I sat down with Menlo Ventures partner Shawn Carolan this week to talk about his early investment in Uber.
Menlo, if you remember, led Ubers Series B and has made a hefty sum over the year selling shares in the ride-hailing company.
Ill have more on that later; for now, I want to share some of the insights Carolan had on his experience ditching venture capital to become a founder.Around when Menlo made its first investment in Uber, Carolan began taking a step back from the firm and building Handle, a startup that built tools to help people be more productive.
Despite years of hard work, Handle was ultimately a failure.
Carolan said he shed a lot of tears over its demise, but used the experience to connect more intimately with founders and to offer them more candid, authentic advice.People in the valley are always achievement-oriented; its always about the next thing and crushing it and whatever, Carolan told TechCrunch.
When [Handle] shut down, I had this spreadsheet of all the people who I felt like I disappointed: Seed investors who invested in me, all the people at Menlo and my friends who had tweeted out early stuff.
It was a long spreadsheet of like 60 people.
And when I started a sabbatical, what I said was Im going to go connect with everyone and apologize.Today, Carolan encourages founders to own their vulnerabilities.Its OK to admit when youre wrong, he said.
Now I can see it on [founders] faces, I can see when theyre scared.
And theyre not going to say theyre scared but I know its tough.
This is one of the toughest things that youre going to go through.
Now I can be there emotionally for these founders and I can say heres how you do it, heres how you talk to your team and heres what you share.
A lot of founders feel like they have to do this alone and thats why you have to getcomfortable with your vulnerability.After Handle shuttered, Carolan returned to Menlo full time and made the firm a boatload of money from Rokus IPO and now Ubers.
Anyway, thought those were some nice anecdotes that should be shared since most of our feeds are dominated by Silicon Valley hustle porn.Want more TechCrunch newsletters Sign uphere.
Ok, on to other newsIPO cornerFunds on funds on fundsThere were so many fund announcements this week; heres a quick list.Extra CrunchLots of great new exclusive content for our Extra Crunch subscribers is on the site, including this deep dive into the challenges of transportation startup profits.
Plus: When to ditch a nightmare customer, before they kill your startup; The right way to do AI in security; and The definitive Niantic reading guide.LawsuitsSinema, that one MoviePass competitor, has run into its fair share of bumps in the road.
TechCrunchs Brian Heater hopped on the phone with the startups CEO this week to learn more about those bumps, why its terminating accounts en masse, a class-action lawsuit its battling and more.Photo by Stephen McCarthy / RISE via SportsfileStartup capitalBattlefield!TechCrunchs Startup Battlefield brings the worlds top early-stage startups together on one stage to compete for non-dilutive prize money, and the attention of media and investors worldwide.
Heres a quick update on some of our BF winners and finalists:#EquitypodIf you enjoy this newsletter, be sure to check out TechCrunchs venture-focused podcast, Equity.
In this weeks episode, availablehere, Crunchbase News editor-in-chief Alex Wilhelm, myself and Phil Libin, the founder of Evernote and AllTurtles, chat about the importance of IPOs.
Plus, in a special Equity Shot, Alex and I unpack the Uber S-1.