1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What is your investment thesis? Tell me a bit more about what you like to invest in? What problems in the world do you have your eye on? What segment do you specifically like? Is e-commerce still an interest?

Ben Narasin: I make a very proactive effort to meet every VC in the top firms. An investor has just joined one of the best firms in the world and I took him out to lunch. He told me a story of what he had done. He has created a mobile advertising platform that sold for a little shy of a billion dollars. I said, “I have two really great mobile ad companies you should meet.” He said, “You got to have a lot of naivete to invest in mobile advertising.”

The reality is I would argue that everybody that has ever done something thinks that anybody else that does it is naïve because they know how hard it is. Interestingly, one sold for a billion dollars. I made 60 times my money. The other one didn’t work out. The reality is, I’ve looked at e-commerce. I have a higher bar there because of my experience. I am a generalist. I believe the best entrepreneurs are highly focused, but the best investors are generalists. Think about it. Sequoia and Benchmark are the two best firms in the world return-wise. They’re generalists. 

Sramana Mitra: There’s a company that I have great respect for. That is Emergence Capital. That is not a generalist firm at all. I did their story. I talked to Brian Jacobs. He presented a thesis of investing in SaaS at a time when nobody was doing SaaS. They did phenomenally well.

Ben Narasin: I’m not saying only generalists are great investors, but the best investors are generalists. I think Rivet is an exceptional firm, and they do FinTech. The way I think about it is, I’m hyper-focused on the entrepreneurs. The firm is called Tenacity for a reason. Brilliance is assumed. A great idea is assumed and a great opportunity is assumed. The only secret to your success is tenacity.

I spent three years, funded 30 companies, and had zero fails. This worried me a great deal because I thought I wasn’t taking enough risk. I loosened up. That was a mistake. I had my very first fail. It was an entrepreneur who gave up. He gave up with money left. It’s like the horrible story when I was young from my parents who are scuba divers. It’s about a man who was found dead in a cave with a full tank of oxygen. Giving up is not an option. Work-life balance is not an option. Those are not things that work for people who want to be entrepreneurs.

Sramana Mitra: I disagree with you. They don’t with venture entrepreneurs. 

Ben Narasin: I’m only calibrating for that.

Sramana Mitra: If you say that you can’t be an entrepreneur if you have work-life balance, I have to push back on that. I have a different segment as well. 

Ben Narasin: I’m talking about what I solve for and what I look for. I look for venture scale entrepreneurs. In that category, if you believe you can have work-life balance, I would like to meet the examples of people that do. 

Sramana Mitra: Venture scale entrepreneurs very often end up with three divorces. Yes, you are absolutely right. Work-life balance is most likely not an option.

Ben Narasin: It’s more that having lived through the realities, you need to go in eyes wide open if you pursue this type of entrepreneurship. My grandfather was an entrepreneur his whole life. He had work-life balance. He did well, but there’s a huge difference from being a day-to-day entrepreneur and being a future public company CEO. A hotdog stand is an entrepreneurial endeavor.

Sramana Mitra: The reason I’m pushing back on a lot of things you’re saying is they’re a bit insulting to another category of entrepreneurs whom we have made a very strong effort to nurture. We continue to believe that the venture way is not the only way. 

Ben Narasin: I agree with you. The number one piece of advice I give entrepreneurs is avoid venture capital. There are a lot of business that can be very good businesses that should not have venture capital because it creates misalignment. 

This segment is part 3 in the series : 1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Ben Narasin, Founder and General Partner at Tenacity Venture Capital
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