148. New Founders, New Stages, New Offerings-- The Only Constant in Venture is Change (Vic Pascucci)

Vic Pascucci of Lightbank joins Nick to discuss New Founders, New Stages, New Offerings-- The Only Constant in Venture is Change. In this episode, we cover: Where'd you get your start in venture and how'd your path lead to Lightbank? Can you walk us through the Lightbank backstory... before you joined? What's the current thesis and investment focus for the firm? How active a role do you play with portfolio companies? What, if anything, do you think the team at Lightbank can do a better job of going forward? Do you think your approach is different than Eric and Brad's? Recently spoke w/ Semil Shah about the multiple stages, within seed... pre-seed, seed, inst seed, post seed, seed extension. WTF is going on with the seed round? There's been an explosion of seed funds... do you think this is a problem? Is there a bubble at seed or, w/ the way barriers to startup have come down, is the influx of capital warranted? I'm noticing entrepreneurs moving away from SAFEs and Convertibles... are you seeing the same? If so, why do you think that's the case? How have you seen startup capital raises change over time and do you think it's moving in the right direction? What should every founder be thinking about, during a fundraise, that most often they're not even considering? Are you seeing a difference in the makeup of founding teams and their capabilities? From personal experience, I certainly notice a difference in the style and approach of a early-20's tech founder vs. a mid-30s founder w/ domain knowledge. So, you're a blockchain guy... I see you on various blockchain boards and I know that you invested in Coinbase in 2015... and, on the record, you were very bullish on cryptocurrency's at the time, when many were not. But what's the deal w/ all these token offerings and ICOs? I'm a relative novice here... can you explain to me what's going on and where you see it going?   To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.