Today’s guest on the “Phil with Forbes 30” podcast is Shawn Xu – Senior Associate of Floodgate

Forbes List: USA

Year: 2020

Category: Venture Capital 

Shawn Xu is an MBA from UPenn and is an early stage investor at Floodgate. Previously, he was the managing partner of the Dorm Room Fund that was famously focused on student-run startups. Shawn made more than 20 pre-seed investments.

Before venture capital, Shawn managed the famous Square payment device and their expansion into Europe. It is now a publicly traded company with a $27 billion market cap. He also managed Vungle’s expansion into Asia, which was eventually acquired by Blackstone for 750M dollars.

His writing on the university startup ecosystem has been featured on Forbes, TechCrunch and Startup Grind.

Shawn is another example of learning from his immigrant family through their experiences and reaching the American dream. In 2016 Shawn started thinking about geopolitics and international affairs. His ultimate goal was to help American technology companies get into Asian, European and Latin American markets.

We start our conversation with Shawn discussing:

• The process of his MBA, the Wharton program and eventually going to North Korea
• His start with Y Combinator
• How his networking led him to Dorm Room Fund and working with student startups.
• Working with Village Global Fund that included Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos
• The benefits of working as a funder as well as a co-founder.
• Understanding the difference of fundraising and building a company and the mistakes made by entrepreneurs not knowing the difference.
• The art and science of getting people to like and buy your product.
• Mike Maples and his framework called back casting.
• The concept of Anchor List

I’m sure you learn valuable lessons from Shawn. And take a look at AnchorList.com for the best great crowdsourced rankings from one of the best startup operators in tech!

“Under 30 Seconds Round”

1. What is the book you’ve gifted more often than any other book, and why?

• Mike Maples on Backcasting https://medium.com/@m2jr
• Andrew Chen on Growth and Product Market Fit https://andrewchen.co/
• Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization Book by Parag Khanna

2. What’s one of the best investments and one of the worst investments you’ve ever made and why?

• Best - What I learned in a deal - Just because everyone else says you’re wrong, doesn’t mean you are wrong.
• Worst - The investment I didn’t make because I missed it.

3. What’s the most impactful thing you do in your Morning routine and most impactful thing you do in your Evening routine?

• AM - I take turns helping my Dad who has Parkinson’s. It humbles me.
• PM - I work out and use FutureFit App https://www.future.fit

4. Pretend you won the Peter Thiel Fellowship and you were going to get money to start a business instead of go to college, what’s the very first thing you’d do to start a new business?

• I'd go and find a co-founder. I like working with co- founders who work and live like they are living in the future. I might find someone in the area of climate change.

5 .What’s something you never knew you needed?

• A coach.

RESOURCES: 

• Syrian Refugee video: Yassin Falafel at Square: https://youtu.be/Yz4Q_SlbZgQ
• List of the Best Startup Operators in the World: https://www.anchorlist.com
• Andrew Chen’s Program “Reforge” https://www.reforge.com/growth-series
• Shawn’s writings https://medium.com/@shawnxu

GUEST INFO: Shawn Xu  – Senior Associate of Floodgate

• CONTACT: Twitter @shawnxu and Instagram @shawnxu
• WEBSITE: https://floodgate.com/

HOST INFO: Phil Michaels

• SOCIAL: @iamphilmichaels
• YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/philmichaels
• PODCAST WEBSITE: www.philwithforbes30.com
• PHIL’s WEBSITE: www.iamphilmichaels.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices