This content was created by Max Brun. This content was uploaded by Max Brun. This is a YouTube video titled "Examples Of Marketplaces That Version One Ventures Has Invested In" (published 2023-03-06). The excerpt is a Q&A-style exchange between an interviewer (SPEAKER A) and an investor (SPEAKER B) in which the investor describes two marketplace portfolio companies — Headout (Varun) and Patch/Path (Bernim) — and explains why they invested. Key themes are founder qualities (deep domain knowledge, passion, preparedness) and the "why now" thesis (digitization of travel experiences for Headout; an API aggregating carbon removal/offset projects for Patch), plus timing/context (Patch introduced around April 2020 shortly after COVID).
Chapters
Are there any, you know, maybe recent portfolio companies that are marketplaces that you could share? I know we actually had a few, you know, we had Varun from Headout and, you know, Bernim from Patch. But, you know, maybe just share a little bit more about, you know, when you met those founders and kind of how you thought about them and evaluated them from a, you know, from a business or kind of founder side and invested in them.
I think these are actually 2 great examples. Headout, which is a marketplace for travel experiences, And then Path, which is a marketplace for carbon offset carbon removal projects. The you know head out when we met them, kind of two two things really stood out. I mean, the first one is generally travel experience hadn't really been digitized, so it felt like this whole question of like why now? Why why? head out felt very easy to answer. Like if you believe that ultimately every experience will be digitized, especially in travel, right? This was kind of an overlooked area where there wasn't a lot of digitization and somebody needed to organize that. But coming back to the founders, you know, one of the best experiences as an investor is you sit down with a founder and you spend an hour with him or her, right? You ask some questions and Varun came back for every question. He had already thought about it. He had already an answer. And you realize, right, how he was driven to solve this problem and he was looking at it from every single angle, right? And that was just like super amazing to see. And we love that passion, that being in the details, having thought through every single question. and walking away is like, well, you know, kind of these founders think about this problem night and day and they're kind of looking at it from every single angle. Switching to Pat, Pat was also in kind of the question of why now? It was actually, we got introduced to Pat in April 2020. So just after COVID hit. And at the time, like nobody really had climate in their mind. There was like obviously many, many other problems in the world, but it was clear to us that, you know, we needed to have better climate solutions and actually an API that would give you access to all of the climate carbon removal, carbon offset projects was a very smart way of consolidating, aggregating that market. And again, like the founders were just like incredibly deep down into having thought that through, even though this was a much earlier climate, wasn't as developed as travel experiences. And kind of you had to be much more creative about thinking about what could come down the road. But so as you see in these, both of these examples, like ultimately it's really always around for us the founders on the one hand side, how passionate and deep down and determined they are to solve this problem. And then secondly, why now? Like, why, what is the big wave that you can bet on?
