Logan Bartlett: WTF is Happening at Growth Stage Investing? | 20VC #920

Career Trajectory & Firm Dynamics

• Logan joined Redpoint in December 2019/early 2020 after a six-year tenure at Battery Ventures.
• Redpoint originally declined Logan's application post-undergrad; they re-invited him after he demonstrated success at Battery.
• Logan's time at Battery shaped his investing philosophy by exposing him to a "mashup" of strategies including early-stage, late-stage, growth equity, growth buyouts, and lower-mid-market leveraged buyouts.
• Redpoint's current competitive strategy focuses on the "sum of the parts," aiming for individual partners to have distinct brands while the firm brand provides a suite of domain expertise that exceeds specialized competitors.
• Logan anticipates a shift toward family office models for underperforming crossover funds that scaled aggressively without prior long-term track records.

Current Venture Landscape & Market Valuation

• Logan characterizes the current environment as one of the "best times to invest" due to rational price recalibrations and a correction from previous highs, though he notes this is less true for seed/pre-seed stages.
• A "dearth" of Series B, C, and D deals exists because late-stage companies raised capital at peak valuations and are waiting for market normalization before fundraising again.
• Capital is being redirected from later stages to earlier stages (seed/pre-seed), causing price inflation in the lower tiers as funds deploy smaller checks ($20M across 10 companies) to capture deal flow.
• Seed and pre-seed valuations are currently seeing inflation due to growth funds migrating earlier and a lack of financial rigor compared to later-stage underwriting.
• Logan advises founders with a time horizon to potentially wait until after Labor Day or later in the fall for a more efficient fundraising process where valuations align across the board.
• He warns Series B companies specifically about the current lack of market comps and active investors for their stage.

Investment Philosophy & Portfolio Strategy

• Redpoint's growth underwriting framework targets a 3x to 5x base case with 10x+ upside, maintaining discipline despite public market shifts.
• Logan advocates for doubling down on portfolio winners at moderate prices rather than chasing "spray and pray" optionality, viewing early investments as full commitments rather than call options.
• He rejects the "spray and pray" strategy where firms hold out-of-the-money call options to "box out" competitors later, arguing it damages founder relationships and fails to build ownership in top companies.
• Logan admits he has been less aggressive in concentrating capital recently due to uncertainty ("I don't quite know where the knife's falling"), preferring pragmatism over catching a falling knife.
• He believes the "laziness" of recent VCs stems from an era where investors had unilateral power; the market has since shifted power to entrepreneurs, forcing VCs to compete harder for deals.
• The most critical challenge for Redpoint is identifying the difference between "A" and "A+" companies amidst market noise, requiring extreme patience and a willingness to say no.

Valuation Transparency & Fund Performance

• Logan supports the concept of VCs marking down portfolio values to reflect true market reality, noting that maintaining book value at pre-2022 levels is a form of "delusion" that erodes trust with LPs.
• He acknowledges that some LPs may resist markdowns to facilitate fundraising or maintain asset allocation targets, creating conflicting incentives.
• Logan admits to losing price sensitivity in 2022/2023 due to public market multiples, though he maintains no regrets about the investments themselves, expecting long-term outsized returns despite compressed multiples.
• He argues that while ownership percentage matters, successful investments in companies like Stripe, Snowflake, and Twilio prove that owning smaller percentages of massive winners yields higher returns than large percentages of smaller exits.

Board Governance & Founder Relationships

• Logan views the board's primary role as earning the right to be a "trusted confidant" rather than a literal "hire and fire" mechanism, preferring soft diplomacy to guide founders toward necessary changes.
• He has not yet had to vote to remove a CEO, reserving that action for ethical or cataclysmic events, and views regular CEO replacement as unethical.
• Logan limits his board seat count to 8–10 to maintain active, pragmatic engagement, citing his additional responsibilities (podcast, LP management) as constraints.
• He identifies Eric Vishria (Benchmark) as the best board member he has worked with, citing his empathy, deep industry knowledge, and ability to push back tactfully.
• Logan believes founders must treat PR as a core competency rather than outsourcing it to agencies to build genuine media relationships and control narrative iteration.

Sector Insights & Market Trends

• Crypto: Logan is skeptical of current crypto valuations, predicting "zeros" in recent vintages due to overfunding relative to actual utility, though he sees value in specific use cases like cross-border exchange and NFTs.
• B2B Marketing: He argues B2B marketing talent is limited because top creative talent prefers consumer roles with larger budgets, leaving B2B firms with specialized, non-transferable skill sets.
• Inevitability Bias: Logan learned from a missed investment in Snowflake (at Battery) that if a technological trend is inevitable (e.g., cloud compute needs), the company's specific execution details are less important than the macro thesis.
• AcuityMD: His most recent excited investment, AcuityMD, combines CRM and targeting for the underserved medical device space, driven by a founder with swimmer-like discipline.
• Underrated Angels: Logan highlights Zach Weinberg and Nat Turner (Operators) for their deep founder focus and pragmatism, specifically noting their ability to drill down from high-level stories to nitty-gritty specifics.

Mistakes & Lessons

• Logan cites his biggest miss as over-indexing on the market's current state rather than long-term inevitability, specifically regarding the Snowflake investment at Battery.
• He emphasizes the necessity of written investment memos that explicitly outline risks to ensure teams are not surprised when investments face "bumps along the way."
• He references "Team of Rivals" as a key text for learning how CEOs synthesize conflicting personalities into insightful decisions.