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Demystifying the conversations we're already here at RRE and with our portfolio companies. In each episode, your hosts, Will Porteous, Raju Rishi, and Jason Black will dive deeply into topics that are shaping the future, from satellite technology to digital health, to venture investing, and much more.
Raju: Favorite boxer of all time? Who’s your favorite boxer?
Vic: Tyson.
Raju: Nice.
Vic: Hands down.
Raju: Nice.
Vic: I know it’s not [unintelligible 00:00:05], it’s not Ali, but Tyson hands—he’s just, he’s so fast, so powerful, he knows how to use his legs—
Raju: And his teeth. And his teeth.
Vic: And his teeth. He knows how to bite an ear off [crosstalk 00:00:17]—
Raju: [laugh].
Vic: The classic peekaboo style, that is very hard.
Will: I’m Will Porteous.
Raju: And I’m Raju Rishi. Welcome to RRE POV, the show in which we record the conversations we’re already having among ourselves, our entrepreneurs, and industry leaders for you to listen in on.
Raju: Hello, listeners. This is Raju Rishi and I’m joined today with our newest partner at RRE Ventures, Vic Singh. So, Vic has had an amazing life journey. He emigrated from Guyana at a young age, Grew up in Jamaica, Queens, in a tough neighborhood. Received a Bachelor degree in mechanical engineering from UPenn and an MBA from Columbia.
He’s worked at numerous venture capital firms throughout the years, including RRE—many years ago, and back again now, thankfully for us—DFJ Gotham and Chart Venture Partners, and was a co-founder of Eniac Ventures for many, many years. Finally, he’s the founder of four startups, including NearVerse in the networking space, Tracks in the experiential graph space, Kanvas in the mobile creativity space, and Originalis, his most recent startup, in the AI space. And finally, he’s back home at RRE. Welcome, Vic.
Vic: Hey, Raju. Thank you. Great to be here. Great to be back home. As Jim [Force 00:01:43] said, “Beam me back up to the mothership.”
Raju: Absolutely, my friend. So weirdly, too many similarities in our stories. Two brown guys, immigrated to the US at a young age. Grew up in tough New York City neighborhoods. Each started multiple companies. Both are partners at RRE, and most importantly, incredible hair and great skin.
Vic: Really good hair. It’s, you know, it’s the La Mer for the hair, and it’s the GATSBY Japanese pomade for the hair.
Raju: Oh, my God.
Vic: [laugh].
Raju: You have the good tips. I mean, I’ve gotten these from Vic over the years. I don’t have the budget for La Mer.
Vic: I didn’t—so I was going to make a caveat on La Mer. I did not start with La Mer. It was snail cream from Korea, I got married very young, and I tell all my older friends, like, if you’re not married young, like, start now because my wife really saved me by making me moisturize all these years. So, it was only after I sold my startup, I was able to afford La Mer.
Raju: Oh, my God. It’s worth it. Like, I could just—I’m looking at right now good skin, man. And my tips are exfoliation—
Vic: Oh yes.
Raju: —and exercise, and I use this Peter Thomas Roth eye patches.
Vic: Ooh, oh, the eye patch. You need the eye—especially brown guys, we have the dark circles. They don’t go away.
Raju: Yeah. You got your dark circles.
Vic: We don’t have the puffiness, right, soo—
Raju: I know. I know. So, I got these eye patches. They’re fantastic. People think I’m really weird. I wear these eye pa—I go into Sephora with my daughter, yeah, yeah—
Vic: [crosstalk 00:03:15] daughters are crazy at Sephora.
Raju: Oh, I know. And so, I’ve got two girls, my wife, I also have two boys, but, you know, the girls, they love to go to Sephora. And so, I go in there, and my daughter will be shopping, and I’ll go back to the Peter Thomas Roth section, and I get these eye patches, and I put them on my skin. They look like… I don’t know, they look like—I don’t know what they look like. They look like teardrops, but they’re kind of, you know, weird shape. So, I put them on and some of them are gold and some of them are green and some of them are blue.
Vic: I like gold.
Raju: Yeah. And I’ll wear it in the mall for, like, 15, 20 minutes. And my daughter’s like, “You cannot be seen with me.” [laugh].
Vic: [laugh]. I love it.
Raju: Okay.
Vic: By the way, don’t exfoliate too much. That’s, like, a once a week thing because you got to get your pores, like, open, but, like, not too much.
Raju: Oh yeah, we’ll have to do a different podcast one day, just on skincare. Like, we just got to do that. This is awesome. All right, let’s start off some questions around your early life, Vic. I’m honored to work with you, I got to be honest.
Vic: Oh, likewise. Likewise.
Raju: It is a true pleasure. I know we were sharing information about you joining the firm, and we got some feedback from other GPs at other firms, like, oh man, these, this is going to be a dynamic duo over here, and I’m so looking forward to it. But let’s start off with some questions around your early life, okay? So, what was the family—and you were born in Guyana, and you left at an early age. What was the family’s impetus to leave?
Vic: Yeah, you know, I was born in Guyana. It was a fairly obscure country. I think it’s known now because they did break oil, but like, back then, and even still now, you know, very impoverished country in South America. So geographically, South American, culturally, Caribbean, Ethnically, Indian. Ancestors came over from India in the 1850s, indentured servants.
And when we got our independence, it was kind of led by, like, a dictator, essentially. And I’m the youngest of six, so my parents, like, really wanted a better life for us, so they came to America, and they left the six of us with my grandma. And they thought it would take them, like, six months to come back, right, after finding their footing and whatnot, but it took them eight years. And I was the youngest. I was a baby when they left, and my grandma, God bless her, raised all six of us and took care of us while my parents found their footing in America and came back over when I was eight years old, when I met them for the first time. So, what a wild, wild experience and journey.
Raju: Yeah. That is wild. I… actually, similarly, my dad moved over when I was a couple years old, and I didn’t see him for a few years as well. But your story is, like, more profound. I mean, I can’t imagine growing up for that length of time without really knowing your father or mother, but obviously your grandmother did a great job.
So, I understand the impetus. And you grew up in Jamaica, Queens. That’s where they kind of established shop. You know, not the world’s safest neighborhood, frankly. And you pretty much lived there for a entirety of your youth, right? So, any important lessons that you had there? Maybe just describe the circumstances a bit so people get context of who you are. And then, just like, I would love to hear if you had any important lessons that you kind of retain today from your life experiences there.
And then, I’ll ask you a second question, which is, every one of us has inflection points that could have taken you in a different path. I’d love to hear one or two of your inflection points that led you to where you are now, and had you taken a different path, would have led you in a different direction. So first, start with the lessons, if that’s okay.
Vic: Yeah, I think just describing that experience, it really ingrained in me, like, hard work, and like, authenticity. I was always, like, very ambitious. Even when I was in Guyana, I was like, “I’m coming to America,” right?
Raju: [laugh].
Vic: And actually, when I got here, I was surprised. One, it was freezing. Like, freezing, right? This is, like, the end of March, so I look back, and I’m like, hey, actually, it wasn’t that cold. It was, like, in the 50s degrees—
Raju: [laugh]. That’s hilarious.
Vic: —[crosstalk 00:07:21] freezing cold. And I thought the streets were going to be paved with gold, but they clearly were not. In Jamaica, Queens, back in 1985—I’m dating myself here—was, like, really going through—it’s one of the two, I think, neighborhoods still today that hasn’t been gentrified in Queens, and it was kind of the height of the crack epidemic. So guns, gangs, violence, cracked vials, like, everywhere, and I was like, “Wow.” But it wasn’t, like… it’s one of those things where you kind of, when you look back, you’re like, whoa, I had a really crazy, like, upbringing, but when you’re there, you know, it’s crazy, you know, guns are being pulled out on you, and people are coming after you and fight and, you know, and threatening your life and all this stuff, but it kind of was just part of growing up, you know?
It’s like you had your crews, a little bit Boyz n the Hood, right? It’s like everyone kind of knew, like, hey, this guy, Vic, like, he’s kind of ambitious and really smart. Like, let’s protect him, you know?
Raju: That’s cool.
Vic: Yeah. Like, there was nothing about, like, oh, you’re a nerd or anything. It’s just like, let’s take care of this guy. He’s going to make it out of the hood, you know?
Raju: Oh, wow.
Vic: That’s, like, their thing, you know? But I was still part of them. Like, I still did all the things you do in the hood growing up, which I won’t really talk about that deeply, but I had a lot of—
Raju: [laugh].
Vic: [laugh].
Raju: It's a family show. It’s a family show, man [laugh].
Vic: Yeah, exactly. I had a lot of fun. I had a lot of great friends. I lost a couple friends, frankly, from street violence, you know, and that was tough. But it really, like, taught me, like, grit, like, just a lot of grit, a lot of, like, literally, physical grit, physical survival. And also, like, it’s okay to, like, be who you are and do what you need to do.
And, you know, I was lucky enough to be valedictorian of my high school. I was actually valedictorian of primary—so I’m not bragging here, but it’s just a funny story. When I came to the country—I think Raju has a similar story—they actually thought that like, I wasn’t smart at all, so they put me in special ed because my Caribbean accent was so thick, and by the time I graduated primary, I was valedictorian primary, and I ended my speech saying, [in Caribbean accent]“To the mothers and the fathers, I want to thank you very much [crosstalk 00:09:20].” [laugh].
Raju: [laugh]. That’s hilarious.
Vic: And by the time I was Valedictorian my high school, it was different. It was like Ayn Rand, right? It was like, with individualism comes pain. With pain comes glory, right? And I would spend the summers, like, spreading cloth in a garment factory with my dad and my brothers, and four bucks an hour to buy all my, like, Tommy Hilfiger and Timberland gear and all that. So, tell you the value of a dollar, the value of survival, the value of loyalty, of friends, a lot of grit, and the value of, like, just ambition, and being yourself.
Raju: Yeah. That’s amazing, man. Really, really fascinating story. And you’re right. I grew up in the Bronx, Co-Op City. It was tough.
Vic: [unintelligible 00:09:59] that’s hard. That’s hard.
Raju: Yeah, it was—look, they’re all hard. But you don’t think about it when you’re a kid. You don’t think it’s hard. You don’t think—but, like, then when you have kids, you’re, like, I would never raise my kids there if I had that choice. We didn’t have choices back then. But like, you don’t really think about it as a tough life. You think about it as just… life, you know? And really, really good lessons.
Any inflection points? Any things that, yeah, that could have, like—I always like to ask this question because I think there are—people are meant to be where they are, so I think you probably would have found your way to RRE today anyway, but any moments in time where you said yourself, like, “Hey, I could have really gone a different route here,” you know? Not necessarily in a bad way, but just in a different way. So, anything like that in your history?
Vic: A hundred percent. I’m trying to think about the PG-friendly version of this. So, there were moments where—you know, when you’re young, you think the world is yours, you’re you know, kind of very cocky, and you are influenced, you want to be cool, right? You want to be cool. You want to be part of, like, the coolest crews, those crews were different than what, you know, what average people are aware of. But there were points where I could have gone—
Raju: Astray.
Vic: Astray.
Raju: Yeah.
Vic: —you know, without giving you the details. And [unintelligible 00:11:24] pretty remarkable ways, actually, where I was kind of like, as I reflect on, I was kind of like toeing the line, right. Which I guess a little bit is my DNA anyway, of constantly t—but like, doing all the things academically, and like, crushing that, but also, like, crushing, like, the streets, right? Like, being part of that street culture growing up was really important to me, actually. Like, really, really important. And it, you know, one or two different decisions, and it would have went astray.
Raju: Gone a different pathway.
Vic: Yeah.
Raju: Yeah.
Vic: Yeah, yeah.
Raju: Wow. Well, we’re glad you picked this path. And as I said, I do believe in a little bit of fate. I think that you’re meant to have impact in certain impact in life, and you’re meant to sort of meet certain people, and you’re meant to be in specific roles. And I don’t mean to be, like, sort of like, hey, you don’t have a choice in any of this matter, but like, I think you would have figured out anyway, had you gone different routes. But anyway.
Vic: Yeah, I tend to agree. I think there’s destiny, but you manifest your destiny, right? There was a counterbalance inflection, sort of, point. Because of my academic, sort of, interest, like, in physics, very deeply in physics, I would actually spend time at college programs. So NYU, Brandeis University, schools like that, and that actually was my first opening to, like a whole other world, and that kind of counterbalance the other influence of potentially going astray. So, that was another, like, a counter-inflection point, I think.
Raju: That’s really cool. That’s really cool. Well, you know, let’s move on to the startup part of your life. I know you did a bunch of fantastic academic work, but let’s move on to the startup thing. You’re definitely a builder, and my belief is that multi-time entrepreneurs make the best investors: they’ve been through a lot of the issues that entrepreneurs are going to face; and they can give cogent advice; they can be empathetic when needed; they can speak from real life experiences which is different than textbook experiences, like, that’s just different.
And frankly, in a really funny, you know, sort of small-world situation, we met during your first startup, and I’d love for you to, sort of, you know, just talk a little bit about your impetus to start that first one, and maybe a little bit about that particular startup because I think it is actually really kind of circular in weird ways. And then we’ll talk a little bit about Tracks and Kanvas as well, and any key lessons that you’ve learned from those. But let’s start with NearVerse if that’s okay.
Vic: Yeah, NearVerse was my first startup. I wouldn’t say I always wanted to be an entrepreneur, but I always wanted to own my own destiny, and I think in business, the way to do that is to become a founder. And I do think, you know, there’s all different types of successful investors. And to your point, being a founder, the lessons are timeless, and we’ll talk about that, how that influences investing. But after college, I just didn’t have a lot of money, right, so I couldn’t go and, like, start a company, so I worked as a full stack developer.
And then, you know, I was lucky enough to land at RRE after business school, and man, for a few years that I worked at RRE, I met so many founders, and I was like, God, I really want to build. I got to build. I really—It’s, you know, it’s just, like, it’s getting really bad now. And my friend Boris in college, one of the smartest guys I know, he’s M&T, had this really incredible idea.
And I’m all about really big ideas, so NearVerse is basically a peer-to-peer mesh network in proximity that would allow you to essentially create these ad-hoc mesh networks and do very interesting things. The biggest thing, the most controversial, was sharing bandwidth. So, you could actually, like, with NearVerse, push up a video file—and back then there wasn’t even, like, 3G; 3G had just come—push up a video file, and then split the packets across a local mesh network, and then reassemble it over short-range wireless, and get, like, 5x the speed, right? So, it’s like, mobile version of BitTorrent. I was like, oh my God, this is going to be massive.
Like, I remember we met, we were raising our round—so we teamed up. I was like, I got to do this. I got to be a founder, it’s a big idea, I’m really into this, I’m still very technical, Boris is a force, like, let’s get after it, right, and we’re going around raising our Series A—because back then there wasn’t a seed; your first real round is an A—and we met with, like, Jim Goetz, incredible at Sequoia, he’s like, “I’m actually—like, I do really good. Like, my deals are pretty successful, but honestly, like, there’s only, like, one or two really disruptive companies I meet a year at Sequoia, and you guys could be one of them, and it’s just so big.” And he’s like, “But I want you to meet John Donovan. John Donovan is the CTO of AT&T. He’s my friend, CTO of the whole thing. If John likes this, we’re going to do it.” We go, we meet with John. John pretty much kicks us out of the room, right?
Raju: [laugh].
Vic: Like, two misfits are rolling in here—
Raju: That’s hilarious.
Vic: —you’re telling me you’re building this, like, platform that’s going to, like, give away AT&T’s bandwidth to Verizon users. [crosstalk 00:16:43] we got a whole credit and debit system. But anyway, you know, if blockchain was there back then, that’s probably what we would have done, right, but on—
Raju: Right, absolutely. A hundred percent.
Vic: And I think your company’s doing that. And he’s like, “Just get out of my office.” So, we didn’t get money from Sequoia, but we did raise our Series A, and off we went and learned so much, which I’m happy to get into. But what an incredible journey with Boris.
Raju: Yeah, I was lucky enough. I had started a company called Rave Wireless—
Vic: I remember. I tried to recruit you as our CTO. You’re like, “Dude.” [laugh].
Raju: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, this is where the story gets very circuitous and fun. Basically, what we were doing at Rave Wireless is we had an MVNO, which was, we were buying minutes from, like, Sprint, and AT&T, and other networks and creating a college campus phone, effectively, branded college campus phone. And so, Vic and Boris approached me and said, “Hey, you want to be CTO?” And I said, “No, I don’t want how to do that,” but I became an advisor to the company, and eventually I became a board member.
And the long story shortened is that Vic, myself, and Boris are now working together on this other company that Eniac had invested in, and RRE had invested in, and where Boris is the founder and CEO called Catio. So, I think great people always find a way to work together. It’s that fate part of it that I was talking about earlier on. I think we would have met anyway, and we would have figured out how to work together anyway. But now we’re there, doing it again together.
But I do love that story because it was an ambitious idea, and just the marketplace kind of tempered it. Because, you know, at one point I remember at NearVerse, we were going to basically arbitrage data, you know, and sort of give people credits and debits. And then at one point, the carriers made data free and it was no longer, like, an issue, right? It was, like—and then now they’ve they shifted back. And so, voice was always the one area where—they turned voice free, and then they had made data expensive, and then they shifted the other way, and made data free and made voice expensive, and now they’ve shifted back the other way. But that massive tectonic shift with a handful of big players really shifted the trajectory of that business. But it was a fun startup.
Vic: A hundred percent. A hundred percent. And you know, you getting on our board was incredible. Like, you had all the seasoning of actually going through the startup journey that we hadn’t gone through. And that also taught me, like, from a technical stack perspective—and I don’t want to get too technical—but like, the universe was like, basically the bottom of the stack is a platform, right?
And what we actually ended up doing, to your point, because you needed density, you needed a lot of people together, like, using this thing, so you could either do a deal with the carrier, which John Donovan was not going to do with us, right, or you go and try to acquire users en masse. And the way that we did that was we built a reference application that allowed users to share media, right? And what I learned there is, like, horizontality, like, you can build really big companies, but you have to, like, showcase it through, like, this vertical reference app, but you have to make sure that that is big enough that if that becomes the business, that is a big business because you may just get trapped there as well, right? So, just so many lessons learned in that first journey.
Raju: Yeah. That was amazing, though. I really loved working with you two at the time. And let’s move on to Tracks and Kanvas. Can you describe those apps, and then relay what your major learnings were for each?
Vic: For sure. So, at this point—so NearVerse didn’t work, but I wasn’t done, right? I had to keep going. And during my time at NearVerse, I had met an incubator fund that was just doing apps, and they’re like, hey, come over here. Let’s brainstorm some ideas together.
This is when social was really social, and mobile really started to take off. It’s like when Foursquare just had become a thing. And so, I had an idea. I said, “You know, if I think about, like, graphs, if I think about social graphs, there’s, like, social discovery, where you’re meeting strangers, there are social networks where you know people and you’re coming together, but then how about if you think about the atomic unit as the experience.” Right?
So, you and I are at a party. We may or may not know each other. We met at the party. The party is the atomic unit, right? You go to a conference, the conference is the atomic unit, right? But the atomic units don’t have to be ephemeral, right? They could be interest-based, right? It could be, hey, this group has a share a love of art, or a love of different types of music. So, then I thought about it and I said, “There’s a different type of graph to be built.” And I coined the term ‘the experience graph.’ So, Trax was founded on the basis of bringing people together through shared experiences. And that was, like the genesis, or sort of like the innovation on, like, social atomic units that I thought was pretty interesting to build Tracks.
Raju: Still an interesting paradigm, honestly. Still an interesting paradigm. And people, you know, like, concerts, are, you know, sort of an interesting—whether you’re there in person or not—you know, they’re sort of separated by weird boundary conditions. I kind of like that one. It’s hard to sort of grasp for, like, just at that very sort of philosophical level, but the tangible level is really easy to grasp. And then, what about Kanvas? What about Kanvas? What was that?
Vic: So, what happened was with Tracks, we raised—actually, we were, like, on the stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, right? Which is, like—
Raju: That was the marquee back then.
Vic: That was the thing. And that’s not easy to get on the stage of. And [laugh] I remember Jeff Clavier was, like, my judge. He was one of the judges. He’s now a great friend, obviously, but, um, we’re up there about to do the demo, and my CTO goes up, and the thing crashed. Like, the app crashed on stage in front of, like, all these—I’m like, oh my God. And I’m trying to, like, explain myself out of it while he’s restarting the thing, right? And it was just—but I got—you know, we did it and it worked out.
We didn’t win Disrupt, but that’s okay. And then I got an email from Alex Welsh, founder of Photobucket. So, he has sold Photobucket for, like, $300 million. He’s, like, “No one understands what you’re doing. I’m Alex Welch. I get it. Don’t worry about the app crashing. Let’s talk.” So, he ended up leading around and took the board seat and helped a lot with, like, product.
This is when I got into, like, becoming, like, a really product-obsessed founder. And it started to work. But then, like, we got—honestly, if I was to do that one over, I would have quickly gone into messaging because what happened is, the messaging apps came, from GroupMe to WhatsApp and others, and they started to add a lot of these features, and it became kind of like that, like, a messaging thing, and I knew I just didn’t want to build too many things. I would have built messaging. But that ate our lunch, and I saw it.
And one of the things I tell founders [unintelligible 00:23:45] lessons, like, you are the only one that actually really knows if your startup is working. When you wake up in the morning and you’re brushing your teeth and you look at yourself in the mirror, you know if this thing is working or not. Then you put on your game face, and you do your thing right. And that comes from a feeling that I—I was like, you know, I don’t think this is working, right? However, like people may—like, Ed Sim wrote me my first check right, like, at Boldstar, and Boldstar was just getting started. And so, I wanted to take care of my people, but I also—and this leads to Kanvas your next thing—like, I was kind of also, like, a crazy consumer-founder. Like, I’m different now.
Raju: No, you haven’t stopped being crazy, just as an FYI.
Vic: [laugh].
Raju: Which I love [laugh].
Vic: So, I would come into the office, like, on Mondays. I’m like, “Guys, this is what we’re doing.” And they’re like, “Oh God, here he goes again.” But I had such a crack team of engineers and designers that they would first object, obviously, like they should, and by the end of the week, they would have the prototype built.
Raju: Amazing.
Vic: So, I was like, you know, I think we could actually take some of what we have and, like, do, like, really interesting, creative things, and that kind of led to, like, a prototype of Kanvas, which I’ll talk about in a second.
Raju: So, did Tracks become Kanvas?
Vic: Exactly. But it was like a really hard pivot. So hard, like, new incorporation and everything. But I made all my investors whole. I had a draconian investor that owned way too much, and you know, how investors do these recaps [unintelligible 00:25:22]? I, as a founder, executed a pay-to-play recap.
Raju: Oh, my God.
Vic: I literally was the guy that did it, but as a founder.
Raju: You did—you were a pay-to-play on yourself?
Vic: I wrote pay-to-play on myself [laugh].
Raju: [laugh].
Vic: And I made them all whole, except for that draconian one, and I got them down from literally over 50% to 10—
Raju: Wow.
Vic: —of the company, and it became Kanvas. And I didn’t have any money, right, so we literally couldn’t make payroll. I would call one of my investors, like, “Dude, can you wire, like, 25k to make payroll?” Like, “All right, you got it.” And so, I had long walks and talks with my CTO, and I was like, “Look, man, I think this thing’s going to work—Kanvas. Just give me three months. Let me talk to your wife. Like, look, give me three months, like, for free. Like, you’re going to have great equity. I’ll pay you back 3X. Like, this is going to crush. Like, trust me.” And a lot of long walks, and they decided to do it. Like, they stuck with me. And, you know—
Raju: That’s amazing.
Vic: Yeah.
Raju: That’s loyalty. That’s a team loyalty thing. And, you know, and it’s not just blind loyalty. You know, you had to convince them that this was the right area to focus in on because, you know, blind loyalty doesn’t always end well.
Vic: Correct.
Raju: But, you know, that’s amazing that you were able to make that happen [laugh]. I’ve never heard somebody put a pay-to-play on themselves. I’ve just—okay, that’s just—all right. Wow.
Vic: Yeah. [unintelligible 00:26:46].
Raju: I mean, that’s breaking new ice here, you know? I was like—[laugh].
Vic: I play you, you pay me [laugh].
Raju: Yeah, yeah, exactly. That’s so funny. And so, Kanvas, you know, tell us about that a bit, and then what the journey and the outcome was, and then, you know, just the lessons that you took away from that, that you impart upon the founders that you work with now.
Vic: Yes. So, that was an incredible ride. Like, really incredible. We were built—I’m proud of all my startups, but the product was beautiful. I got a text the other day from my sister-in-law. She’s a doctor, and she’s like, “I was telling someone that I invested in your, like, Kanvas startup all these years,” and the doctor friend was like, “You know the guy that built Kanvas? What? He’s a celebrity." Like, the product was so good. But basically, it was a mobile platform for creativity, and it was way ahead of its time. Like, we had AI art, we had animated, live special effects. We had live video streaming with special effects. We had music on—talking about musically, music on top of videos. We had painting, all the [unintelligible 00:27:55]—
Raju: What year was this? What year was this, just for our listeners’ purposes?
Vic: So, the company was started—was technically 2014.
Raju: Wow. Okay, so you had all this stuff in 2014.
Vic: 2014. Like, and it was sick. And I built a whole, like, virtual economy around it, right? So basically, I said, hey, I learned R, and I ran all the data through R, and I figured out, like, your magic numbers for attention and engagement and all this stuff, and I was like, how do we drive to these magic numbers? Let’s, like, reward people, right?
So, we created this virtual economy with this coin system. So, you could, like, buy these coins and make your Kanvas incredible, right, like, with different media assets, different gifs, different animated special effects, whatever, or you could earn these coins by creating, by sharing, by inviting friends, by engaging, by liking. So, we had a whole virtual economy that drove the behavior and the usage of this system and this platform. You know, I as a little sidebar consumer is really, really hard, but people think it’s just lightning in a bottle. It’s partially lightning in a bottle, and a big part of it is science.
And the gaming guys know this well. They engineer the science behind retention, engagement, growth, virality, and we engineered that with our virtual economy, and our coin system, powered by lightning-in-a-bottle features. And it just worked. Like, I went—you know, many visits to Apple, and Google, One Infinite Loop, they were like, “I’m featuring it,” app of the month, like, top in this category, top overall. Like, it really worked.
And so, co-founders were happy. We raised a fresh seed round, right? And then it started working. I went out for the A, and then parallel—because I like to do multiple things at once, for better or worse, I don’t know what’s wrong with me—in parallel, I’m doing business development relationships because I’m turning it into a platform now. I’m like, we have this major—like, this social network piece, but let’s decompose it to, like, a tooling, like, the tools, the editing tools.
Let’s decompose that into a keyboard. You have this connected platform. So, I call—I was doing business development essentially. So, I called up all the major messaging apps. I was like, hey, do you want to partner with us? We’ll give you some tooling. Blah, blah, blah. Facebook said yes. Others said yes.
Raju: Interesting. So, you were incorporating some of those features into those products?
Vic: Yes. Yes, natively.
Raju: Okay. Really cool.
Vic: Yeah, yeah.
Raju: Really cool.
Vic: So, if you went to Facebook Messenger back then, I think it was like the end of 2014, beginning of 2015 you could go and say, like, create something cool, and our app would actually power that creation, which was awesome. And one of the folks I called was AOL. I was like, I don’t think the instant messaging thing is really a thing, but why don’t I—you know, I’m going to do holistic BD, right? And I talked with AOL, the head of that product, and at the end—it was like an hour long conversation—literally, at the end of the conversation, it’s like, “I don’t think our messaging app is like that great, but like, whatever. Like, do you want us to just, like, buy you? Because I love everything you just said.”
Raju: [laugh].
Vic: I was like, “Ehh, I’m going big on this one.” Like, I was literally in the Valley on raising the round. I think I was coming out of a meeting with, like, Trinity or something. I forget. I was like, “No.” But we had more and more talks, and it felt right.
Raju: It just made sense.
Vic: It made sense. It made sense.
Raju: Wow. All right, that’s really good. How long did it take you to, like, get married? Like, if you sold a company in an hour, you know what I mean? [laugh].
Vic: Exactly. Eighteen months after launch, we got acquired by AOL. Tim Armstrong really… was very kind to me. He said, “Vic, you’re, like, a crazy guy. We’re holding you back. We got a lot of process. We got a lot of rules. Just do what you want, and just come back to me if people were getting in your way.” He allowed me to acquire a startup when I was there.
Raju: Wow.
Vic: Yeah. So, I bought an animation startup. I transitioned the business to a developer platform. We got to, like, tens of millions of monthly active users as a developer platform. And I hung up my operating hat after that experience, gave the keys of the business to Kwame, who was then my apprentice, and is now my co-founder at Originalis, and Greg, who was then my CTO, and left it in good hands. So.
Raju: Oh, man. Amazing journey. Amazing journey. All right, the last one I want to talk about, the last startup I want to talk about is Originalis. And I love this one [laugh]. I love this one because it’s so true to where venture needs to go. And I’m super passionate about the fact that a lot of what we do in venture capital—not all of it, definitely not all of it, but parts of it—can be benefited by AI and can leverage AI to make it much more frictionless and much faster.
So, first and foremost, describe Originalis, and just for our listeners’, you know, sort of edification, you know, before Vic decided to join RRE, you know, we hadn’t even been recruiting him at the time, we actually were investors in Originalis because we saw this as a real cornerstone for what venture needs and what venture needs to become. But for our listeners, tell them what Originalis is going to do for venture and what capabilities it’s going to provide.
Vic: Yes, so I’m going to give you the one-liner, and you’re going to laugh at me because it sounds very venture capital-y, but it is true. So, it is the intelligent, composable operating system for the private capital markets. And each of those words has very deep meaning to me, and I thought very deeply about that, although the people kind of make fun of me because it sounds jargony. But it is intelligent, like, it will know things and see around the corners that otherwise you require humans to know.
It is composable. Every venture firm works differently, right? There’s many vectors of venture. There is seed, sector, geography, size of team, AUM, fund size, strategy, portfolio, so many things, right? So, it needs to be composable to how you do your work. And operating system, it will sit in the middle of the stack and at the top of the stack, but also operating system, meaning this will be how you operate, like, you actually operate.
So, that’s just a description of the sort of concept. You know this one, this startup, is the most unique one that I’ve ever had the privilege to start. And I’ll say this, like, founder-market fit, we always say this is really, really important, and it couldn’t be, like, clearer here, right? Like, honestly, like, we were incredible—like, what we built at Kanvas was incredible, but honestly, like, our audience was Gen Z. Like, I’m not Gen Z, right? Like, I mean, that’s a long time ago, but even—I’m a young guy, I’m a young, youthful guy—
Raju: Dude, you don’t look a day over, like, 62 [laugh]. No no, yeah. No, you look young.
Vic: I’m not a teenager, right? So, [crosstalk 00:35:15]—
Raju: No, but good skin care, good hair care.
Vic: Yeah, great.
Raju: [laugh].
Vic: And the mind of a youth, but this one was like the culmination of almost two decades of being in this industry, from the time that Jim and Stu gave me a shot at the business here at RRE, when it was a cottage industry, there were a thousand GPs in North America. And it’s grown dramatically. I’m happy that it’s grown, generating massive economic impact, but while it’s grown, there’s also a lot of bloat, a lot of process, a lot of things that we do in this industry that we probably could be way more efficient at, to give us time back to do the art of the business, right? And the art of the business starts, soup to nuts, looking a founder in the eye. Like, are they a killer, right?
You’re not going to get an AI to do that for you, right? And then you have to make the investment, like, you’re on boards, like, you got the 11 o’clock call, the good, the bad, the ugly. Should we sell the company? Should we go big? Should we fire this guy? Should we hire this guy? Like, I’ve got a bad board member. Like, all of that stuff is the art and the craft of venture, but from sourcing, diligence, analysis, winning, syndication, founder tooling, all of that, or could be a series of interconnected software modules to give you time back and give you leverage to do the art of the business.
Raju: Oh man, I love this. We’re going to do a whole podcast on Originalis. So, we’re not going to spend too much, too much more time on this, but suffice it to say, like, all of us at RRE believe in Vic’s vision here. And I think that there’s a whole litany of activities in venture that can benefit from AI, you know? It’s finding a bunch of—all of the opportunities.
You know, this is sort of like a relationship-oriented business, and you know, you’ll get leads from the people that you know, but frankly, you know, every deal that’s been invested in is published, and you should know about every single seed deal that’s in a particular category that you might care about. And it might not be the one that was referred to you by a partner that you know, but it might be the one that you kind of hit the nail on the head that might be the one that you should be investing in. And the platform gives you—that’s just a tip of the iceberg of things that the platform can give you capabilities around. So, I’m in love with this.
You know, we were lead in writing their first check into this, and we are delighted that Vic has done this, and we’re going to definitely leverage this capability inside of RRE, as are other firms. So, let’s not make it unique to RRE. Other people would leverage this as well, but I think it’s going to be pretty profound.
Vic: Raju, we’re going to make a lot of money on this. Is that on the record? That might be—that should go off the record, maybe. But we are compressing time here, my friend.
Raju: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Vic: After all these startups, doing it again like we know what we’re doing. We got access to everything. We got the team built. We got design partners signed up. We are running fast, baby.
Raju: Yeah. This is going to be fun. This is going to be fun. Let’s move to our third topic, which is venture capital. You’ve had the opportunity to work at numerous firms, which is amazing. Actually, you know, a lot of GPs just live and breathe at one single firm all their life, so they never get the collective wisdom, you know, the goods and the bads of various philosophies and ways of doing things.
You know, just from all your time across multiple firms—and obviously with Eniac, you were one of the co-founders, and there forever—what are, like, just two or three of the most important lessons learned in venture capital? So, that’d be the first question I ask. The second question I want to ask you is your particular areas of focus, so that, you know, listeners who are on this podcast kind of can frame hey, if I’ve got this particular, you know, idea or business, you know, should I be reaching out to Vic or Raju or Will or Jim or Sue? And the third is, what are your core decision-making principles? So first, let’s start with the most important lessons learned as an investor across your, you know, sort of many, many years as a VC?
Vic: So, many lessons learned, you know, from DFJ Gotham, Chart Venture Partners, which was a Homeland Security commercialization deep tech firm, RRE. Eniac was amazing. Like, if you think about it was the four of us that started, and we grew it up over 15 years to where it is now, which is incredible. But, like, if you think about it, each fund probably was like a different firm, right?
Raju: Mmhmn. Yeah.
Vic: From, like, a startup to, like, the second fund to your first institutional fund which is really your third, then you cross the chasm, you become more institutional, right? So, it was like many firms just in the Eniac cycle. So—
Raju: Yeah, absolutely.
Vic: —so I think that we need to remember the ‘venture’ in ‘venture capital’ first and foremost. I think, especially as the industry has grown, I think original thinking, not, you know, drink your own Kool-Aid style, but like, thinking first principles, thinking originally, will get you probably the best returns. Like, this is a business of outliers, and ironically, I have witnessed a radical reversion to the mean on thinking and originality, so I think that’s really important. The most important thing in this business is the founders and the LPs that give us capital to bless these founders and put us in business, right?
So, I’m not saying you need to be Mr. Founder-friendly and cheerlead all the time. Founders want the truth, and they don’t have time to waste, right? And you got to have the hard conversations, and you have to be very, very supportive, and you have to tell them the truth. And I think that people who haven’t founded companies, it’s okay.
Like, Fred Wilson was not a founder, like, Mike Moritz was not a founder. Like, that’s fine, but they have the empathy to understand what it is to, like, do something, from nothing, right, to, like, will and bend the universe. And so, we have to respect that. I’m not a big marketing type of guy. I like to put out content and stuff, my brand is built in the trenches, but founders, I think that’s really, really important.
I think another lesson is, like, how you make decisions, which I think is your third question, so we could talk about that a little bit later if you want, but I think decision-making is really important, and I think you want to do it with depth and speed. And that goes back a little bit to Originalis, which we’ll talk about another podcast. But I don’t like to meet a founder and, like, know absolutely nothing about what’s going on. I like to come in with a prepared mind. I think you win and sell better, and it tightens your aperture, and you know, like, exactly where you’re hunting to find those outliers.
And, yeah, there’s, like, so many more. Like, there’s basic stuff. Like, how do you do, you know, portfolio construction the right way, you know, how do you concentrated strategy? You know, are you flying for fund returners, you know, like, all of that stuff. But I really think it comes down to, like, the founders, the venture, and venture capital, and the prepared mind.
Raju: Those are really, really great. What are your areas of focus in, you know, let’s just say the near-term horizon? All of our areas of focus change over time. I think additionally, we at RRE have the luxury of investing in areas that are outside of our areas of focus because we meet a great founder. But you know, just some thoughts on, like, what are your areas of focus right now that you would love to see deals around?
Vic: A hundred percent. So, I am a thematic investor, but it’s really just to guide me to get to a prepared mind. It is all about the founders. Like, if you’re a killer, you’re a killer, right, and we will know that, and then we could get up to speed. But it’s really about the founders.
But I am a thematic investor. So, I lean into more technical things, but I’ve also learned that there are blind spots there around go-to-market shops, is this a science experiment? Can this be a really big company? Is there DNA on the founding team that’s thinking that way, or are they just trying to build cool things, right? So, with all that said, I try to roll out, like, a new theme a quarter, but it’s really under the umbrella of, like, a larger theme that I’m working on right now, that I’ve been working on for probably the last year or so.
I call it LXMs, the X is anything outside of language. And not just multi-modal models, but applications of large foundation models—or even small foundation models—to use cases that aren’t readily apparent, right? So, industrial intelligence, I’ll be putting out a post on that next week. Scientific intelligence is interesting to me. Gaming and how you use LXMs in gaming is very interesting to me. Real world data is very interesting to me.
And then the subgroup around LXMs are three core areas that I’m spending a lot of time in. One is unstructured data. I just think it’s such a hard problem, but if you could crack the knot in a vertical for unstructured data, you could build a really big company. The second is open-source and open-source AI. There’s a three-part thesis I put out on this about a year-and-a-half ago. I think with all of the DeepSeek thing, people are like, oh my God, like, open-source, but I’ve really been thinking pretty deeply around what’s happening in open-source. So.
Raju: Awesome. Those are great areas. And you know, obviously you can always reach out to RRE if you’ve got a startup that is looking for financing that, if you’re a killer—as Vic said—if you’re a killer, we want you. We want killers. And not Jeffrey Dahmer kind of killers.
Vic: [laugh].
Raju: We [laugh] want, like—yeah, exactly.
Vic: We don’t want to arm people here [laugh].
Raju: You know, let’s skip over the decision-making principles because I think they’re probably similar, and you’ve kind of touched on it, having a killer founder. Just to sort of wrap up, we always have this Gatling gun section where I just ask random questions. It’s actually my favorite part of the podcast because, you know, I control it [laugh]. So, I will ask you a bunch of questions that are, you know, kind of all over the place, and just kind of like whatever comes to mind. I know you love hip-hop and reggae—
Vic: Oh yes.
Raju: So, first question is, what is the best hip-hop song of all time?
Vic: Oh, my God. This is a good one. This is a really good one. I can only give one, right?
Raju: Yeah, you can only give one. I have one that I will give you, but you give yours first.
Vic: It probably has to be Tupac’s, “How do U Want it?”
Raju: Mmm. I love that. I love that one. I got… Dr. Dre featuring Snoop Dogg, “Nuthin’ but a “G” hang.”
Vic: “Baby, Two loc’ed out G’s so we crazy.” [laugh].
Raju: But my—this is our line, Vic and Raju’s mantra.
Vic: “‘Death Row’ is the label that pays me.” [laugh].
Raju: No no, not that—not that line. Not that line [laugh]. “Ready to make an entrance so back on up”—
Vic: “Back on up,” [laugh].
Raju: —“Cause you know we’re ‘bout to rip shit up.” [laugh].
Vic: “Give me the microphone first, so I can bust like a bubble.”
Raju: Yeah exactly. Exactly.
Vic: [crosstalk 00:46:12] so good [crosstalk 00:46:15].
Raju: This is so good. This is so—I’m going to get t-shirts made.
Vic: Yes.
Raju: You know?
Vic: [laugh].
Raju: “We’re about to rip shit up.”
Vic: [crosstalk 00:46:20].
Raju: [laugh]. Exactly, exactly. Oh, my God, this guy only wears Sergio [unintelligible 00:46:26]. This guy, like, literally, like, that’s his closet, his entire closet. Okay, best reggae song of all time?
Vic: Oh yeah, this is, uh… this is hard, but I think it’s going to be Buju Banton, “Wanna Be Loved.”
Raju: Oh, I don’t even know that one.
Vic: You want me to sing just one little line?
Raju: Yeah, go ahead.
Vic: “I want to be love, not for who you think I am, not who you want me to be. Real love with more strings attached.”
Raju: Oh, I love that.
Vic: [laugh].
Raju: I love that. I love that. Mine is Bob Marley’s, “Three Little Birds.”
Vic: Oh, I love that song.
Raju: “Don’t you worry about a thing because every little thing is going to be all right, man.”
Vic: I love that.
Raju: I mean, I know it’s a classic, but it is—
Vic: Oh, it’s a good one. It’s a good one.
Raju: It’s a great one. It’s a good one. Okay, so I know you’re a boxer.
Vic: Yes.
Raju: I don’t box; I’m a martial artist. My son’s a boxer.
Vic: I would never want to go one on one with you, man. You’re too jacked [laugh].
Raju: [laugh]. I’ve gotten more jacked as I’ve gotten older. It’s like a weird thing. Benjamin [Bottoms 00:47:26]. Favorite boxer of all time? Who’s your favorite boxer?
Vic: Tyson.
Raju: Nice.
Vic: Hands down.
Raju: Nice.
Vic: I know it’s not [unintelligible 00:47:32], it’s not Ali, but Tyson hands—he’s just, he’s so fast, so powerful, he knows how to use his legs—
Raju: And his teeth. And his teeth.
Vic: And his teeth. He knows how to bite an ear off [unintelligible 00:47:43]—
Raju: [laugh].
Vic: The classic peekaboo style, that is very hard, to go on your quads like that and quickly, like, bob and weave, that is, like, an impossible—I tried it myself. It winds you out like crazy. And I just—he’s by—like, hands down.
Raju: Oh, my God, you know I like—I’m going to go with Manny Pacquiao.
Vic: Oh, that’s a good one. That guy is sick.
Raju: I’ll tell you why. I’ll tell you why.
Vic: —[unintelligible 00:48:07] is good.
Raju: Twelve titles in eight different weight divisions.
Vic: Yes. That guy is unbelievable.
Raju: Eight different weight divisions, my friend.
Vic: Is he like to—like, running for president or something?
Raju: No, no, no, I think he’s in the Philippines, right? I think he’s like—
Vic: But he’s, like, running for a governor or pres—
Raju: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s definitely, like, serious into politics as well. So, okay. Best boxing movie of all time?
Vic: I got to say Rocky II.
Raju: Got to go Rocky II. I’m going to—I loved Rocky II. I was toying between Rocky II and Rocky I, and I went with Rocky I. I went with Rocky I.
Vic: There’s something about Rocky II. It’s almost like Godfather I and II, when they’re kind of like, “You’ve arrived,” right? It’s like a different thing. Like, I actually like Godfather II more than I.
Raju: Yeah. There are very few movies that—
Vic: Very few.
Raju: The second one is better than the first one.
Vic: Yes.
Raju: They’re very few. Like, Wrath of Khan—Star Trek: Wrath of Khan is better than—
Vic: Oh. Ohhh.
Raju: —Star Trek I. Yeah. All right, I know you like to cook.
Vic: Oh, I love [unintelligible 00:49:11].
Raju: This is another thing that people may or may not know about Vic. What is your favorite dish to cook?
Vic: Oh, man, you got to pick your cuisine, right? So—
Raju: No you just—you got to—like, if there’s one dish that you would—like, I said, “Vic, I’m coming over. What’s your favorite dish to cook?”
Vic: I got to make you the Ragu Bolognese.
Raju: Okay? Ragu Bolognese.
Vic: I go to an Italian restaurant and, like, my wife is like, “You got to stop asking them how to make their bolognese.” I’m like, “But babe, mine is better. I just know that it’s better.” It’s classic, it’s from the original, original recipe. And by the way, you have to use a dry white wine. You do not use red wine in Ragu Bolognese. It’s white.
Raju: Okay, that’s good to know. That’s good to know. You know, a handful of people used to call me Ragu.
Vic: That’s why, yes.
Raju: Yeah, it’s—I can sort of relate to it a bit. Your favorite dish to eat… Victor?
Vic: Oh, yeah. My mom’s… her duck curry. It’s just—
Raju: Duck curry.
Vic: My mom’s duck curry, dude, it’s…
Raju: I’m going to go, like, Idli Dosa. Like, that’s my favorite. Idli Dosa is, like—
Vic: What’s that?
Raju: South Indian cuisine. Dosa is, like, this very, very flat, thin pancake—
Vic: Right, right.
Raju: And Idli is, like, this spicy potato sauce that kind of goes in the middle of it, and then they roll it up. All right, what is the best cooking movie ever made?
Vic: I don’t know a movie, but The Bear man. Like, my brother-in-law is a chef and became a restaurateur, and I told him, I was like, “I want to go back—I want to go to culinary school at some point.” And he’s like, “Vic, you’re going to be peeling potatoes for six months.” And I was like, “I don’t mind.” Like, and he told me about everything that happens in the kitchens, and he’s taking me at the back of these kitchens, like, really great kitchens, like Michelin star kitchens in New York, and when I watched that show, I was like, oh my God. It’s like, literally, so real and authentic. And dude, chefs’ lives are, like, insane, right? Like a chef, to me, is like an engineer. They’re a builder, right—
Raju: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah.
Vic: But that, I’ve never seen something that depicts it as true as that.
Raju: Yeah. I have two favorites. The first one is not actually my favorite. It’s my second favorite. It’s called Burnt, and it’s a really good movie. If you haven’t seen it, worth watching. If you go home tonight, watch it. It’s really good. But my favorite is The Hundred Foot Journey. And if you’ve not seen The Hundred Foot Journey, you have to go home tonight and watch that with your children.
Vic: I got to check it out.
Raju: It is literally unbelievable. It’s a great family movie.
Vic: Oh, it’s good. It’s family, yeah. We do movie night on Fridays with my daughter.
Raju: Yeah, don’t even wait till Friday. Just do it tonight. Do it tonight. It’s that good of a movie. I love it. It was such a good movie. Okay. Last question: the year that AI takes over 75% of what a venture capitalist does. What year does that happen?
Vic: Probably by the end of this year, when we’ve fully hardened our product at Originalis.
Raju: Boom.
Vic: [laugh].
Raju: Boom. Dropped the mic. I don’t even think there’s much more to be said. Fantastic. I love it. I don’t think it’ll ever do a hundred percent.
Vic: No, never, and that’s not the intent.
Raju: Yeah, but 75% by the end of the year.
Vic: Yeah.
Raju: I am ready to go. “Ready to make an entrance, so back on up’Cause you know we’re ‘bout to rip shit up.”
Vic: [laugh]. “Give me the microphone first, so I could bust like a bubble.”
Raju: [laugh]. I love this, I love this. I love this. I love this, I love this. All right, all right. Well, listeners, this has been amazing. Vic, you’re amazing. We’re so glad to have you on the team. Anyway, just thank you for listening, all you folks out there, and look forward to having you join us again in a couple of weeks.
Vic: Thank you so much, Raju. You look really nice today, by the way. I’m really liking your look.
Raju: It’s the La Mer. It’s the La Mer that I told you I don’t use [laugh].
Vic: [laugh].
Raju: All right. Thank you, sir. All right.
Vic: Back soon.
Will: Thank you for listening to RRE POV. You can keep up with the latest on the podcast at @RRE on X or rre.com, and on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, or wherever fine podcasts are distributed. We’ll see you next time.