Nina Achadjian on What It Takes to Win in VC Right Now

SPEAKER_1 (0:03)

Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news.

Joe Weisenthal (0:20)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:25)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:26)

Tracy, I love being out on the West Coast. I love being in San Francisco. We did a live episode last night. I love coming out here.

Tracy Alloway (0:32)

It's been fun. We also had some really good Chinese food afterwards.

Joe Weisenthal (0:36)

We had really good Chinese food.

Tracy Alloway (0:37)

Oh, and I woke up to the dulcet tones of the San Francisco parakeets this morning. That was fun.

Joe Weisenthal (0:42)

There's been protests happening. I don't know what, so I've been waking up to the sound of protests. Seems fitting. I think I've mentioned it in a million tweets in another episode. I've taken a few Waymo rides, which is amazing. I love that. But we talked to a lot of, I guess, traditional normie investors most of the time. When we're out on the West Coast, we have to talk to VCs because that's certainly in San Francisco.

Tracy Alloway (1:08)

Are VCs not normies? They're a different class of humans.

Joe Weisenthal (1:12)

They're different. Their offices feel different. They invest in wildly uncertain markets in the way that, say, someone investing in the treasury market is not. It's fun. It's different. It's always eye-opening from my perspective.

Tracy Alloway (1:28)

The interesting thing is, I think 10 or 20 years ago, I think a lot of people would have expected the VC world to move more towards the traditional investment world. Instead, it feels like the traditional investment world has moved more towards VC.

Joe Weisenthal (1:40)

Yeah, I think that's completely right, actually. I mean, I think all of culture has kind of become VC-ified because everyone is just looking for, you know...

Tracy Alloway (1:50)

The lottery ticket.

Joe Weisenthal (1:51)

The lottery ticket in various ways, big high-conviction bets, and you sort of hope that one of them, whether it's a bet on a presidential election, a sports game, a cryptocurrency, one's career, etc., you want to find that right-tail outlier, which has been the VC mentality since the beginning of the industry.

Tracy Alloway (2:10)

Right. Everyone is a VC now. So we should talk more about the industry.

Joe Weisenthal (2:13)

If everyone is a VC, we should talk about what a VC actually is.

Tracy Alloway (2:17)

Actually does.

Joe Weisenthal (2:17)

And doing it now in the year 2024 I'm very excited. We do have the perfect guest. We are here in the offices of Index Ventures, and we're going to be speaking to Index Ventures partner, Nina Achadjian. Nina, thank you so much for coming on the podcast.

Nina Achadjian (2:32)

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to chat with you guys today.

Joe Weisenthal (2:35)

What does a partner at Index Ventures do?

Nina Achadjian (2:39)

Well, our job is to find exceptional entrepreneurs, really build trust with them, and be part of their journey in building a generational company.

Joe Weisenthal (2:49)

Setting aside what a partner does or investor, there's a lot of VC firms. Does Index Ventures have a specific differentiator or mission or raison d'etre that's different than anyone else?

Nina Achadjian (3:01)

Yeah, well, I think to answer that, it's helpful to know a little bit about the history of Index. So Index started in Europe almost 30 years ago and was one of the first VC funds to really believe that entrepreneurship could come from anywhere, not just Stanford, Silicon Valley. And we've really had a global mindset. And so today we have offices in New York, San Francisco and in London. And the way that we think about investing is first and foremost, it is truly all about the people. So when we hear a pitch, we actually spend a ton of time diligencing the entrepreneur and trying to build a foundation of trust to understand what motivates this person. What is truly this person's spike? And we try to see them in many different settings, in our office, in their office, in a comfortable situation, in an uncomfortable situation, in a professional setting or having dinner at a restaurant. And so we spend a lot of time really getting to know the individual because at the end of the day, when you're investing in venture capital, you're really taking a bet on the trajectory of someone, which oftentimes is really hard to see when you're talking to a very young first-time founder.

Joe Weisenthal (4:08)

I bet.

Tracy Alloway (4:09)

This gets into something that I've always wanted to ask a VC person, but what are you doing for founders besides writing checks? Because I hear a lot about the relationship and the pitch is always, well, we have great relationships with our founders and we really build them up as both people and businesses. What does that actually mean?