Semil Shah, Haystack

**SPEAKER_2** (0:06)
Welcome to Origins, a podcast about the money behind the money. This podcast is created by Notation, a pre-seed venture capital firm based in Brooklyn, New York. We invest in amazing technical teams and projects in New York City on day zero. You can find us on Twitter at Notation Capital.
Season three of Origins is sponsored by Silicon Valley Bank and Carta, formerly known as eShares. Silicon Valley Bank is the bank of the world's most innovative companies and their investors, with a dedicated practice for emerging managers. They've been friends and partners to Notation since the beginning. To learn more about SVB services, visit svb.com. We use Carta at Notation and recommend it to all the startups we work with. But something you might not know is that Carta has a product for LPs too. Carta for LPs allows you to easily sign, send, and store K1s, manage capital calls, review investment KPIs and more. You can learn more about Carta at carta.com.
Today, we have Semil Shah, General Partner at Haystack, an early stage investor based here in San Francisco. We're on the road.

**Semil Shah** (1:33)
In an undisclosed location.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:37)
Yeah, this does feel like an underground bunker. Welcome, Semil.

**Semil Shah** (1:42)
Thanks for having me. Great to see you, twice in one week.

**SPEAKER_2** (1:45)
That's right. To kick us off, could you just tell us a little bit about your background and how you came to be a VC at Haystack?

**Semil Shah** (1:54)
Sure, the background kind of bullet point includes a stint of thinking I would go to law school and working for the Manhattan DA. Working as a professional cook.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:06)
Where was that?

**Semil Shah** (2:08)
In New York and a little bit in San Francisco.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:10)
Okay.

**Semil Shah** (2:10)
Yeah, I thought I would take that lifestyle. I read Kitchen Confidential.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:14)
The best.

**Semil Shah** (2:14)
One of the best books. And it's a hard life for people who do it, so.
Let's see.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:22)
Where'd you grow up?

**Semil Shah** (2:23)
Grew up in Connecticut and New York.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:25)
Okay.

**Semil Shah** (2:25)
Yeah, very, very fortunate for that. And had a stint in the nonprofit side in the world. The nonprofit was in the world of finance and economic development.
And then kind of after grad school moved out here and got involved in the startup scene. And I didn't really realize at that time what was happening in the world, which was the world economy was shifting. At the same time, I was moving back here for my second tour in the Bay Area, moving from finance-driven to technology-driven. And that the epicenters of that shift were kind of China and the US.

**SPEAKER_2** (2:57)
Right. And what year was that?

**Semil Shah** (2:59)
Right at the end of 2010 and 2011, basically.

**SPEAKER_2** (3:02)
When did you start writing and blogging? You became a pretty active blogger previous to Haystack, no?

**Semil Shah** (3:09)
Oh, very much so. It was probably late 2010, 2011 Folks will ask, how did you get into it? And it was a couple of ways. Someone introduced me to ABC, Fred's blog, before I even knew what tech and startups were.
And then through just reading that occasionally, not daily, I learned of Chris Dixon's blog, he was in New York at the time. And Chris and I had a mutual friend and I had been on Twitter.
So we met a couple of times.
Again, not really understanding that world. And then when I moved out here, I was really reading Errington and MG and just following how they wrote. And if you go back to some of the posts that they wrote at that time, they were so right about some things that we just use on a daily basis now.
So got to know them. And then I would just fire up my own blog. I think the first one was on Postris or Postris, Gary Tan and Suchin who are both friends now. And then I just started doing it. If I look back at those original ones, they were pretty bad. And then I just started doing it more and more. And then I can't really explain what happened, but people started reading it and sharing it. And with all of the content that's being shared in our online communities now, it's sort of like peer reviewed. And it just so happened that a lot of VCs were reading it as well. And it would start off, it would email me and comment on something I've written or ask to me for coffee. And then the coffee's turned into meet my partner. And then the meet my partner turned into, hey, would you consider working here? And then it turned into, hey, let's get you in business.