The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Mamoon Hamid on Investing Lessons from Leading Rounds in Figma, Slack and Rippling | Lessons Building a Generational Defining Firm with Kleiner Perkins | AI: Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws
Mon, 21 Oct 2024
Mamoon Hamid is a General Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and one of the greatest venture investors of our time. In the past, Mamoon has led rounds in Figma, Slack, Rippling, Intercom, Glean and Box. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-Founder of Social Capital, and prior to that a Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). In Today’s Episode with Mamoon Hamid We Discuss: 1. The Greatest Venture Deal of All Time: Figma or Slack: What is Mamoon’s highest returning deal? What did Mamoon see in Dylan and Figma when they had no revenue and very little user data? What compelled Mamoon to write Stewart the check with Slack? What did he not see with Slack that he should have seen? 2. Taking Control of the Great Brand in Venture: Kleiner Perkins: Is it true that Kleiner approached Mamoon and gave him the keys to the Kleiner kingdom? How did it go down? Will Kleiner go back to having multiple products, large growth funds, international funds? What does Mamoon want Kleiner to be in 5 years? What was the hardest element of the transition into Kleiner? What did Mamoon not know that he wishes he had known? 3. Becoming a Generational Defining Investor: Market, founder, product, how does Mamoon rank them 1-3? How has Mamoon changed most significantly as an investor? What does he know now that he wishes he had known when he became a VC 19 years ago? What is his biggest loss? How did it shape his mindset and go forward investing approach? 4. AI Supercycle: The Greatest Time to Invest Where does Mamoon believe the value will accrue in this wave of AI? Where are many investors spending a lot of time but Mamoon believes is not worthy of that time? Will scaling laws continue? Have we ever seen an incumbent set spend like this incumbent class? How does that change the game for VCs?
Full Episode
I love products that create markets. Slack created a market. Figma created a market. They get to create the playing field, they play on the playing field, and they win the game. There is more capital in our industry than ever before. That capital at times thinks that everything will be a deck of corn, and you're overfunding some companies.
there's a lot of time being spent on a lot of the middle layer between the foundation models and the applications there's just a lot going on there i feel like perhaps it's a little over invested we've invested in a lot of application layer companies we took actually the top 20 jobs in the us and it's doctors it's lawyers and it's developers how do we help supercharge these people who are highly scarce highly skilled and we're not producing enough of them
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and today we are joined by one of the greatest venture investors of our time, Mahmoud Hamid, general partner at Kleiner Perkins. I will tell you why he's the best. He is able to consistently see greatness at moments in a company's lifetime when it is not clear. He did Figma when it had almost no revenue at a $100 million valuation.
Similarly, he did Slack when it had almost no revenue at a $250 million valuation. The company ultimately sold for $27 billion. He also did Rippling pre-inflection point. The man is a master picker. He's also been a dear friend. I met him at SASTA nine years ago, and he's been a mentor to me ever since. This was such a special show to do.
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