The Sequoia scouts program recently celebrated its 10th anniversary. The founding of that program kickstarted a trend in the venture capital industry. As Jason Lemkin once asked: “Anyone not a scout these days?”
Over the past two years, my Village Global partners and I have spent a ton of time studying this trend and indeed building our own effort around it. Here are some frequently asked questions and answers about VC scouts based on our experiences.
What are “scouts”?
People who are empowered to invest money in startups (usually in ~$50k increments at the seed stage) on behalf of a venture capital fund, sometimes with full decision making autonomy.
What are the differences between the scout programs?
There are two broad types of scout programs.
Some scout programs are run by venture funds that for the most part focus on Series A or later investing. For example, Sequoia Capital is commonly credited with inventing the scout program. Sequoia invests the vast majority of its capital via its full-time GPs at Series A stage through IPO. Some of their investments at seed stage happen through independent scouts who write $25k-$50k checks. It’s an active program but in the grand scheme it’s minor part of Sequoia’s reported $8 billion global fund.
Then there are independent, newer firms like AngelList Spearhead or my firm Village Global. At Village, a network strategy is a central part of our firm strategy. We thrive based on our ability to execute our scouts strategy. At the independent venture firms, you’ll generally find more innovation, resources, and community around scouts.
Why the blossoming of scout programs inside legacy firms?
Over the past 10 years, some venture funds have ballooned in size. Lightspeed, A16Z, Sequoia, Accel, Greylock, Founders Fund, Thrive, Spark, and others are all now deploying billion dollar+ funds, a substantial step up from their historic fund sizes of $200–400 million. Suppose one of these firms employs 6–10 GPs to invest that billion dollars. To get leverage on their time, GPs need to be writing minimum $10M+ checks — ideally bigger.
The problem is, at the seed stage, founders don’t want or need a $10M investment. The round sizes are smaller. Small check sizes don’t move the needle for the VC when they’re trying to allocate over a billion dollars. So should these mega funds just get out of the seed stage business altogether and focus on Series A, B, and later? Some firms have done that, but many have decided they can’t. They need to be seeing seed deals because that’s today’s seed deal is tomorrow’s great Series A — it’s the pipeline.
Hence their scout programs. Big firms perceive them as an efficient way of scanning seed stage flow to feed their main Series A or Series B business.
Why are there independent, network-driven firms?
The existence of firms like Village Global represents a different macro phenomenon. At Village, we aren’t trying to lead Series A’s, B’s, and growth rounds. Our scouts aren’t lead gen for later stage investing. We’re taking a network approach to executing on our core seed mission.
Why a network approach? It used to be that a few full time men on Sand Hill Road could wait for the best founders in the Valley to parade into their office and pitch their businesses. Today, that passive approach doesn’t cut it. There’s an explosion of software-driven, diverse entrepreneurship around the world and across almost every industry. We believe this explosion of opportunity requires a fundamentally different approach to sourcing, selecting, and supporting. We believe a wide sensor network (i.e., a network of dozens of scouts) is more likely to discover a talented founder on day zero.
What’s more, the way founders socialize and develop their business ideas has changed. Thanks to online communities and social networks, founders are increasingly able to connect with fellow founders, professors, authors, or other people they know or respect. These days, when you’re brainstorming a business idea, your first stop may not be the VC’s office — and all the intimidation and nervousness that might entail. You might instead call a founder friend to ask for advice.
We want to ally with the people who are that first call, whose expertise makes them valued resources to founders who are just getting going. We empower those people — our Network Leaders — with our Village Global capital to back their smartest friends. And then we bring to bear the full resources of our network to make those companies more successful post-investment.
Can non-professional, non-full time people make good investment decisions?
At the earliest stages of company formation, you’re mainly evaluating whether the founders are unbelievably resourceful and persistent, and whether they’re attacking a massive problem that, if solved, could produce a large business. There aren’t metrics to analyze. There aren’t customers to interview. So at this stage, we think it’s very possible for someone who’s not full time, or even not terribly experienced at investing, to back her smartest friends, and for those friends to end up creating huge businesses.
Chris Sacca, one of the most successful angels ever, backed Ev Williams and Travis Kalanick, before he had any investing track record or sophisticated framework for investing. It worked out pretty well for him — and eventually for the LPs who backed his angel-stage funds. Who’s the next Chris Sacca?
Do the scouts make money themselves?
The sharing of economics differs from program to program. Almost every firm — including Village Global — shares economic upside with their scouts.
For us, we also focus on non-economic benefits. We cultivate a community between and among our Network Leaders. We expose them to and connect them with our luminary LPs. For example, several of our Network Leaders have had intimate interaction with people like Bill Gates, Bob Iger, Abby Johnson, Eric Schmidt, Ben Silbermann, and others.
Most great scouts — most great angels in general, I’d argue — are not doing it for the money. They’re doing it for the love of the game. Making money is a happy coincidence if you find yourself in luck’s way.
Do scouts invest their own personal money alongside the venture fund?
At Village Global, we ask most of our Network Leaders invest money alongside us commensurate with their net worth or whatever would constitute skin in the game. We think it makes for better decision making.
Are scouts exclusive to one firm?
Some venture firms try to insist on an exclusive relationship with their scouts.
At Village Global, we eschew a zero sum, exclusivity mindset. We’re fine with our Network Leaders working with multiple venture firms so long as there’s good communication and transparency around the deals they’re doing.
As it turns out, most of our Network Leaders prefer to just work with us because of our focus on them and the network strategy that’s in our DNA.
Should founder/CEOs really be angel investing on the side? What about focusing on their business?
Different sorts of people can be scouts. At Village Global, we have professors, full-time angels, big company execs, retired GPs, and active founder/CEOs in our network.
The most famous archetype — popularized by Sequoia — is for founder/CEOs themselves to be the ones investing the scout capital.
Some people worry that founders who invest on the side are too unfocused:
Here’s my question: Is any hobby outside of work a dangerous distraction? Should founders who work 80 hours a week and spend 20 hours a week on an intellectual, artistic, or athletic hobby, cut out the hobby time and increase to 100 hours a week of pure focus on their startup? Some people believe that. If that’s you, then it’s true that being a scout (i.e., investing on the side) as a founder is just one more distraction from your day job…along with playing tennis, or writing short stories, or occasional travel, or volunteering, and any other hobby one might pursue.
Myself, I don’t think working 100 hours a week is healthy or sustainable, and I don’t think it increases the odds of success. I also don’t think your team will respect you more if you work those extra 20 hours a week like a heartless robot.
If we’re open to the idea that even founders ought to be able to spend some precious hours each week not directly working on their startup, then I’d argue that of all the hobbies one could have (and who are we to judge?), angel investing is comparatively high value.
When you invest in or advise startups as a CEO, you learn. You learn how other CEOs make decisions, especially around fundraising. You grow your network of fellow CEOs and of VCs. You intertwine yourself with a community of people who will likely be more loyal to you, or at least have no choice but to stay in touch with you as you’re on their cap table for life! Among other reasons, this is why Sequoia Capital encourages many of its founders to be scouts.
And sometimes angel investing can actually benefit the CEO’s main focus: her startup. Adam Nash recently tweeted about how Reid Hoffman’s angel investing in Facebook and Zynga (while he was CEO of LinkedIn) helped LinkedIn:
Here’s Falon Fatemi, who’s a scout and a founder/CEO of Node.io (which has raised ~$40 million):
Should you start angel investing as part of a scout program?
The great Elad Gil, in his post on scouts, frames the pros and cons this way:
The positives of investing include giving back to others, broadening your network, information access (for example, what new distribution approaches are working for others), and the potential for financial return (although you should plan to lose any personal money you invest — so do not invest if you can not afford to lose the money).The cons include investing can become a big distraction, can irritate your cofounders or employees if a lot of your time goes to it (and your startup is not working), and the potential to lose money.
Well summarized.
Is being a scout a good way to become an investor?
Maybe!
Per Bryce, it’s true that in today’s venture industry that best path to a job is to be a really successful founder with a big exit. VC firms tend to favor successful former founders. So if you’re deciding between focusing on your startup or focusing on investing, focus on your startup.
But a lot of VC firms, and all venture capital LPs (they matter if you want to found your own VC firm), care about your angel investing track record. They’d prefer to see some experience at finding deals and investing in the good ones. If you’re cash illiquid, investing scout money — in a time-boxed, hobby kind of way — is a good way to begin to build that track record.
How do you become a scout at a venture firm?
Lots of ways. If you’re interested in working with us at Village Global, feel free to reach out and say hello.