Cracking the AI and consumer code with early Zoom-backer Maven Ventures

Equity

TechCrunch

Founders, Silicon Valley, Finance, Ipo, Vc, Technology, Business News, Startups, Business, Venture Capital, News, Stock Market, Entrepreneurship, Techcrunch

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 24 July 2024

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Maven Ventures General Partner Sara Deshpande has been investing in the consumer tech space for a decade. Over time, the seed-stage venture firm has backed the likes of Zoom, Cruise, Hello Heart, Perplexity and x.AI and has grown to over $200 million in assets under management. Now, with a new $60 million fund — and plans to write six to eight checks of up to $1.5 million each year — Deshpande joined TechCrunch senior reporter Mary Ann Azevedo on Equity to discuss the changes in the consumer landscape, how her firm is doubling down on artificial intelligence and what makes a startup stand out.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity Tech Runches flagship podcast about the
0:15.1	business of startups. I'm Mary Ann Azavado and this is our Wednesday episode
0:18.8	where we hone in on a trend in the startup world and dive deep.
0:22.8	Joining us for today's conversation is Sarah Deshponde,
0:26.0	general partner at Maven Ventures,
0:27.7	a seed stage venture firm investing in tech companies
0:30.5	addressing emerging consumer behavior and trends.
0:33.4	It has $200 million in assets under management across five funds.
0:38.3	That includes four seed stage funds and one opportunity fund.
0:41.9	Sarah, welcome to the show. How are you today?
0:45.0	Thanks Marianne for having me. I'm doing great and I'm glad to be here.
0:48.6	Yeah, super excited to have you here. So first off, I understand you've been with Maven for 10 years you
0:54.2	were actually the firm's first employee is that correct? Yeah that's right when I
0:58.2	joined Maven Jim Scheinman had just started the fund he had a successful career as an operator, executive,
1:05.6	founder, mostly within the consumer tech realm and started MAVEN with the idea
1:09.9	of investing in the exact same kinds of companies he was advising or investing in as an
1:14.3	angel and as a founder and he started and ran the fund for only about six months
1:18.7	and only raised about five million dollars at that time really at the beginning of
1:22.3	the micro VC movement in 2013
1:24.0	and realize if you wanted to launch kind of a true venture fund that was going to last for a decade or more,
1:30.0	he wasn't going to do it alone.
1:31.0	And so it started looking for somebody to come and
	...

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