The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
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20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th
17 december 2020 · 40 min
David Hsu is the Founder & CEO @ Retool, the company that allows you to build internal tools, remarkably fast. David has raised over $69M with Retool from the very best in startups including Sequoia, YC, Patrick and John @ Stripe, Henrique & Pedro @ Brex, Paul Graham, Nat @ Github, Peter @ Segment, Tomer @ Gusto and Elad Gil to name a few incredible names. Today Retool works with some of the biggest companies in the world from Amazon to Volvo to Mercedes Benz. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How David made his way from studying philosophy at Oxford to creating one of the valley's hottest companies in the form of Retool?
2.) How does David analyse pivots today? How does one balance between vision and persistence vs realism and knowing when is the right time to pivot? How did a conversation with John Collison change the course of Retool? What advice does David have for founders on pivoting?
3.) Why does David believe that YC is useful pre-product-market fit but useless post-product-market fit? What elements are so helpful vs not about YC? Why did David raise his Series A as a split between Sequoia and prominent angels? Why was that transformational for the company?
4.) Why was David sceptical of VCs for a long time? Why does David believe VCs are useless pre-product-market fit and useful post-product-market fit? What have been David's biggest takeaways from working with Bryan Schrier @ Sequoia?
5.) Why does David believe that once you are profitable and growing it is actually quite hard to become unprofitable? How does David advise founders considering raising VC vs bootstrapping? How does David know when to allocate resources more aggressively to a segment? What are the signs?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
David's Favourite Book: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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20VC: Figma Founder, Dylan Field on How Leadership Needs To Evolve with Scale, The Transition from Application to Platform & The Future of Remote Work, Education and Digital Spaces
14 december 2020 · 30 min
Dylan Field is the Founder & CEO @ Figma, the company that helps teams create, test, and ship better designs from start to finish and is one of 2020's fastest-growing companies. To date, Dylan has raised over $132M with Figma from some of the best including Sequoia, a16z, Index, Greylock, Founders Fund and Kleiner Perkins. Figma's latest round valued them at a reported $2Bn. Prior to founding Figma, Dylan enjoyed internships at Flipboard, LinkedIn and O'Reilly Media. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Dylan made his way from an internship at O'Reilly Media and a Thiel Fellowship to founding Figma, one of the fastest-growing unicorns?
2.) How does Dylan feel about the future of education? What core questions do students need to ask before entering? How does Dylan assess the impact of the Thiel Fellowship today? Why does Dylan believe that everyone should be an intern? What did he take from that experience?
3.) How would Dylan describe his leadership style today? How has it changed over time? How did he get past micro-managing in the early days and learn to delegate? How does Dylan think about insecurity and vulnerability as a young leader today?
4.) What does Dylan foresee as the biggest challenges in Figma's transition from application to platform? How does Dylan evaluate the success of the Figma plugin ecosystem? How does Dylan think about the right cadence to roll out new products? How does Dylan think about catering to power users vs catering to the standard everyday user?
5.) What have been the most significant impacts of COVID for Figma? Why did Dylan choose to adopt a hybrid model for Figma in terms of working styles moving forward? What have been Dylan's biggest lessons of what it takes to attract the very best talent? What works? What does not?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Dylan's Favourite Book: Snow Crash
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20VC: Hopin, The Breakout Startup of 2020 on Scaling from 10 to 230 People and $174M in Funding in just 13 Months, The 3 Phases of Startup Scaling, How To Lead Remote Teams Effectively, The Future of Events Post-COVID and more
10 december 2020 · 30 min
Johnny Boufarhat is the Founder & CEO @ Hopin, one of the fastest-growing companies on the planet, providing an online events platform where you can create engaging virtual events that connect people around the globe. In the last 13 months, Johnny has raised over $174M for Hopin from the likes of Accel, IVP, Slack, Northzone, Coatue, Salesforce and of course, 20VC Fund. With the funding, again in just 13 months, Johnny has grown the team from 10 people to over 210 people in 37 countries. In October of this year, Semil Shah awarded Hopin the label, "The Breakout Tech Startup Of 2020". Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Johnny made his way into the world of startups and how severe health challenges led to his realisation and founding of Hopin?
2.) What have been Johnny's biggest lessons scaling the team from 10 to 235 in just 12 months? What starts to break and when? What does Johnny believe are the 3 stages of startup growth? What have been Johnny's learnings on what it takes to acquire the very best talent?
3.) Why does Johnny believe that remote has so fundamentally changed the game? How does remote culture differ from physical culture? What advice does Johnny have for those shifting from physical to remote? Where does Johnny see so many make mistakes with the remote model?
4.) Why does Johnny believe fundraising is a game of leverage? How does Johnny advise founders to structure their raise? Should they shop their term sheets around? Should founders always be raising? How should they think through a pre-emptive round? How does COVID change the world of fundraising?
5.) What does the world of virtual events look like in a post COVID world? What events will remain virtual? What will not? How does Hopin expand beyond purely events into the much wider "connection" space? How does that look both from M&A and product expansion?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Johnny's Favourite Book: Nineteen Eighty-Four
As always you can follow Harry and The Twent…
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20VC: Reid Hoffman on Investing in Airbnb and Passing on Stripe, The Different Styles of Truly Great Leaders, How To Think Through Ownership and Price in Venture & How To Ensure Venture Partnerships Always Have Trust and a Learning Mindset
7 december 2020 · 45 min
Reid Hoffman is a Silicon Valley stalwart in the modern technology world. On the investing side, he is a Partner @ Greylock, one of the leading venture firms of the last 2 decades with a portfolio including Facebook, Airbnb, Dropbox, Figma, Appdynamics and Okta to name a few. Reid has led investments in Airbnb, Convoy, Coda and Aurora to name a few. As an operator, Reid co-founded LinkedIn, the world's largest professional network and before LinkedIn, Reid served as executive vice president at PayPal, where he was a founding board member. If that was not enough, Reid is the co-author of Blitzscaling and two New York Times best-selling books: The Start-up of You and The Alliance. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Reid made his way into the world of startups, came to found Linkedin and how that led to his joining Greylock?
2.) Does Reid consider himself an innate and natural leader today? How has his leadership style changed over time? What elements does Reid struggle with? How has he scaled to these leadership challenges? What does Reid believe are the different strands of leadership?
3.) How does Reid think about what separates the good from the great board members? What is the biggest danger for board members today? How do the very best founders manage their boards? How does Reid think about the weight of his words today?
4.) How does Reid think about the importance of ownership? How does Reid analyse price today? What was the story behind Greylock investing in Airbnb? What did Reid see so clearly and before anyone else saw it? What is the story with Stripe? Why did Reid turn Stripe down?
5.) How does Reid think about ensuring venture partnerships always have a learning mindset? What can be done deliberately to ensure this? Where do many people struggle here? How can partners develop trust within venture partnerships? Where does trust most often break down?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Reid's Favourite Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow, Amusing…
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20VC: Stitch Fix Founder Katrina Lake on Growth vs Profitability, Her Biggest Lessons From Working with Bill Gurley at Benchmark and The Importance of Mental Flexibility as a Leader
3 december 2020 · 36 min
Katrina Lake is the Founder & CEO @ Stitch Fix, a multi-billion dollar public company, which has brought an entirely new model to retail apparel by combining data science, technology, and personal stylists, to create a unique shopping experience tailored to the individual consumer. Prior to their IPO in 2017, Katrina raised just $42M in venture funding from some of the best in venture including Bill Gurley @ Benchmark and Steve Anderson @ Baseline. In just 6 years Katrina took the company from founding moment to $2BN IPO and was even cash flow positive after just 3 years. If that was not enough, Katrina is also on the board of both Grubhub and Glossier. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Katrina made her way from being an associate at a venture firm to reshaping the world of fashion with Stitch Fix?
2.) On reflection, is Katrina happy that the business was forced to be so capital efficient so early? What did Katrina do to structure the business and its inventory management to preserve cash? How does Katrina think about the balance between growth vs profitability?
3.) What have been some of Katrina's biggest lessons from working with Bill Gurley? How does Katrina ensure not to overweight his opinion on the board? What have been Katrina's biggest lessons on effective board management? How has being on the Grubhub and Glossier board changed the way she operates the Stitch Fix board?
4.) How does Katrina think about imposter syndrome and self-doubt today? How does she remedy it? How does Katrina ensure she remains on the front lines with customers despite being a public company CEO? What benefits are there for founders to stay in the trenches even when a large company?
5.) How does Katrina think on the importance for founders to have a vision today? Where do they need to be flexible? What are some dangers or pitfalls associated with "the vision"? How far are Stitch Fix along in cementing their vision?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Katrina's Favour…
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20VC: Robinhood Founder Vlad Tenev on The Single Most Important Thing Leadership is Responsible For, How To Manage Fear and Self-Doubt as a Leader & The Future of Fintech; Bundled or Unbundled
30 november 2020 · 36 min
Vlad Tenev is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Robinhood, the company that provides commission-free investing, plus the tools you need to put your money in motion. To date, Vlad has raised over $2.2BN with Robinhood from some of the very best in the business including Sequoia, Greenoaks, Index, DST, Ribbit, IVP, Thrive, NEA, GV and more incredible names. Before Robinhood, Vlad started two finance companies in New York City. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Vlad made his way from Bulgaria to studying Math at Stanford to founding one of the fastest-growing companies of the decade in Robinhood?
2.) How does Vlad describe his own style of leadership today? How has this changed with the scaling of the business? What phase has been the most challenging? Why does Vlad think so much about "the tempo" of the company? What can you do to ensure the highest tempo?
3.) How does Vlad think about self-doubt as a leader when recognising the sheer size of the Robinhood team today being over 1,000? How does Vlad analyse the role that fear has to play in leadership? How does Vlad manage the weight of expectation? What works? What does not?
4.) What have been Vlad's lessons in what it takes to acquire the very best talent? Where do many founders make mistakes here? How does Vlad think about the role of mentorship with young team members? Why and how does Vlad bet so big on giving young team members responsibility?
5.) How does Vlad assess the current state of the fintech landscape today? Does Vlad believe we are entering a period of bundling or unbundling? Will we see the continued rise in the M&A activity we saw earlier this year? Why? What is likely to change in 2021?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Vlad's Favourite Book: The Mars Project
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Why Chasing GMV Will Lead To The Wrong Direction, The 2 Crucial Tipping Points For Marketplace Adoption, Why UGC Plays Are Like Marketplaces & How To Determine Between Existential and Non-Existential Risk
23 november 2020 · 37 min
Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, WeWork, Snapchat, StitchFix, eBay and many more. As for Sarah, prior to joining Benchmark, she was a General Partner at another globally renowned firm, Greylock, where she led deals in Sonder and Gixo. Pre-Greylock, Sarah was the first PM @ Pinterest where she led three acquisitions, launched Pinterest internationally, and was responsible for closing their $100m Series C financing. Lees meer
20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Why Chasing GMV Will Lead To The Wrong Direction, The 2 Crucial Tipping Points For Marketplace Adoption, Why UGC Plays Are Like Marketplaces & How To Determine Between Existential and Non-Existential Risk
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Sarah made her way from being the first PM at Pinterest to being a General Partner at one of the world's leading venture firms, Benchmark?
2.) What does Sarah mean when she says, "the small things are not the big things"? How does Sarah determine between existential vs non-existential risk? How does this impact the type of board member Sarah is? How has Sarah seen the best board members engage? Who are they?
3.) Why does Sarah believe that in marketplaces, chasing GMV will lead you in the wrong direction? How does Sarah think about good vs great when it comes to 1.) Average order values? 2.) Repeat purchase rates. 3.) NPS? 4.) Net revenue retention? How should they change with time?
4.) In marketplaces, what is a tipping point? What are the 2 crucial tipping points to be aware of? How can marketplaces ensure demand brings further demand? What can they determine from how demand engages with different suppliers? How does Sarah feel about feedback systems?
5.) Why does Sarah believe that UGC plays are like marketplaces? What lessons can be drawn from TikTok to suggest this? How does Sarah think about her biggest lessons when analysing the growth of …
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20VC: Alexis Ohanian on Why Now Was The Right Time To Start Seven Seven Six, The 2 Very Distinct Types of Deals In Venture & The Unbundling of Social in 2021
19 november 2020 · 34 min
Alexis Ohanian is the Founder @ Seven Seven Six, his new fund which just recently announced their first investment leading the $4M seed round for Dispo. Prior to founding Seven Seven Six, Alexis was the Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Initialized Capital, where he backed many a unicorn including Ro, Flexport, Patreon, GOAT just to name a few. Alexis is also the co-founder @ Reddit, commonly referred to as the front page of the internet, their latest valuation priced the company at $3Bn. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) When Alexis left his L Sats to go get waffles, what did he learn about himself? How did that lead to founding Reddit? How did Reddit lead to angel investing? How did that lead to Initialized?
2.) Why did Alexis leave Initialized? Why was now the right time? What worked with Initialized that he has taken with him to Seven Seven Six? What did not work with Initialized that he has learned from? How does he view VC NPS as a result of this and the learnings?
3.) How does Alexis analyse his own relationship to money today? How did his relationship with his mother and her illness impact how he thinks about wealth and happiness? How did he feel when at 22 he sold Reddit? How does he feel about the "keeping up with the Jones'" mentality?
4.) How did having Olympia change how Alexis operates and invests today? How does Alexis define backing projects he would be proud to talk to Olympia about? How does he feel about the type of deals many investors make today?
5.) How did Alexis first meet PG from YC? How did he feel when he heard he believed in him and Steve with Reddit? How did that change how Alexis feels about being the first person to really back someone?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Alexis' Favourite Book: Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction
Alexis' Most Recent Investment: Dispo
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madnes…
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20VC: Slack Founder Stewart Butterfield on Leadership Styles, Decision-Making, The 3 Levels of Wealth, IPOs vs Direct Listings & Why Effective Entrepreneurship is Like Parkour
16 november 2020 · 44 min
Stewart Butterfield is the Founder & CEO @ Slack, the leading channel-based messaging platform, used by millions to align their teams, unify their systems and drive their businesses forward. Prior to their direct listing in June 2019, Stewart raised over $1.3Bn from the likes of Accel, Thrive, Softbank, Kleiner, IVP, T Rowe, GV and a16z to name a few. Prior to founding Slack, Stewart co-founded Flickr, a company he built into one of the largest web services in the world. Due to his many incredible successes, Stewart has been named to the 100 Most Influential People in the World by Time Magazine, and one of the Top 50 Leaders by BusinessWeek. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Stewart made his way into the world of startups and came to found Flickr? What was his founding moment for the Slack journey?
2.) How does Stewart think about and assess his relationship to money? How has it changed over time? What does Stewart believe are the 3 levels of wealth? How does Stewart think about his identity being tied to the company? Is that a challenge? How does he mitigate it?
3.) How does Stewart describe his management style and philosophy today? How has it changed over time? How does Stewart approach reversible vs irreversible decisions? How does Stewart structure post-mortems? Why does Stewart believe effective entrepreneurship is like parkour?
4.) How does Stewart think about and advise on the debate between direct listing, IPO and SPAC? What has been better/worse and different since making the transition to being a public company? What have been some of the biggest surprises?
5.) Why does Stewart believe that for most companies, comprehension is the reason for the lack of adoption and customer acquisition? How does he look to solve that with Slack? What have been their biggest mistakes on messaging and branding?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Stewart's Favourite Book: Leadership and Self-Deception: Getting Out of the Box, Crucial Conversations Tools f…
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20VC: Accel's Dan Levine on The Current State of Seed & Series A, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, Solo Capitalists and Multi-Stage Funds Entering Seed & Market, People and Product; What To Prioritise?
12 november 2020 · 44 min
Dan Levine is a Partner @ Accel, one of the world's leading venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Slack, Qualtrics, UiPath and Deliveroo. As for Daniel, he actually joined Accel in 2010 before leaving to join Dropbox. At Dropbox, he worked on the platform team helping open the platform to third-party developers and launched and managed many of the company's developer-facing initiatives. Following Dropbox, he rejoined Accel and has led investments in Scale.ai, Mux, Vercel and Sentry to name a few. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Dan made his way into the world of venture with Accel? How that led to his joining Dropbox? What led to his re-joining Accel 3 years later?
2.) How does Dan assess the current state of the seed and Series A landscape? How does Dan analyse the rise of pre-emptive rounds? How does Dan determine when to lean in and pre-empt vs when not to? What does Dan think is the biggest myth about raising a Series A?
3.) How does Dan analyse multi-stage funds so actively entering seed? What has Accel's seed portfolio data shown? How many went on to raise a Series A? How many did Accel lead? How many companies died? What is the biggest problem this portfolio presents?
4.) How does Dan analyse the trio of people, product and market? How does Dan approach market sizing? How does Dan approach the risk associated with market timing? What risk is he willing to take? What is he not? When can one stretch on market? When is it a stretch too far?
5.) How does Dan evaluate the rise of solo capitalists? What does he see as the core pros and cons of the model? What are the pros and cons of the partnership model like Accel has? How does Dan evaluate the rise of investor personal brands today? What worries him?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Dan's Favourite Book: Titan: The Life of John D. Rockefeller, Sr. (Vintage)
Dan's Most Recent Investment: Altinity
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter …
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20VC: Lessons from Investing in Uber and Airbnb, How To Think Through Bundling vs Unbundling, Late Stage Funds Moving Earlier, Early Stage Funds Moving Later& The Mechanics of Venture That Founders Should Know with Derek Zanutto, General Partner @ Capital
9 november 2020 · 38 min
Derek Zanutto is a General Partner @ CapitalG, Alphabet's independent growth fund with investments in the likes of Stripe, UiPath, Looker, Robinhood and Lyft to name a few. At CapitalG, Derek has led investments in Collibra, Dataiku and Armis as well as sitting on numerous boards. Prior to CapitalG, Derek spent a decade investing in such companies as Uber, Airbnb, Lynda.com and CAA at investment firms TPG, Hellman & Friedman and GIC. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Derek made his way from the world of TPG and growth equity to being a GP with Alphabet's independent growth fund, CapitalG?
2.) Does Derek agree with Bill Gurley, "the biggest challenge is the over-supply of capital"? How does Derek see this changing with interest rate changes or lackof? How do interest rate changes impact later stage pricing? How does Derek assess his own relationship to price?
3.) How does Derek approach investments thinking through the bundling vs unbundling lens? What have been some core examples of this over the last decade? How does Derek assess market timing risk? What risks is he willing to take? How does he build a thesis ahead of meeting companies?
4.) What does Derek make of large later stage firms moving earlier and doing Seeds and Series A's? What do entrepreneurs need to know about these firms? What does Derek think about early-stage firms scaling into multi-stage firms? Why is stage specificity so important?
5.) What are the core economics of venture capital that all entrepreneurs need to understand? How do different GPs and funds have different motivations according to fund size? How do different funds approach carry allocation and fees? Why does this matter to founders?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Derek's Favourite Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Derek's Most Recent Investment: Armis
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all…
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20VC: Zach Weinberg on Whether A Company is a Democracy, The Importance of Ownership, The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds, Multi-Stage Funds Entering Seed and How he Approaches Both Risk and Personal Capital Allocation
6 november 2020 · 36 min
Zach Weinberg is a Co-Founder of Operator Partners, operators funding operators, with no outside LPs, just their own capital. Fun fact, 20VC Fund has actually invested with them in 3 companies from Alt, Dooly.ai and Boom Pay. Prior to founding Operator Partners, Zach was the Co-founder/COO of Flatiron Health (acq @Roche for $2b) and before Flatiron Zach co-founded Invite Media (acq @Google for $81m). If that was not enough, Zach has also been an incredibly successful angel in the past with a portfolio including RigUp, Ro, Color, BlueApron and Plaid to name a few. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Zach made his way into the world of startups, came to found Flatiron (acq for $2Bn) and how that led to Operator Partners?
2.) How does Zach analyse his own personal capital allocation? How much in funds? How much in cash, equities, direct, credit etc etc? How does Zach analyse his relationship to money? How has it changed over time? How does Zach evaluate his relationship to risk?
3.) What does Zach make of the rise of pre-empted rounds? When should founders takem them vs reject them? How does Zach feel about multi-stage funds re-entering seed aggressively? How does he advise founders? What are the pros and cons of having multi-stage money?
4.) How does Zach think about the importance of ownership? How does Zach analyse the re-investment decision? How does he approach reserve allocation? How does Zach reflect on his own price sensitivity? How has his relationship to price and ownership changed with time?
5.) How does Zach feel about Brian Armstrong's piece on employees bringing their own political and external beliefs into the workplace? Why does Zach believe that companies are not a democracy? Why does Zach believe that we do not live in a democracy any longer?
Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode
Zach's Favourite Book: Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-Driven World
Zach's Most Recent Investment: David Energy
As always you can follow Har…
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20VC: The Implications of a Biden vs a Trump Administration on Venture and Startups, How The Rise of Rolling Funds, SPACs and Solo Capitalists Will Impact Venture & What We Can Do To Swing the Race Pendulum in VC with Barry Eggers, Founding Partner @ Ligh
2 november 2020 · 30 min
Barry Eggers is a Founding Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners and currently Chair of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) Board of Directors. Lightspeed is one of the premier funds of the last decade with homeruns including Snapchat, Affirm, Mulesoft, Nutanix and Stitch Fix. Prior to LSVP, Barry spent close to 6 years as @ Cisco developing Cisco's initial M&A program and leading the company's first wave of acquisitions and integrations. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Barry made his way into the world of venture over 20 years ago and how he came to found one of today's leaders, Lightspeed?
2.) What are the implications of a Biden administration? How does this compare to a Trump administration? What can be done to mitigate the tax concerns around Biden's policies? How does Barry think about each candidate's stance on immigration? What are the challenges here?
3.) How will SPACs change the world of venture? What will it take for them to be viewed in the same class as IPOs? Why are they often better than direct listings? How does the rise of solo capitalists change the state of venture? What does Barry make of rolling funds being born?
4.) What does Barry believe we can do to swing the race pendulum in venture? What were Barry's biggest lessons in taking the Lightspeed partnership from 1 to 10 female partners? How can this be done with ethnic minorities also? What advice does Barry give to his counterpart GPs?
5.) How would Barry describe his own style of board membership? How has it changed over time? How does Barry keep his head in boards with many around him are losing theirs? What advice does Barry give to new board members adopting board seats for the first time?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Barry's Favourite Book: Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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20VC: Unity Founder David Helgason on The Hypergrowth Early Days of Unity, Why Running A Company Is Like A Liberal Art, The Secret To A Successful CEO Transition and What Makes Roelof Botha Such A Special Board Member
29 oktober 2020 · 29 min
David Helgason is the Founder @ Unity, the company that gives content creators the tools to create innovative RT3D experiences and deliver better processes for almost every industry. Prior to their IPO in 2020, Unity raised from the likes of Sequoia, Thrive, DFJ, SilverLake and then individuals including Max Levchin and VMWare's Diane Greene. If that was not enough, David is currently a Partner @ Nordic Makers, a group of ten top Nordic angels working together to be the best angel investors in the Nordics. David also serves on the board of Labster, Realm.io and Quizup. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How David made his way from founding Unity in a cafe in Denmark to the $10Bn+ public company it is today?
2.) How would David describe his leadership style? How has it changed over time? What were the biggest challenges David faced as the Founding CEO?
3.) What was the decision-making behind David's transition out of the CEO role? What was challenging? What was key to make the transition successful? How did David know John Riccitiello was the right person for the role? How does David advise other founders contemplating the same?
4.) How does David analyse his own board management style? What are the most important elements a board member can do to help the company and founder? What makes Roelof Botha such a special board member to have? How does David advise new board members today to be successful?
5.) Why does David believe running a company is like a liberal art? How does David think about the importance of vision? How does David assess the current state of the European tech landscape? What can be done to improve it? How can investor approach change for the better?
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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20VC: Sequoia's Roelof Botha on His Biggest Lessons Working Alongside Don Valentine, Mike Moritz and Doug Leone, Leading Sequoia's US Business and What Sequoia Do To Retain Their Edge at the Top & The Crucible Moments That Define Startup Success
26 oktober 2020 · 41 min
Roleof Botha is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Airbnb, Instacart, Stripe, UiPath, Zoom, the list goes on. As for Roelof, at Sequoia he has led rounds into the likes of YouTube, Instagram, Eventbrite, Square, MongoDB, 23andMe and Unity Technologies to name a few. Before joining the world of venture, Roelof was the CFO @ Paypal playing a key role in their hyper-growth from 2000-2003. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How did Roelof go from actuary in South Africa to CFO @ Paypal? What were his biggest lessons from seeing Paypal burn $10M per month? How did Paypal lead to his joining Sequoia as a Partner?
2.) Market Evaluation: Does Roelof agree that the market is crazy today? How does today compare to prior vintages? How does Roelof assess the compression of fundraising timelines? With compressed timelines, how does he build relationships of trust with founders?
3.) Founder Evaluation: What were Roelof's lessons on founder assessment from Don Valentine? What matrix did Don teach Roelof to assess founders on? How does Roelof feel about the rise of competitive rounds? When should founders take them vs remain heads down on execution?
4.) Investment Mentality: How did Roelof prevent becoming too confident when early investments went well? How does Roelof prevent relying on past failures as a reason for turning down opportunities today? What can investors do to retain a very flexible mind? Why does Roelof believe you are only as good as your next investment?
5.) Sequoia's Edge: How does Roloef think about what it takes for Sequoia to retain it's edge at the top? How does Roloef measure the success of the Sequoia scout program? How did they structure it? How has the structure changed? What do they plan to do moving forward?
6.) Board Membership: How would Roloef evaluate his current style of board membership? How has that style changed over time? What elements did he find challenging…
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20VC: Intercom Founder, Eoghan McCabe on How To Deal with the Weight of Expectation, Having Your Identity Tied To Your Company, How To Be Your Authentic Self Even with Stakeholders & Why There Are No Rules
22 oktober 2020 · 30 min
Eoghan McCabe is a technology entrepreneur. He's started a number of companies, the most notable of which is Intercom, the conversational relationship platform. He was CEO of Intercom for nearly 10 years, during which he grew the company to hundreds of millions in annual revenue, nearly 700 employees, and raised nearly $250M from the likes of Kleiner Perkins, Index, Bessemer, and ICONIQ. He's also invested in dozens of companies including Stripe, Figma, SuperHuman, and Coda. In the summer of 2020 he moved to the role of Chairman of Intercom. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Eoghan made his way into the world of startups from Ireland and came to build one of the Valley's greats with Intercom?
2.) How does Eoghan thinking about living and thriving with a chip on one's shoulder? What does Eoghan advise in terms of one's search for their true selves? What were his biggest learnings in his search? What does Eoghan advise people who maybe feel they have lost themselves?
3.) Having been CEO of a $Bn company for close to 10 years, how does Eoghan think about dealing with the weight of expectation placed on shoulders? How did he manage it? How does he think about his identity being so tied to his company?
4.) In terms of being one's authentic self, how can one achieve this while also respecting their stakeholders who may hold different views? How does Eoghan think about being an authentic leader vs bowing down to the demands of your team? What is the right balance?
5.) Why does Eoghan think that vision can actually be limiting? How does Eoghan think about stress testing one's vision and ambition? What adversity from early VCs did Eoghan have to fight against? How does Eoghan encourage dissent and debate within his teams?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Eoghan's Fave Book: Breathe: simple breathing techniques for a calmer, happier life
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20VC: Cyan Banister on Her Relationship To Money, Risk, Her Investment Decision-Making Process, Why We Will See A Reckoning in the Early Stage Market, Her Biggest Takeaways from HQ Trivia & The Future of Silicon Valley
19 oktober 2020 · 53 min
Cyan Banister is one of the most successful and renowned early-stage investors of the last decade. Her portfolio includes the likes of SpaceX, Uber, Affirm, Opendoor Postmates, Niantic and Thumbtack to name a few. Today Cyan is a Partner @ Long Journey Ventures, joining the team there following a 4-year stint @ Founders Fund where she led deals in both Niantic and HQ Trivia. Prior to Founders Fund, Cyan was a super successful operator and angel, co-founding Zivity and before that being an early employee at Ironport, leading to their acquisition by Oracle. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Cyan made her way into the world of startups? How SpaceX came to be her 1st angel investment? How that led to her joining the world of VC?
2.) How does Cyan think about and assess her relationship to money? Why does someone believe she had a fear or loathing of money? What made Cyan the capitalist she is today? How does Cyan analyse her relationship to risk? Has Cyan always trusted her own convictions?
3.) How does Cyan think about her own investment decision-making process? What were Cyan's biggest lessons from her experience with HQ Trivia? How did she change how she interacts with founders pre-investment? Why does Cyan never Google someone before meeting?
4.) How does Cyan think about price sensitivity today? Why does she believe there will be a reckoning? How will this shake out in terms of who succeeds and who fails? Why is Cyan in favour of party rounds? How does she think about VCs with sharp elbows?
5.) Why does Cyan believe SF is eating itself? What can be done to reinvigorate the city positively? What can be done to solve much of the homelessness problem? Why does Chesa Boudin never convict anyone? Why does Cyan believe her "BLM tweet is not spicy"? Why is Cyan fundamentally sad and worried for the current state of the world?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Cyan's Fave Book: Snow Crash
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20VC: How To Determine The Risks To Take vs To Pass On, Should Founders Meet Investors When Not Raising & The Most Important Non-Obvious Role of the CEO with Spike Lipkin, Founder & CEO @ Newfront Insurance
16 oktober 2020 · 24 min
Spike Lipkin is the Founder & CEO @ Newfront Insurance, the modern insurance brokerage empowering risk management experts with advanced technology to deliver innovative solutions to their clients'. To date, Spike has raised from some of the best in the business including Founders Fund, Meritech and 20VC Fund. Prior to founding Newfront, Spike was one of the first employees at Opendoor, where he helped grow the team from 5 people to an enterprise value of over $5Bn today. Prior to Opendoor, Spike was an investor at Blackstone, where he served on the startup team that built Invitation Homes into the largest owner of single-family real estate in the United States. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Spike made his way from banking to be one of the first operators at Opendoor to founding the next generation of insurance with Newfront?
2.) What were some of the biggest takeaways for Spike from his time at Opendoor as employee #5? How does Spike approach prioritisation? How does he determine what to delegate vs what to control?
3.) How would Spike describe his own style of leadership? How has Spike needed to change his style with the business? What does Spike believe is his biggest weakness as a leader? What is he doing to confront it and grow as a leader? What is the most important thing a leader can do?
4.) How does Spike think about what it takes to acquire the very best talent? What does his framework for hiring look like? Why did Spike decide to hire a COO? Why was then the right time? How does Spike think about the balance between hiring external vs promoting internal?
5.) Why did Spike believe it was important not to announce any of his prior fundraises? How did Spike approach investor selection with Newfront? Does Spike believe founders should meet with VCs between fundraises? Which angel has done the most to move the needle for the company? How?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Spike's Fave Book: Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lin…
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20VC: CRV's George Zachary on His Relationship To Money and How it has Changed Over Time, Why The Best Founders Have Often Experienced Parental or Home Instability and The Stories Behind Investing in Unicorns; PillPack, Yammer and Udacity
12 oktober 2020 · 47 min
George Zachary is a General Partner @ CRV, one of the nation's oldest and most successful early-stage venture capital firms with a portfolio including the likes of Airtable, DoorDash, Dropbox, Niantic and many more. As for George, today at the firm he focuses on advancing health through revolutionary computer science, centred around bio-engineering. During his incredible 16 year tenure at CRV, he has led deals in the likes of PillPack, Udacity, Scribd and HealthIQ. Before joining CRV, George was a General Partner @ Mohr Davidow Ventures for over 6 years. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How George made his way into the world of venture over 21 years ago and how he came to be a General Partner @ CRV 16 years ago?
2.) How did seeing the booms and busts of the dot com and 08 impacts George's investment mindset? What is the right way to voice concerns in an internal investment discussion? How does George now view capital intensity? How does it impact his conviction and check size?
3.) Why does George believe one should invest in founders who do not need their investors help? Why does George believe the best founders have experienced some form of parental instability? How does George detect the psychological need to win when he meets founders? What are the signs?
4.) How would George describe his own philosophy of board membership? How has it changed over time? What are the 2 control functions that a board member has? What advice does George give to new board members today? Where do many young board members make mistakes?
5.) How does George analyse his own personal relationship to money? How has it changed over the years? How did his relationship to money change his relationship with people? Was that challenging? How did he cope with it? How does he advise others who experience the same?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
George's Favourite Book: Foundation Trilogy
George's Most Recent Investment: Glympse Bio
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20VC: CapitalG Founder David Lawee on Why People Overvalue Diversification in Venture, Why Investment Clubs Are More Successful Than Investment Partnerships & How Growth Funds Think About Portfolio Construction, Loss Ratio & Reserves
8 oktober 2020 · 25 min
David Lawee founded CapitalG, Alphabet's independent growth fund, in 2013, drawing on his experience both at Google and as a serial entrepreneur. Since then, he has helped transform high-potential startups into some of the most highly valued businesses of our generation, including Airbnb, Lyft, Snap, Robinhood, Credit Karma, Oscar, Lending Club and Thumbtack. Prior to CapitalG, David played a pivotal role in Google's growth story--first as Google's Chief Marketing Officer and then as the instrumental VP of corporate development where his group spearheaded over 100 acquisitions for the company. Lees meer
CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How David made his way into the world of startups, came to be the first CMO @ Google and how that led to his founding CapitalG?
2.) Having operated and invested through both the dot com and 08', how has seeing the booms and busts impacted David's investing mindset? How does David think about temporal diversification today with CapitalG? Why does David believe diversification is largely overrated?
3.) How does David think about portfolio construction today, given CapitalG is a growth fund? How does David compare early-stage to growth today? How does David think about loss ratios at growth? How does David benchmark good vs great from a multiple perspective at growth?
4.) How does CapitalG approach investment decision making today? How does David avoid consensus thinking/following the crowd when it comes to deals? Why does David believe investment clubs operate much more successfully than partnerships? How does that change the structure for CapitalG?
5.) How has David seen himself evolve and develop as a board member of the years? What type of board member would David say he is today? How does that change with the founder? Who is the most memorable board member David has sat on a board with?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
David's Fave Book: Born A Crime: Stories from a South African Childhood
David's Mo…
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20VC: Arlan Hamilton: "We Have Come For Cake, Not The Crumbs", Arlan's Plan To Return $1Bn in 10 Years, Why Arlan Plans To Giveaway or Invest 90% of Her Wealth & What The LP Class Can Do To Ensure More Under-Represented Managers Get Funded
5 oktober 2020 · 36 min
Arlan Hamilton is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Backstage Capital, the seed fund that has paved the way investing exclusively in startups that are led by underrepresented founders. Backstage Capital also expanded their model and now have Backstage Accelerator working with companies across 4 cities. Last month, Mark Cuban gave Arlan $6M to invest in underestimated founders (ArlanWasHere Investments Fund I). Arlan is also an Author of "It's About Damn Time". If you would like to invest with Arlan, you can, check out BackstageCrowd.com with over 2,000 accredited and non-accredited investors, they just completed their 6th deal and $1m raised within 3 months of launch. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Arlan made her way from the airport floor to founding her own venture firm, Backstage Capital and writing a book, "It's About Damn Time"?
2.) How does Arlan assess her own relationship to money and wealth? What is Arlan's thinking around her desire to give away 90% of her wealth? How does Arlan evaluate her own appetite for risk? How has that changed over time?
3.) From a strategic perspective, what are some core elements to Arlan's strategy that are not obvious? What are the main misconceptions that remain with regards to under-represented founders? What does Arlan believe are the leading indicators when assessing founders today?
4.) What does Arlan believe have been the biggest challenges in building the firm that is Backstage? What have been the core breaking points in the scaling of people and strategy? How does Arlan think about the relationship between brand vs reputation? What does Arlan believe are the main misconceptions people have about her?
5.) How would Arlan like to see the world of venture change over the next decade? What can LPs do to encourage more under-represented founders are backed? How can this be measured? Who should be held accountable?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Arlan's Fave Book: What I Know For Sure by Oprah Winfrey
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20VC: What Is Founder Narrative Fit and How to Detect and Invest In It, How To Avoid Consensus Thinking When Investing, Price Sensititivity; When To Pay Up vs Stay Disciplined & From New York Times To General Catalyst; Why Venture and Journalism are Not S
1 oktober 2020 · 47 min
Katherine Boyle is a Partner @ General Catalyst, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Stripe, Snapchat, Airbnb, Canva, Cazoo, the list goes on. As for Katherine, at GC she has led deals in game-changing companies such as Anduril, Nova Credit, Spring Discovery and Airmap to name a few. Prior to General Catalyst, Katherine entered the world of venture with Founders Fund and before that spent an incredible 4 years at The Washington Post where Katherine investigated entrepreneurship in many forms. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Katherine made her way from investigating entrepreneurship at The Wall St Journal to being an intern at Founders Fund to today, being a Partner @ General Catalyst?
2.) Why does Katherine believe that journalism is like venture? Why does Katherine believe there are two different styles of venture? What were Katherine's biggest takeaways from her formative years in venture with Founders Fund? How did that impact her investing mindset?
3.) What does Katherine mean when she says she "invests solely on founder narrative fit"? Are there leading indicators of this fit? What advice did Katherine take from her conversation with Mike Moritz pre VC career? How does Katherine strategically avoid consensus thinking and decisions?
4.) How does Katherine approach market sizing? How does Katherine think about strategic insertion into niches that expand to much larger markets? How does Katherine assess market timing? How does Katherine determine the velocity of a market tailwind? What is an example of this?
5.) How does Katherine evaluate the rise of pre-empted rounds today? What advice does Katherine give to founders considering taking multi-stage money at seed? Why did it make sense for Anduril? How does Katherine gain the time of the founders when they are not raising?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Katherine's Fave Book: The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Suc…
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20VC: Anduril Founder, Palmer Luckey: "I Am Here To Build a $50Bn Company", How Palmer Evaluates His Relationship To Money Pre & Post Oculus' $2.3Bn Exit & Why The US DOD Needs To Be More Like China in It's Approach
28 september 2020 · 47 min
Palmer Luckey is the Founder @ Anduril Industries, founded on the premise of radically transforming the defence capabilities of the United States and its allies by fusing artificial intelligence with the latest hardware advancements. To date, Palmer has raised over $385M with Anduril from Founders Fund, a16z, Elad Gil, Spark Capital, Lux Capital, General Catalyst and 8VC to name a few. Prior to changing the world of defence, Palmer founded Oculus VR where he designed the Oculus Rift. Oculus VR was acquired by Facebook for $2.3Bn in 2014. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Palmer made his way into the world of startups, made his way from trailer to selling Oculus for $2.3Bn to changing the defence industry with Anduril today?
2.) How does Palmer evaluate his own relationship to money? How has that changed since his $2.3Bn Oculus exit? How does Palmer assess his relationship to risk? How does Palmer approach the correlations between money, risk and happiness?
3.) What were some of Palmer's biggest takeaways from his time scaling Oculus? How have they informed his mindset with Anduril? What worked? What did not work? How has Palmer changed as a leader? How does Palmer approach personal development? How does he optimise for it?
4.) Palmer scaled Oculus to 1,400 people in 1 year, where do organisations break with scale? Why does Palmer believe, "you never want to play yourself"? Where does he feel his biggest weakness is as a scaling leader? How does Palmer approach hiring at scale yet maintaining culture?
5.) From a defence standpoint, why does Palmer feel the US needs to be more like the Chinese? Why is the DoD so poor at investing in innovation? What does it take to sell into the DoD really effectively? Why have the only 2 successful defence companies been founded by billionaires?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Palmer's Fave Book: The Three-Body Problem
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20VC: The 4 Phases of Effective Decision-Making, The No 1 Quality of Good Decisions, How To Approach Effective OKR Setting, & How To Optimise and Improve Your Operating Cadence with Shishir Mehrotra, Founder & CEO @ Coda
25 september 2020 · 50 min
Shishir Mehrotra is the Founder & CEO @ Coda, the startup that brings all of your words and data into a flexible all-in-one doc. To date, Shishir has raised over $140M from some great names including Greylock, Kleiner Perkins, General Catalyst, NEA and Homebrew to name a few. Prior to founding Coda, Shishir spent an incredible 6 years at Google in a couple of different roles; first as Director of Product for Youtube Monetisation and then moving to Youtube VP of Engineering, Product and UX. Before Google, Shishir was with Microsoft for 6 years as a Director of Program Management. Shishir also serves on the board of Spotify. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Shishir made his way into the world of tech, came to be VP of Engineering, Product and UX @ Youtube and how it led to founding Coda?
2.) What is the No 1 quality of a good decision? How does Shishir think through reversible vs irreversible decisions? What are the 4 phases of decision-making? When should decisions be based on speed vs not? How can teams adjust questions to come to more productive outcomes?
3.) How does Shishir encourage debate and dissent within team discussions? How can leaders build deep trust with their teams? How can leaders create true democracy for idea sharing and meritocracy? Should ideas always be acted on immediately? What are the pros and cons?
4.) How does Shishir think about and evaluate his own operating cadence? How has this changed over time? How does Shishir approach time allocation? What have been his core learnings? How does Shishir divide his time between proactive and reactive tasks?
5.) How does Shishir approach OKR setting? What can leaders do to create aspirational and inspirational goals? How should goals be correctly communicated across orgs? How many OKRs should one team/person have? How should attribution across OKRs be given?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Shishir's Fave Book: Switch: How to change things when change is hard
As always you can follow…
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20VC: The Chainsmokers on Raising Their First $35M Fund and Entering The World of Venture, Dealing with Vulnerability and Insecurity Today & How Music and Venture Compare; The Similarities and Differences
21 september 2020 · 29 min
Alex Pall and Drew Taggart are the Founders of The Chainsmokers and Mantis. The Chainsmokers are one of the most sought after musical acts of our time. As for Mantis, just last week they announced their first $35M venture fund and have backing from Ron Conway, Mark Cuban and Keith Rabois. They have already invested in hotly contested rounds for Fiton and Loansnap. Drew and Alex also own a production studio, are stakeholders in the spirit brand JaJa Tequila and last year co-founded the anti-scalper ticketing platform Yellowheart. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Drew and Alex made their way into the world of tech and startups and how they came to found a venture firm with Mantis?
2.) Why did Alex and Drew decide now was the right time for the fund? What did they look for in their LPs? How do they use their LPs to strategically help their companies? What is their preferred stage, sector? Do they have ownership requirements?
3.) Are Alex and Drew nervous about making the move into venture? If everyone has a chip on their shoulder, where does the chip on their shoulder come from? How do they think about their own vulnerabilities? How do they manage them? What works? What does not?
4.) What ways do Alex and Drew most like to work with their founders? Where do they provide outsized value? What are some examples of this? How do they think about working with VCs to get into the best rounds? How do they want to position Mantis in the ecosystem?
5.) With the tequila brand, the film production company and now the venture fund, how do they think about the expansion of "The Chainsmokers Empire"? What does this look like in 10 years? How would they like it to expand and grow?
Items Mentioned In Todays Episode
Drew's Favourite Book: The Unbearable Lightness of Being
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20VC: Lambda School Founder, Austen Allred on How To Assess Your Relationship To Risk and Money, Why San Francisco Is A Case Study For The Greatest Squandering of Wealth in History & Why Complexity Increases Exponentially with Scale
18 september 2020 · 32 min
Austen Allred is the Founder & CEO @ Lambda School, the startup that remotely trains people to become a web developer or data scientist and the students pay no tuition until they are hired. Just last month, Lambda's $74M Series C was announced led by Gigafund bringing their total funding to date to over $129M with prior investors including Stripe, Bedrock, GV, Gigafund and GGV to name a few. Prior to founding Lambda, Austen was Senior Manager for Growth @ LendUp and before that co-founded Grasswire. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Austen made his way into startups having slept in a Honda Civic and how he went from homeless to rockstar founder @ Lambda?
2.) How does Austen evaluate his own attitude to risk? How does Austen think about downside protection today? How has this changed over time? How does Austen feel about founders taking secondaries? How does Austen think about his own relationship to money?
3.) Having raised his Series C last month, why did Austen choose the investors he did? How did the round progress? What made Gigafund different to alternate options? What makes the best board members in Austen's mind? What makes the worst?
4.) What have been the most challenging elements for Austen of scaling the team? How does complexity change with time in team scaling? Why did Austen bring in a COO? What did he look for in the role? How does Austen advise others on bringing in a COO?
5.) Why does Austen believe that post-COVID we will never go back to the valley as we knew it? Why does Austen believe the valley represents the biggest potential squandering of wealth in history? How does Austen evaluate the government intervention we have seen?
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
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20VC: Sequoia's Ravi Gupta on His Lessons From The Hyper-Growth of Instacart, The Key Question To Ask When Building or Evaluating Teams & The Importance of Investing In and Detecting Slopes Rather Than Intercepts
14 september 2020 · 41 min
Ravi Gupta is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Airbnb, Instacart, Stripe, UiPath, Zoom, the list goes on. As for Ravi, prior to Sequoia, he spent 4 years as COO & CFO @ Instacart playing an integral role in their hyper-growth journey. Before that Ravi spent 10 years as a Director @ KKR. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Ravi made his way from KKR to being one of the key execs leading Instacart? How Instacart led to Ravi becoming a Partner @ Sequoia?
2.) When thinking about team, what does Ravi believe is the single most important question to ask? How does Ravi determine between good and great when assessing talent? What are the leading indicators? What have been Ravi's lessons on what it takes to acquire those great talents?
3.) How does Ravi think about and approach prioritisation today? How does Ravi analyse what to delegate vs what to control? Should you get good at your weaknesses and double down on strengths? How does Ravi think about vulnerability within leadership? How did he show that vulnerability as a leader at Instacart?
4.) In joining Sequoia, what has Ravi been most impressed with in regards to the team? What has he been most surprised by? Why is Ravi so bullish unanimous decision-making is right? How do founders determine which Sequoia Partner will be on their board?
5.) How does Ravi think about what it takes to be the very best board member? Who is the best board member Ravi has worked with? What made them so special? What advice does Ravi give to new board members adopting board seats for the first time?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Ravi's Fave Book: Clay Christensen: How Will You Measure Your Life?
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
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20VC: Calm Founder Alex Tew on What It Takes To Build Viral Products Today, The Current State of Customer Acquisition Costs, What Makes The Best Brands
11 september 2020 · 36 min
Alex Tew is the Co-Founder and Co-CEO @ Calm, the #1 App for Meditation and Sleep allowing you to find your calm, sleep more, stress less and live better. To date, the company has raised over $143M in funding from some of the best including Lightspeed, Insight, TPG and then some very cool names such as Ashton Kutcher, Harry Styles, Brad Feld and Jason Calacanis. Prior to Calm Alex founded numerous other startups including PopJam, Pixelotto and most famously rose to internet fame with his founding of The Million Dollar Homepage. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Alex went from playing Fifa with Michael Acton Smith in Berwick St, London to founding one of the hottest startups in the valley, Calm?
2.) What does Alex believe the very best brands do today? How do they message? How do they present? How do they divide opinion? How did Alex think about the early Calm brand? How has it changed? How does Alex advise others looking to build a company brand?
3.) Does Alex agree with Peter Fenton, "there is a lack of free and open distribution"? How does Alex analyse the economics for customer acquisition costs today? What is a good paid vs organic ratio? How do CACS change over time in Alex's experience?
4.) What have been Alex's biggest learnings on what it takes to build a viral product? Where do many people go wrong? Why does Alex believe pressure is the enemy of creativity? Does Alex believe people should create time for creative thought? What does Alex do to stimulate idea creation?
5.) How has Alex seen himself evolve and develop as a leader over the last 5 years? What have been the hardest elements to scale? How does Alex think about effective delegation? What have been Alex's biggest lessons on what it takes to hire A* people consistently?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Alex's Fave Book: Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid
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20VC: a16z's Angela Strange on Why Every Company Will Be A Fintech Company, How Founders Should Think About Niches and Optimal Insertion Points, How To Transition To Become The System of Record & Are We Entering A Period of Bundling Or Unbundling for Fint
8 september 2020 · 35 min
Angela Strange is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Github, Slack, Airbnb, Asana and more. As for Angela, she largely focuses on investments in financial services and is currently a board member of Addi, SynapseFi, and Tally. Prior to a16z, Angela was a product manager at Google where she launched and grew Chrome for Android and Chrome for iOS into two of Google's most successful mobile products. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Angela made her way into the world of venture and came to be one of the leading fintech VCs with Andreesen Horowitz?
2.) Why does Angela believe that every company is going to be a fintech company? What is driving this shift? How does removing the barriers to entry for more products change both product quality and cost? How does Angela think about the role of regulation here?
3.) How does Angela think about what makes the best insertion points? How big does the initial wedge into the market have to be? When do you need to be able to prove you can transition from the insertion to the wider market? How does Angela fundamentally assess market size today?
4.) How does one transition to being the system of record? Do you have to be the system of record from day 1? Which examples are most striking for Angela on becoming a system of record? What are the biggest challenges in making this transition? Which metric tells you if you have become it?
5.) Does Angela think we are in a period of bundling or unbundling? What are the leading indicators of each? How does Angela assess the Fintech M&A market today? Will we continue to see large consolidatory moves in the form of Credit Karma, Plaid etc etc?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Angela's Fave Book: Investing: The Last Liberal Art
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20VC: Biggest Lessons from Working with John Doerr, How Founders Can Have Discussions of Vulnerability with Their Board and Investors & Marrying Another Founder; The Pros, Cons and Ways To Make it Succeed with Alyson Friedensohn, Co-Founder & CEO @ Modern
4 september 2020 · 36 min
Alyson Friedensohn is the Founder & CEO @ Modern Health, a one-stop solution for employee mental well-being through evidence-based support and digital content. To date, Alyson has raised over $45M in funding from some of the best in the business including Kleiner Perkins, Founders Fund, John Doerr, 01 Advisors and Katrina Lake to name a few. Prior to founding Modern Health, Alyson was a Product Partner for Operations at Collective Health and before that was an operations manager @ Keas (acquired by Welltok). Lees meer
CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Alyson made her way into the world of startups and came to change how we think about mental health with Modern Health?
2.) How does Alyson think about and assess her own psychology? How does Alyson deal with crisis modes? What works? What does not? What is the driver for Alyson to get her through the very toughest of times? How does Alyson approach her own attitude to risk?
3.) What is Alyson's biggest pieces of advice for non-technical founders? What are the biggest challenges Alyson has had to overcome as a non-technical founder? How did she do it? How did Alyson strategically invest in the sales process? What worked? What did not? How does Alyson think about the balance of hitting sales quota and mental health?
4.) With some of the best VCs in the world, how did Alyson approach the process of investor selection? What can VCs do to build that relationship of trust with their founders? How does multi-stage VCs investing impact whether the founder remains in a "sales process" for the next round? How does Alyson temper the weight of John Doerr's words?
5.) What have been Alyson's biggest lessons in making it work marrying another founder? What works? What is challenging? How do they as a couple think about switching off? How does Alyson advise Harry on his own love life?!
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Alyson's Fave Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People
As always you can fol…
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20VC: SPACs. What Are They? Why Now? How Do They Change The Venture Landscape? Are They Better Than IPOs & Direct Listings? How Should Founders Think About Them? Kevin Hartz & Troy Steckenrider @ A*
31 augustus 2020 · 38 min
Kevin Hartz is Co-Founder & Partner @ A*, a newly listed special acquisition company which raised $200M to acquire and take public a tech startup. Kevin is also the Co-Founder, former CEO, and Chairman Eventbrite (NYSE: EB). Before Eventbrite, Kevin was the Co-Founder & former CEO of online money transfer service, Xoom (acquired by PayPal for $1.1B). Kevin is also one of the most successful early-stage investors in the business with a portfolio including the likes of Airbnb (Seed, Series A), Uber (Series B), Pinterest (Seed, Series A), Trulia (first check) and PayPal (Seed). Lees meer
Troy Steckenrider is Kevin's co-founder and Partner @ A*. Prior to A*, Troy was COO @ ZeroDown changing the landscape for homeownership with $136M in funding. Before ZeroDown, Troy spent 5 years at Opendoor as Director of Capital Markets. Before that hyper-growth experience at Opendoor, Troy enjoyed roles at both Bain Private Equity and McKinsey.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Troy and Kevin came together to co-found A*? What is a SPAC? What are Kevin and Troy looking to achieve with the SPAC?
2.) What does Kevin believe are the primary drivers for the rise in SPAC's over the last few years? How will they change the structure of both the VC and startup industry? How will the SPAC landscape evolve over the next few years? What is the biggest challenge they face?
3.) Why does Kevin believe that the fee structure for SPACs is egregious? How would they like to change the incentive structure? How does the timeline for a SPAC transaction compare to that of an IPO? How does the fee structure compare when comparing SPACs to banks in IPOs?
4.) Why did Kevin and Troy choose $200M for the right size for their first SPAC? How does the size of the SPAC determine the type of company the SPAC will merge with? What are Kevin and Troy looking for in their partner company?
5.) What does the fundraising process look like for a SPAC? How do SPAC sponsors deal with the challenge that LPs call pul…
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20VC: PagerDuty CEO Jennifer Tejada on A Leader's Relationship To Risk, Insecurity, Making Decisions with Imperfect Data & What Successful Board Management Looks Like
28 augustus 2020 · 44 min
Jennifer Tejada is the CEO @ PagerDuty, the company that provides a real-time operations platform ensuring less downtime for your digital services. Prior to their IPO in 2019 PagerDuty raised funding from some of the best in the business including Accel, a16z, Baseline, Bessemer and Harrison Metal to name a few. As for Jennifer, prior to PagerDuty, she was CEO of Keynote Systems leading to their acquisition by Dynatrace. Before Keynote, Jennifer was Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer at Mincom, leading them to their acquisition by ABB. If that was not enough, Jennifer is also on the The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (NYSE: EL). Lees meer
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In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Jennifer made her way into the world of SaaS and came to be one of the leading enterprise CEOs today with PagerDuty? How does Jen advise graduates on joining a startup vs large incumbent?
2.) How does Jen analyse and evaluate her relationship to risk? What does Jen do to remove herself from her environment and make the clearest decisions? How has Jen's decision-making process changed? How does Jen encourage debate and free thought sharing internally?
3.) How does Jen think about the role of insecurity within leadership? What would Jen say are her biggest insecurities? How does Jen manage them and mitigate them today? What works? What does not? Why does Jen believe data is the key to overcoming insecurities?
4.) What have been Jen's biggest lessons on what successful board management looks like? What separates good vs great board members? How can CEO's structure their board in an optimal way? What do they need? What do they not need? How does scale change this?
5.) How does Jen think her style of leadership has changed over the years? What have been Jen's lessons on what it takes to both acquire and retain the very best execs? Where do many go wrong here?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Jennifer's Fave Book: Tuesdays With Morrie: An old man, a young …
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20VC: Sahil Lavingia on Rolling Funds and Their Impact on The Future of Venture, How To Evaluate Market, Team and Product, The Value of Party Rounds & The Pros and Cons of Multi-Stage Funds Investing at Seed
24 augustus 2020 · 45 min
Sahil Lavingia is the Founder and CEO @ Gumroad, the company that helps creators do more of what they love. With Gumroad, Sahil has raised funding from an all-star list of investors including Accel, Kleiner Perkins, First Round and then Max Levchin, Chris Sacca, Ron Conway and Naval Ravikant on the individual side. However, most recently Sahil has made waves launching one of the first rolling funds on AngelList with his being $6M per year. In the past, Sahil has backed the likes of Lambda School, Figma, HelloSign and Haus to name a few. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How did Sahil make his way into the world of startups and angel investing? What were his biggest takeaways from being employee #2 at Pinterest? How did that experience impact his mindset?
2.) Why did Sahil decide to make his new fund an AngelList rolling fund? How is it structured? Does Sahil think this will represent a seismic shift in early stage investing? Is this a game of the 1%? Why does Sahil think early-stage remains so undervalued? How will this impact Series A pricing?
3.) How does Sahil assess his own price sensitivity today? How does Sahil think about the right way to turn down a founder? Where do many go wrong? How does Sahil feel about the rise of pre-empted rounds? How does Sahil advise seed founders with offers from multi-stage firms?
4.) What does Sahil believe founders care most about today in their investors base? How does Sahil think about investor brand and distribution? How does Sahil analyse the pros and cons of party rounds? How does Sahil advise founders on constructing their early cap table?
5.) How does Sahil think about his relationship to risk and to money? How did Sahil deal with it when his investors wrote off his company? How did Sahil feel about the weight of expectation placed on his shoulders at such a young age? How did he deal with this?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Sahil's Fave Book: How to Win Friends and Influence People
As always you can fol…
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20VC: Biggest Lessons From Scaling Houseparty To Millions of Users, Why Today's Metrics Are Insufficient To Determine Product Success & What Breaks with Scale From Team To Product with Ben Rubin, Co-Founder @ /talk & Houseparty
21 augustus 2020 · 44 min
Ben Rubin is the Founder & CEO @ /talk, the anti-meeting tool for fast, decentralised conversations. Prior to co-founding /talk, Ben was the Co-Founder & CEO @ Houseparty, where he scaled the product to millions of users and raised over $70M in funding from the likes of Sequoia, Greylock and Entree Capital to name a few. In addition over the last few years Ben has enjoyed roles at Sequoia as a Scout and then also at Benchmark as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Ben made his way into the world of startups and came to found Life on Air, later turning into Meerkat and Houseparty?
2.) What were Ben's key learnings from the Houseparty scaling experience? Why are the traditional metrics we use to measure startup success (DAU, MAU etc) insufficient? What is the nuance to metrics? How does Ben think about being first to market vs being the best to market?
3.) How does Ben believe the product principles differ when comparing the 0-1 stage vs 10-100 stage? How does Ben think about where to be rigorous on product? How does Ben advise founders to discover the key guiding product principle? What was it for Ben with Meerkat?
4.) Meerkat pivoted to Houseparty 3 months after having raised $40M, how did Ben communicate that to the board? How did they respond? How does Ben believe the best boards operate? What does Ben most look for in his board members? Where do many go wrong with board management?
5.) From the team side, when in hypergrowth, when do things start to break? What profiles are usually the first to break? Does that mean one should not hire those profiles? What can the leader do to create that intimacy and trust amongst the team?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Ben's Fave Book: Seneca: The Shortness of Life
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
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20VC: Why Entrepreneurs Care Less About Firm Brand at Seed, How LPs Should Think About GP Commit & How The World of LPs and Fundraising Will Change Post COVID with Apurva Mehta, Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments
17 augustus 2020 · 40 min
Apurva Mehta is the Managing Partner @ Summit Peak Investments, investing in early stage venture capital funds and making direct co-investments. To date they have backed the likes of Raymond Tonsing, Lachy Groom and Josh Buckley to name a few on the fund side and then on the direct side, invested in Airtable, Virta Health and Sourcegraph. Prior to founding Summit Peak, Apurva spent 7 years as the Deputy Chief Investment Officer at Cook's Children's Hospital and before that spent 3 years as Director of Portfolio Investments at The Juilliard School. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How did Apurva make his way into the world of fund investing? How did that lead to his founding Summit Peak and also becoming a GP?
2.) How does Apurva think about how much importance to place on references when diligencing managers? What reference types mean a lot? Which mean less? Why does Apurva still believe early-stage is the most inefficient segment of the venture landscape?
3.) How does Apurva think about GP commits? Is it fair to have a required benchmark? How does Apurva advise founders on LP concentration limits? When is one LP too much of a fund? How does Apurva advise managers on selling a stake in the management company?
4.) As a fund of funds, how does Apurva approach fund portfolio construction today? How does this differ between the fund portfolio vs the direct portfolio? How does Apurva think about the compression of fundraising timelines both with GPs and Founders? Why does Apurva believe founders at the early-stage care less about firm brand today?
5.) How does Apurva feel about investing in managers he has not met in person? How does the GP/LP fundraising process need to change? How does COVID change the fundraising process for venture funds? How will LPs react to these changes?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Apurva's Fave Book: Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
Apurva's Most Recent Investment: Sourcegraph
As always you can follow Harry and The Tw…
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20VC: Why Few Firms Are Doing True Early Stage Investing Today, Why Founders Should Spend Time with Analysts When Raising & The Rise of Pre-Empting Rounds and How To Know When To Engage vs Wait with Anna Khan, General Partner @ CRV
14 augustus 2020 · 42 min
Anna Khan is a General Partner @ CRV, one of the pre-eminent firms of Silicon Valley stretching over what is now an incredible 18 funds. In their portfolio, they have the likes of Airtable, Doordash, Postman and PillPack to name a few. As for Anna, prior to joining CRV, she spent an incredible 6 years at Bessemer investing in the likes of Intercom, NewVoiceMedia, RainforestQA and Zylo. If that was not enough, Anna is also the Founder & CEO @ Launch X Ventures, offering female entrepreneurs an immersive opportunity to learn how to raise capital for their businesses. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Anna made her way into venture as an analyst with Bessemer and how that led to her scaling the venture ladder to now being GP @ CRV?
2.) How does Anna feel about the importance of analysts in venture? Should founders spend meaningful time with analysts? How should they determine which to spend time with? What were the biggest lessons Anna learned about venture and people from being an analyst at Bessemer?
3.) With the rise of rounds being pre-empted, how does Anna determine when to lean in and move on a deal vs when to wait? How does Anna determine when to stretch vs be disciplined on valuation? Why does Anna believe very few firms are "doing real early-stage investing" today?
4.) Why does Anna believe that there are so much fewer women in venture? How does Anna respond to the suggestion that it is a "pipeline problem"? How would Anna advise an all-white male partnership looking to truly change how they work? How does carry come into showing commitment?
5.) What advice does Anna give to people on developing your early network? Why does Anna believe VCs spending time with VCs is antithetical? How has Anna's investment decision-making process changed over the last 9 years? How does Bessemer's compare to CRV's?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Anna's Fave Book: Why We Sleep: The New Science of Sleep and Dreams
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty …
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20VC: MongoDB CEO, Dev Ittycheria on Why Sometimes You Have To Be Inefficient To Be Effective, The 2 Different Types of Decisions and How Great Leaders Respond To Each & Why Value To Overhead Ratio Is The Metric To Use When Selecting Investors
10 augustus 2020 · 43 min
Dev Ittycheria is the President and CEO @ MongoDB, recognized as the world's most popular next-generation database and the first database company to go public in over 26 years. Prior to their IPO, MongoDB raised from some of the best in the business including Sequoia, USV and NEA to name a few. As for Dev, before Mongo Dev was Managing Director at OpenView Venture Partners, Venture Partner at Greylock Partners, and CEO/Co-founder of BladeLogic, which was acquired by BMC for $900 million. Dev has also sat on some incredible boards including AppDynamics, athenahealth and BazaarVoice. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Dev made his way into the world of startups? How Dev made his entry into the world of venture? How that led to his joining Mongo as CEO?
2.) How has Dev seen his style of leadership change over the last few years? What are the 3 core benefits of being vulnerable with your investors? Why does Dev believe you sometimes have to be inefficient to be effective? What element/trait would Dev like to improve and develop as a leader?
3.) Where does Dev believe the majority of leaders make mistakes when it comes to scaling their teams and orgs? How does Dev think about the debate of whether to promote internally or hire externally for a role? Why does Dev believe the asymmetry of information there is dangerous?
4.) What has been Dev's biggest lessons when it comes to the speed that information is relayed within orgs? How does this differ between good news and bad news? What can leaders do to create environments where bad news is shared freely? Where do many go wrong here?
5.) How does Dev advise founders on the criteria they should use to determine which investors to work with? What has been so impressive to Dev about working with Sequoia? How would Dev describe Roelof Botha's style of board membership? How can investors crucially build trust with their CEOs?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Dev's Fave Book: High Output Management
As always you c…
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20VC: Loom Founder Joe Thomas on Whether To Take Multi-Stage Money at Seed, How Early Stage Founders Should Select Their VC, How Sequoia Won The Loom Deal & The 3 Rules To Operate Remote Teams Successfully
7 augustus 2020 · 44 min
Joe Thomas is the Founder & CEO @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. To date, Joe has raised over $68M from some of the valley's leading firms including Sequoia, Kleiner and Coatue as well as individuals such as Mathilde @ Front, Kevin & Mike @ Instagram and Dylan Field @ Figma to name a few. Prior to founding Loom, Joe was in LA as Director of Product at MyLife.com and before that Director of Operations at MediaPass. Due to Loom's success, Joe has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 for Enterprise Tech. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Joe made his way from the mid-West to the valley and came to found one of the hottest startups today in Loom?
2.) What does Joe believe are 3 rules to operate remote teams successfully? Why does Joe believe in remote + HQ as a model so much? How do the tools and culture need to change with this as a new format for work? How do leaders now need to learn to write more than ever before?
3.) How has fundraising fundamentally change in the world of COVID? What are the benefits? What can founders do and tools can they use to increase their chances of getting funded in a COVID world? What did Coatue do to build rapport and trust without meeting in person?
4.) What advice would Joe give to founders on how to pick their early VCs? How does Joe advise founders when it comes to accepting multi-stage money at seed? Why does Joe believe you need to be upfront with your VCs about their ability to build future ownership?
5.) Sequoia and Coatue led the Series B, how did the round go down many months before Joe and Loom planned to raise it? What did Sequoia do to win and close the deal? How did that as a founder make Joe feel? How does Joe advise VCs on what it takes to win the most competitive of deals?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Joe's Fave Book: Enders Game, Think On These Things
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter her…
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20VC: Steve Jurvetson on 20 Years of Friendship with Elon Musk, How To Analyse Market Timing, Why Venture Does Not Scale & Why He Has Never Sold A Share in Any Company He Holds
3 augustus 2020 · 55 min
Steve Jurvetson is the Co-Founder @ Future Ventures who announced their debut and flagship $200M Fund in 2019. Steve's incredible portfolio includes the likes of SpaceX, Tesla, Planet, Memphis Meats, Hotmail, and the deep learning companies Mythic and Nervana. Steve also sits on the board of both SpaceX and Tesla. Prior to founding Future, Steve was the co-founder of renowned valley firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson where he led investments in 5 companies that went public in successful IPOs and several others that became billion-dollar acquisitions. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Steve made his way into the world of startups and Silicon Valley and how that led to his creation of "The Lean Startup Movement"?
2.) How does Steve think about and assess market timing? How does Steve assess technical risk? Given the long term horizons of such deep tech projects, does Steve think we need to change the 10 + 2-year fund life structure? How would Steve like to see funds structured?
3.) Given the sheer size of outcomes if these plays work, how does Steve assess his own price sensitivity? How does Steve approach the challenge there is a lack of downstream investors for such deep tech projects? How does Steve try and catch an industry on the cusp of a transition?
4.) How does Steve assess his own relationship to money? How has it changed over the years? Why does Steve fundamentally believe that venture partnerships do not scale? Where do venture partnerships breakdown? How can one introduce cognitive diversity into a firm?
5.) Having worked with Elon Musk across both SpaceX and Tesla, what does Steve believe makes Elon one of the most gifted entrepreneurs of our time? What is Steve's most memorable moment from his many years of friendship with Elon? What have been his biggest takeaways from SpaceX and Tesla?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Steve's Fave Book: Out Of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
Steve's Most Recent …
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20VC: Why The Unbundling of Fintech Will Continue, How VCs Are Propping Up The Neo-Banking Industry & Why We Need A New Framework To Value Businesses Today with Clay Wilkes, Founder & CEO @ Galileo
31 juli 2020 · 30 min
Clay Wilkes is the Founder & CEO @ Galileo, the API standard for card issuing and digital banking, powering many of the leading global FinTech companies including Chime, TransferWise and Monzo to name a few. Prior to their reported $1.2Bn acquisition by SoFi, Clay raised just $86M in funding with Galileo from the likes of Accel and Ryan Smith @ Qualtrics, having run the company as a profitable company before that for over 15 years. Clay also has a keen interest in philanthropy having created the Galileo foundation with his wife in 2005. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Clay made his way into the world of tech and startups more than 20 years ago and how he came to build the foundations for many fintechs today with Galileo?
2.) When looking at the current financial ecosystem does Clay believe we are in a phase of bundling or unbundling? Does Clay believe we will see the verticalisation of banking? Will every company become a payments company? Does Clay believe we will see consolidation in the space?
3.) What does Clay believe were the benefits of going 15 years withour raising VC money, building a profitable business? What are the trade offs? What could he have done if he had raised? With hindsight, does Clay wish he had raised earlier? Why was then the right time to raise?
4.) Why does Clay believe the discovery mechanism for VCs finding startups is broken? How did Clay select the venture firm he chose to work with, Accel? What advice does Clay give to board members when it comes to being the best board member to their founders?
5.) Why did Clay believe that selling to SoFi was the right decision? What are the benefits of the merger? How does Clay think about the competitive element that many of Galileo's current clients are competitors with SoFi? How do they remedy and solve for that today?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Clay's Fave Book: Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty
As always you can follow Harry and The Twent…
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20VC: Brad Feld, Jerry Colonna and Tracy Lawrence on Depression and Mental Health, The Dangers of Tying Happiness To Milestones & Why Fear, Anxiety and Guilt Are Useless Emotions
27 juli 2020 · 47 min
Brad Feld is a Co-Founder and Managing Director @ Foundry Group, one of the most successful venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Zynga, Fitbit and Sendgrid to name a few. Brad is also a co-founder @ Techstars and prior to Foundry, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital. Lees meer
Tracy Lawrence spent the last 8 years as Founder & CEO @ Chewse, the startup that it effortless for office managers to order delicious food for their teams. Tracy grew the team to 300 people across 4 markets, raised millions in venture capital, and ultimately sold the business to Foodee.
Jerry Colonna is the CEO of Reboot.io where he is now the professional coach to some of the world's leading founders. Prior to his work with Reboot, Jerry was an early-stage VC co-founding Flatiron alongside Fred Wilson in 1996.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How did Brad, Jerry and Tracy all experience their first forms of depression? At what stage did it become a more prominent part of their life? Why do they think then was the catalyst?
2.) Why does Jerry believe that despite what people say, no one is crushing it? How can founders present their vulnerability as a strength? At what point did Tracy realise this? How did she convey her vulnerability to her team? Who is to blame for the lack of vulnerability and fear of opening up?
3.) How does Brad think about tying happiness to milestones? What are the biggest dangers of doing so? Does this mean one does not have goals? How does one balance between ambition and appreciating the present? How did Brad learn this when Amy asked for a divorce? How did he respond?
4.) Why does Brad believe fear, guilt and anxiety are useless emotions? What was the result of Tracy tying her mental state to her revenue line? How does Tracy think about the loneliness of being a founder? What does Brad believe is some of the biggest BS in the industry?
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
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20VC: Steve Blank on Why The Startup Ecosystem is Partially A Ponzi Scheme, 3 Things That Determine Startup Survival in a COVID World & Facebook: Platform vs Publisher and Where Does Their Responsibility Lie?
20 juli 2020 · 38 min
Steve Blank is one of the leading luminaries of Silicon Valley, credited with being foundational to the creation of The Lean Startup movement and having spent the last 9 years at Stanford University as a professor and the last 8 as a Senior Fellow @ Columbia University. Steve is the author of "The Four Steps To The Epiphany" and "The Startup Owner's Manual". Prior to joining the world of academics and writing Steve spent over 20 years in the world of entrepreneurship as part of, or co-founded eight Silicon Valley startups ranging from semiconductors, video games, personal computers, and supercomputers. If that was not enough, Steve is also on the Defense Business Board for the United States Department of Defence. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Steve made his way into the world of startups and Silicon Valley and how that led to his creation of "The Lean Startup Movement"?
2.) Why does Steve vehemently disagree with Adam's Smith's "Invisible Hand" theory when it comes to government intervention? Why is this proven to have failed? How does this only help the rich become richer? As a result, what needs to change in the mechanics of the economy?
3.) Why does Steve not believe that there is accountability placed on investors and founders for projects they create and invest in? Why does Steve believe for the majority of investors today, they have no social conscience? How could this be changed and improved?
4.) How did seeing the booms and busts of the dot com and 2008 impact Steve's operating mentality? What are the 3 core traits that will ensure success for founders in a post COVID world? How should founders change their decision-making process post-COVID? Why does Steve believe in "benign dictatorship"?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Steve's Fave Book: Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
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20VC: Chamath Palihapitiya on Why IPOs and Direct Listings Are Broken, Turning Social Capital Into A Combination of Berkshire Hathaway, Koch Industries and The Red Cross, Why Forecasts Are Worthless, What Creates True Defensibility & Why You Have To Be Pr
13 juli 2020 · 52 min
Chamath Palihapitiya is Founder & CEO @ Social Capital, the organisation on a mission to transform society by using technology to solve the world's hardest problems. Social's portfolio includes the likes of Slack, Yammer, Front, Intercom and Carta to name a few. As for Chamath, prior to founding Social, he spent an incredible 4 years at Facebook including as the original exec in charge of FB Platform as well as being responsible for overseeing core growth components and overseeing FB's mobile efforts. If that was not enough, Chamath is also an owner @ The Golden State Warriors & Chairman @ Virgin Galactic. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Chamath made his way into the world of tech and startups, came to be a VC with Mayfield before joining Facebook and then starting Social?
2.) What were Chamath's biggest takeaways from his team building the growth team at Facebook? Why does Chamath believe that forecasts are worthless? What should founders focus on instead? What did Facebook teach Chamath about defensibility and moat building?
3.) What was the realisation moment for Chamath that the venture firm he was building with Social was not what he wanted to build? Why does Chamath believe the biggest mistakes he made were "compensation and partner selection"? How would he do them differently now? What does he look for most in partners today? How does he detect for integrity?
4.) Why has Chamath doubled down on the SPAC model? What are the core benefits both to the founders and investors? What are the core challenges with both direct listings and IPOs? How does Chamath think about scaling his SPAC strategy? What are the core challenges in doing so?
5.) Facing alcoholism and psychological challenges with his parents, how did Chamath deal with becoming a carer sooner than expected? How has becoming a parent changed Chamath's operating mentality today? How does Chamath analyse his relationship to money today?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Chamath's Fave Bo…
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20VC: The Future of Subscription Media, Why Startups Need To Stop Blaming Facebook and Google & How Founders Should Think Through Customer Acquisition Channel Dependencies with Alex Mather, Founder & CEO @ The Athletic
10 juli 2020 · 38 min
Alex Mather is the Founder & CEO @ The Athletic, the startup bringing you in-depth sports stories you won't hear anywhere else. To date, Alex has raised over $139M with The Athletic from some of the best in the business including Founders Fund, Bedrock, Y Combinator and Emerson Collective to name a few. Before founding The Athletic, Alex spent an incredible 5 years as part of the hyper-growth @ Strava serving Vice President of Product Management and Product Design. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Alex made his way into the world of tech and startups with Strava? How did his time at Strava lead to his founding The Athletic?
2.) With the scaling of The Athletic to over 500 people, how has Alex seen his leadership style change and adapt? What does he need to improve? How did having children impact how he thinks about management? What lessons did he take from Strava on what worked for community building?
3.) What was it like raising money for a subscription media business back in 2016? Who was the first person to really take a bet on Alex and The Athletic? What value adds does Alex think are the most important for VCs to provide? What are the biggest investor misconceptions around media?
4.) How does Alex see the future structure of the media landscape? What elements of media is Alex most concerned about right now? Does Alex view Substack as competition? What does Alex believe will be the 2 ways to succeed in media moving forward?
5.) What have been the biggest customer acquisition learnings for Alex from The Athletic? How does Alex feel about platform reliance for customer acquisition with Facebook? What does it take to successfully acquire customers on Facebook at scale?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Alex's Fave Book: The Kingdom of God is Within You
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
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20VC: 8VC's Joe Lonsdale on How To Foster Contrarian Thinking Within Venture Partnerships, Why The Best VCs Are Company Builders & Why It Is Not Possible To Build Multi-Billion Dollar Companies and Have Worklife Balance
7 juli 2020 · 39 min
Joe Lonsdale is a General Partner @ 8VC and in the past has invested in many notable companies including Wish, Oculus, Oscar and Guardant Health. As a result, in both 2016 and 2017, Joe was the youngest member of the Forbes 100 Midas List. Prior to 8VC, Joe co-founded Palantir, one of the world's most impactful multi-billion dollar software companies. Joe also co-founded and serves as Chairman @ Addepar, which has over $1.8 trillion managed on its wealth management technology platform. If that was not enough, Joe is also a founder of Affinity, Anduin and Esper. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Joe made his way into the world of tech and startups, came to co-found Palantir and Addepar and how that led to his founding 8VC? How does Joe
believe the study of history makes one a better investor?
2.) Why does Joe believe that the best VCs are company builders? How does Joe think about, evaluate and put into action the incubator model? How does Joe respond to LPs that suggest it is a distraction? How does voting for incubations differ for investment voting?
3.) What does contrarian thinking really mean to Joe? What does Joe do to specifically engender contrarian thinking in the 8VC partnership? What is the relationship between contrarianism and political correctness? How does Joe think about the dangers of woke culture today?
4.) How does Joe advise founders to think through cash burn and runway today? What is going to happen to companies that sacrified growth for gross margin in 1 year? How does Joe advise founders on the balance of sticking to your vision and mission vs knowing when to give up?
5.) Why does Joe think it is important to not just start new companies but new cities also? Despite the insane cost of living, why does Joe believe the Valley has given rise to the insane levels of innovation it has done? Will the dominance of the valley remain over the next decade?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Joe's Fave Book: How Innovation Works, A Time …
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20VC: Biggest Lessons From Opendoor's Scaling Journey, How To Implement Systems for Growth & The Right Way To Structure Customer Discovery Processes with Julia DeWahl, Angel Investor
3 juli 2020 · 35 min
Julia DeWahl is one of the rising stars of the Silicon Valley angel investor community with a portfolio including the likes of Linear (Sequoia-backed), Modern Fertility (USV backed) and Primer (Founders Fund backed). Prior to angel investing Julia was one of the first 10 employees at Opendoor seeing their hyper-growth first hand in many different roles from Head of Seller Experience to being General Manager of Pheonix & City Operations. Before Opendoor, Julia spent 3 years as a consultant at Bain. If that was not enough, Julia is also an avid cyclist and is setting up a women's cycling apparel line alongside her investing. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Julia made her way into the world of startups with Opendoor from Bain and how that position at Opendoor led to her angel investing? What were the 1-2 takeaways for Julia from her time at Opendoor that have most impacted how she angel invests today?
2.) Customer Discovery: When is the right time to engage in deep customer discovery work? How does one select the customers to go deep with? How does Julia structure the process? What questions are most revealing? Where do many go wrong? How does one determine the feedback to accept vs which to reject?
3.) How does Julia think about implementing systems for growth? What is the structure of these systems? Where does one start? How does Julia determine the metrics to track and focus on? How does Julia balance between growth vs profitability?
4.) Does Julia believe people can really scale with the company? What are the leading indicators that people are struggling to scale with the company? How does Julia advise generalists to survive and thrive in a scaling organisation? Should they specialise?
5.) What have been some of Julia biggest lessons of what it takes to be successful as an angel today? Who has Julia learned and gained the most from in this new discipline? How does Julia measure her own success as an angel? What are the core challenges?
Items Ment…
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20VC: Oren Zeev on Why Diversification Is Overrated, The Downside of Thematic Investing, Making Quality Decisions In Uncertain Conditions & Why He Has No Reserves Allocation
29 juni 2020 · 38 min
Oren Zeev is the Founding Partner @ Zeev Ventures, one of the best and most under the radar firms in the early stage Silicon Valley landscape. Over the past decade, Oren has backed the likes of TripActions, Tipalti, Audible, Houzz, Chegg and Hippo Insurance to name a few. Prior to crushing it with Zeev Ventures, Oren spent 12 years as a General Partner @ Apax Ventures, starting in Israel and then moving to the US where he headed the Technology Practice of Apax and the Silicon Valley office. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Oren made his way into the world of venture with Apax and how that led to his founding his own firm, Zeev Ventures?
2.) Having been in a venture partnership, why did Oren want to be a solo GP? What are the benefits? How does it change decision-making? What are the downsides? How does Oren discuss deals and ideas without partners? How does Oren explain the decision to LPs on being a solo GP?
3.) Why does Oren not believe in thesis-driven investing? What are the dangers and downsides to it? Why do most managers still do it then? Why does Oren specifically look for under-appreciated markets? How is pricing and competition different there? How does Oren assess his own price sensitivity?
4.) Why does Oren think that diversification is overrated? How does Oren think about cross-fund investing? Why is it such a strength that managers should use? Why do many not do it? How does Oren think about reserve allocation? Why is he the only VC to not have a reserves strategy?
5.) How does Oren think about fund deployment timelines? Why do LPs not like the annual fundraising approach? How does Oren size up his position in companies over time and round? How does Oren feel about founders taking secondaries?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Oren's Fave Book: The Last Lion: Winston Spencer Churchill: Defender of the Realm
Oren's Most Recent Investment: Treeverse
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, yo…
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20VC: How Fundraising For Funds Has Changed in The World of COVID, The Benefits of Managers Selling Part of Their GP & How To Think Through Your "Minimum Viable Fund Size" with Lo Toney, Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital
26 juni 2020 · 40 min
Lo Toney is the Founding Managing Partner @ Plexo Capital, a very unique firm making both direct investments and fund investments. They have invested in Precursor, Boldstart, Female Founders Fund and WorkBench on the fund side and then PlayVS, Replicated and StyleSeat on the direct side. Prior to Plexo, Lo was a Partner @ GV (Google Ventures) and before that was a Partner with Comcast Ventures where he led the Catalyst Fund. Before venture Lo was an operator enjoying exec roles at Zynga, Nike and eBay. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Lo made his way into the world of venture with GV and how that led to his innovating on the venture model investing in both funds and directly with Plexo today? What were Lo's biggest takeaways from his 5 years as a Partner @ GV?
2.) How will GPs raising today be impacted by COVID? How does this differ dependent on the stage they invest and the size of fund they are raising? How does Lo advise managers communicating with existing and new potential LPs today?
3.) What does Lo mean when he discusses your "minimum viable fund size"? How does Lo advise GPs when it comes to closing strategies? How much do they need for first close? How many closes should there be thereafter? Should they take the money when it is on the table?
4.) How does Lo feel about anchor LPs taking/investing in the GP? What are the benefits for the manager of doing so? Why does Lo believe there is such a binary view towards it? Why does Lo disagree with the benchmarks set of what a GP commit "should be"?
5.) Why does Lo believe we will see the hybridization of GP/LP over the coming years? What are the benefits of having your LP also direct invest? What are the core challenges to the model? How does Lo envisage the world of venture evolving over the next decade?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Lo's Fave Book: Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun?: How Reginald Lewis Created a Billion-Dollar Business
Lo's Most Recent Investment: PlayVS
As always y…
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20VC: Andrew Wilkinson on Building The Berkshire Hathway of Tech, Sustainable vs Unsustainable Growth and The Relationship Between Money and Freedom
22 juni 2020 · 39 min
Andrew Wilkinson is the Managing Partner @ Tiny, a vehicle that buys, builds and invests in wonderful internet companies. Within their family of companies is Dribble; home to the world's best design professionals; MetaLab and Supercast to name a few. Tiny does also make venture investments in the likes of Superhuman, SpaceX, Pitch and Buffer. Today Andrew oversees a group of companies with over 300 employees and tens of millions in revenue. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Andrew made his way from founding a design agency in Canada to starting Tiny and building a family of companies with over 300 people?
2.) What does Andrew mean when he says, when buying companies he looks for companies like New Zealand? What qualities/features do they have? How does Andrew think about price sensitivity when acquiring these companies? What determines paying a premium price to Andrew?
3.) How does Andrew assess and analyse true defensibility within company strategies today? Why does Andrew not believe they will lose any companies? How does Andrew think about grow vs profitability? Are they mutually exclusive? When does one pour fuel on the fire and raise big?
4.) How has Andrew seen himself develop and change as a leader over the last 5 years? What does truly great delegation look like? What is Andrew's biggest weakness? What is his biggest insecurity? How does Andrew think about sink the boat vs non-sink the boat decisions?
5.) Does Andrew believe we will see the unbundling of social networks moving forward? What are the core characteristics that determine whether a social network will win? Why does Dribble have defensibility as a brand against all large incumbents?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Andrew's Fave Book: Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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20VC: Craft Ventures' David Sacks on How To Assess Founder Psychology, How To Accurately Evaluate CAC, Burn and Churn & What Makes The Very Best Startup Boards
15 juni 2020 · 38 min
David Sacks is the Co-Founder @ Craft Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's leading early-stage funds with David's portfolio including the likes of Facebook, Tesla, SpaceX, Palantir, Affirm, Airbnb, Slack and Bird to name a few. David started his career in tech as the first product leader and COO @ Paypal, growing payment volume from $0-$500M per month, leading to their $1.5Bn acquisition by eBay. David then founded Geni.com, creating a family tree for the whole world, the company was acquired 3 years later by MyHeritage. David then founded Yammer, the secure solution for internal corporate communication and collaboration, acquired by Microsoft for $1.2Bn. Finally, David then became COO and Interim CEO @ Zenefits before starting Craft. Lees meer
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How David made his way from founding Yammer to creating one of the valley's newest and most prestigious firms in Craft Ventures? Given David's operating success he could have angel invested continuously, why decide to start a fund? What does he ultimately want to achieve with Craft?
2.) How did experiencing the Dot Com Bubble with Paypal and then 2008 impact David's investing and operating mindset? Does David believe VCs really are "open for business" today? How is VC behaviour shifting when comparing early to later stage? How is Craft responding?
3.) Unit Economics: How does David assess unit economics in early-stage opportunities he is looking to invest in? What does proper attribution look like? Where do many go wrong with unit economics? Is it too early to try and assess unit econ at seed? How does David think about having mental plasticity towards unit economics, recognising how they change over time?
4.) Customer Acquisition: Does David agree with Peter Fenton, "there is a complete lack of free and open distribution"? What are the rules of thumb on CAC that David does and then does not agree with? How does David feel about blended CAC? What separates good from great when it comes to CAC/L…