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Back to Oren Zeev's $2.7B Solo GP Playbook, with Oren Zeev.

Where Do Oren Zeev's Deals Come From?

Oren Zeev says about 80 to 90 percent of the deals he ends up doing come from other portfolio companies. He has no associates out hunting. A portfolio CEO introduced him to the founders of Descartes less than three years before this conversation. He took the Zoom the same day. There was no finished plan. The idea was to optimize inference: the founders could program low-level GPU code, including CUDA for Nvidia chips, and it was not clear whether they would sell to businesses or to consumers. What was clear to him was that the founders were exceptional.

They had a legally binding agreement in less than a day. He met them in person a week later. The introduction and the decision both happened over Zoom.

Transcript

Oren Zeev's $2.7B Solo GP Playbook ·

The Peel with Turner Novak

More from this episode

  1. How Does Oren Zeev Run a Venture Fund Alone?Oren Zeev says most partners add very little value to each other, and a team is not automatically better than one person. Speed matters.
  2. Why Does a Venture Committee Miss the Best Deals?Oren Zeev says this business is not symmetrical, and a missed investment is much worse than a bad one.
  3. How Does Oren Zeev Report to Limited Partners?Oren Zeev sends limited partners a quarterly report made of numbers only.
  4. What Does Oren Zeev Do in a Typical Week?Oren Zeev's typical week is a board meeting or two, a few founder calls, and long open stretches, including time in the ocean. He does not count the meetings.
  5. Does Oren Zeev Use a Pitch Deck?Oren Zeev never presents a single slide to any limited partner and has no pitch deck at all.
  6. Does Oren Zeev Start With a List of Ideas?Oren Zeev does not show up with a pre-planned list of ideas he is looking for. He has never done healthcare because he feels he lacks the intuition.
  7. Why Does Diversification Inside One Fund Have No Value?Oren Zeev says diversification inside one fund has zero value for LPs, because they already invest in multiple managers.
  8. Why Was Early Corporate Travel Software a Nightmare?Oren Zeev says first-generation corporate travel software, built in the early 2000s, maybe had the control and visibility a chief financial officer wanted…
  9. Why Does Oren Zeev Invest Across Funds?Oren Zeev invests across his funds, which he says most other managers will not do. The objection is a conflict of interest.
  10. Why Does Oren Zeev Skip a Limited Partner Advisory Council?Oren Zeev skips a limited partner advisory council because he wants no extra rules and no friction around cross-fund deals.
  11. Why Did Oren Zeev Hold Navan Stock After the Lockup?Oren Zeev held Navan stock after the lockup because he thought the share price was far too low and that selling then was not in his limited partners' interest.
  12. How Did Israel Seed Eight Venture Funds?Oren Zeev walked through a program that sponsored eight funds of $20 million each.
  13. How Did Peter Thiel Get Oren Zeev to Raise a Fund?Peter Thiel got Oren Zeev to raise a fund by offering, in a meeting Zeev thought was only a comparison of notes, to be the limited partner and treat it as an…
  14. Why Is the Israeli Connection Network Exclusive?Oren Zeev says the Israeli Connection Network is exclusive because when you try to help everyone, you help no one.

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