Hadley Harris is the Founding General Partner at Eniac Ventures, the first seed stage venture fund focussed exclusively on mobile. Eniac's investments include the likes of Soundcloud, Airbnb, Elevate and many more incredible mobile first companies. Before Eniac, Hadley was a two-time entrepreneur in the mobile space, as an executive at Vlingo, acquired by Nuance Communications for $225m and after Vlingo he became CMO of Thumb, which was acquired by Ypulse. Hadley also worked at Charles River Ventures where he spent time helping with mobile investments while looking for a young startup to join. As if his portfolio does not prove enough of what a seed stage investing legend he is, he was also named by Business Insider as 'New York's Best Early Stage Investor'. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Hadley made it into startups and the investing industry?
2.) What does an engineering degree provide when investing? Why did Eniac decide to focus solely on mobile?
2.) How has Hadley seen the NY venture and startup scene develop over the last years? Does an ecosystem need anchor companies to be great? Ex-Googlers, and ex-Facebook, ex-LinkedIn, ex-Sun, etc. are so important to the Bay Area ecosystem. What are New York's anchor companies? How has that affected the ecosystem?
3.) What is it like helping companies like Soundcloud and Airbnb scale when in hyper growth mode? At the seed level, how important a role does valuation play when determining whether to invest or not?
5.) Why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell? Has NYC, like London, seen a rise in the second seed round?
6.) What are Hadley's thoughts on VC founder alignment? What are the common characteristics of the best founders that Hadley has worked with and invested in?
Items Mentioned In Today's Episode:
Hadley's Fave Book:
Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner Hadley's Fave Blog or Newsletter: NuzzelHadley's Most Recent Investment:
Phhhoto: Instant Moving Pictures As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Hadley on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!