Quid's Josh Berman on providing financings against private stock, "trapped liquidity" at funds, and his learnings from co-founding Myspace.

Venture Unlocked: The playbook for venture capital managers

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.

This week we are joined by Josh Berman, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of private lending firm Quid, an active funding platform that provides liquidity to shareholders of top private companies. Quid has raised $420M across two funds.

Josh has been in technology for over two decades, co-founding MySpace in 2003, after which he went on to start BeachMint before moving to the investing side and starting both Troy Capital Partners in 2016 and private sharing financing company Quid in 2018.

During the show, we talked about the difference between secondary selling and borrowing, the issue of trapped liquidity at funds, and the learning he took away from his Myspace experience.

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About Josh Berman:Josh Berman is an operator and investor based in Los Angeles. Most recently he Co-Founded and is Managing Partner of Quid and is General Partner at Troy Capital Partners. Previously he was the Co-Founder and CEO of BeachMint, a next-generation eCommerce company based in Santa Monica, CA. He was the President of Slingshot Labs, a division of News Corporation, a web incubator dedicated to building new Internet companies.

Josh is also a co-founder and was the chief operating officer of MySpace.com.

He also co-founded and managed successful Internet companies, ResponseBase Marketing, and Xdrive Technologies. Prior to his startup life, Berman was a management consultant with PricewaterhouseCoopers. He received his MBA from the University of Southern California, his BA from UC Santa Barbara, and is a CPA in the State of California.

In this episode we discuss:

01:16 Josh’s journey into startups06:01 The private stock problem that he saw in the market that Quid addresses10:58 Tax advantages of Quid’s approach to providing liquidity15:47 How stock financing actually works20:16 Affects of 2021 valuations on Quid’s lending model24:45 Employee retention strategies when strike prices may be lower than current valuation27:59 Other uses for Quid’s liquidity strategy30:00 Will traditional lenders get into this space?32:21 How the market today compares to the market in 1999/200035:26 Should investors slow down today or stay the course37:53 The biggest lesson from his time at Myspace

I’d love to know what you took away from this conversation with Josh. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you’d like to be considered as a guest or have someone you’d like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.

Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee Agency

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