20VC: Biggest Lessons and Challenges Building One of the Most Successful Seed Funds, How To Manage Investor Psychology, Self-Doubt and Insecurity & The Secret to Truly Successful Venture Partnerships with David Frankel, Co-Founder @ Founder Collective

David Frankel is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Founder Collective, one of the great seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Uber, Coupang, Airtable, Whoop and many more incredible companies. Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT. David is also a founding board member of Endeavor SA and in the past has been selected by the World Economic Forum for the Global Leader of Tomorrow (GLT) program.

In Today’s Episode with David Frankel You Will Learn:

1.) How David made his way into the world of angel investing? How his mindset changed when making the transition from angel to an institutional investor with the founding of Founder Collective?

2.) Building the Firm: Founder Collective

• What are the biggest challenges in venture firm building today?

• Why is “deploy” and “the game” banned as words within Founder Collective? What terms are promoted as an alternative?

• How does David construct investment decision-making in the partnership?

• How does David create a safe space where all team members can share their thoughts in a non-judgemental, safe environment?

• What are the biggest mistakes or challenges that David sees firms make when building?

3.) David Frankel: Investor Mindset

• How does David analyse the current seed market today? What does he like? What worries him?

• Does David agree that early stage investing has never been less collaborative?

• How does David reflect on his own relationship to price today? How does he determine when to pay up vs when not to?

• How does David think about the compression on fund deployment timelines? Will this change?

• How does David keep a fresh and clean mind when viewing new opportunities, having seen many work and not work? How does one retain that mental purity when investing?

• What have been some of David’s biggest misses? How did it impact his style of investing?

4.) The Partnership:

• What was the most recent disagreement David had with the partnership? How was it resolved?

• How does David approach self-doubt and insecurity within the partnership? How can this be managed successfully?

• What have been some of David’s biggest lessons on how to give effective feedback without being judgemental?

• In a world of Zoom, how did the partnership retain the same level and quality of connection that they had in person? What works? What does not work?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode with David Frankel

David’s Favourite Book: The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race

David’s Most Recent Investment: PairTree