GV partner Elena Sakach on fintech investing: $2.8B fund, seed investments in Robinhood, Plaid, Gusto, and Ramp

Ventures. Oh, fantastic. Amazing. Okay. What's I was going to hit I was going to hit this button, but uh not not partner mode. Partner mode. Uh how uh what's your reaction to demo day been? What are the common trends that you're seeing? How has this one different from other ones?

Are valuations the highest they've ever been? What are you seeing? I feel like valuations are always higher. I think the fact that the public markets have come back has just reintored a lot of faith. IPO windows open people IPO windows open. I'm excited to see a lot of that.

Um, I run fintech at Google Ventures, so there's a lot of fun fintech and crypto companies in the pipeline. Um, and yeah, it's been a really fun demo day. The energy is always Did you do any of the companies in this batch yet? Are you still looking?

Not in this batch yet, but I think again, but you guys are you guys can are so multi-stage that you kind of come in for. It's more about Yeah. building building relationship. Right now, we're investing out of a $2. 8 billion fund every two years. Yeah. Um, and our sole LP is Google. That's a lot of work.

It's a lot of work. Why we like work? You introduced it as Google Ventures, but isn't it rebranded fully to GV or have we gone back? It's uh you know it depends on what flavor people are looking for. But it's both GV and Google. Got it.

What uh give us give us the state of early stage fintech today because if this was four years ago, I think we would have seen like half the batch some something like that fintech related and very little of that today from from what we've seen.

It probably creates probably means like now is the right time to to be starting company. But what are you seeing? Yeah, I feel like fintech has always ebed and flowed. Um and at GV, we've been investing in fintech since the start. Uh we were seed investors in Robin Hood, seed investors in Plaid, seed investors in Gusto.

We recently invested in RAMP. Um and so what you can kind of see in fintech right now. Yeah, let's go. Big day. Big day today. Um what you can see in fintech is a barbell. There are people who are solving things at the earliest stages. Uh parts of the world where fintech still hasn't touched.

I'll still say fintech's total market cap is 4% of all of financial services. Financial services is 20% of the S&P 500. Yeah. So there's a lot of ways to go.

Do you think the fact that there are so many uh scaled growth stage deckorn plus fintech companies with founders still at the helm changes the strategy at the early stage? Like do you need to be more focused or niche because you have Zach at Plaid, you have Eric at Ramp, uh Brian at Coinbase, Rad at Robin Hood.

Like it's not the same era where it's like the founders died 50 years ago. And so yeah, it's probably open season on that category.

It's like no, if you if you start that company in that space, like that person, that founder that we all know who's already on the podcast circuit is going to be coming for you and they go multi-product, right? They earn the trust of a of a consumer and then they get advantages and they also are not in manager mode.

So yeah, I mean I think that's a lot of why we invested a ramp even at this last round's price, right? Like I've spent a decade looking at office of the CFO software and I think that they'll end up winning. Hey, let's give it up for the office of the CF. Let's do it.

Um, and I think the best founders think they're never done. Yeah. And so with fintech, what I love about it is I look at AMX. It's a $230 billion company. Yeah. There is a lot of room to run if you're a fintech founder. Are you pitching Ruth Parat on ramp? Always. Okay. Let's make it happen. Yeah. Uh, we got to do that.

Were you at the last demo day? Yes. Uh, why did Yeah. Yeah. the one that's that's more important, but I was going to say like vibes based analysis. To me, the uh I've been more a lot more excited about this batch than last time.

Last time it felt like super derivative, everything uh it was a lot of like agents for agents and infrastructure for agents.

This is a lot more of like agent less infrastructure, more like here is a product with like a clear value prop and we have 100 people using we're using AI like we're using cloud or mobile or anything else. Yeah. And I I think I think I always think of things as variables, right?

And when people are building for things that don't yet exist, it becomes stacking a bunch of variables on top of each other. And I think what I love about this badge is it seems pretty grounded and rooted in things that people need today. Like the market is there.

I'm not taking a risk on whether or not the market's going to come into fruition. Yeah.

And a year ago, if you were doing agentic infrastructure, there was a lot of people that I was seeing like not even just in YC that were like building infrastructure for agents and yet and they would sign up a lot of customers, but none of the customers were creating any value.

So it was like it was like infrastructure for companies that weren't really working and and I think that's and I think that the catalyst now is like now you have a bunch of companies building Agentic software that are delivering value for customers and so a lot of the infrastructure companies can probably work now.

Yeah. Uh we're doing a lightning round outside of Larry and Sergey obviously who is your favorite entrepreneur of all time in history alive or dead? Anyone that you think is inspiring maybe read a biography or something. Oh wow. Uh there are there's so many this is really difficult.

Um anyone you know what I I think I would say um Brian Armstrong Coinbase created a market that didn't exist before. The largest businesses are always market creators in spite of what I said earlier about a market. Yeah, that's a great one. We love Brian. Uh second question.

So if you're the next Brian Armstrong, if you're creating a market right now, please please get in touch. Yeah. Um second question. How did you make your first dollar on the internet or in business? Oh wow. Um, trading crypto. Trading crypto. I'm surprised we haven't heard that more. I know. Yes. Let's hear.

Thank you for laughing. She was born in the trenches. Born in the trenches. Still in the trenches. Still in the trenches. Still in the trenches. Last question. Uh, do you consider yourself GPU poor, GPU rich? You're you're bolted onto a hyperscaler. I think I know the answer, but I'll hear it from you.

Uh, define GPU poor, GPU rich. GPU poor means that you're struggling to scrap together every H100 you can. GPU rich is you press the button on the mass run if you want. You know, it's it's a vibe, but it's also a very real thing for foundation model companies. Now, it's just a general vibe.

Do you feel constrained by technology or liberated by it? I feel like liberated by We got to lean in. We got to lean in. We'll give you the sn It it hasn't been properly said. Oh, maybe it fits. Anyway, thank you so much for coming on the show. Fantastic. Great to meet you back sometime. See you next batch.

Have a great rest of your demo day. Two phones. You know she means business. There you go. That's a corporate. That's a corporate. That's a corporate athlete. Corporate athlete right there. Jenn,