05: Discovering hidden baseball talent to leading Sales at Stripe all applied to finding outliers in tech

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First Funders

Shaherose Charania and Aamir Virani

22 episodes

1 month ago

Learn from angel and seed investors bold enough to write the first check. How do they decide which startups to invest in? How do they gain conviction in founders and ideas? How do they add value to their companies? Shaherose Charania and Aamir Virani are operators turned investors. They chat with their friends investing in early-stage technology startups and learn about their strategies to fund the best founders and startup companies. If you are an angel investor or seed investor, you'll hear how others operate. If you are a startup entrepreneur, you'll hear how investors filter and decide on writing that first check.

All content for First Funders is the property of Shaherose Charania and Aamir Virani and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Investing

Business,

Entrepreneurship

05: Discovering hidden baseball talent to leading Sales at Stripe all applied to finding outliers in tech - Meka Asonye, First Round Capital

First Funders

1 hour 8 minutes

1 year ago

05: Discovering hidden baseball talent to leading Sales at Stripe all applied to finding outliers in tech - Meka Asonye, First Round Capital

Meka Asonye, a Partner at First Round Capital, started angel investing in 2018 while working at Stripe and joined First Round in 2021. He has made dozens of Angel investments and 13 Venture investments, and he's just getting started! While he focuses on B2B SAAS, he has not shied away from investing in audacious founders, from modernizing 911 call centers to putting the biggest satellites in space. Meka shares his approach to finding true outliers, a practice he began while uncovering hidden talent for the Cleveland Guardians.

Meka writes checks of $2M to $5M as the lead at pre-seed and seed.

Highlights from the discussion:

Meka's unconventional path to VC: from discovering high-potential baseball talent to leading sales at startups to VC
Meka's first angel investment came from Craiglist!
Exploring the frontiers: investing in Space and GovTech
How Meka supports founder friends, honestly
Leveling up in VC by learning from partners, retros, reviews, and reflection powered by process and data

This is for information purposes only. This is not investment advice.

Topics

(00:00) - Kicking Off the First Funders Podcast with Meka Asonye
(03:52) - First Round Capital's role in Meka and Shaherose's transition from Angel to VC
(05:53) - Meka's Unconventional Path to Venture Capital: from baseball talent to management consulting to startups to VC
(10:54) - Meka's purpose is rooted in being a part of the founder's village
(13:55) - The Art of Angel Investing: Meka's First Investment Story came from a person he met on Craiglist!
(18:37) - Thoughtful reflection: outliers can't be discovered via pattern matching
(20:15) - How Meka assesses for money smells and hustle in a founder
(23:16) - Missed deals like Anthropic keep Meka up at night.
(28:10) - How Meka supports founder friends
(33:42) - Outcomes and up rounds thus far: Rimeto, CODA, K2Space, Prepared
(36:16) - Exploring the Frontiers: Investing in Space and GovTech
(37:42) - Meka's betting on a pair of brother's putting big satellites in space
(39:04) - Unexpected VC bet: Integrating tech into every 911 emergency call
(43:31) - Meka is a generalist investor with a focus on B2B SAAS, Fintech and hard tech
(44:54) - Investing in YC companies and maintaining an orientation towards prioritizing ownership over valuation
(49:28) - First Round Capital's approach is rooted in consensus not conviction, they invest as team
(52:17) - Leveling up in VC by learning from partners, retros, reviews, reflection powered by a process and data
(01:07:47) - Outro

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