately you meet the person, you hear them talk for five minutes, you're like, yeah, we should do the deal. If I had done that with every investment, I would probably done a lot better than I have and not overthink it. But yeah, the clarity of the vision.

[Doug Leone]

Sorry, I'm interrupting you. You know, my biggest lesson is I don't meet many companies. And so if I had said yes to every company I invested. Invested in, I would have made more money because I would have done the deal precede, the vanta precede and the flexible precede.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, exactly. I mean and we, we had the same. And that we ran the same analysis where if you had said yes to every single company that had come to present at the partnership, we'd had done a lot better than we have. Simply because it goes back to the parallel. You miss one, you know, and we missed a few. I mean just imagine just Spotify, you know, that's it.

[Doug Leone]

Is that the one in the firm that everyone goes, ah, that's of course, yeah, yeah, listen dude, it's only 148 billion. So you know, you miss that on a double digit sonorship. It's fine, dude, Exactly.

[Harry Stemmings]

But you know what you would have sold in commodities.

[Doug Leone]

So if not 148 billion, what's one book that you really freaking loved and you just say everyone should read this.

[Martin Mineo]

Well, I would say a recent one, I finished a gambling man about Masa from Softbank.

[Doug Leone]

Oh, this is what's his face from the fuck.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, I forgot the name of the.

[Doug Leone]

Yeah, yeah. Lionel Barber.

[Martin Mineo]

No.

[Doug Leone]

Yes, Lionel Barber. Yeah. Well done.

[Martin Mineo]

Was it good? It's amazing. It's such a unique. I mean it's bigger than.

[Doug Leone]

It's underground golf course.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah. Like it's. Everything is just. It's alive. That is bigger than fiction. But then what's. What's amazing with him is this ability to. Again talking about ambition. He could have been the king of Japan and you know, just run a very successful company there. But no, he thought global from day one. There was nothing that was too big for him. He went out to raise 10 billion and then on the Go. He decided to raise 100 billion and become the biggest and most successful. That was the target to be the biggest and most successful investor in the world. So he had no limits. It took very long. It keeps on taking extremely big bets. And he lost it all multiple times, but never stopped and just went back at it. And I think when you read these kind of stories is it shows you that a lot of the limits they are in your own, like you make your own limits. You could say, oh, if you fail, like, oh my God, I'm bad, it's never going to work. He never thought that way. Okay, let's get back on and move on to the next one and then let's focus on, let's launch the next business and make it all back. And it came from not much. And it's like just. The story is incredible. Such a lesson in the power of ambition and hard work and thinking big. I thought it was really, that was really inspiring and a fascinating story.

[Doug Leone]

Everyone told me about your marriage and your weddings. Weddings not to different women, to be clear. The same woman, multiple events, to be very clear. That sounds terrible.

[Harry Stemmings]

What's your biggest advice?

[Martin Mineo]

I wouldn't judge them.

[Doug Leone]

Well, I mean, having several, like a portfolio approach in a short period of time might be challenging, but what's your biggest advice on marriage and having a great marriage?

[Martin Mineo]

When I met my wife, I was anti wedding. I wasn't sure I wanted kids. So it took me a long time. We only got married, I think 11 or 12 years in. So it took me a little while and we already had kids.

[Doug Leone]

Dude, I could get married sooner than that.

[Martin Mineo]

So it took me a little while. I absolutely love it and recommend it. I think it brings a level of commitment that is amazing. It kind of grounds you.

[Doug Leone]

A level of commitment that you don't have with not being married.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, exactly. And obviously, you know, having kids is part of, you know, like really helps with that. And you start thinking as a family instead of as an individual. And I think that's. That is so powerful. You know, it changes your relationship with your parents. You know, the spotlight is not on you anymore. You know, you start, start to think in a longitudinal way. Like you start thinking generation, which is very different, much more long term, which I think is incredibly powerful in terms of, in terms of getting married. We are very, very different. Very different. We come from very different culture, very different family. You know, I'm an only child. She has three brothers and sisters. You know, she comes from Congo originally. So it's very communal. There's Always a lot of people. Mine is, you know, very different. And so at first I was pretty judgmental and I was like, oh, you know, it's different from what I know. And it's, you know, I have the truth and that's how things should be. And you know, and it was so different. And I didn't say French. Yeah, totally French. And I, and I didn't fully appreciate it. And then now, you know, I've learned to appreciate and value those differences, you know, a lot. I think she's right on most things and I think we're trying to bring and build a culture in our family that is kind of a mixture of, of both of our, you know, our respective cultures. Yeah. I think that, that lessons of appreciating people differences and how they make you, how they make you better and they challenge your set minds, I think is, is great. And I thought what I love with this job, you know, in, in some.

[Doug Leone]

Ways about you, you that was maybe uncomfortable for you to appreciate.

[Martin Mineo]

The importance of family is a big one. The importance of the beauty of having large family, the beauty of having kids. I mean I was close to my parents but I never thought as in such a communal way, I worry about.

[Doug Leone]

Kids, that I will be less on it and obsessed about what we do. How did having kids change how you are as an investor?

[Martin Mineo]

It is true that it has an impact. I think you shouldn't, shouldn't lie. I mean, I mean you're obviously more focused and again you're more long term thinkers in many ways. But it is true that you don't have as much time. You have to limit what you do and really, really prioritize. It makes you. Well, I think the first thing that's amazing is that it means that whenever you come home you have this unlimited amount of love and purity. And so no matter, so it makes you, you become a lot more relative versus what's happening at work. You know, where you come home and you know that there is these people who don't care about any investment. Like it's so especially when you talk to young kids and you try to explain what you do as a job. Like my oldest is eight, it's going to turn eight soon. And she still doesn't fully understand what I'm doing. So for 10 years they won't understand. Then you realize if you can't explain it to your child and they don't fully get it, then it's, it's quite abstract and it's not really, you know, it's not, not the true reality, you know, it doesn't really impact people's lives so much on a concrete basis. So it makes you just a lot more. I think it's easier to distance yourself in many ways.

[Doug Leone]

I was going to a $100 billion founder the other day and he said, you know, the thing I love about kids is like, you know, in my day job, I'm $100 billion founder.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah.

[Doug Leone]

When I come home, one, my baby does not care and two, my baby shits on me.

[Martin Mineo]

Exactly. So it is very helpful. You don't. Yeah, you don't waste time. You know, you have. You have even. I know you're very good at prioritizing and managing your time, but I think having kids makes you even less tolerant of wasting time. Because any moment you spend on the road, at a conference, at an event that you shouldn't be on, it's time you're not spending with, you know, with the most important people in your life.

[Doug Leone]

Final one for you, dude. It's kind of a horrible one in some ways because it's just like obvious and shit. But we spoke about kind of people's ambition, Nick's ambition. Ambition. What's your actual ambition? Do you want to run Index when Danny hands over the mantle?

[Martin Mineo]

Well, first of all, there is no one running Index and Danny doesn't have a mentor. Purely equal partnership. If you look at. I was looking at the data, is.

[Doug Leone]

It an equal partnership?

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, it's a very equal partnership. And even in terms of performance, so I mentioned there's eight companies that represent the largest share of return. There has been involvement from seven partners for these eight companies. The performance is totally spread across the partnership and the responsibilities are totally spread across the partnership as well. We don't have a CEO, we don't have a managing partner. So we do make, you know, collegial decisions. So I have no ambition of becoming index CEO because there is no index CEO for me.

[Doug Leone]

When you look at the 8 to 9. Sorry, you've got Revolut, Figma, Wiz, Scale. Any of them.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, Roblox. That's pretty much it.

[Doug Leone]

Pretty nuts.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah.

[Doug Leone]

Well done.

[Martin Mineo]

Yeah, I don't know if that's eight, but I think that there should be.

[Doug Leone]

You know, in 30 years time, I so hope that we can have a portfolio like that.

[Martin Mineo]

But yeah, they're all, you know, all from seven different parts and from five different locations too. You know, they are not all in the Valley. Like that was always kind of the key focus at Index, as I was saying, is, you know, great entrepreneurs can come from anywhere. There's Amsterdam, there is London.

[Doug Leone]

But the distribution of value across the partnership is really rare. We know the concentration of it, that's nuts.

[Martin Mineo]

So that's definitely not my ambition. I will keep doing this job.

[Doug Leone]

Who did Roblox?

[Martin Mineo]

Neil? Yeah, I will keep doing it as long as. And for as long as I can, to be honest, because I love it for two main reasons. One is the people. And again, Index is all about the people. And people is both the founders I work with. I mean, it's obviously pretty incredible to see them seeing Nick at Seed versus Nick now, you know, Will at Seed and Will now like, oh, totally. It's. It's just. I love seeing them becoming so successful and wealthy and established and transformed as leader. It's. It's just incredible to, to witness. And I, you know, I learned so much from them and I'm so grateful to, to be part of that. But it's also the people at Index. And the good thing when you've been around for a long time is that pretty much everyone who works at Index have had a part in, you know, in hiring at some point. So it's only people I really enjoy being with. And it's also just people in the ecosystem. I think that what's very special about Venture, and there's a lot of beef on Twitter and so on and so forth, but if you compare with any other industry, it's nothing. And most of our relationships are very cordial and they are very cooperative because we're creating value. There's so much value creation that happens that you don't have to. Of course, you compete to win a deal, but then you can still go on at the next round and it's okay. You can still make a really good return and you will end up working closely with so many different people. And I enjoy most of the people in the industry that I work with. And then the second thing is more philosophical. You know, I'm kind of a techno humanist in many ways where I think. Well, I don't think. I think it's a fact that technology is so critical to alleviate human suffering and pain and disease. Imagine a life without technology, how exposed you are to wild animals, to the elements, to, you know, we forget about that. But. But our life was shit. You know, we would get sick, we would get eaten alive. We would get. And everything that we've done is to extract ourself and escape that condition. And to me, that's still what we're doing today. We just want, you know, we are building the tools. And in our case, as investors, we are helping founders build the tools that will make our lives less painful, longer, happier, you know, more meaningful, full. And every technology will come with its downsides, but then you have more technology to solve the downsides and then keep that wheel going. And I think that's an incredible human adventure and I love being, you know, very small part of it.

[Doug Leone]

Dude, I cannot thank you enough for being a friend for many years. I so appreciate you. I so appreciate Index paving the way for firms hopefully like mine and like Nico's and so just so grateful to you and thank you for doing this, man.

[Martin Mineo]

No thanks. I really appreciate it.

[Harry Stemmings]

I have to say that show is a real symbol of why I love.

[Doug Leone]

What I do so much.

[Harry Stemmings]

You can find the full show on YouTube by searching for 20VC. That's 20 VC on YouTube. But before we leave you today, I love seeing the team come together to make this show happen. What I don't love is trying to keep track of all the information, the data and the projects that we're working on across dozens of platforms, products. That's why we use Coda, the all in one collaborative workspace that's helped 50,000 teams all over the world get on the same page. Offering the flexibility of docs with the structure of spreadsheets, Coda facilitates deeper teamwork and quicker creativity. And their turnkey AI solution. The intelligence of Coda Brain is a game changer. Powered by Grammarly, Coda is entering a new phase of innovation and expansion and aiming to redefine productivity for the AI era. Whether you're a startup looking to organize the chaos while staying nimble, or an enterprise organization looking for better alignment, Coda matches your working style. Its seamless workspace connects to hundreds of your favorite tools, including Salesforce, Jira, Asana and Figma, helping your teams transform their rituals and do more faster. Head over to Coda iO20VC right now and get six months off the team plan for startups for free. That's Codacoda iO20VC and get six months off the team plan for free. Coda iO20VC and while Coda keeps our team aligned, Acuity Scheduling ensures our time stays on track. This show is brought to you by Acuity Scheduling, the flexible scheduling software, software that helps you focus on what matters most. Growing your business. With Acuity, you can manage your calendar. You can accept secure payments, offer clients a seamless booking experience that reflects your brand. I've been using my complimentary subscription and it's been a game changer for staying organized and saving time. I especially love online booking. Clients can book, reschedule or cancel anytime, and the booking page looks fully branded with my logo and colors. The calendar map management tools let me set buffer times and sync with other calendars so I never feel overbooked. And with secure payments, I can collect deposits or full payments upfront through Stripe or PayPal, making the process smooth and professional. Head over to acuityscheduling.com 20VC for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use the offer code 20VC20 to save 20% off your first Acuity Scheduling subscription. Description and speaking of incredible companies, don't forget what really keeps those customers coming back. Trust is the ultimate currency in business and today customers expect it faster than ever. And that's why over 10,000 global companies trust Vanta. Vanta automates up to 90% of the work for in demand compliance standards like SOP2, ISO 27001 and more, using smart AI to centralize workflows, manage risk and get you audit ready in weeks, not months so you can stop chasing paperwork and start closing deals. And a new IDC report found that Vanta customers achieve $535,000 per year in benefits. That's insane. And the platform pays for itself in three months. I had no idea about these Whether you're growing fast or just getting started, Vanta connects you with trusted auditors and experts support to help you build trust with customers. Get $1,000 off your first year at Vant. Vanta.com 20VC that's Vanta.com 20VC as always, I so appreciate your support. And stay tuned for a fantastic panel coming on Thursday with Rory o' Driscoll and Jason Lemkin shooting the shit about.

[Doug Leone]

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