20VC: Accel's Dan Levine on The Current State of Seed & Series A, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, Solo Capitalists and Multi-Stage Funds Entering Seed & Market, People and Product; What To Prioritise?

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
This is The Twenty Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and my work with a broad ranging discussion we have in store for you today. And so diving right in, and I'm thrilled to welcome Daniel Levine, partner at Accel, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade, with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Slack, Qualtrics, UiPath and Deliveroo, to name a few. As for Daniel, he actually joined Accel in 2010 before leaving to join Dropbox. At Dropbox, he worked on the platform team, helping open the platform to third party developers and launched and managed many of the company's developer facing initiatives. Following that time at Dropbox, he then rejoined Accel and has led investments in the likes of Scale.ai, Mux, Vercel and Sentry, to name a few. I'd also want to say a huge thank you. This was a real team effort in terms of the schedule, to Alex at Scale, John at Mux, Andrew Brachier, John Locke and Vass Natasha Run on Accel's side for some amazing question suggestions. I really do so appreciate that. But before we dive into the show today, I'm sure you've heard me talk about it before, but I love Carter. Carter simplifies how startups and investors manage equity, track cap tables and get valuations. Go to carter.com forward slash 20VC to get 10% off. More than 800,000 employees and shareholders use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of dollars in equity. And Carter now offers fund administration so you can see real time data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants. As I said, head over to carter.com forward slash 20VC to get 10% off. And speaking of a transformational product like Carter there, 2020 has been a year full of unexpected changes. But one thing that's remained very constant, the most important part of a company is its people. In a world with distributed workforces, it's more important than ever to align, engage and develop employees. And that's where Lattice comes in. Lattice is rated the number one people management platform by real users to help companies develop engaged and high performing teams. And because Lattice is trusted now by over 2000 companies like Reddit, Slack and Postmates, you can trust Lattice to build a high performing culture. Companies who leverage the Lattice platform see improvements in retention, engagement and productivity. And Lattice is the only solution that connects performance management, employee management, and now very excitingly with the launch of brand new Lattice Grow, career development in one unified platform for people strategy. Our remote teams need more support as we all navigate to find our new normals. So head over to lattice.com forward slash 20VC to find out more. And do you ever wish that you were in some of the best performing IPOs of 2019 and 2020? R-Crowd investors were, and now you can join them in what's next. With R-Crowd, accredited investors have access to invest directly, easily, and most importantly, early. R-Crowd investments have IPO'd like Beyond Meat or been bought by companies like Intel, Nike, Microsoft, and Oracle. Today you can join R-Crowd's investment in Tech-C, a software startup revolutionizing how leading enterprise companies provide remote customer support. You can get in early on Tech-C and other opportunities at rcrowd.com/20vc. If you're interested in investing, the account is free. As I said, just go to rcrowd.com forward slash 20VC. However, that's enough from me, so now I'm very excited to hand over to Daniel Levine, partner at Accel.
You have now arrived at your destination.
Dan, I'm so happy to be doing this one. We already have Strappy together. I've heard so many great things from everyone on your team, Vass, Andrew, so many more. So thank you so much for joining me today.

**Dan Levine** (3:24)
Thank you so much for having me, Harry. I'm super excited to be here.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:26)
Well, that is very kind of you, but I do want to kick off with a little bit on you. So we both know Venture is this very weird but wonderful world, but you had an even more interesting path than most. Started as an associate at Accel, then left and returned to it. So a question actually from your wonderful wife, Christina. What led you to Accel and then what led you back again the second time?

**Dan Levine** (3:42)
Honestly, I never envisioned being a venture capitalist. Right before I joined Accel the first time around in 2010, I had founded a company called Chardio and went through iCombinator. Candidly, I was a terrible, terrible founder for a variety of reasons. I ultimately ended up leaving the company and as part of that, I hadn't been paying myself during the summer. Back then, YC gave us $17,000 for the summer and I had no savings, so I was broke. When I was at Chardio, I had had the good fortune to meet a guy at Accel named Kevin Effercy, and I liked him and he liked me, I gather, in hindsight. But I didn't think too much of it. It wasn't going to fund Chardio. Then all of a sudden through the grapevine, after I left Chardio, we reconnected and he inquired, hey, have you ever thought about doing venture? The honest truth was not particularly. I mean, as you might know, I think the default posture of YC companies and founders is a little bit of fun, fear, uncertainty, and doubt about the venture community, which I think is merited in some cases. And so I had never envisioned doing it, but candidly, I really needed the job and I really liked Kevin. The other thing that was interesting about it was when you were in Y Combinator around this community of founders, venture loomed. It was this really important aspect of our lives, like raising money after demo day so that we could continue to fund the company and work on it. But nobody really knew much about it, which is what led to that FUD. And so I thought to myself, well, this is great. I need a job. I can use the money and I'll be able to learn a lot about the industry and it's a great place to figure out what I'll do next. And at the same time, I'll be able to help my friends understand Venture better because I don't think it can be as bad as everyone had thought. So I joined Accel, I think officially in October of 2010 And I had to go buy, like at the time dress codes were tighter in Venture. So I had to go buy khaki pants and dress shoes. I remember going with my now wife to do it and it was just so odd.