On today’s Tank Talk! We welcome our guest Villi Iltchev, Partner @ Two Sigma Ventures.
On today's Talk, we ask Villi about his journey into technology investing after starting his career at HP on the corporate development side and then moving over to Salesforce during the last crisis. We ask Villis' about his time as Vice President of Corp Dev at Salesforce Ventures and about some of the amazing startups he invested in like BOX, Hubspot, Zapier and countless others.
We dig into Villi’s experience moving from corporate venture into traditional venture roles as a Partner at August Capital where he made his investment into unicorn startup Gitlab as the Series B lead and his reasons behind that investment even after 100 Venture firms already passed on them. Next, we ask Villi to explain why Two Sigma Ventures was the best fit for him for his next journey in venture and how their quantitative approach to investing on the public side has shaped their investment strategy on the venture side. Finally, we ask Villi what he looks for when investing in emerging areas and how he manages timing risk and avoids being too early into an emerging market. This tank talk really helps you think about the ways in which venture investors are forced to think outside the box and into the future sometimes decades ahead in order to place bets on startups at the early stage today and how founders should approach these kinds of investors.
Now please welcome today's guest to the Tank, Villi Iltchev.
Books Mentioned In The Show:
Villi’s words of inspiration - “Have a truthful life, do things that are meaningful and do things that matter.”
Tank Talk: Villi Iltchev (Partner @ Two Sigma Ventures) - Investing in Emerging Areas at the Early-Stage