20VC: First Round's Phin Barnes on How The Best Founders Optimize for Learning Per Dollar Spent, What Makes A Truly Special Founder/VC Relationship and Why Pattern Recognition is Another Term For Intellectual Laziness

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
This is The Twenty Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, at hstebbings1996, with two Bs on Instagram. But straight in today, because I think this is simply one of the best shows we've ever done. It was such a joy for me, Stu, that The Twenty Minutes went out of the window, to be quite honest. And so with that, I'm so thrilled to welcome Phin Barnes, partner at First Round Capital, one of the most prestigious and successful early stage funds of the last decade, with a portfolio including The Lights of Uber, Square, Warby Parker, HotelTonight, Goat, PatientPing, Atrium, and many, many more incredible companies. As for Phin, in his own words, he learned the business of startups helping grow and won from $15 million to $225 million in revenue as creative director for footwear and started his own fitness video game company, producing Your Self Fitness, the first game of its kind for Xbox and PlayStation 2, where he also built partnerships with The Lights of Procter and Gamble and McDonald's. And Phin also writes the most fantastic blog, Sneakerhead VC, that really is a must read for me always. And I'd also want to say a huge thank you to Phin's partners, Josh Kopelman, Bill Trenchard, Rob Hayes, Hailey Barna for the fantastic questions provided today. I really do appreciate that. But before we welcome Phin to the hot seat today, we mentioned some incredible companies in the intro there. And I want to spend a minute to talk about Brex, the first corporate card for startups. Brex founders, Enrique and Pedro, built a payments business in Brazil, but found themselves rejected for a corporate card when they were in Y Combinator. They decided to build Brex with instant online signup, no founder liability required, and limits 10 to 20 times higher than standard cards. Pretty incredible, I know. And you can sign up for Brex today and get fees waived by entering the code HARRY during signup. Honestly, it really is such a special service. And with Brex in place, we now need a team to really use the cards. And that's where Terminal comes in. Terminal is a startup that appreciates. Hiring amazing developers is really hard. Plus, it's even harder if you're only looking in a 25 mile radius of your office. So Terminal is your dedicated partner in rapidly standing up world class remote technical teams. How do they deliver both speed and quality? Well, Terminal does this by focusing on everything necessary to successfully source, set up and support these teams. From physical elements like beautiful workspaces and equipment to ongoing resources like HR, payroll, legal, professional learning and development. But don't take my word for this. Take the word of Eventbrite, former 20 VC guest hymns and Dialpad, all of whom customers and lovers of Terminal. And you can find out more today at terminal.io. Finally, we now have the team in place. So as a founder or operator, your next crucial job is people operations. That could be hiring execs, developing managers, retaining that top talent and building a high performing culture. And that's where Lattice comes in. Lattice is the number one people management solution for growing companies, helping the likes of Asana, Reddit and Cruise build a really strong company culture. And with Lattice, it's easy to launch 360 reviews, share ongoing feedback, facilitate one-on-ones, set up goal tracking and even run employee engagement surveys. And Lattice is the only solution that combines both performance management and employee engagement. So operators can really make sure top performers are happy. And Lattice is giving away three months of Lattice free to 20 VC listeners. Just go to lattice.com forward slash 20VC. That's lattice.com forward slash 20VC. Build an award-winning culture with Lattice, the number one people management solution. But it's now time for one of the best shows I think we've ever done. So I'm thrilled to hand over to Phin Barnes, part and ad First Round Capital.
Phin, it's such a pleasure to have you on the show today. I've been pestering you for so long now, but it's wonderful having made the intro from Bill and Rob. So thank you so much for joining me today, Phin.

**Phin Barnes** (3:36)
Yeah, no, I'm delighted to be here and really excited to talk to you. You've done such a great job documenting sort of the approach of lots of VCs and entrepreneurs across the ecosystem. So I'm happy to take part.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:44)
Well, it's a joy to do it. But I do want to start today with documenting you and before the show when discussing your entrance to VC, you mentioned being a reluctant intern at First Round. So tell me, how did you make your first entrance into the wonderful world of venture, Phin?