[Venture Capital Series] A Snappy Masterclass on Startup Investments With Sky Fernandes, Co-Founder and General Partner at VU Venture Partners

Skyler (Sky) Fernandes is the Co-founder and General Partner at VU Venture Partners, a venture capital fund. He is also the Founder of Venture University, a multi-stage investment fund and a trade school for venture capital, private equity, and angel investing. 

Sky has over 15 years of venture capital and private equity investing experience with over 150 portfolio companies. Prior portfolio companies include Beyond Meat (IPO'd, $14B), Sensity (acquired by Verizon, $300M+), ShopKick (acquired by SK Telecom, $200M), Made In Space (acquired by AE Industrial Partners), and more. 

Sky is also the Co-founder of the #1 startup board game, The Next Big Thing: The Game of Entrepreneurship, backed by over 25 top accelerators and VC investors.

In this episode…

Investing in a startup is a significant risk, but the massive opportunity it holds is too good to pass on, especially for venture capitalists. What do these venture capitalists know that makes them invest millions into certain startups that almost no one has ever heard of? For companies yet to make a dollar in revenue, how do they determine their valuation? And which types of companies do VCs invest in?

Sky Fernandes walks us through these critical questions. According to Sky, a significant deciding factor for VCs to invest in a startup is the market size and how extraordinary the opportunity is in terms of the magnitude of improvements. But getting the hang of these things is not a walk in the park. After 160 investments, Sky would still tell his younger self to have a higher bar of what ‘extraordinary’ is when he makes investments. Ready for a VC masterclass? 

Listen to the Inspired Insider Podcast episode with Dr. Jeremy Weisz featuring the Co-founder and General Partner at VU Venture Partners, Sky Fernandes. They discuss what goes into a startup's valuation pre-revenue, how Sky chooses companies to invest in, raising capital, and more.