20VC: Lightspeed's Arif Janmohamed on Why Market Risk Is The Most Dangerous Risk To Underwrite As A VC, How To Determine When to Stretch vs Not on Price Today & The $TRN of Market Cap Up For Grabs Today In Enterprise

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
This is The Twenty Minute VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and if you'd like to suggest either guests or questions for future episodes, you can do that on Instagram at hstebbings1996 with two Bs. I do always love to see you there. But to our episode today, and I'm thrilled to welcome to the hot seat today, Arif Janmohamed, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the leading firms of the last decade, with a portfolio including the likes of, check this out, Snapchat, Mulesoft, Max Levchin's firm, AppDynamics and many more incredible companies. Some of Arif's most notable companies that he's led or been involved with the deals in for Lightspeed include TripActions, Blend, Nutanix, AppZen, MoveWorks and more. And prior to Lightspeed, Arif worked in the corporate business development team at Cisco as part of transaction leadership and execution on a number of great deals, including the likes of WebEx. Before Cisco, Arif founded WVP Ventures, a student-run venture capital organization. And I do also want to say a huge thank you to Nicole Quinn, Jeremy Liu and Alex Tauszig for the fantastic questions and suggestions today. I think it was a thoroughly team effort, so Mojito's on me for that. But before we dive into the show's date, if you have employees and they're anything like me, you need spend management, and that's where Airbase come in. Airbase is the ideal cloud-based spend management platform for growing startups. With Airbase, you can issue virtual and physical cards for card payments, as well as checks and ACH transfers for invoice payments. They also have an incredible pre-approval system for expense requests. So you see expenses as employees request them instead of only learning about them when the statement comes through at the end of the month. And finally, because of all the transaction flows through the Airbase system, they can really help you automate a ton of accounting work like coding expenses, collecting invoices and receipts and more. And that's why Gusto, Front and Segment all love Airbase. Simply head over to airbase.com to book a demo and find out how to get up to 1.5% cash back on your monthly spend. But wait a minute, to have spend management, you have to have a spend. And my word, it is five weeks. That is all the time that stands between you, your online business and the holiday season. Will you have marketing budget to boost your best ads? Can your inventory supply keep up with shopper demand on Cyber Monday? Are you starting to sweat? Well, ClearBank's here to help. They offer fast, affordable investments for online businesses. Simply fill out a 20 minute term sheet today. Love that name. And within 24 hours, you could be approved for $10,000 to up to $10 million in funding. And the best part, they can top you up with more when you need it most. Time is running out. Make sure you're prepared to capture as many sales as possible this holiday season. Head over to clearbank.com forward slash 20minvc to apply for Q4 funding. That's clearbankwithac.com/20minvc. But there's never going to be spend without a team. And scaling engineering organizations is the hardest. Did you know that there are five job openings for every one developer in the US? That's where my friends at Terminal come in. Terminal is your dedicated partner in quickly building really skilled remote engineering teams. How do they deliver on both speed and quality though? Well, Terminal does this by focusing on everything necessary to successfully source, set up and support these teams. From really little things like managing office logistics to really big things like benefits, legal and community. They've developed this proprietary and comprehensive remote team solution based on decades of experience building remote teams across multiple continents so they know what works. But don't take my word for this. Take the word of Eventbrite, former 20 VC guest Hims and Dialpad, all customers and lovers of Terminal. And you can find out more today at www.terminal.io. But you've heard quite enough from me. So now I can't wait to head into this fantastic episode and welcome Arif Janmohamed, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
You have now arrived at your destination.
Arif, it is such a pleasure to have you on the show today. As I said beforehand, I heard from literally everyone at Lightspeed, from Alex, to Jana, to Mercy, to Nicole, really got the full picture. So thank you so much for joining me today, Arif.

**Arif Janmohamed** (3:52)
Oh, thank you. I'm absolutely delighted to be here. Thank you.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:54)
Well, that is very kind, but I would love to kick off the day with a little bit about you, and the best question of all, which is how did you make your way into the wonderful world of venture and come to be partner at one of the world's leading firms today in the form of Lightspeed?