VG

Venky Ganesan

Things Venky Says on Podcasts

“Morality is sort of a privilege of the people who have already succeeded. It's easy to be moral now when you already have the things you have. The question is, will I be a moral person if I were to go back 20 years ago and start there? That's a real test. And I don't think I've lived to that test as much as I would like.” — Venky Ganesan, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch “Every venture company is writing a tax to NVIDIA in some way, shape, or form, writing their tax to a hyperscaler in some way, shape, or form. … All of them are available in the public markets, or they will be soon in the public markets, for someone to invest in a no-fee, no-carry index fund. And so you have to think about your IRR as I've got to beat that with a thousand basis points to justify anyone giving you capital in the private markets.” — Venky Ganesan, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch “Venture is an asymmetric game. You lose the dollars you invest, but you can make 10x if you're right. And that asymmetry means that the sins of omissions are way higher than the sins of commissions. … You only see the deals we do, right? You don't see the deals we pass. But the most expensive mistakes venture capitalists make are the deals they passed, not the deals they did.” — Venky Ganesan, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Where to Find Them

Venky Ganesan has been a guest on Bloomberg Tech , The Information's TITV and The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch .

Recently: “20VC: Is Seed Investing Dead Without a $1BN Fund? | Does Ownership and Price Matter When Companies Can Be $1TRN Exits | Are AI Revenue Numbers Real and What to Watch Out For with Venky Ganesan, Menlo Ventures” on The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch (October 2026); “SpaceX Wavers Near $2T Market Cap After 3-Day Rout” on Bloomberg Tech (June 2026); “Nvidia–Thinking Machines Deal, Tencent Enters China AI Agent Race, Vibe Coding Paradigm Shift” on The Information's TITV (March 2026).

What They Said

“Morality is sort of a privilege of the people who have already succeeded. It's easy to be moral now when you already have the things you have. The question is, will I be a moral person if I were to go back 20 years ago and start there? That's a real test. And I don't think I've lived to that test as much as I would like.” — Venky Ganesan, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The host asked Ganesan whether he had ever been inauthentic. He said he no longer says things he doesn't believe to win a deal, then added that this is easy to say once a single win no longer changes your life, and that a 25-year-old building a career does whatever it takes.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · 2026-10-05 Permalink → Listen →
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch Around 54:33 into the episode
Venky Ganesan

mean, I think what I particularly appreciated about Brian is that he laid out his principles of what he believed. And he told people, hey, if you really want to engage in political activism, then Coinbase is not the place for you because we do not want to have political dialogue here. And if that's important for you, you should go and find a place in which you can do it. I think that takes courage to say. And I think, but it's being true to what he wanted to do. And to me, I think that's most important. Try to be authentic to who you are. And I think I appreciated him being authentic when I think it came at a cost, right? Definitely. He was catchigated in the press and maybe on Twitter. And he had people leave. But I think he ultimately said, we want people who are authentic to Coinbase values articulated by me, the founder.

Harry Stebbings

Have you ever been inauthentic to who you are?

Venky Ganesan

I think there are times when you say certain things to founders because you want them to like you or you want to win a deal that may not be truly authentic. What I'll tell you is that I have dealt with my own insecurities and feeling like an imposter. And I've gotten more comfortable in my skin now where I just feel like I just don't do it. And if it means I have to say something inauthentic to me to win the daylight, I'd rather not win it. But that's easy to say because I'm sort of at the point in my life I like, you know, that win doesn't matter. Of course, I like to win, but it's not going to change my life. So I always say, it's very different when you're a 25-year-old and you're trying to build your career. You do whatever it takes to win. And so in some way, morality is sort of a privilege of the people who have already succeeded. It's easy to be moral now when you already have the things you have. The question is, will I be a moral person if I were to go back 20 years ago and start there? That's a real test. And I don't think I've lived to that test as much as I would like.

Harry Stebbings

Are you a better investor now you're richer?

Venky Ganesan

Yes. You're not afraid as much. You're not afraid of failure. You're willing to go all in and go to the hilt. And so I just think you can go for broke more easily. It's sort of like, think about it on a poker table. The guy with a big amount of chips has so much leverage to win, right? They see more cards and this. And so ironically, this is why I think, you know, like the way our capitalism system is set up, the rich are going to get richer because they just have more opportunities to be the bully on the poker table.

Harry Stebbings

Does that mean emerging managers are just in the old stat to Answom game? I don't see, and forgive me for this, I don't like binaries, but fuck it, Romedia, so you kind of have to do binaries. It depends, doesn't sell. $30 to $100 million funds are just the worst place to be.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode
“Every venture company is writing a tax to NVIDIA in some way, shape, or form, writing their tax to a hyperscaler in some way, shape, or form. … All of them are available in the public markets, or they will be soon in the public markets, for someone to invest in a no-fee, no-carry index fund. And so you have to think about your IRR as I've got to beat that with a thousand basis points to justify anyone giving you capital in the private markets.” — Venky Ganesan, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Asked whether cash returned or rate of return matters more, Ganesan said that when he started in venture nobody focused on rate of return, and now you have to. His reason is that the big public tech companies collect from every startup, so they are the benchmark a fund has to beat.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · 2026-10-05 Permalink → Listen →
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch Around 34:34 into the episode
Venky Ganesan

No. I think the velocity of the business is very important for venture capitalists, right? And the velocity will determine a bunch of things, right? Because the other reason why your dilution goes down is like if you have a fast uptick in valuation, the amount of ownership you've got to give for your next set of human capital is a lot lower, right? So you are a $200 million company and you're giving, you know, 2% of the company to hire a senior exec, right? That's pretty meaningful. You quickly become a $2 billion company. You don't need to get, you're going to give RSUs and you give the same person $20 million, right? Which is 0.1%.

Harry Stebbings

DPI or IRR?

Venky Ganesan

Both. I mean, you can. I do think actually that you can't have IRR without DPI. I think the question you're trying to ask is, hey, will you settle for a larger DPI over a longer horizon or do you want quicker DPI with a faster IRR? I think the reality of venture when I joined, this is now dating myself 28 years ago, people didn't focus on IRR. People were like focused on cash on cash return because IRR took care of itself. I think in today's venture, the game has changed. You have to focus on IRR. You know why? Because there's no way for venture to be successful in today's era without the Mag 7 participating in everything you're doing. Every venture company is writing a tax to NVIDIA in some way, shape, or form, writing their tax to a hyperscaler in some way, shape, or form, and possibly writing a tax to the foundational model in some way tax or form. So if you're going to be successful, right, you're going to be writing a tax to all of them. All of them are available in the public markets, or they will be soon in the public markets, for someone to invest in a no-fee, no-carry index fund. And so you have to think about your IRR as I've got to beat that with a thousand basis points to justify anyone giving you capital in the private markets.

Harry Stebbings

You mentioned town. I had JD on the show. Really like him. I've known him since the plan days. I'm pissed off about that one because he started the company when he left. And I remember talking to him about it when he saw it. And he was doing something in some terrible space. No offense. He'll agree with me. And then he obviously pivoted.

Venky Ganesan

Tax, I think they were doing something in tax and pivot. Thank

Harry Stebbings

you. I'm too old for this shit.

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode
“Venture is an asymmetric game. You lose the dollars you invest, but you can make 10x if you're right. And that asymmetry means that the sins of omissions are way higher than the sins of commissions. … You only see the deals we do, right? You don't see the deals we pass. But the most expensive mistakes venture capitalists make are the deals they passed, not the deals they did.” — Venky Ganesan, The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

The host was pressing Ganesan on whether investors like him have stopped being disciplined about price. This was his explanation of why venture firms pay up to get into deals.

The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch · 2026-10-05 Permalink → Listen →
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch Around 16:11 into the episode
Venky Ganesan

differentness out there, we definitely pay up. So definitely call us.

Harry Stebbings

Yeah, you do. And every time I'm like, man, look paying up. And you prove me wrong. Like you you're right and I'm proved wrong when I'm like God They're not disciplined on price and so I guess I'm questioning Does Ownership just need to completely reshape how we think about TAMs and market sizing?

Venky Ganesan

Let's think about when people pay up people just sometimes pay up to be able to win the deal I think some sometimes people pay up because they're able to see a bigger TAM than the other investor and in those cases you're not actually paying a higher market price you're able to see that the opportunity is bigger and therefore you're willing to see that possibility. Now sometimes you're going to be right, sometimes you're going to be wrong. So to me, I don't necessarily think it's just price. Sometimes you don't see the TAM, you're just trying to win the deal and that's what the price it takes. Then you're just a clear price taker. And that happens too. The problem is venture is an asymmetric game. You lose the dollars you invest, but you can make 10x if you're right. And that asymmetry means that the sins of omissions are way higher than the sins of commissions. What do I mean by this? You only see the deals we do, right? You don't see the deals we pass. But the most expensive mistakes venture capitalists make are the deals they passed, not the deals they did.

Harry Stebbings

When you say that, what's the most memorable past that haunts you? What

Venky Ganesan

is it? My most memorable past was that I was a young board member at a company called Plaxo, which had an incredible board. Mike Moritz, Ram Sri Ram, Tim Kugel from Yahoo, and Little Unknown Me, and Sean Parker, and Todd Massanis, and was the founder and Cameron Ren. Sean had some challenges on that board and was asked to leave that board because I was the only person within 10 years of his age in that group. He was telling me he was going to Boston and he's going to work with his college dropout. And he's like, you should get involved. And I'm like, Sean, you just got booted out of this board and I have no idea what I'm doing. And I didn't even take that meeting. And I probably had the opportunity to write a $50,000 check. And those seed rounds were different. They were million dollar seed rounds.

Harry Stebbings

That's a tough one. What was Sean like back then?

Speaker names from our own diarization · position estimated from where the line sits in the episode

Collections They Appear In

Startups & Venture