The new Extra Crunch Live series is taking flight this week. Today we’re talking to Cowboy Ventures’ Aileen Lee and Ted Wang. This Thursday we’re keeping the parade of well-known investors coming, when Charles Hudson will join Natasha Mascarenhas and I for a deep-dive into all things pre-seed and seed.
Extra Crunch Live Episode 2: Charles Hudson will air at 3 PM PT/6 PM ET this Thursday. Important Note: Extra Crunch members will be able to ask their own questions live on the call.
Hudson has been a guest on Equity a few times and even popped up onstage at Disrupt. Why? Because he’s made a number of notable investments and he has a penchant for explaining the seed venture market in useful, easy-to-grok terms.
Precursor Ventures, Hudson’s firm, has raised a number of funds, and filed paperwork to put together a $40 million third fund earlier this year. If closed, the new vehicle would be Precursor’s largest to date. The firm previously raised two main funds, and one $10 million “opportunity” fund.
Hudson, along with senior associate Sydney Thomas and analyst Ayanna Kerrison, tends to invest in software, internet-focused and e-commerce companies, according to Crunchbase data. However, other data indicates that the firm’s investment pace may have slowed in 2019 as the world unwittingly marched toward the new, COVID-19 era.
The new world we live in is precisely why we wanted to get Charles back for a chat. The last time we spoke with him Airbnb was still going public in 2020 on the back of a direct listing. We also chatted about which Y Combinator companies were the biggest. Now Airbnb’s been forced to borrow expensive capital, cut its valuation and is generally expected to delay its public debut. And Y Combinator is pulling back on its investing cadence.
A new world, a changed world.
Before we let you go, while prepping for our talk with Hudson, we discovered that Precursor put money into both payment firm Finix’s seed round and Series A, according to Crunchbase data. The startup later raised a Series B that would wind up being more complicated than it first seemed.
If you aren’t a member of Extra Crunch just yet, join up and don’t miss any of the next few months’ worth of live chats that are going to be pretty damn cool.
You can find all the Zoom information below, as well as an AddEvent link to put the details directly onto your calendar.
See you soon!
