Ilya Strebulaev: Venture Mindset Takeaways for Board Members.
Description
(0:00 ) Intro.
(1:39 ) About the podcast sponsor: The American College of Governance Counsel.
(2:25 ) Start of interview. Reference to E21 with Ilya Strebulaev from October 2020.
(4:01 ) On why he wrote his book The Venture Mindset: for decision makers in large organizations.
(5:37 ) About the first principle: Home Runs Matter, Strikeouts Don’t. Make small bets vs fear of failure.
(7:23 ) Two types of innovation: incremental (step by step) vs. disruptive innovation.
(13:32 ) The unique role that independent directors can play in innovation.
(18:20 ) On corporate unicorns and intrapreneurs.
(20:11 ) On errors of omission and building anti-portfolios.
(24:01 ) Promoting the venture mindset for large companies to be more innovative and become more like Silicon Valley.
(28:29 ) Red flags in decision-making ("why should I not invest?"), and the example of Theranos. Examples from Shark Tank.
(34:00 ) On Yuri Milner's investment in Facebook (2009) and investing without taking a board seat (informal controls and indirect influence).
(38:30 ) Formal vs informal control rights in corporate governance.
(44:13 ) Stay private vs go public debate. On "quasi-public" companies.
(49:11 ) On the pressures to go public for VCs and employees, and the evolution of secondary markets.
(52:20 ) On the principle (#5) to Bet on the Jockey (put people above process).
(53:22 ) On the principle (#7) to Double Down or Quit (allow flexibility, and phenomenon of escalation of commitment).
Ilya Strebulaev is a Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and is an expert in corporate finance, venture capital and private equity, corporate innovation, innovation ecosystems, and financial decision-making. His recent work has examined the valuation of VC-backed companies, decision making by venture capital and private equity investors, corporate venture capital, and impact of venture capital.
You can follow Ilya on social media at:
Twitter: @IlyaStrebulaev
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ilyavcandpe/
Venture Mindset Website: https://thevcmindset.com/
You can follow Evan on social media at:
X: @evanepstein
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/epsteinevan/
Substack: https://evanepstein.substack.com/
__
To support this podcast you can join as a subscriber of the Boardroom Governance Newsletter at https://evanepstein.substack.com/
__
Music/Soundtrack (found via Free Music Archive): Seeing The Future by Dexter Britain is licensed under a Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License