Adam Fisher: Why Small Markets are Better Than Big Markets | E1106

I don't think that the way you build a big company or the way you get a big exit is by investing in the most ambitious companies growing the fastest. Those are also the companies that crash and burn.

This is Adam Fisher, partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. He is one of the most prolific early-stage investors in Israel, with some of the most successful company exits, including Wix, Fiverr, and Habana.

I see my role as a VC as picking up an entrepreneur when they're, like, on the ground, but also pulling them down when their head's in the clouds. The entrepreneurs that come to me, they realize that I have that balance and react to entrepreneurs, whether it's good news or bad news, with some kind of composure. They become more transparent with you.

What's the best investment advice you've received?

There are two pieces of advice which are contrary. The first is...

Adam, I am so excited for this. I stalked the shit out of you beforehand. I spoke to Byron, Amit, Daniel, the list goes on. But thank you so much for joining me.

Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here.

Now, I would love to start with your entry into venture. We had a little chat about it before. Tell me, Adam, how did you make your way into the world of venture and come to be at Bessemer today?

So it was serendipitous. I was a student, uh, at the time I was an undergrad at, uh, Georgetown University, and I did a one-year program at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. And, uh, in my first days, I was looking for an internship. That's just what we did at Georgetown. Every single semester, I had an internship somewhere. These are unpaid types of roles where you learn. And, uh, somebody pulled out, they went through this, like, uh, box full of, of, like, letters or faxes, and they said, uh, "Well, here's one." Now, I told them I was interested in business. And, uh, it was for a venture capital fund. Now, it's serendipitous because literally a month before, I had read an article about venture capital in Israel in a now defunct Israel American business magazine called Link at the time, and I just leapt at that opportunity. I said yes. Uh, now nobody knew what venture capital was at the time. Certainly not in Israel, but also not in the United States, not in, not to college students. And for years, I would tell people what this was and what I did, and they were kind of, you know, loo- didn't look at me with a strange face.

And this was 1996?

This is 1996, um, and so that's how I got started as an intern. This was a tiny fund. All funds in Israel at the time were tiny. We're talking $15 to $20 million funds. Uh, there was one partner, one secretary, and one internet connection. And I had to ask the secretary to get off her computer so I could, uh, search the, the, the internet. Um, this is pre-Google, o-obviously. Uh, business plans would come in the mail in a big fat manila envelope. And I like to say that those business plans actually taught me more than my undergrad, undergrad degree did because they, they really spent a lot of time explaining everything. And these were very technologically oriented, uh, companies. So that's how I got started, uh, very young, I'll admit, very early. Um...