20 VC 022: Letting go of the life we planned and the Power of the Female Narrative with Matthew McCall

Matthew McCall is a Partner at Pritzker Group Venture Capital and was previously a Partner with DFJ Portage. He has been involved with investments with Feedburner (acquired by Google), Playdom (acquired by Disney) and EverDream (acquired by Dell), just to name a few. Matt has been named in Chicago's '40 under 40' and their Top Tech 25 list. He has been named as one of the Top 100 VCs in the US, a Media 100 and a Hollywood 100 Power Player.

Items Mentioned in Todays Show:

• Matt's Blog: Beyond the Profit Line


• SMS Assist


• Bill Gurley predicts dead unicorns


• Steve Job's Commencement Speech


• Finding Joe with Joseph Campbell


• Hello Giggles with Zooey Deschanel


• Jessica Alba: The Honest Company


• BigFrame with Sarah Penna


• Eric Ries: The Lean Startup


• Stephen King:On Writing


• Robert McKee: Story, Style, Structure, Substance, and the Principles of Screenwriting 


• Christopher Voglar: The Writers Journey


• Viv: The Global Brain

In todays show, you will learn:

• How Matt got into the VC world?


• What is Matt's normal investment size? 


• When investing does Matt have a mental timeline of the startup with a clear strategy of when a desired exit will take place? 


• Matt has been named to the AlwaysOnTop 100 VCs list, leading me to ask how has Matt's investment strategy changed over the years? What were his early deals? What did Matt learn from them? What does Matt do differently now?


• Matt has written about the 15 year tech cycle and has quoted Steve Juvertson ‘if you can see it, it isn’t the revolution’, leading me to ask where does Matt stand on a ‘tech bubble’. Is it occurring and why does he say that?


• Has Matt seen a rise in the emergence of the female entrepreneur?


• Matt LOVES commencement speeches. Why is that and are there any Matt would recommend in particular?

The episode will then finish with a quick fire round where we hear the resource that Matt would most recommend to an aspiring Founder and Matt's recent investment and why he said yes?

*Shortly after the interview Matt strongly recommended to me Never Eat Alone by Keith  Ferrazzi