Visa Follow-Up and Today’s Payments Ecosystem (with Gaurav Ahuja)

Ben Gilbert (0:00)

Gaurav Ahuja, welcome to ACQ2.

Gaurav Ahuja (0:03)

Thanks for having me, guys.

Ben Gilbert (0:04)

It's been a long time in the works. You've been a friend of the show for a long time, and thank you for being a research source for our Visa episode.

Gaurav Ahuja (0:11)

Of course, I was excited to give it a listen, and you guys do such a good job just going through the history in the most meticulous way possible. I love the episode.

Ben Gilbert (0:21)

Thank you. Well, we wanted to say, listeners, if you don't know Gaurav, Gaurav is an investor at Thrive, and some of you may know that name, but not know the history. So Thrive launched its first institutional fund in 2011 That was a $40 million fund. They led Warby Parker Series A, invested in Instagram, and they incubated several businesses, one of which is Oscar Health, and another of which we will talk about later this episode with Gaurav that is in the FinTech credit card payment space.

And since then, the firm has grown to a much larger entity, managing $15 billion with a team of nine investors. They invest at all stages and their track record includes leading rounds in companies like Stripe, OpenAI, Twitch, and many more.

Gaurav, we want to open with you and say, you're both an investor at Thrive and also the founder of a Thrive-backed startup. And in particular, you invest in Vertical SaaS and FinTech, but you started this credit card company. So how does that work? How do you pull off this dual role?

Gaurav Ahuja (1:24)

Yeah, look, the very fact that Thrive is open-minded on how exactly we think about our day-to-day and our roles is really what drew me to the firm seven years ago.

I love investing and working with founders directly, but I knew if one day I have an idea and it was this idea, I couldn't stop thinking about, and I just had to start it that Thrive would be a unique way to capitalize that company in a pretty special manner. And so in 2020, I got really excited about the idea of co-branded credit cards, and I hit it off with this guy named Dara Murphy. And I remember it was early COVID and we were breaking New York City curfew just to hang out with one another, and just kept talking about the idea in New York City, going in parks, unsure how much distance we needed to keep, we had masks on, but I was pretty much just focused on imprint for that first year and helping it get launched.

And I still get the same emotional ups and downs that a founder would get, which is one week, I'm like, man, imprint is the best company in the world, and the next week, I'm pretty sure that we're about to go bankrupt. And that oscillation keeps me going back and forth and back and forth. And even today, I'm still joining leadership meetings every single week. I am, you know, about to go to a company offsite. I'll hop on a plane for any important sales meeting, and I'm even a pitcher or a storyteller of the product to other venture capital firms as well.

Ben Gilbert (2:44)

Does being the founder of one of your portfolio companies make you behave differently with companies that you're not the founder of?

Gaurav Ahuja (2:50)

Definitely. I like to think that each of the roles makes me better at the other. Every day at Thrive, I'm a seller of the venture capital product. At Imprint, I'm actually a buyer of the venture capital product, and telling the story to other firms, and we've raised over $100 million at this point.

The reality is, I think we've seen so many types of venture capital experiences. We know what good founder experience looks like versus bad founder experience, and man, do I take that back to the firm. I think it's really influenced the way that I want Thrive and myself to just really thoughtfully interact with founders and always make sure we're creating that good experience.

David Rosenthal (3:25)

Yeah, it's pretty crazy that as an active GP at a premier venture firm, you are also going and pitching GPs at other venture firms. You're getting real-time competitor experience data.

Gaurav Ahuja (3:39)

Every firm has its own style, and every individual will have their own style. That's what's going to make them unique and win opportunities.

But one thing that always stuck with me is during the A that we raised, we talked to a few firms, and one of those firms, we met a few of the partners we presented, nobody asked questions afterwards, kind of felt like a dead room. We walked away feeling like, do they really like the business at all?