Oren Zeev's $2.7B Solo GP Playbook

Oren Zeev runs one of the most successful venture firms in the world. The catch: he has no partners, no associates, holds no investment committee, writes no memos, and has no office.

He's a solo GP managing $2.7 billion across 11 funds, an early backer of Audible, Houzz, Chegg, Tipalti, and Navan, where a relationship that started with a $50k check became a stake worth more than a billion dollars.

We get into why most partners add negative value, the days his calendar is empty enough to surf on a Tuesday, why he's never shown an LP a single slide in 11 funds, why diversification is a lie, his fund that had only five companies, how Navan went from a $90M run rate to zero in a month (and survived), the cross-fund investing everyone tells him not to do, the DPI stand that cost him LP's, the Yozma Program that built Israel's startup economy, and the 30-minute meeting that turned into his first fund.

Thank you to Monaco, Flex, Clerk, and Numeral for supporting this episode.

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Timestamps:
() Running $2.7B with no team or partners
() How one person can beat a team
() Omission beats commission: why committees miss
() What really fills a partnership's day
() The returns business, not the production business
() A week in his nearly empty calendar
() The mistakes new solo GP's make
() Eleven funds, zero slides
() No thesis
() Why diversification doesn't work
() The fund with only five companies
() TripActions insight: everyone hates their travel software
() Paying employees to spend less
() COVID: $90M run rate to zero
() How Navan survived
() A $100M round with no way to price it
) Keeping the team: the real test of leadership
() What Oren looks for in founders
() Cross-fund investing, and "trust me, bro"
() Always his own biggest LP
() The DPI stand that cost him LP's
() Decart, and the Anthropic deal
() Inside the 30-year rise of Israel's tech ecosystem
() The Yozma program that built an industry
() Why Israelis build now instead of selling early
() Moving to the Valley in the 2002 nuclear winter
() Audible, and why the first home run matters
() Leaving Apax, and going solo
() Peter Thiel and a fund raised in 30 minutes
() The second fund: 48 hours, still no deck
() ICON: helping Israeli founders crack the Valley
() The leader he admires most: Anwar Sadat

Referenced:
Zeev Ventures: zeevventures.com
Navan: navan.com
Mercury Interactive: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_Interactive
ICON: iconsv.org
Yozma: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yozma

Follow Oren
Twitter: x.com/orenzeev
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ozeev

Follow Turner
Twitter: twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/turnernovak

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Oren Zeev's $2.7B Solo GP Playbook

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