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1. 20VC: Substack Founder Chris Best on The Future of Public Journalism, Why The Economics Of Attention Have Been Flipped & Why Micropayments For Content Will Not Work

   12 juni 2020 · 32 min

   Afspelen
   Chris Best is the Founder & CEO @ Substack, the company that makes it simple for a writer to start a paid newsletter. To date, Chris has raised over $17M in funding from the likes of a16z, Y Combinator, Twitch CEO Emmett Shear and Zynga Co-Founder Justin Waldron to name a few. Prior to founding Substack, Chris was the Co-Founder & CTO @ Kik, letting users connect with friends, groups and the world around them. The company raised over $220M in funding from Spark, Tencent and USV to name a few. Lees meer

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) How Chris made his way into the world of startups and came to found Kik? How his journey with Kik led to his founding Substack?

   2.) During COVID, traditional media publications have been hit hard and Substack has taken off, how does Chris see the correlation there? Given the public journal of record has always been free, how does Substack interact with public news? What does Chris

   3.) Why does Chris believe that micropayments are a fundamentally bad idea? Structurally why would they not work? Does Chris agree the biggest problem consumers face today in content is one of discovery? Why not?

   4.) When designing the Substack product today, how does Chris think about incentive design? Why does Chris believe with incentives, Substack is the opposite of Twitter from a product perspective? Why have the "economics of attention now been flipped?"

   5.) How has Chris seen himself evolve and change as a leader over the last 3 years? What advice would Chris give to CTOs making the move into the role of CEO? What does Chris believe his greatest strengths and weaknesses are as a leader? How does Chris find the war for talent today?

   Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

   Chris' Fave Book: The Death and Life of Great American Cities

   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.

2. 20VC: Lightspeed Partner, Merci Victoria Grace on The Future of Collaboration Tools, Bundling vs Unbundling, Synchronous vs Asynchronous & What It Means To Productise The S*** Out of Venture

   8 juni 2020 · 37 min

   Afspelen
   Merci Victoria Grace is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the valley's leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Mulesoft, Affirm, AppDynamics and more. As for Merci, prior to entering the world of venture, Merci spent 3 years at Slack including as Head of Growth where she grew the growth team to over 50 people and drove DAU's from 500K to 5M in under 2 years. Merci is also the Founder of Women In Product a global community of incredible women in product management. Lees meer

   CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) How Merci made her way into the world of venture having led the growth team at Slack for close to 3 years?

   2.) Merci has been working to productise venture, so what core elements of venture need productising? What systems and tools has Merci put in place to create a product around these processes and methods? What have been the biggest challenge in the attempt to productise VC?

   3.) How does the decision-making process look like at Lightspeed? How does Merci use post mortems to help her improve post having lost a deal? How does she structure those post-mortems? What have been some of the core takeaways? What internal tech stack does LSVP run itself on?

   4.) How does Merci see the future of the collaboration tools market? Are we entering a period of bundling or unbundling? How does Merci feel about the debate between synchronous and asynchronous? How does Merci determine between those who have grown sustainably vs unsustainably in the time of COVID?

   5.) Why do the majority of collaboration tool startups fail? What do they get so wrong in their go-to-market? For those that succeed, what are the commonalities in those that succeed? Why is being good at Twitter a competitive advantage? How does Merci feel about the Superhuman, high touch onboarding style?

   Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

   Merci's Fave Book: Never Split The Difference: Negotiate As If Your Life Depended on It
   …

3. 20VC: How To Scientifically Measure Product-Market Fit, How To Efficiently and Accurately Segment Users Into Cohorts, Why Investors Analysing CAC's at Pre-Seed Is Not Useful & How To Determine Between Customer Feedback to Accept vs Reject with Daniel Eric

   5 juni 2020 · 27 min

   Afspelen
   Daniel Erickson is the Founder & CEO @ Viable Fit, the startup that allows you to find product-market fit faster than ever by collecting structured user feedback to measure PMF on an ongoing basis. Daniel has raised funding from the likes of David Sacks @ Craft Ventures, Todd Goldberg and Superhuman Founder, Rahul Vohra and then also Brianne Kimmel @ Worklife Ventures. Prior to founding Viable Fit, Daniel was VP Engineering @ Eaze and before that spent time as CTO @ Getable and then also had a front-row seat for the hyper-growth of Yammer with a 3-year stint there. Lees meer

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) How Daniel made his way into the valley and startups from setting up a consultancy in Portland and how that led to founding Viable Fit?

   2.) How does Daniel define product-market fit today? Why does Daniel believe it is the single most important metric for startups? What happens if you do not have product-market fit? How does Daniel feel about investors spending so much time analysing unit economics at seed?

   3.) What is the single most important question one can ask to determine whether you have PMF? How does customer segmentation play a role in revealing the true PMF number? How do you productise this and put it in a process? What does Daniel make of the rise of closed betas?

   4.) Once they have the customer data, what elements of the data should founders double down on to determine PMF? How do they determine between feedback to adopt vs discard? Why does Daniel believe PMF is transient and you always have to measure it?

   Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

   Daniel's Fave Book: Atomic Habits by James Clear

   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.

4. 20VC: It's Time To Talk About Drinking; How To Stop, The Impact It Has, How Life Changes Post-Alcohol and The Biggest Misconceptions on Drinking with Ryan Petersen, Founder @ Flexport, Justin Kan, Founder @ Twitch, Matteo Franceschetti, Founder @ Eight

   1 juni 2020 · 35 min

   Afspelen
   Ryan Petersen is the Founder & CEO @ Flexport, the operating system for global trade with over $1.3Bn in funding from the likes of Softbank, Founders Fund, DST, GV and First Round to name a few. Lees meer

   Justin Kan is the Founder @ Atrium and Twitch (acq by Amazon for $1Bn). Justin is also a prolific angel with a portfolio including the likes of Scale AI, Digits, Cruise and Triplebyte to name a few.

   Matteo Franceschetti is the Founder & CEO @ Eight Sleep, the #1 Smart Mattress, designed to help you fall asleep faster and stay asleep. To date, Matteo has raised over $70M from Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures, Craft Ventures, Kevin Hartz and Ryan Petersen to name a few.

   Steve Schlafman is a Coach and Investor @ High Output. Previously Steve was a Partner @ Primary Ventures in NYC and before that Principal @ RRE.

   CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) What was your realisation moment for stopping drinking? How did it come about? What was your prior relationship to alcohol like?

   2.) For me I always found an excuse to not stop drinking, when you think about your attempts to give up, what excuses did you provide as reasons for continuing to drink? What insecurities and vulnerabilities did drinking hide and mask for you? How did it impact them?

   3.) From a literal standpoint, how did you approach giving up the act of drinking? What tools did you find most helpful? What resources do you recommend? How has your life changed since you stopped drinking? Matteo, you have the data from Eight Sleep, what does the data say about how stopping drinking truly impacts your sleep?

   4.) People often say that stopping drinking kills your social life, what would you respond to that commonly held belief? What other core misconceptions do you find people hold towards drinking? To those considering giving up drinking, what would you advise them? What do you know now about alcohol that you wish you had known earlier?

   As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute…

5. 20VC: TravelPerk's Avi Meir on Why 2021 Will Be A Record Year For Business Travel, The 3 Priorities For All Founders During COVID, What VCs Can Do To Really Support Their Founders In A Recession

   29 mei 2020 · 30 min

   Afspelen
   Avi Meir is the Founder & CEO @ TravelPerk, the travel management platform that combines the best of leisure and corporate travel into one smooth experience. To date, Avi has raised over $134m with TravelPerk from the likes of DST, Spark Capital, Felix Capital and Heartcore to name a few. Prior to founding TravelPerk, Avi co-founded HotelNinjas, a hotel management product that was acquired by Booking.com. Before that Avi was VP Product at budgetplaces where he managed a team of 50 across product and marketing. Lees meer

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) How Avi made his way into the world of startups and came to change the way we think of corporate travel with TravelPerk?

   2.) Why has Avi advocated for the re-opening of society much sooner than others have done? If Avi were in government, what would he advocate for and do? How does Avi try and effectively assess the core risks of COVID both from a societal and economic perspective?

   3.) How does Avi feel when he hears the comparison of COVID to Saars or 9/11 when it comes to their impact on travel? Why is this so different? Why does Avi believe 2021 will be a bigger year for business travel than 2019?

   4.) How does Avi advise founders heavily impacted by COVID to really effectively analyse their spend and optimise runway? How does Avi think approach the element that sales and marketing is now non-revenue driving? How does Avi approach resource allocation as a result?

   5.) Does Avi believe we will see a fundamental re-shaping of corporate travel? What will change? How does domestic travel change? What will the landscape look like on the other side? Who will survive? Who will thrive? Does Avi feel now is an opportune time for M&A?

   Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

   Avi's Fave Book: The Hundred-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared

   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.

6. 20VC: Elad Gil on Startup Offense and Defence in a Recession, How The Venture Landscape Has Shifted & All Things Valuations, Secondaries and Layoffs

   26 mei 2020 · 42 min

   Afspelen
   Elad Gil is one of Silicon Valley's most successful and prominent angels of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Stripe, Square, Airbnb, Pinterest, Instacart, Flexport and Brex to name a few. Prior to solely company investing, Elad was an operator as Founder and CEO @ Color Genomics for their first 3 years. Before Color, Elad was a VP of Corporate Strategy @ Twitter following their acquisition of the company he founded, Mixer Labs. Before founding Mixer, Elad spent 3 years at Google where he was involved with 3 acquisition including the Android acquisition. Lees meer

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) How Elad made his way into the world of startups and how that led to his investing in some of the most prominent companies of the last decade?

   2.) How is the venture and startup landscape shifting right now? What does Elad make of the large multi-stage funds re-entering seed? How does Elad advise founders when it comes to taking secondaries?

   3.) What are the core elements startups need to assess to fully understand their cash position? What is the optimal runway to have and to raise for today? How can founders stress test their runway models? Where does Elad see the most mistakes when it comes to runway?

   4.) Does Elad believe the VC messages of "Open for Business" during COVID? How does Elad advise founders when it comes to valuation sensitivity today? What are the core terms that founders should watch out for when raising? How does Elad see venture fund reserve allocations changing?

   5.) What are the core tenets of an effective layoff strategy? How should they determine the right level of aggression with which to make cuts? How can layoffs be done in a way that maintains internal culture and morale? Where does Elad see many going wrong when it comes to layoffs?

   6.) Which business will thrive in COVID times? Which will die? What are the leading indicators of each? How does Elad determine in the businesses that are growing immensely during COVID, tho…

7. 20VC: TripActions CEO Ariel Cohen on The Future of Business and Personal Travel & Layoffs; How To Do Them The Right Way & Maintain Company Culture and Morale

   22 mei 2020 · 32 min

   Afspelen
   Ariel Cohen is the Founder & CEO @ TripActions, the company trusted by more than 4,000 companies to manage their business travel and expenses. To date, Ariel has raised more than $980M with TripActions from the likes of Lightspeed, Oren Zeev and a16z to name a few. Prior to TripActions, Ariel co-founded StreamOnce, a business multimedia integration platform which was acquired by Jive Software. Prior to StreamOnce, Ariel led Product Management in a senior leadership role at Hewlett-Packard. Lees meer

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) How Ariel made his way into the world of tech and came to change the way we think about business travel today with TripActions?

   2.) What are TripActions doing in their business to be there for their partners, customers and suppliers in the long term? TripActions engaged in layoffs, how did Ariel approach the size of layoff required? What is the right way to do layoffs? How does this change in a remote world?

   3.) Given the uncertainty, how does Ariel advise founders to assess and correct their burn and spending? What is a reasonable amount of runway to reserve for? For those hit hard on the demand side, what can they do to build durable defensibility when they can't scale demand?

   4.) How does Ariel view the future of business travel? Does Zoom replace much of the business trips? What will the landscape look like in 3 years? What players will survive? Who will thrive?

   5.) From a founder psychology perspective, what has Avi done to cope in these very challenging times? What has worked? What has not worked? What does Ariel advise founders struggling to cope psychologically? What can investors do to be there for their founders?

   Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

   Ariel's Fave Book: Mr Vertigo

   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.

8. 20VC: 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy: Deconstructing Economies of Scale, How To Assess True Market Size, Assessing Risk vs Uncertainty, What "Brand As Power" Really Means with Hamilton Helmer, Managing Partner and Chief Investment Offi

   18 mei 2020 · 38 min

   Afspelen
   Hamilton Helmer is the Managing Partner & Chief Investment Officer @ Strategy Capital a long-only public equity fund that selects securities for investment based on Power Dynamics, a proprietary model of fundamental value, developed by Hamilton over decades of strategy consulting with clients such as Hewlett-Packard, Adobe and more. Hamilton is also the author of one of my favourite books, 7 Powers. If that was not enough, Hamilton is also an Instructor in the Economics Department @ Stanford University. Lees meer

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) How Hamilton made his way into the world of investing from advising some of the largest tech titans on the planet with Adobe and HP?

   2.) What is a strategy mental model? What makes the most effective strategic models? What characteristics do they have? How should founders balance between sticking to models and being willing to change them? What are Hamilton's biggest takeaways from working with Netflix?

   3.) "All strategy begins with invention", what did Hamilton mean by this? How does Hamilton explain the success of copycats in markets? How does Hamilton separate between first mover and creator? How does Hamilton analyse the transition from startup to pricer with scale economics?

   4.) How does Hamilton advise founders to view and approach competition? Why does Hamilton totally disagree with the requirement of being 10x better than your competition? Is product innovation alone enough without brand or business model innovation?

   5.) How does Hamilton define "brand"? Is brand an attainable strategy alone or is it the byproduct of something else? How transferable is brand in one category to alternative categories? How does a brand truly know when they have sustainable leverage and power?

   Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

   Hamilton's Fave Book: The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe, Stardust

   As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!

   Likewise, you can follow Harry on In…

9. 20VC: Sarah Kunst on Why There Is Plenty Of Investor Money Still Available, The Megan Markle Effect and How It Impacts Hiring and Talent & Whether GP Commits Prevent Diversity and Inclusion

   15 mei 2020 · 38 min

   Afspelen
   Sarah Kunst is the Founder and Managing Director @ Cleo Capital with a portfolio including the likes of StyleSeat, Glow Bar and PlateJoy to name a few. Prior to venture, Sarah served as a senior advisor at Bumble where she focused on their corporate VC arm, Bumble Fund, and on the board of the Michigan State University Foundation endowment. If that was not enough, Sarah is also a contributing editor @ Vanity Fair. Due to her success, Sarah has been named a Future Innovator by Vanity Fair and a top woman in VC by Wall St Journal. Lees meer

   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

   1.) How Sarah made her way into the world of venture from Bumble and how that led to her founding Cleo Capital?

   2.) Does Sarah believe VCs really are still "open for business"? What does Sarah make of all the dry powder sitting on the sidelines? How does Sarah think reserve allocation strategies will change today? Why does Sarah believe another great vintage of funds is to come, as it did in 08'?

   3.) What would Sarah most like to change about the world of venture? Does Sarah agree that GP commit expectations prevent diversity in venture? How was the fundraising process for Sarah? How can VCs prove skin in the game without having personal capital?

   4.) What is the #1 piece of advice Sarah is giving her founders in these COVID times? How does Sarah advise her founders on approaching the talent market today? How does Sarah advise her founders on burn and capital allocation given COVID?

   Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

   Sarah's Fave Book: Attached: Are you Anxious, Avoidant or Secure? How the science of adult attachment can help you find – and keep

   Sarah's Most Recent Investment: Planet Forward

   As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sarah and on Twitter here!

   Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

10. 20VC: Floodgate's Mike Maples on 3 Key Breakthroughs Startups Experience in Success, The Rise of Angel and Operator Funds, Multi-Stage Funds Re-Entering Seed Investing and The Insight Development Framework

    11 mei 2020 · 42 min

    Afspelen
    Mike Maples is a Founder & Partner @ Floodgate, one of the leading early-stage firms of the last decade with investments in the likes of Lyft, Twitch, Twitter, Okta and Sonos to name a few. He has been on the Forbes Midas List since 2010 and was also named one of "8 Rising Stars" by FORTUNE Magazine. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was involved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back startup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (IPO TIVS, acquired by IBM) and Motive (IPO MOTV, acquired by Alcatel-Lucent.) Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Mike made his way from founding startups to entering the world of venture and the gap he saw in the market when founding Floodgate?

    2.) Mike has previously said, "a startup is not a company, it is a series of breakthroughs". How does Mike define a breakthrough? What are the 2 most meaningful breakthroughs a startup can experience? Which excites Mike the most to see? How do the best startups scale pre-breakthrough to post-breakthrough?

    3.) What are the core ways inflections can create breakthrough opportunities? What were Mike's learnings on inflections from investing in Lyft? What does Mike mean when he talks about the importance of "backcasting"? What did investing in Twitch teach Mike about forecasting?

    4.) How does Mike feel about the rise of operator and angel funds? How does Mike analyse the re-entrance of large multi-stage funds back into seed markets? Does Mike agree with Semil Shah, "founders are voting with their feet and taking multi-stage money at seed"?

    5.) As Mike's peers have all moved into larger funds, Mike did not, why? How does Mike view "fund size as your strategy"? How does Mike think about the centrality of ownership? Does Mike really believe you can concentrate capital into your winners? What are the challenges? Why does Mike feel self-promotion is one of the biggest challenges in VC?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Mike's Fave Book: Superforecasting: The Art and Science of…

11. 20VC: How Roam Research Analyse Product Design, Team-Building, The Future of Collaboration Tools & Applying Tesla Go-To-Market To Roam with Conor White-Sullivan, Founder & CEO @ Roam Research

    8 mei 2020 · 29 min

    Afspelen
    Conor White-Sullivan is the Founder & CEO @ Roam Research, the tool taking over our industry providing a seamless note-taking tool for networked thought. Prior to founding Roam, Conor founded 2 prior businesses and also worked at HuffPost as a Co-Founder of HuffPost Labs where he reported directly to Arianna Huffington and HuffPost CTO. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Conor's high school wrestling career taught him "how to win"? What was the founding story with Roam? How does Conor think about when to stay true to the vision and persist vs when to give up?

    2.) How does Conor think about the product design philosophy they have @ Roam? Conor has said before, "Roam is not about taking better notes", what is Roam about then? How does Conor think about the importance of adding challenge to a product? What does he mean when he discusses the importance of "low floors and high ceilings" with regards to product design?

    3.) How would Conor analyse his own hiring and team-building philosophy? Why are the two most important traits, "girt and autodidacts"?How does Conor really stress these two characteristics in an interview process? Why does Conor choose to live with the team? What are the benefits of this?

    4.) Does Conor believe we are in a phase of bundling or unbundling when it comes to collaboration tools? Does Conor believe we will see large players acquire and consolidate over the coming months? Why does Conor compare Roam more to Google than other collaboration tools?

    5.) How does Conor think about go-to-market today? What were some of Conor's biggest takeaways for bootstrapping for years with revenue from customers? Why is Conor borrowing from the Tesla GTM? What does that really mean in practice?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Conor's Fave Book: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

    As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Conor and on Twitter here!

    Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojit…

12. 20VC: Mark Cuban on His Relationship To Wealth and Risk, Why Coming Out of The Pandemic Will Be The Best Time In The History of Mankind To Start A Business & Why Silicon Valley Investors Are Like Old Hollywood

    4 mei 2020 · 30 min

    Afspelen
    Mark Cuban is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. His career began with his founding of MicroSolutions, a company he went on to sell to CompuServe in 1990. Then in 1995 Mark co-founded Broadcast.com - streaming audio over the internet. In just four short years, Broadcast.com (then Audionet) was sold to Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars. Following the acquisition in 2000, Mark acquired the Dallas Mavericks where since his taking over they have competed in the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history in 2006 - and becoming NBA World Champions in 2011. They are currently listed as one of Forbes' most valuable franchises in sports. If that was not enough, Mark is also one of ABC's "Sharks" on the hit show Shark Tank. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Mark made his way into the world of technology and startups having been fired from his first job in sales?

    2.) How does Mark evaluate his relationship to wealth and money? How has that changed over time? What advice does Mark have to those that tie happiness and money together?

    3.) What does Mark think about Silicon Valley investors today? Why does he believe they and the valley are like Hollywood? Why does Mark believe that if the greatest tech companies of today had been started elsewhere, they would be more successful?

    4.) How does Mark evaluate his own investing philosophy today? How does Mark think about price and price sensitivity? Why is Mark so keen to have his investment funded from the cashflow of the business? Does this not narrow opportunity and limit upside? How does Mark evaluate risk today?

    5.) Why does Mark believe post-COVID is the single greatest time to be an entrepreneur? What advice would he give to an entrepreneur starting their new business in this time? How would Mark go about the re-opening of society post lockdown?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Mark's Fave Book: Rebooting AI: Building Artificial Intelligence We Can Trust, Healthy Buildings…

13. 20VC: Framework For Hiring The Best Talent 100% Remotely, Raising $32M From Benchmark and GV Pre-Launch and How To Think Through Capital Efficiency and Runway Today with Jeff Seibert and Wayne Chang, Co-Founders @ Digits

    1 mei 2020 · 37 min

    Afspelen
    Wayne Chang and Jeff Seibert are the co-founders @ Digits, the company that gives you a complete, real-time understanding of your expenses, all in just a few clicks. To date, Wayne and Jeff have raised over $32M for Digits from some of the best in the business including Peter Fenton @ Benchmark and Jess Verrilli @ GV and then with the most incredible base of angels with the founders from Box, Github, Stitch Fix, Tinder, Gusto and more. Prior to Digits, Wayne and Jeff co-founded Crashlytics, acquired by Twitter for a 9-figure sum in Jan 2013 and then acquired from Twitter by Google in 2017. If that was not enough they are also LPs in some of the world's most exclusive funds and angels in the likes of Gusto, OpenDoor and SoFi to name a few. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How did Jeff and Wayne make their way into the world of tech and startups? How did Wayne crashing a startup dinner start everything for them?

    2.) How did Jeff and Wayne's prior success with Crashlytics impact their operating mindset scaling Digits today? What worked? What did not work? What gets easier with time? What gets harder the second time around?

    3.) What have been Wayne and Jeff's biggest lessons from having a remote team from Day 1? What structure and framework do they use to hire the best remote talent? How does that change at the exec level? How do they think about optimising product management for remote teams?

    4.) How would Wayne and Jeff summarise their design philosophy with Digits? Why does Wayne believe "minimalism only favours the designer"? When does it make sense to actually add some complexity to your product?

    5.) Digits raised $33M pre-launch, why did they favour this approach? How do they think about when to transition from lean and iterative to aggressive and pouring fuel on the fire? Why did they choose to work with Peter Fenton? How do they think about optimising their angel network?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Wayne's Fave Book: Enders Game

    Jeff's Fave…

14. 20VC: Airtable's Howie Liu on Potential Consolidation In The Collaboration Tools Market, The Transition From Peacetime To Wartime CEO & How To Make The Move To Remote Work Successful; The Process Beyond The Tools

    27 april 2020 · 31 min

    Afspelen
    Howie Liu is the Founder & CEO @ Airtable, the all in one collaboration platform that has taken so much of our ecosystem by storm. To date, Howie has raised over $170M from some of the best in the business including Benchmark, Thrive, Coatue, Caffeinated Capital, Founder Collective, CRV and Freestyle to name a few. Prior to founding Airtable, Howie was the Co-Founder @ Etacts, an automated intelligent CRM that was acquired by Salesforce just 9 months after creation. Howie then led the social CRM product at Salesforce. Fun fact, Howie started his career as an intern at Freestyle Ventures. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Howie made his way from founding Etacts to changing the way we think about databases and spreadsheets today with Airtable? How did Salesforce acquiring Etacts impact Howie's operating mentality with Airtable?

    2.) With the rise of remote work, what have been Howie's core observations from the last month of the world going WFH? What does it take to succeed? What mistakes have Airtable made in their process of work from home? Why did it not work? What lessons did Howie take from that?

    3.) How does Howie think about Airtable's transition from an application to a platform? What does he perceive as the core challenges in making the transition? What lessons has he learned from studying others who have done it? Why did Howie choose Peter Fenton @ Benchmark to work with?

    4.) How has Howie seen himself evolve and scale as a leader over the last few years? What have been the most challenging elements? How does Howie think about which individuals he would like as mentors? How does he determine which advice to ingest vs to reject?

    5.) How does Howie analyse the remote work/collaboration tools environment today? Does Howie believe we will enter a period of consolidation with the proliferation of new tools created? Does Howie believe we will see an unbundling in collaboration tools?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Howie's Fave Book: Hard Drive: …

15. 20VC: Superhuman's Rahul Vohra on How 1-1 Customer Onboarding Can Scale Efficiently to $100M ARR, Why Gamification Does Not Work But Game Design Does & What Game Design Means For The Next Generation Of Product Managers

    24 april 2020 · 42 min

    Afspelen
    Rahul Vohra is the Founder & CEO @ Superhuman, the startup that has rebuilt the inbox from the ground up creating the fastest email experience ever made. To date, Rahul has raised over $56m with Superhuman from some of the best in the business including a16z, First Round, Box Group and then 2 of my favourites in Jeff Morris Jr @ Chapter One and Ed and Elliot @ Boldstart. Prior to founding Superhuman, Rahul was the Founder @ Rapportive, a company later acquired by LinkedIn in 2014. If that was not enough, Rahul is also an investor having co-founded a new firm with Todd Goldberg just last year. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Rahul made his way from making the first plugin for Gmail with Rapportive to changing how we think about email today with Superhuman?

    2.) Why does Rahul believe game design is worth doing? What is the difference between game design and gamification? What does it take to create a game? What is the truth on game design?

    3.) What are the core 5 factors that make up effective game design? How can products incorporate goals to make the user feel emotion when engaging? What emotions does one want the user to feel? How can they be tested? What controls should be placed around the UX? Why are controls so fundamental?

    4.) What is the difference between a toy and a game? How can one effectively incorporate toys into their product? How has Superhuman done this effectively to date? Hw can designers create a system of flow in the user experience? What works? What does not work?

    5.) Did Rahul intentionally create an entirely new category when it comes to onboarding? Why does Rahul pushback on people that suggest 1-1 onboarding is not scalable? What does the unit economics look like? How does this scale to $100M ARR?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Rahul's Fave Book: The Art of Game Design: A book of lenses

    As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!

    Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito …

16. 20VC: Upfront's Mark Suster on COVID Redefining What A Great Company Looks Like and What Valuations Look Like, Why Pay-To-Play Is Back On The Table & Why We Will See The Death of Party Rounds

    20 april 2020 · 47 min

    Afspelen
    Mark Suster is the Managing Partner @ Upfront Ventures, one of LA's leading and largest venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Bird, GOAT, Maker Studios and Ring.com to name a few. Prior to joining the world of venture, Mark was the founder & CEO of two successful enterprise software companies, the most recent of which was sold to Salesforce.com where Mark became VP, Products. Mark is also the author of one of my favourite industry blogs, Both Sides of The Table. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Mark made his way from founding enterprise companies to joining "the dark side" of venture with his move to Upfront?

    2.) How does the current economic landscape change the world of B2B? How will renewals be impacted? How will customers approach discounting? Similarly, how will the world of B2C be impacted by COVID? How does this impact marketing and ad spend?

    3.) How does Mark think about reserve allocation today with Upfront? How does that change in the face of COVID? Why does Mark believe this environment will redefine valuations? How should founders respond in the face of heavily changed valuations?

    4.) Does Mark believe we will see a graveyard of new venture firms who have deployed too quickly and have too many hungry mouths to feed? How does Mark think about building temporal diversification into the portfolio? How can managers use reserves more intelligently moving forward?

    5.) Does Mark agree with the Twittersphere that VCs remain "open for business"? How will we see deal volume impact? How will we see size of transaction impacted? What is the most important role a VC can play today? How will the M&A market also be impacte din the face of COVID?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Mark's Fave Book: Disunited Nations: The Scramble for Power in an Ungoverned World

    Mark's Most Recent Investment: Solve

    As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mark and on Twitter here!

    Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mo…

17. 20VC: Notion's Fundraise with Index: The Most Anticipated Deal in The Valley: How It Came To Be | The Future of Remote Work |How Notion Approach The Balance of Growth and Profitability

    17 april 2020 · 38 min

    Afspelen
    Sarah Cannon is a Partner @ Index Ventures, one of the world's leading venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of Dropbox, Skype, Figma, Bird, Slack and many more incredible companies. As for Sarah, at Index, she works with groundbreaking companies including Notion, Slack, Pitch, Quill and Instabase. Prior to Index Sarah spent time at CapitalG, Warburg Pincus and even worked in The White House as Policy Advisor for the National Economic Council. Lees meer

    Akshay Kothari is the COO @ Notion, the company that has taken the modern working world by storm as the all-in-one workspace to write, plan, collaborate and get organised. Just last week Notion raised a $50M round led by Index at a reported $2Bn valuation. Prior to Notion, Akshay spent 5 years at LinkedIn following his prior company, Pulse News, being acquired by LinkedIn in 2013.

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How did Sarah make her way into the world of venture from The White House and come to be a Partner @ Index today? How did Akshay parlay his angel investment into Notion into joining as COO the company 5 years later?

    2.) With such a proliferation of collaboration tools today, how does Sarah see the remote work/collaboration tools landscape playing out? Are wein a phase of bundling or unbundling? Will we enter a phase of heavy consolidation? How does Notion think about the transition from an application to a platform? What are the challenges in doing so?

    3.) What have been some of Akshay's core observations and learnings from watching the world move to remote work overnight? What behaviours will remain post COVID? What behaviours will not? What sectors will be forever changed due to the crisis? What opportunities does that bring about?

    4.) Why did Notion decide to keep the team so small for so long? What are the advantages? How does Notion think about maintaining quality when hiring for scale now? What have been some of Akshay's biggest learnings in what it takes to attract A* talent to Notion?…

18. 20VC: Basecamp Founder David Heinemeier Hansson on Why It Is The Biggest BS To Chase Being A Unicorn, His Relationship to Wealth and Status and Why Now More Than Ever It Is A Myth Entrepreneurs Have To Raise VC

    14 april 2020 · 49 min

    Afspelen
    David "DHH" Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh) is the creator of Ruby on Rails, founder and CTO at Basecamp (formerly 37Signals), and the best-selling co-author of Rework and Remote: Office Not Required. If that was not enough, fun fact, he went from not having a driver's license at 25 to winning, at 34, the 24 Hours of Le Mans race, one of the most prestigious automobile races in the world. It is often called the "Grand Prix of endurance and efficiency." Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How David made his way into the world of tech and startups from his childhood living in Copenhagen and how a cold email led to the founding of Basecamp with Jason Fried?

    2.) What have been some of David's core observations as people move to remote work over the last few weeks? What is the #1 mistake that 90% of teams make? How does David advise founders to approach loneliness and depression in their team? What strategies have Basecamp used to unite the team and inspire collaboration and teamwork?

    3.) Why have David and Jason always tried to keep the Basecamp team as small as possible? Why does David believe one of the biggest problems is that execs have too much time? How does that manifest itself? What does David's week look like? How does he approach meetings?

    4.) Why does David hate the majority of "mission statements" today? What are the best composed of? What are the worst? What feelings does David believe your mission statement should inspire in the reader? What does David believe one needs to do to build a challenger brand today?

    5.) Why has David and Basecamp always resisted the conventional path of raising VC funds? Why does David believe needs VC money is total BS? Why does David believe it is BS to chase being a unicorn? Why have founders got this so wrong today and what can they do to change?

    6.) How would David describe his relationship to money? How has that relationship changed over time? What are the core challenges as one moves from a monetary to a deeper appre…

19. 20VC: Why Venture Fund Life Cycles Do Not Align To Companies Today, Actionable Strategies To Separate Good From Great When Assessing and Hiring Multiple Candidates & Why We Need More Adventure in Venture Capital with Blake Scholl, Founder & CEO @ Boom Sup

    10 april 2020 · 32 min

    Afspelen
    Blake Scholl is the Founder & CEO @ Boom Supersonic, the world's fastest commercial aeroplane, aspiring to bring back supersonic passenger flight at an affordable price. To date, Blake has raised over $166M in funding with Boom from the likes of Paul Graham, Sam Altman, Ray Tonsing @ Caffeinated Capital, Homebrew and 8VC to name a few who have featured on the show in the past. Prior to changing the world of commercial flight, Blake started his career with a 5-year stint at Amazon as a Manager of Social Networks and Automated Advertising. Blake then went on to found his own company, Kima Labs, acquired by Groupon in 2012 where he then spent 2 further years before founding Boom. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Blake made the move from Groupon to changing the way we think about commercial travel today with Boom Supersonic?

    2.) How was the fundraising process for Blake given he was raising for supersonic jets? What is his most memorable fundraising moment? Where does Balek believe investors provide outsized value? Where could the investing class improve? How should the fund structures today change?

    3.) What deliberate choices and decisions has Blake made to find and acquire the best talent? What is Blake's favourite interview question? What works? What does not work? What specific elements has Blake built into the culture at Boom to build operational excellence?

    4.) How has Blake seen himself evolve and develop as a leader over the last few years? What have been the most challenging elements to develop and scale? How does Blake feel on whether founders should have experience on the industry they are entering or if there are benefits of not having so?

    5.) What would Blake really like to change about the world of tech and Silicon Valley today? How does Blake feel about the current level of both innovation and founder ambitions? What can be further done to foster this in the coming years?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Blake's Fave Book: Atlas Shrugge…

20. 20VC: Are VCs Still "Open For Business", How VCs Attitude To Risk Has Changed & The 2 Most Valuable Assets To Founders Today with Fred Destin, Founding Partner @ Stride VC

    8 april 2020 · 32 min

    Afspelen
    Fred Destin is a Founding Partner @ Stride.VC, one of Europe's newest and largest early-stage seed firms. Prior to co-founding Stride, Fred was a General Partner @ Accel where he was the lead investor and board member at Deliveroo, Pillpack (acq. AMZN for $1BN) and Carwow. Prior to Accel, he was a partner at Atlas Venture (now Accomplice) where he invested in and served on the board of Pillpack, Zoopla (IPO), Secret Escapes, Integral Ad Science (partial exit to Vista at $850M) and TheCurrencyCloud to name a few. Fun fact, his portfolio has a total enterprise value of more than $10BN and he generated in excess of $700M in exit value to investors. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How did Fred make his way into the world of venture and come to co-found one of Europe's newest and largest seed funds in Stride.VC?

    2.) If you look to Twitter, all VCs are "open for business", does Fred really believe the market is still open for business? How will deal volume be affected? How bad does Fred think this could get? How does this downturn compare to that of the dot-com and 2008?

    3.) Why did Stride decide to take the decision to pause on investing at this moment in time? How does Fred respond to the suggestion of better pricing and less competition at this time? How does Fred believe venture investors view of risk evolves at this time? What is the first to change?

    4.) With many new funds deploying their first fund in 18 months, does Fred think we will see a gravyard of new fund managers out of cash and with cash hungry portfolios? What advice does Fred give to newer managers of other elements they have to be minfdul/aware of?

    5.) How does Fred think about the right way for managers to communicate with their LPs at this time? What has Stride done that has worked? Does Fred believe we will see many LPs defaulting on their initial commitments? How does Fred think emerging managers can navigate this?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Fred's Fave Movie: Mulholland Drive
    …

21. 20VC: Raising A $1.35Bn Fund I, The Emerging Secondary Opportunity For Early Stage Managers and Founders & What It Takes To Win The Best Growth Deals Today with Ravi Viswanathan, Founder & Managing Partner @ NewView Capital

    6 april 2020 · 39 min

    Afspelen
    Ravi Viswanathan is the Founder and Managing Partner @ NewView Capital, launched in 2018 with their $1.35Bn Fund I, they have already set themselves as leaders in the world of growth funding with 3 massive exits in less than 2 years in the form of Plaid, sold to Visa for $5.3Bn, Acquia, sold to Vista Equity for $1Bn and then Scout, sold to WorkDay for $540M. Prior to founding NewView Ravis spent 14 years at one of the largest venture firms in the business, NEA where he co-led their venture growth equity practice and in 2016, became COO @ Nea. Before the world of venture, Ravi spent 4 years as a VP @ Goldman Sachs and before that was at McKinsey & Co. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Ravi made his way into the world of venture from investment banking and how that led to his founding the monster $1.35Bn Fund I for NewView Capital?

    2.) Given the first fund being $1.35Bn, how did Ravi find the fundraising process for NewView? On reflection, what did he and the team do well that they would do again? What did they not do well that they would alter? What advice would Ravi give to first-time fund managers raising today?

    3.) Would Ravi agree with Bill Gurley, "the biggest challenge today is the sheer quantum of capital flowing into the industry"? What does Ravi make of the rise of private equity (PE) houses entering the venture landscape? How does it change the exit landscape?

    4.) How does Ravi think about the right way for funds to navigate and approach the secondary market? What advice would he give to emerging managers? How does Ravi feel about founder secondaries? What framework does he use to determine whether the amount is reasonable?

    5.) How does Ravi think about what it take to truly win the best deals in competition today? If one does not have the budget of a16z, how does one build a venture platform? Where do the majority of investors make mistakes when it comes to VC value add?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Ravi's Fave Book: Shoe Dog: A Memoi…

22. 20VC: The Framework to Scale A Team From 20 to 190 in 24 Months, How To Structure The Perfect Investor Updates & How To Create A Culture of Distributed Ownership with Radical Transparency with Jean-Charles Samulian, Co-Founder & CEO @ Alan

    3 april 2020 · 38 min

    Afspelen
    Jean-Charles Samulian is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Alan, the startup revolutionising health insurance with a service centred on people, simplicity and comfort. To date, Jean-Charles has raised over $85M in funding with Alan from some of the best in the business including Jan Hammer @ Index, Shakil Khan, Tom Stafford @ DST, Xavier Niel and Brent Hoberman to name a few. Prior to changing the healthcare insurance system, Jean-Charles founded Expliseat, revolutionising airline seating for economy class, now used by some of the world's leading airlines. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Jean-Charles made his way from re-inventing the airline seating industry to re-inventing the way consumers experience healthcare insurance? How did re-inventing the airline seat prepare and impact Jean-Charles' mindset going into the highly regulated healthcare market with Alan?

    2.) How does JC structure his investor updates? What framework does JC believe these investor updates should take? Does he include thank you's at the end? Does he include requests for help? How does he involve the team in the writing of these updates? How does JC insert core strategic thinking into his updates? How much time does JC allocate to writing updates? How does JC think about transparency when coming investor updates?

    3.) How has JC created a culture of distributed ownership combined with radical transparency? What are the key elements to achieve this? Where do so many go wrong with culture maintenance and creation? What have been the biggest challenges in scaling from 20 to 190 people in just 2 years? What has worked? What has not worked?

    4.) How does JC structure the hiring process at Alan? Why does JC believe in the importance of "shadowing" for people to be excellent at hiring? How does JC define "excellence" in a potential candidate? What questions does JC most like to ask candidates? How does JC think about the right way to optimise new employee onboarding? Where do many go wrong with on…

23. 20VC: Howard Marks on How COVID-19 Impacts Our Economy, Liquidity and National Debt, Why The Theory of Falling Knives and Market Bottoms is Wrong & Why The Best Investors Are Fundamentally Unemotional

    30 maart 2020 · 26 min

    Afspelen
    Howard Marks is the Co-Founder and Co-Chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, a leading investment firm with more than $120 billion in assets. Prior to founding Oaktree, Howard spent 10 years at The TCW Group, where he was responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. Previously, Howard was with Citicorp for 16 years, where he served as Vice President and senior portfolio manager in charge of convertible and high yield securities. Howard has also written two books, most recently Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side, and it was Warren Buffet who said, "When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they're the first thing I open and read. I always learn something." Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Howard first made his way into the world of finance over 50 years ago? How did not getting an investment banking job change the course of Howard's life?

    2.) What does Howard believe is the fundamental economic crisis occurring today? How does Howard expect liquidity availability to change over the next few years? What analogies of prior downturns and recessions can we look to learn from? How does this downturn differ and align to prior recessions and downturns? What policies would Howard like to see governments enact to prevent the worst-case scenario?

    3.) In conditions of such uncertainty, how does Howard think about how to manage and move forward with such volatility? What are Howard's frameworks and mechanisms to analyse crises events like this? Taking the analysis one level further, how bad does Howard believe this could get? If short of The Great Depression, are there scenarios that could lead there? What are the leading signals?

    4.) Being proactive, how does today's situation change the mentality and activity at Oaktree? Why does Howard not agree with the notion of "the falling knife"? How does Howard think about market bottoms? How does Howard determine the right insertion point? Why…

24. 20VC: How To Solve The Chicken and Egg Problem in Marketplaces? How Important Is Differentiated Supply? How To Prevent Leakage? How to Create Marketplace Defensibility and more with Alyssa Ravasio, Founder & CEO @ Hipcamp

    27 maart 2020 · 31 min

    Afspelen
    Alyssa Ravasio is the Founder & CEO @ Hipcamp, the startup that allows you to book unique camping experiences on over 300,000 campsites, cabins, RV parks, public parks and more. To date, Alyssa has raised over $41M in funding from some of the best in the business including Benchmark, a16z, Brad Feld, Dave Morin, Sam Shank @ Hotel Tonight and more. Prior to founding Hipcamp, Alyssa enjoyed numerous diverse roles including being Director of Sales & Marketing @ Revel Systems to working on International Information and Communication Policy in the US State Department. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Alyssa made her way from the US State Department to founding the game-changer of camping experiences in the form of Hipcamp?

    2.) How did Alyssa solve the classic chicken and egg problem for marketplaces in the early days with Hipcamp? How important does Alyssa believe it is for marketplaces to have truly differentiated supply? How does Alyssa think about what it takes to prevent leakage in marketplaces today? How can marketplace founders be strategic in building moats around their business? What works? What does not work when building marketplace defensibility?

    3.) How does Alyssa manage the psychology of being CEO? What does Alyssa find to be the most challenging element of the role? What have been Alyssa's biggest lessons from her last 12 months in the role? How has she seen her style of leadership change and develop over time? How does Alyssa deal with the shit hit the fan moments?

    4.) How did Alyssa find the fundraising process for Hipcamp? Why did Alyssa wait 5 years before raising the Series A? What changed in the business that made Alyssa realise then was the right time to raise big? How did the Series B with a16z and Andrew Chen catalyse so fast? Why did Alyssa select the investors she did? What investors did Alyssa not select or not select her that she would also loved to have worked with?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Alyssa's Fave Book: The Ov…

25. 20VC: Multi-Stage Funds Investing At Seed Are Option Value Investing, Why The Biggest Enemy For Venture Firms Is Group Think and How Running Companies Changes Your Investment Mentality with Manu Kumar, Founder @ K9 Ventures

    23 maart 2020 · 33 min

    Afspelen
    Manu Kumar is the Founder @ K9 Ventures, one of the leading seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Carta, Lyft, Twilio, Auth0 and Lucidchart to name a few incredible companies. Prior to K9, Manu was either the founder or co-founder of 4 companies, 3 of which with successful exits and the 4th being the fantastic Carta. Manu also has an incredible model with K9 where he not only invests in companies but also founds them and is currently the founder and CEO @ HiHello, the company that allows you to network smarter providing digital business cards designed to help you curate and grow your network. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Manu made his way into the world of venture having founded 4 prior companies and how he came to found K9 and be one of the OG's of pre-seed funding, having coined the term?

    2.) What does Manu believe have been the biggest and most significant changes in the early stage market over the last 7 years? How does Manu evaluate the rise of operator and scout funds? Would Manu agree with Semil Shah, "founders are voting with their feet and taking multi-stage money at seed?" What advice does Manu give to founders on taking multi-stage money at seed? How does Manu evaluate their aggressive movement back into the seed stage? Why is it?

    3.) Given Manu only makes 3-4 new investments per year, how does Manu think about and assess his own portfolio construction today? How does Manu think about building temporal diversification into the portfolio? What does Manu believe is the biggest mistake early-stage managers make in the first few years? Why does Manu believe that "group think" is so dangerous for funds today? What can they do deliberately to avoid it?

    4.) Manu not only invests but also founds companies at the same time, how does Manu split his time and what does his day look like? What are the benefits of investing and operating simultaneously? What are the biggest challenges and drawbacks? What elements did …

26. 20VC: How To Assess Risk and Value Creation, Why It Would Be Better If VCs Had Smaller Portfolios & How To Optimise Internal Decision-Making with Misha Esipov, Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit

    20 maart 2020 · 28 min

    Afspelen
    Misha Esipov is the Founder & CEO @ Nova Credit, the startup that allows you to use your international credit history to apply for credit cards, apartment rentals, loans and more. To date, Misha has raised over $69M with Nova from some of the best in the business Kleiner Perkins, Index, First Round, Pear and Core Innovation Capital to name a few. As for Misha, prior to changing the world of credit history, he spent over 5 years in the more traditional world of finance including time at Apollo in the world of private equity and then also Goldman Sachs in the world of investment banking. If that was not enough, due to the incredible impact Nova is having, Misha also sits on the board of World Education Services. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Misha made his way from the world of investment banking and private equity with Goldman and Apollo to changing the way we think about international credit with the founding of Nova?

    2.) How does Misah think about and asses both risk and value creation? How did Misha's time at Goldman Sachs influence his operating mentality and how he thinks about the value of data today? Why does Misha find the growth at all costs and revenue later mindset challenging? What core fundamentals around unit economics did Misha establish early with Nova? How does Misha advise founders when it comes to unit economics?

    3.) Misha has raised over $69M from some of the best, how did Misha find the process of fundraising? Where specifically does Misha believe his investors provide outside value? What is the optimal way to use an investor in the recruitment process? Where does Misha believe investors could do better and improve? How does Misha advise founders when it comes to manager selection?

    4.) How does Misha manage the psychology of being CEO? How does he deal with the shit hit the fan moments? How has his role changed over the last 3 years? What elements have been the most challenging to learn and scale?

    5.) How does Misha advise fou…

27. 20VC: True Ventures' Toni Schneider on How Being CEO @ Automattic (Wordpress) Made Him A Better Investor, The Biggest Lessons from Automattic on Running Successful Remote Teams and The Right Way For Investors To Show Founders They Have Their Support (Note

    16 maart 2020 · 32 min

    Afspelen
    Toni Schneider is a Partner @ True Ventures, one of the valley's leading early-stage firms with a portfolio including the likes of Peloton, Hashicorp, Fitbit, Automattic (Wordpress) and Tray.io to name a few. As for Toni, he has spent 14 years as a Partner @ True but during that tenure, he was also the CEO of Automattic for 8 years where he helped WordPress.com become a top 10 global internet destination with close to a billion monthly visitors. Before that, he was a VP @ Yahoo post their acquisition of the company he was CEO of Oddpost, much of their work formed the basis for Yahoo mail. Lees meer

    (Note: Recorded Pre-Coronavirus)

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Toni made his way into the world of venture following two turns in the seat of CEO and then joining Yahoo?

    2.) Does Toni fundamentally believe it helps when investing to have been both an operator with Automattic and Partner @ True? How did being CEO @ Automattic shape how he thinks about investing today? How did Toni manage the balancing act of a being a CEO and Partner at a venture fund for 7 years? Having been a CEO and having worked with the best, what does Toni believe are the qualities that make the great CEO of today?

    3.) Why does Toni believe that startups do not have to be as stressful as they are or are portrayed to be? How does Toni deal with the shit hit the fan moments? What can an investor do in times of high stress when the founder is not performing? What is the right way for them to express that the performance is not where it needs to be? On the flip side, what is the right way for investors to show their support to the founders?

    4.) What are Toni's biggest learnings from the Wordpress days on what it takes to run a truly successful remote team? Where does Toni see many people going wrong today? What does Toni advise those considering going remote first? What does Toni believe are the biggest pros and cons of the model? What infrastructure does one need to have in place to make it se…

28. 20VC: 3 Addictions Of Early-Stage Startup Founders, How Founders Should Strategically Think Through Unit Economics From Day 1 & Why Micromanagement Can Be Beneficial In The Early Days with Adena Hefets, Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes

    13 maart 2020 · 34 min

    Afspelen
    Adena Hefets is Co-Founder @ Divvy Homes, the startup that turns your monthly rent into a down payment allowing you to get on the property ladder, sooner. To date, Adena has raised over $189M with Divvy from some of the best in the business including a16z, Ray Tonsing @ Caffeinated, Max Levchin, DFJ and Threshold Ventures to name a few. Prior to founding Divvy, Adena was an early-stage fintech investor at DF. Before the world of venture, Adena was part of the original team that started Square Capital and grew the product to over 10,000 advances ($50M) within 1 year. Finally, before that, Adena started her career in the world of private equity with TPG. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Adena made her way from the world of venture with DFJ to changing the way we think about homeownership with Divvy?

    2.) What does Adena believe are the 3 addictions of many early-stage startup founders? How does Adena advise founders on the right way to think about paid marketing? What have been some surprising lessons from seeing Divvy's CAC change over time? How does Adena advise founders to construct a playbook and cadence for hiring?

    3.) How does Adena think differently about unit economics today? Is it fundamental to have this mindset from Day 1? Where does Adena believe many founders go wrong when it comes to unit economics? Who is to blame for this desire for synthetic growth? The founders? The VCs?

    4.) Considering female founders get a tiny portion of VC funds raised, how was the fundraise for Adena with Divvy? How does Adena advise other female founders and minorities on fundraising successfully? Does Adena believe that founders should always be raising? How does raising debt differ to raising equity? Why is it so much more challenging?

    5.) Why does Adena believe that micromanagement can be beneficial in the early days? How does Adena ensure that it does not lead to dependencies and dejected team members? What does Adena to do push people to really get the most…

29. 20VC: Matt Mochary, Coach To Silicon Valley's Leading VCs & Founders on How To Deal with Imposter Syndrome and Self-Doubt, How To Manage Fear and Anger & Why Board Seats Are The Death of Investors

    9 maart 2020 · 38 min

    Afspelen
    Matt Mochary coaches some of the world's leading venture capitalists and founders helping them to build the best organizations possible. On the VC side, Matt has worked with Peter Fenton @ Benchmark, several Sequoia Partners, Hemant @ GC and Mamoon @ Kleiner to name a few. As for founders, Matt has worked with the founders of Brex, Coinbase, Plaid, Reddit, Flexport and more. Prior to coaching, Matt began his business career as an investor with Spectrum Equity Investors. He then co-founded Totality, eventually sold to MCI/Verizon. In his own words, Matt went on to have fun (making the Academy Award short-listed documentary Favela Rising) and do good (starting the Mochary Foundation). Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Matt made his way from growth investor to immensely successful founder to now coaching the world's leading investors and founders?

    2.) How does Matt advise founders to think about their relationship towards fear and anger? Why doe they generate bad quality of decision-making? What should be done when one recognises they are fearful or angry? Where do many founders and investors go wrong here?

    3.) How does Matt advise founders who struggle with issues of self-doubt and imposter syndrome? What process should they go through to gain their confidence? What should they not do? How should they communicate their self-doubt to their team and the world?

    4.) How does Matt advise founders in terms of the optimal communication strategy both with their team and their co-founders? Does radical transparency need to be instant or should it be timed correctly? What are the best conflict resolution strategies between founding teams?

    5.) Why does Matt believe boards are the death of investors? Why are board members not optimally placed to advise their founders? What does Matt believe makes the best board members having worked with the likes of Peter Fenton? What does Matt advise new board members to be the best board member they can be?

    As always you can f…

30. 20VC: Why Most Founders Do Not Structure Their Fundraise Correctly, The Pros Of Having An MBA As A Startup Founder & How To Manage The Psychology Of Being CEO and Overcome Self Doubt with Iman Abuzeid, Founder & CEO @ Incredible Health

    6 maart 2020 · 34 min

    Afspelen
    Iman Abuzeid is the Founder & CEO @ Incredible Health, the startup that connects hospitals with nurses and other high shortage healthcare professionals to dramatically speed up the hiring process. To date, Iman has raised over $17M with Incredible Health from some dear friends of the show including NFX, a16z, Charles Hudson @ Precursor and Obvious Ventures to name a few. As for Iman, prior to Incredible, she was a medical doctor, a McKinsey alumnus and led product management at AliveCor, a Khosla-backed health tech startup. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Iman made her way into the world of startups from a family of surgeons and then through being a medical doctor herself?

    2.) How was the fundraising process for Iman as a female minority founder? What advice would Iman give to other women and/ or minority when it comes to getting the very best investors? Where does Iman see so many founders make mistakes raising? How should founders structure their meetings with VCs?

    3.) Where does Iman believe VCs can be most helpful? Where do many think VCs are helpful but they are actually not? What does Iman think of the "VC Twitter" ecosystem at play today? What investors said no along the way but Iman really liked? Why? Why does Iman believe MBA's provide such an advantage to startup founders today?

    4.) How does Iman manage the psychology of being a CEO? How does Iman deal with moments of self-doubt and imposter syndrome? How has Iman seen herself evolve and change as a leader over the last 3 years? What elements have been the most challenging to come to grips with?

    5.) Why does Iman still believe if you are not building your startup in the bay, you are missing out? What is so special about Silicon Valley? What advice does Iman give to founders looking to build a diverse team from day 1? How does Iman think about inevitable hiring mistakes? When is the right time to pull the plug?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Iman's Fave Book: The Hard Thing About Hard …

31. 20VC: Index Ventures Partner, Mark Goldberg on The Questions Founders Must Ask A Multi-Stage Fund Before Taking Their Money At Seed, Why Most Angels Will Lose Their Money & Why We Will See Our First $100Bn Neo-Bank Shortly

    2 maart 2020 · 33 min

    Afspelen
    Mark Goldberg is a Partner @ Index Ventures, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Dropbox, Revolut, Supercell, Plaid and Transferwise to name a few. As for Mark, since joining Index he has largely specialised on all things financial services and sits on the board of Plaid, Nova Credit, Intercom, Pilot and more incredible companies. Prior to Index, Mark spent 3 years in BizOps at Dropbox where the company increased tenfold during his time there. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Mark made his way into the world of venture with Index having spent 3 years at Dropbox during a transformational time for the company? What were Mark's biggest takeaways from seeing the growth cycle at Dropbox? How did that impact his investing mindset with Index?

    2.) Why does Mark believe that venture as an asset class is commoditising? What does Mark believe the best funds will have to do to stay ahead? How does Mark build relationships of trust and authenticity so early with founders? What works? What does not? What is the right way to deliver direct and tough feedback to founders?

    3.) How does Mark feel about multi-stage funds re-entering seed investing again? What are the right questions seed founders should ask multi-stage funds when determining whether to take their money? What does Mark believe it takes to be competitive and win the very best of deals? How is the Founder <> VC dynamic changing with capital supply?

    4.) Why does Mark believe that most angels are going to lose their money? What does Mark wish all angels knew when they started? How does Mark feel about the rise of founders investing alongside operating? What are the pros? What are the cons? How does Mark feel about the rise of scout funds? Where is there place in the ecosystem?

    5.) We are seeing unparalleled levels of activity in fintech, is this a boom or are we at the start of a fundamental shift in the landscape? Why does Mark believe we will soon s…

32. 20VC: Gusto Co-Founder, Tomer London on Why Most Founders Approach Fundraising With The Wrong Mindset Today, How To Construct A Values/Motivation Alignment Test To Determine The Right Investors For You & Why Delight Is So Crucial To The Success of Any Con

    28 februari 2020 · 34 min

    Afspelen
    Tomer London is the Co-Founder @ Gusto, the people platform for small businesses providing one place to run payroll, manage benefits, and support your team. To date, Tomer and the team have raised over $520M with Gusto from some of the industry's leading investors including General Catalyst, CapitalG, Kleiner Perkins, T Rowe, Fidelity and more and then individuals including Shopify Founder Tobias Luttke, Sam Altman, Max Levchin, Matt Mullenweg, Kevin Hartz and Elad Gil to name a few. Prior to Gusto, Tomer did a PHD in Electrical Engineering at Stanford and before that was Founder and CEO @ Vizmo, mobile self-service technologies for enterprise to try to fix customer care. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Tomer made his way from creating inventory management software for his Father's small business in Israel to Stanford and founding the unicorn that is Gusto?

    2.) Why does Tomer believe that most founders approach fundraising with the wrong mindset today? What does he mean when he says, "fundraising = creating change"? What is the "values motivation alignment"? How can founders use it to help them select the right investor for them? Why should you add investors just as you would new team members?

    3.) Having raised over $200M in the latest financing, how does Tomer think about when is the right time to pour fuel on the fire and go big? Is it a fundamentally different mindset when you have so much cash thrown on you? What would Tomer advise founders with suddenly expanded budgets? With 111 investors on the Gusto cap table, what would Tomer advise founders when it comes to cap table management?

    4.) What have been Tomer's biggest learnings when it comes to building a delightful product at scale across different segments? How important does Tomer feel time to delight from the UX perspective is? How does Tomer think about testing levels of user delight? NPS? Product analytics? How does Tomer think about the balance between product development and going all o…

33. 20VC: Vinod Khosla on What Venture Assistance Really Means, Why Many VCs Are Not Qualified To Advise Founders & Why Startups Can Innovate So Much Faster Than Incumbents

    24 februari 2020 · 36 min

    Afspelen
    Vinod Khosla is the Founder @ Khosla Ventures, one of the valley's most renowned firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Square, Affirm, DoorDash, Impossible Foods and OpenDoor just to name a few. As for Vinod, he started his career as a Founder, founding Daisy Systems, a company that went on to IPO. Then in 1982, Vinod founded Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. In 1986, Vinod joined his longtime friend, John Doerr and became a General Partner @ KPCB where he helped incubate Juniper Networks and helped transform the telecommunications business with Cerent Corporation, which was acquired by Cisco Systems in 1999 for $7.2 billion. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Vinod made his way into the world of startups with the founding of Daisy and Sun Microsystems and how that led to his entry into the world of venture with KPCB and ultimately founding Khosla Ventures?

    2.) How does Vinod feel about the term "venture assistance" today? Where does Vinod believe VCs can really drive value? How does Vinod allocate his time to drive as much value for the portfolio as possible? How does Vinod get involved when it comes to talent acquisition for the portfolio?

    3.) Why does Vinod believe that most board members are not qualified to advise entrepreneurs today? Why does Vinod believe that most value is driven outside of the board? What can founders to do make their boards as efficient as possible? How does Vinod advise founders to determine which advice to take vs which to disregard?

    4.) How does Vinod assess his own approach and attitude to risk today? What does Vinod believe are acceptable vs unacceptable risks in startups? How does Vinod believe the very best founders think about risk management? Does Vinod agree time is the biggest killer of startups? Why does Vinod believe startups are so much quicker to innovate than incumbents?

    5.) Why does Vinod believe that tolerance for failure has gone down in Silicon …

34. 20VC: Twitch Founder & CEO Emmett Shear on When To Persist vs When To Give Up For Entrepreneurs, The Fundamental Tension When Scaling Orgs and How To Optimise Them & How The Role of CEO Fundamentally Changes with Scale

    21 februari 2020 · 35 min

    Afspelen
    Emmett Shear is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Twitch, the world's leading live streaming platform for gamers and the things we love. Prior to Twitch's exit to Amazon for a reported $970M, Emmett raised over $42M in funding from some of the best including Thrive Capital, Bessemer, Mike Maples, Aydin Senkut, Paul Graham and Y Combinator. Emmett is also a part-time Partner @ Y Combinator, advising YC companies on everything from fundraising strategy to product decisions to hiring and firing. Before Twitch, Emmett co-founded Kiko, a company he later sold on eBay for 6 figures. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Emmett made his way into the world of startups with Kiko? How he ended up selling that for 6 figures on eBay? How that led to the creation of Justin.TV & Twitch?

    2.) Why does Emmett believe starting a startup is like "deciding to take on the burden of Sisyphus?" At what point in the journey does is start to get easier? Does Emmett agree with many on the show who say, "it does not get easier, it just gets different"? How does one know when to give up vs when to persist and follow the vision?

    3.) How does Emmett think about structuring an org at 1,500 people? Why does Emmett believe there is a fundamental tension when scaling teams between centralisation and decentralisation? How does one structure a reorg without causing instability? How does one communicate the reorg to the team? Where does Emmett see many go wrong here?

    4.) Does Emmett agree the best CEOs are the best resource allocators? How does Emmett approach internal resource allocation today between both functions and projects? What does he find most challenging here? What does the decision-making process look like? What are his taekaways from Apple, Amazon and Microsoft in how they determine and process resource allocation internally?

    5.) How does Emmett believe he has changed and evolved as a leader over the last 10 years with Twitch? What elements has he found the most challenging to master? Wha…

35. 20VC: Ashton Kutcher on Early Lessons From Investing in Airbnb and Spotify, Why VC Ownership Requirements Are Becoming More and More Egregious & What Being Good At Product Truly Means

    17 februari 2020 · 38 min

    Afspelen
    Ashton Kutcher is a Founder & General Partner @ Sound Ventures. Over the last 5 years, Ashton and his partner, Guy Oseary, have built Sound into one of the West Coast's leading new entrants with a portfolio including Lambda School, Calm, Gitlab, Affirm, Bird and many more incredible companies. As for Ashton, he started his investing career as an angel with early home runs including Spotify, Alibaba, Skype, Airbnb and Optimizely. Due to his immense success both in media and technology, Ashton has been named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People in the World". Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Ashton made his way into the world of startups with his foray into angel investing in Skype, Spotify etc? How did that lead to his founding Sound Ventures most recently?

    2.) How does Ashton's background in the world of media impact Sound's investment strategy and the type of deals they get excited by? Question from Daniel Ek @ Spotify: How did your deal sourcing look lin the early days? How has that changed over time and with the institutionalisation of Sound?

    3.) Why does Ashton believe people creating the future are perpetually young? What question does Ashton always like to ask founders? What does he look for in their answer? How does Ashton ensure founders feel comfortable with him? What does he do to allow them to open up? What is the hardest thing Ashton feels he has persevered through?

    4.) How does Ashton build strong product intuition about products in areas he is not familiar with? In terms of great product, Ashton backed Spotify with Daniel Ek and Shak Khan, what did Ashton see in Spotify way back then? How did Shak and Daniel innovate on distribution and customer acquisition with him and Spotify?

    5.) What have been Ashton's learnings in what it takes to truly win the best and most competitive deals? Before as an angel, Ashton's check size was friendly, now with Sound it is competitive with VCs, how does Ashton approach the element of now …

36. 20VC: How Founders Should Think Through Distribution and Customer Acquisition Today, The Challenges of the Digital Advertising Duopoly Currently & How To Structure Company Post Mortems Effectively with Gabriel Weinberg, Founder & CEO @ DuckDuckGo

    14 februari 2020 · 32 min

    Afspelen
    Gabriel Weinberg is the Founder & CEO @ DuckDuckGo, the Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. Over the last 12 years, Gabe has scaled DuckDuckGo to doing 1.6Bn private searches every month, a team of 83 full time fully remote employees, raising funding from some of the best in the business; USV and most importantly, being a profitable company. If that was not enough, Gabe has also written two phenomenal books, Traction and Super Thinking. Lees meer

    CLICK TO PLAY

    CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Gabriel made his way into the world of startups and came to found one of today's leading search engines and privacy companies in DuckDuckGo?

    2.) Gabriel decided to raise $13M from USV 4 years into the life of DDG, why did he believe that was the right time? Why does Gabe believe that DDG never needed any primary capital? How does Gabe advise founders to think when it comes to chasing profitability early? How does Gabe view the relationship between growth and capital? Are they in conflict or aligned? What does Gabe make of the many $100M rounds getting done today?

    3.) How does Gabe feel about the lack of free and open distribution today? How does Gabe strategise when it comes to channel diversification? What is the right level of marketing channel diversification to have? How do you know when to really double down on one that is working? How should founders be thinking about channel saturation rates? What have been Gabes biggest lessons on payback period over the last 12 years with DDG?

    4.) How does Gabe feel about the digital advertising duopoly on the internet between Facebook and Google? Why does Gabe argue that this duo of incumbents are so much more powerful than any other prior generation of incumbents? How does Gabe think about strategies to reduce their data monopolies?

    5.) DDG is 83 people and fully remote, what have been Gabe's biggest lesson…

37. 20VC: Lessons from 150 Angel Investments into the likes of Carta, Gusto, Airtable and Superhuman, Creating Algorithms and Models For Investing At Seed & Why Younger Investors Have An Advantage When It Comes To Finding Deals Early with Jude Gomila, Angel I

    11 februari 2020 · 50 min

    Afspelen
    Jude Gomila is the Founder & CEO @ Golden, creating the world's first self-constructing knowledge database built by artificial and human intelligence. To date, Jude has raised from some of the best in the business including Founders Fund, a16z, SV Angel and one of my dearest friends, Josh Buckley. Jude is also a prolific angel having invested in over 150 companies including Carta, Airtable, Superhuman, Gusto, Linear and many more incredible companies. Prior to Golden, Jude started Heyzap (now used by 100,000 mobile apps) alongside former guest Immad, now Founder of Mercury. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Jude made his way into the world of tech and Silicon Valley having been born and raised in Harrow, London? How did he then make his way into the world of investing?

    2.) What models should investors and founders have common ground on? Where are founders and investors often misaligned? What does Jude mean when he says he uses "algorithms for investing"? How are these algorithms structured? What is within them? How can/should people build their own?

    3.) Why does Jude very much disagree with spray and pray to be the dominant model to make money at seed? How does Jude think about portfolio construction having now made 180 investments? How has Jude's approach and attitude to ownership changed over time?

    4.) Does Jude agree with Semil Shah that founders are voting with their feet and taking multi-stage money at seed today? How does Jude evaluate the approach of multi-stage funds back into seed? How does Jude think about VC value add? Where does he believe they really can add value? Where do people think they do but they actually do not?

    5.) How does Jude foresee the future of the early-stage market? Will we see a generation of old school venture firms die out? Why does Jude believe younger investors have a higher chance of finding and winning the next best deal? How does Jude believe the angel ecosystem will shake out? Will we fundamentally see the unbun…

38. 20VC: Why You Never Want To Fight A Fair Fit For Distribution, Why No Great Company Is Built with 1 Product and When To Release Your Second & What Founders Can Do To Extract The Most From Their Cap Table with Shoaib Makani, Founder & CEO @ KeepTruckin

    7 februari 2020 · 31 min

    Afspelen
    Shoaib Makani is the Co-Founder & CEO @ KeepTruckin, the modern fleet management platform building solutions that make drivers and fleets safer, smarter, and more efficient. To date, Shoaib has raised over $229M from some of the world's leading investors including Index, GV, Greenoaks, IVP & Scale Venture Partners. Pre-founding KeepTruckin, Shoaib was an investor @ Khosla Ventures where he led investments in Instacart, Everlane and Indiegogo to name a few. Before venture with Khosla, Shoaib was on the operations side enjoying roles at both Google and Admob. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Shoaib made his way from the very comfortable world of venture to changing the way trucking fleets are managed today with KeepTruckin? How does Shoaib analyse and assess his own attitude to risk today?

    2.) How has Shoaib seen himself change and evolve as a leader over the last few years? How did his time investing impact how he approaches the role of CEO? How does Shoaib think about appropriate market sizing today? What advice does he give to founders on this? What is a reasonable market penetration to assume if successful?

    3.) What advice would Shoaib give founders when it comes to successful board management? How does Shoaib ensure investors have the right context at the right time to provide advice? What does that information flow to investors look like? How does Shoaib determine between the advice to accept vs what to reject?

    4.) Shoaib thought about distribution and customer acquisition long before he launched the product, why? What did this thought process conclude with? Does Shoaib believe you have to own your own lines of distribution to succeed? How does Shoaib feel when it comes to current CAC's on incumbent platforms?

    4.) As a founder, what does Shoaib say is his biggest mistake made in the KeepTrickin journey? How does Shoaib think about what it takes to acquire the very best talent? How does Shoaib advise founders work with recruiters? What can they d…

39. Breaking News: Meet First Round Capital's Newest Partner, How To Approach Generational Transition as a Venture Firm & The Dangers of Attribution In Venture

    4 februari 2020 · 39 min

    Afspelen
    Todd Jackson is First Round Capital's newest Partner (announced today) having spent the last 2 years as a Founder-in-Residence working with the FRC portfolio. Prior to his time in venture, Todd spent close to 3 years at Dropbox as VP Product & Design. Before that he was with Twitter as Director of Product Management, following his startup, Cover, being acquired by Twitter in 2014. Before founding Cover, Todd was a Product Manager @ Facebook where he helped lead major redesign of Newsfeed. Finally, Todd started his career at Google as a Product Lead taking Gmail from 0 to 200m users in 4 years. Lees meer

    Todd is joined today by his Partner @ First Round, Phin Barnes. Phin also writes the most fantastic blog, sneakerheadVC, that really is a must-read.

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) Phin, what is the exclusive news you would like to break on the show today? Todd, taking one step back, how did you make your way to this stage, what was your entry into technology and how did you come to be a Partner @ First Round Capital today? What were Todd's biggest takeaways from working on some of the most transformative social products in Gmail, Twitter, Newsfeed @ Facebook and Dropbox?

    2.) What advice does Phin have for Todd when it comes to entering a venture partnership? Where do many people go wrong in their first year in venture? What should Todd be optimising for in the partnership? In terms of measurement, how does one measure success of the first year of work as a Partner?

    3.) Todd, making the move from angel to institutional VC is a mindset shift, how does Todd think his investment mentality will be impacted by the shift from angel to institutional VC? Having raised funding as a founder, what type of founder experience and investor does Todd want to be and bring?

    4.) Phin, it has been a long time since FRC added a Partner, walk me through the recent changes at the top of FRC? What are the most important qualities for First Round when adding a Partner? What are the bigg…

40. 20VC: Alexa Von Tobel on Raising NYC's Largest Ever Female Led Fund , Portfolio Construction, Compression of Fundraising Timelines, Reserves Management & Personal Branding in Venture

    31 januari 2020 · 38 min

    Afspelen
    Alexa Von Tobel is the Founder & Managing Partner @ Inspired Capital, announced in 2019 as the largest ever female-led VC fund based in NYC. Prior to co-founding Inspired, Alexa founded LearnVest where she enjoyed an incredible 11-year journey culminating in their $250M exit to Northwestern Mutual in 2015. Alexa is also the author of New York Times Bestseller "Financially Fearless" and is an inaugural member of the Presidential Ambassadors for Global Entrepreneurship for the White House. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Alexa made her way into the world of startups with the founding of LearnVest? How did that experience running LearnVest lead to her founding NYC's largest-ever female-led VC fund in the form of Inspired?

    2.) How does Alexa think about portfolio construction with the new $200M fund? What does she mean when she says they have segmented it into 3 distinct and separate buckets? How much is in each bucket? How does Alexa think about reserves and re-investment decision making? What is the process here?

    3.) As a former entrepreneur, how does Alexa think about those moments when the VC and the Founder are no longer aligned? What are those moments? How does Alexa approach the aspect of saying no to founders? What is the right way? How does Alexa feel about the compression in fundraising timelines? How does Alexa meet founders before they raise their round?

    4.) Why does Alexa believe that capital is no longer the differentiator? How does Alexa think about personal brand in venture today? Where does Alexa believe are the most crucial times for reputation building? How does Alexa approach time allocation across the portfolio? What is the correlation between decision-making and reputation?

    Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

    Alexa's Fave Book: The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

    Alexa's Most Recent Investment: Snackpass

    As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Alexa on Twitter here!

    Likewise, y…

41. 20VC: Moxxie Ventures' Katie Stanton on What It Takes To Raise A First Time Fund As A Solo GP, The Entrance of Multi-Stage Funds Into Seed Rounds and The Inverse Relationship of Those That Fund Diverse Managers and Those That Say They Do

    27 januari 2020 · 38 min

    Afspelen
    Katie Stanton is the Founder and General Partner of Moxxie Ventures, investing in founders who make life and work better. Prior to Moxxie, Katie was a Founding Partner of #angels and has the most incredible angel portfolio including Airtable, Carta, Cameo, Coinbase and Modern Fertility to name a few. Katie also served in numerous executive operating roles at Twitter, Google, Yahoo, and Color and also served in the (Obama) White House and State Department. If that was not enough, Katie is also on the board of Vivendi and previously sat on the board of Time Inc. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Katie made her way into the world of tech with Yahoo? How did that translate into her investing in Lowercase Fund I? How did the angel investing lead to founding Moxxie? How has Katie found her investment mindset has changed moving from angel to VC?

    2.) How did Katie find the fundraise for Moxxie? How many LPs did Katie meet and how did she structure the process? What does Katie think she did well in the fundraise? What would she look to improve or change when raising for Fund II? What advice was Katie given in the process by Semil Shah which really changed her thinking? What advice would Katie give to other emerging managers raising today?

    3.) Does Katie agree with Semil Shah that "founders are voting with their feet in taking multi-stage money at seed"? What advice does Katie give to founders who do have these offers from multi-stage funds at seed? How does Katie assess these later stage funds moving earlier? How should smaller micro-managers respond to this?

    4.) How does Katie think about portfolio construction today with Moxxie? What are the hard rules that mean Katie is willing to walk away from a deal? How does Katie think about and assess her own price sensitivity? In terms of decision-making, what support system has Katie built around herself to enhance her decision-making process?

    5.) How does Katie advice founders when it comes to selecting their VC? …

42. 20VC: The Most Successful Companies Are Not Where Employees Work The Most, How To Know When To Promote From Below Or Bring in External Candidates & Why It Is A Unique Advantage To Be Building A Company Outside A Tech Hub with Rick Nucci, Founder & CEO @ G

    24 januari 2020 · 41 min

    Afspelen
    Rick Nucci is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Guru, the knowledge management platform that delivers everything you need so you can spend less time searching and more time doing. To date, Rick has raised over $38m with Guru from some of the best in the business including Thrive, Emergence Capital, Firstmark, Slack and Salesforce. Prior to Guru, Rick was the Founder of Boomi, which defined and led a new segment as the first-ever cloud integration platform-as-a-service. Boomi was ultimately acquired by Dell where Rick went on to grow the organisation into the industry leader it is today. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Rick made his way into the world of startups originally and how he came to change the way we think about knowledge management with his founding of Guru?

    2.) How would Rick describe his leadership style today? How has he seen his style change over the years? What have been those learnings and the inflexion points causing them? Does Rick believe can be learned as a leader? What does he recommend to founders wanting to become more empathetic?

    3.) Culture is a fluffy and overused term, what does it mean to Rick? What has Rick done to purposefully build a very specific culture that he wanted to create? What specific initiatives have worked well? What have not worked so well? How does Rick think about culture maintenance with scale? What are the challenges with scaling culture?

    4.) How does Rick think about the interview process when adding to the team at Guru? How do they literally structure it? What does their culture interview encompass? How heavily is it weighted? What specific questions do they ask and responses they look for? If it does not work out, what have been Rick's biggest lessons on letting people go?

    5.) Rick is based in Philadelphia, often people say if you are not in a tech hub it is not possible to get the best talent, does Rick agree with this? In what roles does it make sense to hire from a tech hub for? What are the advantages of …

43. 20VC: Oaktree Capital's Howard Marks on The Most Important Skill An Investor Can Have, The Right Way To Think About Price Sensitivity & Where Are We At Today; Take More Risk or Less?

    20 januari 2020 · 32 min

    Afspelen
    Howard Marks is co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, a leading investment firm with more than $120 billion in assets. Prior to founding Oaktree, Howard spent 10 years at The TCW Group, where he was responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. Previously, Howard was with Citicorp for 16 years, where he served as Vice President and senior portfolio manager in charge of convertible and high yield securities. Howard has also written two books, most recently Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side, and it was Warren Buffet who said, "When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they're the first thing I open and read. I always learn something." Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Howard first made his way into the world of finance over 50 years ago? How did not getting an investment banking job change the course of Howard's life?

    2.) Where does Howard think we are in the cycle today? What leads his thinking here? What is it crucial for all investors to remember at any point in the cycle? From a risk distribution and diversification perspective, does Howard believe now is a better or worse time to increase risk?

    3.) Having worked through and been at the forefront of some of the most significant downturns of financial markets, what have been Howard's biggest learnings from seeing the booms and busts? How did it impact his investment mindset? At a point in 2008, Oaktree were deploying $600M per week for 15 weeks running, so how does Howard think about when is the right time to be aggressive vs when to pullback?

    4.) How does Howard think about and assess his own price sensitivity? If there is one thing Howard wants to know to determine the right price, what is it? How does Howard believe we are seeing pro-risk mindsets alter investors attitude to price? How does Howard think about his right vs wrong and consensus vs non-consensus matrix?

    5.) Howard and his Partner, Bruce h…

44. 20VC: Portfolio Construction, Optimising SPVs, Opportunity Investing "Between Rounds", Being Distribution-Centric Over Product-Centric and Capital Concentration Within Funds With Sumeet Gajri, Chief Strategy Officer @ Carta

    17 januari 2020 · 57 min

    Afspelen
    Sumeet Gajri is the Chief Strategy Officer @ Carta, the startup that helps companies and investors manage their cap tables, valuations, investments, and equity plans. Sumeet is largely responsible for all things fundraising and M&A and Carta have raised over $485m from a16z, USV, Thrive, Spark, K9, Lightspeed and Meritech to name a few. Sumeet is also Managing Partner @ Original Capital, where he has partnered with companies including Front, Tonal, Instabase, Everlywell and Cockroach Labs to name a few. Finally, Sumeet is also an LP in world-leading firms such as USV and Valar Ventures. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Sumeet made his first foray into the world of venture in NYC having grown up in Scotland? How that led to his move to operations with Carta? How his learnings from Carta led to his establishing Original Capital?

    2.) How is Original Capital different from every other micro-fund? How does Sumeet approach portfolio construction with the fund? What is the optimal number in a portfolio? How does Sumeet think about loss ratio? What 3 criteria dos every new investment have to pass to make it into the portfolio? How does check size vary by deal?

    3.) How does Sumeet invest in some of the best companies in between "official rounds"? What does this conversation look like with the founders? How does Sumeet analyse reserve allocations? What makes the right strategy? What are his capital concentration limits per company? How does Sumeet think about using SPVs effectively?

    4.) Sumeet helps his companies fundraise a lot, what does the first step look like? How does he advise on investor selection? How does he advise on pipeline management? Should founders speak to investors when they are not raising? How open should they be in these meetings? What can founders do to catalyse the process? Where does Sumeet see many founders make mistakes?

    5.) How does Sumeet think about distribution vs product? What can founders do to adopt a more distribution first m…

45. 20VC: Khosla Ventures Founding Partner, Samir Kaul on Why Pro Rata Is A Cop Out, Why He Likes Technical Risk and Does Not Take Market Risk & How To Approach Time Allocation Across The Portfolio In Venture

    13 januari 2020 · 37 min

    Afspelen
    Samir Kaul is a Founding Partner and Managing Director at Khosla Ventures, one of the valley's most renowned firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Square, Affirm, DoorDash, Impossible Foods and OpenDoor just to name a few. As for Samir, he led the firm's investment in Guardant Health, Impossible Foods, Nutanix [NASDAQ: NTNX], Oscar, among others. Prior to Khosla, Samir spent five years at Flagship Ventures where he started and invested in early-stage biotechnology companies, including Helicos Biosciences which went on to IPO. Samir was also founding CEO of Codon Devices and led the Arabidopsis Genome Initiative at Craig Venter's Institute for Genomic Research. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Samir made his way into the world of venture from the world of biotech and came to found one of the leading firms of the last decade?

    2.) How did seeing the booms and busts of the last 2 decades impact Samir's investing mindset? Why does Samir think it is dangerous for a VC to have a "conservative mindset"? How does Samir analyse and think about upside maximisation when investing today? How does Samir think about when to sell your position and how to determine the right time?

    3.) What does investment decision-making look like at Khosla? What are the criteria that re-investments are made upon? Why does Samir believe that pro-rata is a kop out? Which should be the core questions that determine whether to double down or not? How does Samir and the partnership think about time allocation across the portfolio?

    4.) How does Samir approach the exercise of market sizing? Why does Samir never want to take a risk when it comes to market? Why does Samir want to maximise his risk when it comes to technological risk? How does Samir think through having to carry these deep tech companies for longer? What were his learnings from the clean tech days on this?

    5.) How would Samir analyse his own price sensitivity today? What was his most formative inflexion moment …

46. 20VC: Raising $105m in Just 13 Months Over 3 Separate Rounds, The 5 Core Ways VCs Can Add Value & How Founders Can and Should Fully Leverage Their Cap Table with Kurt Rathmann, Founder & CEO @ ScaleFactor

    10 januari 2020 · 35 min

    Afspelen
    Kurt Rathmann is the Founder & CEO @ ScaleFactor, the startup providing an automated bookkeeping solution at its core, bringing all of your company's important financial information into one place. To date, Kurt has raised over $105m with ScaleFactor from the likes of Byron Deeter @ Bessemer, Coatue, Canaan Partners, Stripes Group and Firebrand to name a few. As Michael @ Coatue told me before the show, there is no way Kurt was not going to be the founder of a bookkeeping company given his background. Prior to ScaleFacotr, Kurt was the CFO of KNS Communications and a Senior Audit Professional @ KPMG. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How did Kurt make his way into the world of startups and come to found the gamechanger for bookkeeping in the form of ScaleFactor? Does Kurt believe that Founders do need to be mission-driven or can founding a company be a more analytical exercise?

    2.) How did it come to be that Kurt raised 3 separate funding rounds and over $105m in just 13 months? How does Kurt feel about the saying, "when there is money on the table, take it"? Having had his B and C pre-empted, how does Kurt feel about the rise of pre-emptive rounds today? How did Kurt approach the mental challenge of transitioning from resource-starved to relative resource abundance? Was that tough to do?

    3.) What is Kurt's biggest advice to founders when it comes to investor selection? What does Kurt believe are the 5 things that VCs can do to add value? Why does Kurt believe it is the responsibility of the founder to extract that value from the VC? What can founders do to really get the most out of their investors? What has Kurt found to be the biggest value from his cap table? Where do founders think VCs add value but they do not?

    4.) What are some very unique and deliberate things that Kurt does to create an amazing culture at ScaleFactor? How does he advise on creating great energy in the office itself? How does Kurt think about retaining that core ethos with the exp…

47. 20VC: Why Now Is The Hardest Time To Raise an Institutional Pre-Seed in the Last Decade, What To Do When The Founder and VC Interests Do Not Align & The Rise of Pre-Emptive Rounds with Gaurav Jain, Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital

    6 januari 2020 · 39 min

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    Gaurav Jain is Co-Founder & Managing Partner @ Afore Capital, one of the west coast's leading pre-seed funds with a $124M fund focused purely on pre-seed. To date, they have backed the likes of Petal, BetterUp, BenchSci and Modern Health to name a few. Prior to co-founding Afore, Gaurav was a Principal @ Founder Collective where he was directly involved with some incredible companies including Cruise (Acq. by General Motors for $1B+), Periscope (acq. by Twitter), Airtable and Dia & Co. Before venture, Gaurav spent time in operations both at Google as one of the first engineers for Android and then also founding his own company, Polar, a leading mobile solutions provider with $10m in funding. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Gaurav made his way into the world of venture with Founder Collective and how that led to the realisation that Afore needed to exist in the funding landscape? What were the 3 biggest takeaways for Gaurav from his time at Founder Collective?

    2.) Why does Gaurav believe now is the hardest time in the last decade to raise your first institutional round of funding? What is driving these capital reductions at pre-seed? How does Gaurav assess the rise of operator funds and super angels we have seen in the last 5 years? How does Gaurav advise founders on investor selection at pre-seed?

    3.) What does Gaurav make of large multi-stage funds entering into pre-seed? Why does Gaurav strongly believe that you cannot apply the same financing product to a different market? Does this mean the multi-stage funds will revert back to later stages?

    4.) How is Gaurav seeing Series A funds behaving? Why are they more aggressive now than ever before? What does Gaurav make of the rise of pre-emptive rounds? How does he advise founders on pre-emptive rounds?

    5.) How does Gaurav think about portfolio construction today with Afore? What is the right level of diversification across the portfolio to be sufficiently diversified at pre-seed? How does Gaurav thin…

48. 20VC: Rahul Vohra @ Superhuman, The Most Downloaded Founder Episode of 2019

    3 januari 2020 · 41 min

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    Rahul Vohra is the Founder and CEO @ Superhuman, the fastest email experience in the world. Fun fact, users get through their inbox twice as fast — and many see Inbox Zero for the first time in years! To date, they have raised funds from our friends at Boldstart, First Round, John Collison, Sam Altman, Wayne Chang, Mike Ghaffery and Yes VC just to name a few. Previously, Rahul founded Rapportive, the first Gmail plugin to scale to millions of users. Rapportive was ultimately acquired by LinkedIn. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How did Rahul make his way into the world of startups with the founding of Rapportive and how did that transition to changing the world of email with Superhuman?

    2.) What does Rahul mean when he says, "you can reverse engineer a process to get to product-market fit"? What does Rahul believe is the defining metric which determines your "product-market fit score"? What is Julie Supan's framework? How did Dropbox and Airbnb use it to increase their product-market fit? How can founders implement it into their process?

    3.) What can founders do to expand the customer base to include users that currently are "somewhat disappointed"? What are the right questions to ask? What do we do with this feedback? How do we further segment the user base? Why should we "disregard the users whereby the primary benefit of the product does not resonate"?

    4.) How does Rahul approach product roadmap and prioritisation? How can founders ensure that continuous tracking and user feedback is engrained within the organisation? What tools does Rahul do to monitor and capture this? What are some of Rahul's biggest lessons from going through this painstaking process stage by stage?

    5.) Finally on fundraising, what does Rahul mean when he says, "always be raising but never be actively raising"? What are the benefits of this? How can founders transition catch up coffee into fundraising subtly? How does Rahul feel about party rounds? What are the pros? What are th…

49. 20VC: Inside The Acquisition Decision-Making Process at Cisco, How To Measure True Success in M&A Evaluation & Why By Not Speaking To Corp Dev Teams You Are Closing The Door On The Biggest Potential Accelerator To Your Business with Rob Salvagno, VP of Co

    30 december 2019 · 46 min

    Afspelen
    Rob Salvagno is VP of Corporate Development and Cisco Investments at Cisco, where he is responsible for leading all M&A efforts as well as managing Cisco's strategic venture capital which invests hundreds of millions of dollars annually. At Cisco, Rob led the $1.2 billion acquisition of Meraki, one of the most successful platform acquisitions in Cisco's history, and the $3.7 billion acquisition of AppDynamics, cementing Cisco's place in the business intelligence, analytics and IT operations market. Most recently, Rob engineered the $2.3 billion acquisition of Duo, the leading provider of unified access security and multi-factor authentication delivered through the cloud. Prior to the world of M&A, Rob was a technology investment banker at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How Rob made his way from investment banking to leading the M&A and venture activity for one of the world's largest tech players of the last decade?

    2.) How do M&A teams like to get to know startups that they could invest in or acquire? How does Rob like to work with the venture ecosystem? How does Rob think on Paul Graham's comment of "do not talk to corp dev"? What are the nuances here? How does it differ for consumer vs enterprise?

    3.) How does Rob define true success when it comes to M&A evaluation? Should corp dev be strategy first or transaction first? What have been Rob's biggest lessons on successful integration? Where do so many go wrong with integration post M&A? What questions can be asked ahead of time to know if integration and culture will be a fit?

    4.) How does Rob reflect on his own price sensitivity today? How does Rob feel about the multiples enterprise companies are currently trading at? What have Rob's most successful acquisitions taught him about price and price sensitivity? How does Rob deal with the inherent conflict of investing and also acquiring companies? How does he communicate that to the companies he invests in?

    5.) What does t…

50. 20VC: Most Downloaded Episode of 2019 with Bill Gurley, General Partner @ Benchmark Capital

    23 december 2019 · 35 min

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    Bill Gurley is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, 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 many more. As for Bill, widely recognised as one of the greats of our time having worked with the likes of GrubHub, NextDoor, Uber, OpenTable, Stitch Fix and Zillow. Prior to Benchmark, Bill was a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before entering venture, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston where his research coverage included such companies as Dell, Compaq, and Microsoft, and he was the lead analyst on the Amazon IPO. Lees meer

    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

    1.) How did Bill make his way into the world of VC from Credit Suisse and come to be GP at one of the world's leading funds in the form of Benchmark? What were Bill's biggest takeaways from seeing the boom and bust of the dot com? How did that impact Bill's investment mentality today?

    2.) Why does Bill believe that one of the biggest challenges today is the abundance of capital? Subsequently, does Bill agree with Peter Fenton statement, "never turn down a deal based on the valuation it is a mental trap"? How does Bill assess his own price sensitivity? What was his learning here in meeting Larry and Serge early on with Google?

    3.) How does Bill think about and approach market sizing today? How important is it to him when analysing an investment? Where does Bill believe a lot of managers make mistakes when assessing market sizing today? What was his big lesson here with Uber? How does Bill think about and evaluate market creation and market expansion plays?

    4.) Bill has spent over 3,000 hours on some of the most famed boards of the last decade, how has Bill seen his style of board membership change over the last 10 years? What advice would you give to someone who has just joined their first board? How does Bill think …