Season 5 Episode 6 – Who Wants To Invest In Jurassic Park with Larry Warnock

Howdy, Ags! Today, we have the managing partner of Ring Ventures, Larry Warnock! In this episode, he discusses how venture capital actually looks at businesses. It is with great pleasure that we have him on the show!

Who Wants To Invest In Jurassic Park with Larry Warnock

Venture capital is never considered a debt. The beauty of it lies in the risk-taking capacity of a firm or investor because there is a potentially high return for it. Venture capital is equity to build a business with the hopes of an exit, being an IPO, or getting acquired. To be an accredited investor, one must meet the criteria the SEC set. By definition, someone making $200,000, or $300,000 with a partner, or has a million-dollar liquidity net means one can get accredited. A venture capital pitch takes six weeks on average, as investors would want to go into the details. A pitch usually takes 30 to 45 minutes, where investors check on the idea, the total addressable market, due diligence on income statements and balance sheets, and other similar things. After the presentation, that is the time investors bid against each other on who gets to buy a percentage of a company with a long-term opportunity to return high gains.

About Larry Warnock:

Larry Warnock is a seasoned venture-backed tech executive with multiple exits via acquisition or IPO. He was most recently the president and CEO of Olono, an AI platform for sales effectiveness (acquired by InsightSquared). Previously he was the CEO of Gazzang, a provider of big data security software (acquired by Cloudera), and Phurnace, a provider of DevOps software (acquired by BMC Software). After moving to Austin from Silicon Valley, Larry was a venture partner at AVLabs, the incubator fund of Austin Ventures. His career has allowed him to work with numerous VCs and companies across California, Colorado, and Texas. Austin is now his home with his wife of 35 years. He started his software career in sales and marketing and has been a VP executive at several successful high-growth companies, including Documentum, OnLink, Siebel, and Vignette. Larry is an advisor to InsightSquared of Boston, MA, and several early-stage companies here in Texas. He is also a Venture Partner with ATXVenture Partners, a seed and Series A stage investor in the Southwest. Larry graduated from Texas A&M and is a frequent speaker at Texas A&M’s Mays School of Business.