Avidan Ross of Root VC on investing in deep tech, taking an heavy approach on reserves, and building LP relationships - Venture Unlocked 016

Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers

Happy New Year! I’m thrilled to announce that Avidan Ross is our first guest of 2021 Avidan is the Founder and managing partner of Root Ventures and one of the most thoughtful newer seed stage managers in the market.

Like many that have appeared on the show, Avidan took a non-traditional path into venture. After graduating from Columbia, Avidan spent time in various engineering roles before becoming CTO at CIM Group, L.P., a private equity firm currently with $30B under management. After nearly 7 years at CIM, Avidan moved on to become a host a Food Network pilot and also co-write a book on the best coffee in the U.S.

In 2013 Avidan founded Root Ventures. Today, he and his partners Chrissy Meyer, Kane Hseih, and Lee Edwards each bring strong engineering backgrounds and a passion for taking a very hands-on roles with their portfolio companies which incline toward very technical in nature.

In this episode we discuss the following topics:

00:35 Avidan’s journey into venture capital

04:15 Getting comfortable with investing in early-stage deep tech companies out of a small fund

09:01 What is the most important thing they look to bring to founders

11:38 Portfolio construction and why they reserve more than most seed funds

16:44 Portfolio sizing

18:54 His thoughts on generalist funds vs. specialists

21:32 How they think about value-add.

25:54 The hiring model Root uses

30:06 The difference fundraising Fund I and Fund II, and building relationships with LP’s.

39:46 Avidan’s biggest career mistake.

41:02 His biggest investing miss.

42:30 The people in the industry he’s inspired by.

Mentioned in this episode:

* Root Ventures

I’d love to know what you took away from my conversations with Avidan Ross. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

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