Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures on the craft of building a top-decile firm - Venture Unlocked 003

Follow me on Twitter @Samirkaji to get my ongoing and frequent updates on the early stage venture landscapeRoger Ehrenberg is the founder and Managing Partner of IA Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City. In this episode, Roger gives a master class on all aspects of starting and building a venture firm. IA is managing $475M across four funds, and is currently investing out of its $160M fourth fund. Fund 1 was a $50MM fund raised during the global financial crisis, with a first close of $17MM. Earlier in his career, Roger served as CEO of DB Advisors, was Global co-head of Deutsche Bank’s Strategic Equity Transactions Group, and was an investment banker at Citibank in derivatives, capital structuring and Mergers & Acquisitions.Roger currently sits on the Boards of Ethyca, Gospel Technology, Mighty, Octane and TransferWise, and was an early lead investor in both The Trade Desk (NASDAQ: TTD) and Datadog (NASDAQ: DDOG). Formerly, he served on the boards of Buddy Media (sold to Salesforce for $800M), Recorded Future (sold to Insight for $780MM), and Simple Finance (sold to BBVA for $120M). In this episode, Roger covers the following:* His background from going from M&A banking and hedge to early stage investing. * The opportunity and vision he saw for IA during the global financial crisis. * The amount of diligence he went through for choosing a partner. * How he made some unconventionally sized portfolio bets early in Fund 1 when the fund was still raising. * IA’s philosophy on fund sizing. * How he thinks about portfolio construction and recycling. * How he thinks about staying disciplined on ownership and valuation targets and when to have some flexibility.* The role of pattern matching and how IA tests and re-tests this. Here are some resources to learn more about Roger:* IA Ventures website* Roger’s Information Arbitrage blog. The following posts should be required reading for emerging managers:* Building a Seed Stage Venture Fund* Working to Build a Better Mousetrap* Thoughts on distribution strategy * A presentation Data-Driven Business Models for The Research Board’s Global CIO Conference This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com