Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.
Today’s episode is with Jeff Morris, Jr., founder of Chapter One Ventures, an early stage product fund that has invested in Cameo, Pipe, Alt, and Roam. After a significant track record as an angel investor (including investing in Lyft) he started Chapter One in 2019 that featured tier one investors such as Lightspeed and Sequoia as LPs.
Jeff was previously the VP of Product at Tinder, spearheading popular features like Boost and Tinder Gold. He graduated with an MBA from UCLA’s School of Management and is a frequent speaker on monetization, product, and growth.
We chat about finding your product market fit as an investor; thinking about scaling yourself, and the ever-changing relationship between entrepreneurs and VCs.
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In this episode we discuss:
02:11 Jeff’s journey into investing
05:43 Jeff’s learnings as an angel investor to being a scout to starting a firm
08:38 The main differences between being an angel investor and a full-time venture capitalist
11:13 Adjusting to doing venture full time
13:51 How Jeff evolved along each step of the way in his investing career
16:22 How he constructed his LP base, and him taking on capital from Tier 1 VC’s
17:58 How Jeff thought about fund sizing and what he learnt from his first fundraising
22:14 Why bring a Chief of Staff onto a VC firm
24:47 The debate between optimizing for # of companies vs. ownership
27:27 Learnings from Sequoia about investing and entrepreneurship
30:23 Jeff’s decision-making model
34:39 The future of the VC
37:17 The pros and cons of having a brand on Twitter/ social media
39:52 The most counterintuitive lesson Jeff has learned
41:20 Lessons learned from companies that he missed
43:26 Inspirations in the VC world
Mentioned in this episode:
Chapter One Ventures
I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Jeff. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.
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