Building a Venture Firm Like a Product | Jeff Morris Jr, Chapter One

Turner Novak (0:02)

Jeff, welcome to the show.

Jeff Morris Jr (0:04)

Great to be here.

Turner Novak (0:05)

You guys publish these kind of internal IC meeting minutes that you do inside of Chapter One. So what is that? What have you guys been talking about lately inside the firm?

Jeff Morris Jr (0:15)

Yeah, basically we have investment committees like every firm once a week. And we found those are probably our best conversations, and we talk about everything behind the scenes in venture. And I was like, if we record these notes and publish them, I think people will find them to be really interesting. And so we just started to do that every week.

It's like investment committees at venture firms are when the partners get together. And I have this idea if we just capture everything we do all day long, and you kind of do this in venture through granola and everything else, like there's a lot of really interesting topics that come up every week. So rather than having like a content strategy, like let's just record everything we talk about all day long, and then share that publicly. And yeah, it's kind of an extension of building in public, which is obviously a thing in operating, but venture as well. And if you as a venture firm can be more open around what you're thinking and doing all day long, people do find that interesting. It's just venture firms are very, historically, they've been very kind of like private, right?

Turner Novak (1:25)

Yeah, you're kind of like automating the building in public where you're just like taking the conversations and it's just synthesizing all the stuff for you.

Jeff Morris Jr (1:34)

Pretty much, yeah.

Turner Novak (1:36)

What have been some of the interesting things from the past couple of weeks? Like the things that have been the most, I mean, you could probably go, what's been like the most liked post about these?

Jeff Morris Jr (1:45)

Yeah, I think the firm topics, firm building get a lot of reactions from other B.C.s and L.P.s. So like when we're talking about portfolio construction, that seems to get a lot of interests.

Everyone's like, like loves to talk about the seed market right now. And what's seed versus growth? It's like the thing people love.

Turner Novak (2:08)

Seed, Series A, growth, like that's all.

Jeff Morris Jr (2:11)

People just love to talk about like round definitions and you know, should like emerging managers be doing things that aren't like pre seed or seed. Those topics, I think, because everybody's at home, like shit, like should we be a just hand strategy? And I think that's just like become more of a thing. So those are popular, then we try, I wish we could like name companies and like actual, we try to anonymize everything so it's not as obvious about who we're talking about.

Turner Novak (2:45)

Yeah, cause you'll, I noticed you'll say something like, you have some questions about it and you don't want to say anything that's like not positive about a founder, trying something really hard. You don't want to like put anyone on the spot.

Jeff Morris Jr (2:56)

Yeah, we, I think Sequoia has had this philosophy for a long time, like never, never disparage or talk poorly about a founder.

Turner Novak (3:05)

Yeah, building a company is like super hard. And the last thing you need is some random VCU, just like tripping away at like the obvious thing.

Jeff Morris Jr (3:12)

Yeah, we would never like nag or speak poorly about anyone building a company cause it's so hard. Yeah. I think some VCs use that for marketing and I think it's entirely wrong strategy.

Turner Novak (3:30)

Really?

Jeff Morris Jr (3:30)

The answer is why? Like why would you do that?

Turner Novak (3:34)

Yeah.

Jeff Morris Jr (3:34)

If someone's building a company that's their life's work and they're like, you know, the least you can do is like not talk shit about them online.

Turner Novak (3:42)

Yeah.

Jeff Morris Jr (3:43)

Yeah, that's what... Hopefully you support them, but yeah.

Turner Novak (3:46)

And so the interesting thing you brought up was the evolution of all these different rounds and naming sizes.

What is your current thinking about that? And maybe there's not a concrete answer to that, but yeah, what's been kind of top of mind in all that evolution of all these different rounds and stuff?

Jeff Morris Jr (4:07)

Yeah, I think we've had to evolve our model to not think of ourselves as being like a pure seed fun.

Turner Novak (4:15)

And that's how you started initially?

Jeff Morris Jr (4:17)