Kevin Colleran was Facebook's first sales person, joining the company seven years ago as its seventh employee.
By the time last summer rolled around, Colleran was Facebook's second-longest tenured employee – after only Mark Zuckerberg himself. He decided it was time to move on.
Now, after spending the last six months traveling the world, he's got a new gig: partner at Boston-based venture capital firm General Catalyst.
General Catalyst has been around since 2000, and it raised a $500 million venture fund in 2011. Notable investments include Airbnb, Vostu, and Kayak.
We caught up with Colleran on his second day on the job for an extensive interview about his views on VC, Facebook's ad business, the industry, and what he learned watching Facebook grow from seven employees to 3,000.
Highlights from the interview:
- The life of a Facebook millionaire is as cool as you would imagine. After quitting Facebook, Colleran spent six months traveling. He went to Russia and Africa, and is about to fly to China and Japan.
- Zuckerberg won because he is not a business-side first CEO. "I've realized that it takes the product visionary to be the leader. It's not the entrepreneur who has the business background to just plan an idea. If I had been in Mark's shoes throughout the Facebook experience I would have made a lot of by-the-book decisions that would have been the wrong decisions for the company."
- Facebook doesn't have the ad unit of its future yet. "I think they have the strategy. I don't think anyone knows if they have the right placement or size or specs or characters. Banner ads served a purpose for a while as a creative canvas for a story, whether it was graphical or video. I think now most people realize this is a new medium and it allows a much bigger opportunity."
- Neither does Twitter. "There's a big discussion about how do you measure ROI for social advertising and I don't have the answer to it, nobody really does."
Business Insider: As Facebook's first sales person – and the seventh employee at the company overall – you had your pick of jobs and industries. Why venture capital?
Colleran: [After leaving] I met with several companies and had thought about maybe getting back into the game then realized I'd wanted to do something different for a while.
Most of the offers that I had were to run sales teams. I decided even during my Facebook time that sales weren't really what I wanted to do for the long term.
I started talking to the GC guys about five years ago – way, way early in the Facebook time frame just because I'd always knew that I was gonna end up in Boston even though I was in New York at the time.
When I left Facebook, they said, "Hey here's an opportunity for you to hang out if you just want office space and want do your own thing that's cool, if you want to learn the VC business or seed stuff. "
I definitely wanted to be employed in some capacity but I wasn't really ready to commit in the same way I did at Facebook and start with another startup.
This seemed like the best way for me to get an education. My education was pretty specific to social media and the Facebook platform, advertising, and consumer Internet.
So they let me come in and hang out at partner meetings for a bunch of weeks.
It was eye opening to me. The consumer Internet space is a small portion of venture capital.
BI: What did you do during your six months off?
Kevin: We did a month in Europe and a month in Africa with a couple of other Facebook people. I spent time in Russia as the guest of Medvedev.
I spent tons of time on the West Coast with the old Facebook crew – Dave Morin, Zuckerberg, all my close friends, Sean Parker etc.
We leave next week and do an Asia trip: China, Japan and couple others.
When I left Facebook, I didn't want to check out completely. I took an advisory spot with Buddy Media and Path.
BI: What are you bringing to the table as a VC?
Kevin: The honest answer is I think we're still figuring that out.
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