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Betsy Flanagan: And you also bring a lot of experience. I mean, I think there is a lot of benefit in terms of, you know, getting off the learning curve. If you could talk just a little bit about maybe getting some of the experiences that you have had helping entrepreneurs, you know save time or money, you know, to get their business to be successful because you have been involved.

David Hornik: Sure. I mean, it’s absolutely the case that generally people who end up being venture capitalists are because they have either built a business themselves or have been involved in the building of businesses or they have a particular expertise in around company building.

And so I’ve been in the venture capital business now going on seven years. Before that I was representing startups for a number of years as their attorney, and over that period of time I’ve seen a lot of things. I’ve seen how companies that are doing well raise money. I’ve seen how companies that are not doing well raise money. I’ve seen how companies can get distribution deals that are incredibly valuable and drive a lot of traffic or drive a lot of value and I’ve seen how they can sign up to agreements that can really shackle a company in a lot of ways.

And so what I think VCs generally bring to the table is that we don’t work with one company. We work with a portfolio of companies and we haven’t been doing it for only a couple of years on a particular investment but have been doing it for a period of time with a set of different companies. And so we can hopefully bring to bear--the best practices and the worst practices that we’ve seen because, you know, it’s always different, it’s always a learning process.

When I joined the August Capital, the partner who started this firm, a guy named Dave Marquardt, who is--Dave Marquardt was the only private investor in Microsoft and the first investor in Sun and the first investor in Symantec. I mean, he’s just been an incredibly successful VC, so I’m always saying to Dave, you know, “I need to know, what is it? I’m looking for the answer. What’s the answer?” Dave never tells me. First of all, it wouldn’t be in his interest to tell me. I think what he says is is, “Look, this is a giant experience about pattern matching, about understanding that businesses are similar but always different.”

And so, you know, I come to it understanding that everything that I’ve seen in the past will have some bearing on the thing that I’m doing now but it will not be identical. And so, I think the most helpful venture capitalist can see, you know, sort of that pattern and see and try to be helpful and say, you know, “Don’t do that deal or maybe think about it this way or maybe this person isn’t the right person to be your head of marketing or maybe these are really good investors that you should talk with.” Those sorts of things.