Jon McNeill on VC 2.0 and creating startups in house

Equity

TechCrunch

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

4.2 • 365 Ratings

🗓️ 3 July 2024

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

What’s the common thread between Tesla, building startups, General Motors, venture capital and Lyft? Jon McNeill, co-founder and partner of DVx Ventures, joins TechCrunch editor Kirsten Korosec on Equity to discuss how Elon Musk’s pay package has influenced founders, when it makes sense to go light on cash and heavy on equity, and his firm’s unique approach to investing that eschews the traditional management fee structure. McNeill describes DVx as VC 2.0. The firm comes up with business ideas and builds them into a startup within the firm before it goes out to find the leadership team. To date, the firm has started and invested in 14 portfolio companies that span EVs and AI, SaaS, consumer tech and climate tech. McNeill also walks Equity through the startup creation process, managing risk and how to spot opportunities that can disrupt the market.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome back to Equity, Tech Runches flagship
0:15.4	podcast about the business of startups. I'm Kirsten Kaurisac
0:19.4	transportation editor here at Tech Crunch and this is our Wednesday episode where we hone in on a trend in the startup
0:26.1	world and dive deep. Today we're talking to partner and co-founder John McNeil of DVX Ventures, but John is more than just a venture capitalist.
0:36.7	He's a serial entrepreneur, the former president of Tesla, former CEO at Lift on the GM board and more recently on the cruise board.
0:47.5	So we have quite a bit to talk about today.
0:50.7	John, welcome to the show.
0:52.4	Thank you. Nice to be show. Thank you.
0:53.0	Nice to be here.
0:54.0	All right.
0:55.0	Well, it's already been a crazy summer in the world of transportation,
0:59.0	which I kind of want to jump into first.
1:01.0	I have to ask you before we start talking about D.V.X.
1:05.2	Because your former Tesla and worked closely with E.
1:08.4	I have to get your take on E. L. Musks recently approved $56 billion compensation pay package. This is what
1:16.0	shareholders recently re-approved after a court rejected as flawed. You were still
1:21.3	at the company in 2018 when that package was originally proposed.
1:25.0	I love your perspective as not just former Tesla, but as a serial entrepreneur and as a
1:30.5	VC who has led a number of companies, do you support these kind of performance-based pace games?
1:38.5	Or is this really a only works for Elon type of deal?
1:42.1	Great question.
1:44.0	I think as entrepreneurs, we think about alignment with our investors and maybe the
	...

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