20VC: Why We Are Valuation & Ownership Insensitive, Why We Do Not Take Board Seats & The Effects Of The Series A Crunch with Topher Conway, Co-Managing Partner @ SV Angel

**Harry Stebbings** (0:00)
This is The Twenty Minute VC with your host Harry Stebbings at H. Stebbings on Snapchat, and all requests get a personal response from me. I'd absolutely love to see you there. But to the show today, and what a fantastic guest we have in store for you today. So joining me in the hot seat, I'm thrilled to welcome Topher Conway. Now, Topher is a co-managing partner of SV Angel, one of Silicon Valley's leading seed funds with investments in the likes of, check this out, Facebook, AirBnB, Twitter, Dropbox. The list goes on of incredible companies. And at SV Angel, Topher works particularly closely with Gusto, Github, Lookout and many more incredible companies. He's also been included in Forbes Magazine's 30 Under 30 in 2015 And prior to SV Angel, he worked at eCal. At eCal, he worked with the business development and sales teams and led efforts in creating new business opportunities. Prior to eCal, he held positions at eCost and a 2004 summer internship in Google's direct sales organization. He's also a member of the UCLA VC Fund, helping foster entrepreneurship at the university. And I'd like to say a huge thank you to previous guest, Keith Tare, for the introduction to Topher today, without which the episode would not have been possible. However, before we dive into the show today, you must check out Intercom. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website. They can engage current users with targeted messages based on their behavior and provide personal support at scale with an integrated help desk and knowledge base. All products are powered by live customer data, helping businesses avoid the stiff spammy status quo and have real conversations that build real connections throughout the entire customer life cycle. This is perfect for businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers and marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time. So simply head over to intercom.com forward slash 20MVC. And speaking of serving your clients better there with Intercom, I've always been a big history man. And so I want to talk about Cooley, the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world with 50 plus years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad of issues that arise through a funds life cycle. So to learn more about the number one most active law firm representing VC backed companies going public, simply head over to cooley.com and also check them out on cooleygo.com. But enough from me and I'm now delighted to hand over to Topher Conway, co-managing partner at SV Angel.

**Topher Conway** (2:37)
You have now arrived at your destination.

**Harry Stebbings** (2:40)
Topher, welcome to The Twenty Minute VC. It's great to finally have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining me today.

**Topher Conway** (2:46)
Absolutely, thanks for having me.

**Harry Stebbings** (2:47)
Now I'd love to start today by hearing a little about you and how you came to be rocking the world of venture and early stage venture with SV and what your entrance into the VC industry was.

**Topher Conway** (2:58)
Absolutely. So I started my first investment.
My first angel investment was when I was in eighth grade. It was in a company called Napster.
And my dad would ask my brothers and I for diligence sometimes on companies. And so he sent over Napster and said, can you guys play with this product? Let me know what you think. It was one of those products, the first time you use it, you could just tell that this was gonna turn the music world upside down. And so that was the point where I said, I wanna invest my own money in this as well. And so from that point forward, I always knew I wanted to be in venture and be a investor. And from there, I actually started going to meetings with my dad. I would just sit in the corner and listen, see how the meetings went, the types of questions asked, all that good stuff. What I never knew was how, you know, which point in my career I would actually move over to the venture side. And in this case, it actually is a little earlier. I was working at a then portfolio company in LA called Equal. We made shows for YouTube, it was the first real episodic content on YouTube. And in 2009, I wanted to move back to the Bay Area and get back into technology.