E40: Mitchell Green's $9B and Why Persistence Beats Intelligence

**Mitchell Green** (0:00)
AI is the great equalizer of intellect. So in the world we're gonna come in in the next 20 years, what skills are gonna be really important? EQ, the ability to speak, write, communicate, sell, be persistent. I mean, I've heard Ken Griffin talk about this, that the ability to sell something, and the ability to have sales skills, I think is probably one of the most important skills that any young person can have.

**Ravin Gandhi** (0:44)
Welcome to Forged in America. As always, I am Ravin Gandhi with my buddy Al Goldstein, and we are both entrepreneurs who have built and sold businesses. And believe it or not, today is episode 40
And to celebrate episode 40, we have an amazing guest, Mitchell Green from Lead Edge Capital. This is a super unique growth equity firm, over $9 billion AUM. Their last fund was over $3 billion. And we're going to get into their unique structure, but it is a pleasure to have Mitchell on today.

**Al Goldstein** (1:18)
Really appreciate it. Thanks, Mitchell. I love your contrarian sticker in the back and you got that racing helmet. We're going to have to dig into some of that at some point.
Maybe, yeah, maybe a place to start. What differentiates you guys? You have this amazing group of experts that are also your LPs, right? Is that a core part of the differentiation strategy?

**Mitchell Green** (1:41)
Yeah, exactly.
So I can also give you the history too, if that's helpful. And like Holly got there. But yeah, so very clearly, people take our capital, entrepreneurs take our capital, because they want access to our LPs, primarily who are like world class executives and entrepreneurs. So if you look at our website under network, there's probably 700 plus people mentioned, people who are the former CEO of Charles Schwab, the former CEO of Kogut Hamalev, the former CEO of General Motors, the former CEO of Pfizer.
And it's all these world class operators and executives that we leverage throughout the entire investment lifecycle. Literally, if we are calling a company in Kansas City and they won't call us back, when we think it's an interesting business, we'll ask our LPs that live in Kansas City, hey, do you know anybody on the board of this company? Hey, if you are an entrepreneur and we invest in your business and you say, hey, I'm looking for an intro into Kogut Hamalev or Bank of America or hey, we have a $500,000 deal already at Goldman Sachs. If I could get high up the organization, it could be a $10,000,000 deal. So we'll literally ask our LPs, hey, does anybody know anybody high up at Goldman Sachs or at Pfizer or XRZ company? Or hey, we're looking for a CFO or an audit chair. Does anybody know anybody? People love to help their friends find opportunities.

**Ravin Gandhi** (3:25)
Well, I'll tell you, I went to your website and when I heard this story that you just kind of articulated, you know, oh, there's this helpful and network. Like to be completely honest, it sounds a little bit too good to be true. Everyone sort of says it. We all do a bunch of deals and we all kind of say it. Well, then I watched all these videos on the Lead Edge website, and it's all these like legit CEOs saying over and over and over again, like he didn't think Lead Edge was going to come through and they did over and over. So it's a real thing. Well, I recommend everyone go to the Lead Edge website and watch some of these videos because it's super compelling. And I have a question, Mitchell, this $9 billion that you guys have raised, there is no giant institution, no state pension?

**Mitchell Green** (4:14)
I say yeah, there are. So when you look at the dollars deployed, 95% of the capital by dollars, sorry, by number, 95% of the people by number are individuals, 5% are traditional institutions. By dollar, it's like 50-50 between world-class executives and entrepreneurs and then like institutions. However, we have institutions that are like big hospital systems.
You know who buys software companies or technology companies? Hospital systems. You know who, we have big state pension funds that are investors, you know, who buys software?
Pensions, you know, state states, state governments. And so we're constantly leveraged in these people. But why, why this all started? Like why we got the idea for all this was actually like more rooted in my background. And so when I started my career, I started cold calling companies. I joined Bessemer Venture Partners. It was 2005, I think, and at 2005, they handed me a telephone and a computer, and I'm like, go get them, Tiger. So between 5 to 07, my now partner, Brian, and I left 10,000 voicemails. And I like, we'd source deals the same way now, but I left out for my young analyst. So it's like, hey, guys, I know y'all want to send emails. I know we want to split the phone, but you should actually like leave voicemails. And there's nothing like being talking to an entrepreneur and having to call the entrepreneur every two days for a month until they call you back. So you learn like a game of persistent, which by the way, is the most important trait, I think a human being can learn. It's like being persistent and responsive.