Roy Bahat
Head at Bloomberg Beta
Roy Bahat
Head at Bloomberg Beta
San Francisco, California
Overview
Work Experience
Head
2013 - Current
First venture capital firm investing in the future of work, and also the first to focus on investing in artificial intelligence. Currently investing out of a $75M fund. Also chair of the Aspen Business Roundtable on Organized Labor, and served on the California Governor's Commission on the Future of Work, and as co-chair of the Shift Commission on Work, Workers, and Technology -- a joint effort of New America and Bloomberg to understand the long-term prospects for work in America. We run our fund in unorthodox ways to build trust with founders: We're a corporate-backed fund that invests to make money. We experiment with the limits of transparency -- instead of a normal website, we open sourced our entire operating manual. We are #foundersfirst, and measure success by our founders' customer service ratings of us. To deliver our promise to founders, I'm lucky to work with a team that's a poker hand of seven aces and one joker. Blog post on how to write intro emails sadly has 100x the traffic of the one on using less warlike language in business.
Lecturer
2011
I teach an annual seven-week course to MBA students, alternating between teaching about how to lead an organized workforce and on the media industry.
Co-Founder and Chairman
2012 - 2015
A new kind of game console, unlocking game developers who brought to it more games than on any other game console. Invented by Julie Uhrman, designed by Yves Béhar, born on Kickstarter, backed by the intrepid, supported by tens of thousands of game developers, built by a heroic team. Acquired by Razer. Was responsible for fundraising and failed to raise a seed investment from VCs -- got 40 no's (or, more accurately, 40 not-a-yes's since many VCs simply never said no). Despite raising $8.6M on Kickstarter, only got two term sheets and one verbal offer, and it took seven months from first meetings to closing the round. Failed to have any semblance of work-life balance.
Unemployed (happily)
2012 - 2013
Changed LinkedIn title to "Doing Nothing." Succeeded for about two weeks, then worked almost full time to raise money for OUYA.
President
2007 - 2012
Thank you to the one-of-a-kind team at IGN for oh-what-a ride. We hired software engineers without looking at their resumes; a colleague built an always-on system for giving feedback to anyone to replace the "think about your feedback" twice a year reviews we used to do; we gave bonuses decided by peers instead of managers. Spent 18 months trying to do a management buy-out to spin IGN out from News Corp., unsuccessfully, despite three reasonably good offers. Also struggled to retain key leadership poached by fast-growing startups, and spent way too much time and effort on a project to create a new website serving female gamers, before realizing we had no clue how to do it, or if it could be done.
Vice President
2006 - 2007
Finally hired after almost a year of searching, phew. Got to see much of the world for the first time (had never gone to Asia before this job), and worked on making News Corp. carbon neutral (mostly by buying carbon credits, a bit of a hack). Rupert Murdoch did, as part of our work, say we all had a social responsibility to fight climate change: https://nypost.com/2007/05/10/duty-to-the-future/
Unemployed (unhappily)
2005 - 2006
Went on 102 interviews, from internships on up. Consistent feedback: "Nice guy, seems smart, don't know what I'd do with him." Often stayed home for entire days, sitting on the couch writing follow-up emails, struggling to answer the "what do you want to do" question. (Did get to do project work, including on what became Catalist, a data service for progressive political organizations.)
Director of International Strategy
2003 - 2005
International outreach at New York's bid for the 2012 Olympic Games. Hired a guy to knock holes in the office wall with a sledgehammer, so I could communicate more easily with my team. New York placed 4th out of 5 cities. Met almost no actual IOC Members myself. Unclear what effect if any our efforts to persuade IOC Members had on the outcome.
Senior Policy Director
2002 - 2003
Economic development policy aide in New York's City Hall. Proposed the idea that New York City buy the World Trade Center site from the Port Authority in exchange for the airports -- would have taken two acts of state legislatures, and stalled under its own weight. https://www.highly.co/hl/56214f106c696c08687f0100
Associate
2000 - 2002
Felt impostor syndrome at giving business advice despite never having been in business. Accidentally called management consulting "value-added PowerPoint resale" in a meeting on values. When 9/11 happened, I was on a conference call discussing movie theater pricing for popcorn. Before I joined, got rejected by McKinsey's competitor, BCG, when I estimated the population of the UK at 6 million people, not 60.