The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Alle afleveringen
1.527 afleveringen, van nieuw naar oud
-
20VC: Kleiner Perkins' Mamoon Hamid on Investing Lessons from Leading Rounds in Figma, Slack and Rippling | Lessons Building a Generational Defining Firm with Kleiner Perkins | AI: Where Value Accrues, Startups vs Incumbents & Scaling Laws
21 oktober 2024 · 59 min
Mamoon Hamid is a General Partner @ Kleiner Perkins and one of the greatest venture investors of our time. In the past, Mamoon has led rounds in Figma, Slack, Rippling, Intercom, Glean and Box. Prior to joining Kleiner Perkins, Mamoon was a Co-Founder of Social Capital, and prior to that a Partner at U.S. Venture Partners (USVP). Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Mamoon Hamid We Discuss:
1. The Greatest Venture Deal of All Time: Figma or Slack:
What is Mamoon's highest returning deal?
What did Mamoon see in Dylan and Figma when they had no revenue and very little user data?
What compelled Mamoon to write Stewart the check with Slack? What did he not see with Slack that he should have seen?
2. Taking Control of the Great Brand in Venture: Kleiner Perkins:
Is it true that Kleiner approached Mamoon and gave him the keys to the Kleiner kingdom? How did it go down?
Will Kleiner go back to having multiple products, large growth funds, international funds? What does Mamoon want Kleiner to be in 5 years?
What was the hardest element of the transition into Kleiner? What did Mamoon not know that he wishes he had known?
3. Becoming a Generational Defining Investor:
Market, founder, product, how does Mamoon rank them 1-3?
How has Mamoon changed most significantly as an investor?
What does he know now that he wishes he had known when he became a VC 19 years ago?
What is his biggest loss? How did it shape his mindset and go forward investing approach?
4. AI Supercycle: The Greatest Time to Invest
Where does Mamoon believe the value will accrue in this wave of AI?
Where are many investors spending a lot of time but Mamoon believes is not worthy of that time?
Will scaling laws continue?
Have we ever seen an incumbent set spend like this incumbent class? How does that change the game for VCs?
-
20Growth: Revolut's Chief Growth Officer on The Growth Playbook Revolut Used to Scale to $2.2BN in Revenue | How Revolut Launch and Grow Products | Why the Best PMs Don't Need A/B Tests & Why CAC is a BS Metric with Antoine Le Nel
18 oktober 2024 · 57 min
Antoine Le Nel is the Chief Growth and Marketing Officer at Revolut, one of the fastest growing fintechs on the planet. Prior to Revolut, Antoine spent an incredible 7 years at King (Makers of Candy Crush) overseeing continuous expansion of the world's most famous mobile game as VP of Growth. Lees meer
10 Questions with Revolut's Chief Growth Officer:
Why does Antoine believe that the best product and growth teams do not need to do A/B tests?
Why does Antoine believe the best growth teams do not believe in anything?
What growth tactics have worked best for Revolut? What did they learn?
What have been the biggest growth flops? How did that change their approach?
Why does Antoine believe localisation in product is BS and overrated?
Why does CAC never come up at Revolut? Why do they not believe it is a metric to focus on? What metrics do they focus on instead?
What does Antoine mean when he says "growth is a bidding war"? How does one win the "bidding war" today?
Why does Antoine believe the best growth teams focus on optimisations and 1% gains not moving the needle for a company?
What are the single biggest mistakes growth teams make today? What used to work that no longer works?
What growth tactic is most effective but also most under-utilised? How can startups take advantage of this?
-
20VC: Why Founder Mode is Dangerous & Could Encourage Bad Behaviour | Why Fundraising is a Waste of Time & OKRs are BS | Why Angel Investing is Bad for Founders to Do and the VC Model is on it's Last Legs with Zach Perret @ Plaid
16 oktober 2024 · 51 min
Zach Perret is the CEO and Co-Founder of Plaid, a technology platform reshaping financial services. To date, Zach has raised over $734M for Plaid from the likes of NEA, Spark, GV, Coatue and a16z, to name a few. Today, thousands of companies including the largest fintechs, several of the Fortune 500, and many of the largest banks use Plaid. In addition, Zach is also a Co-Founder of Mischief, an early-stage venture fund in San Francisco. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Zach Perret We Discuss:
1. Founder Mode:
Why "Founder Mode" will be the most dangerous blog post written in the last decade for founders? What is most misleading about it?
What are "grinder problems"? Why does Zach believe that grinder problems are the best problems for startups to try and solve?
Why does Zach believe that OKRs are BS and should be removed? What should be used instead?
2. Lessons from Raising $734M for Plaid:
What is the worst advice that VCs give that most founders take?
Why does Zach believe that angel investing is more distracting than helpful for founders to do? What are the pros of investing alongside running a company?
Why does Zach encourage founders to raise money as infrequently as possible? What does this mean for the size and price of rounds Zach thinks we should see occur?
3. The $5BN Exit and the $13.4BN Round:
Why did Zach turn down the $5BN exit to Visa? Was it the right choice?
Does Zach regret raising at such a high price of $13.4BN when the exit did not happen?
Would Zach sell the company today for $13.4BN if offered it?
What did Zach not do that he wish he had done? What did he do that he wishes he had not done?
-
20VC: Investing Lessons from FC Seeding Uber, Airtable and Coupang | Why Pro Rata is the Original Sin in VC | Why Liquidity Has Died in 2024 | Why LPs are Pissed with VCs | The Hard Truth About Seed Fund Economics with David Frankel @ Founder Collective
14 oktober 2024 · 1 uur 27 min
David Frankel is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Founder Collective, one of the best seed firms of the last decade. David has led rounds in companies such as Suno, Coupang, SeatGeek and PillPack (sold to Amazon for ~$1B). Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT Japan. David has been named to the Midas List six times. In 2023, he was #11 and in 2024, he appeared at #15 on the Midas List of the world's best venture capital investors and at #2 on the Midas list of seed investors. Lees meer
10 Questions With One of the World's Best Seed Investors:
1. Reserves: Why are reserves the hardest part of venture? What have been David's biggest lessons in how to do them well?
2. Why does David believe that pro-rata is the original sin of VC?
3. Has DPI died in 2024? Is PE the salvation for the VC exit market and liquidity?
4. Why does David believe LPs are so pissed of with VCs right now? What will change that?
5. When will IPO markets open? Are M&A markets shut? What would cause them to open?
6. How does David reflect on price today? When will he pay up and break his rules?
7. Biggest lessons for David on knowing when is the right time to sell? Why does David believe you should never sell your winners? What has David sold that he regrets most?
8. What companies returned the most to Founder Collective Funds? Uber? Coupang? Airtable? The Trade Desk? What did he learn from those mega hits?
9. What have been David's biggest losses? How did losing the company change his mindset and approach to investing?
10. What does David believe is the future of venture capital? How can seed funds play in a world of mega multi-stage funds? Who wins? Who loses?
-
20VC: Why Most AI Investments Will Do Worse than the S&P 500 | Why Early Stage VC is F******* | The Danger of Kamala Harris and Why Trump and Vance are Best | Freedom of Speech, Censorship and Government Control with Eoghan McCabe @ Intercom
11 oktober 2024 · 47 min
Eoghan McCabe is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Intercom, one of the largest private software companies in the valley with hundreds of millions in revenue and thousands of customers. To date, Eoghan has raised over $238M from Index, Kleiner Perkins, ICONIQ, GV, Bessemer and more incredible firms. Intercom's goal is to reinvent customer service with AI agents replacing human agents over the next 10 years. Lees meer
10 Questions with One of the Largest Private Company CEO's:
AI Investing: Why will most AI investments not do better than the S&P 500?
Building SaaS Tools with AI: Why is it crazy for companies to follow Klarna and use AI to build their own tools?
Going Public: Why is Bill Gurley wrong that more later stage companies should go public? Why did Intercom shelve plans to go public in 2022?
Early-Stage is F*******: Why is the early-stage venture ecosystem as an asset class f******?
Founder Mode: Why does Eoghan believe all of the best founders are unbalanced? What is the difference between Founder vs Manager mode?
Political Voice: Why did Eoghan decide he had to voice his political opinions now?
The Danger of Harris: Why does Eoghan believe a Harris administration would rob the US of immense freedom, democracy and civil liberty?
Why Vote Trump: Why does Eoghan believe that Trump will regain immense freedom for the sovereign individual?
Freedom of Speech: How does Eoghan determine right vs wrong when freedom of speech leads to harm and injustice?
Middle East and Nuclear War: Why does Eoghan believe that nuclear war is much closer than we think? Will we see the Middle East descend into war?
-
20VC: Sequoia Capital's $9BN Global Equities Fund on The Future for NVIDIA, Google & Meta | How to Play AI in the Public Markets | China & Europe: Is the Future Bleak | The Opportunity for Crossover Funds with Jeff Wang, Managing Partner @ SCGE
9 oktober 2024 · 1 uur 12 min
Jeff Wang is the Managing Partner of Sequoia Capital Global Equities (SCGE), a public/private crossover investment firm with investments spanning from late-stage private companies to public companies. As Managing Partner, Jeff has primarily focused on public growth technology companies but has also invested $3 billion in private companies including Bytedance, SpaceX, and Stripe. Prior SCGE private investments that have since gone public include Airbnb, Doordash, MongoDB, Nubank, and Snowflake. Before joining SCGE in 2010, Jeff also worked at TPG Capital and Silver Lake Partners where he focused on investments in technology buyouts. Lees meer
10 Questions with the Leader of Sequoia's $9BN Global Equities Fund:
1. Crossover Fund Opportunity: Why are crossover funds more attractive today than ever? Have the tourists gone?
2. Public Market Opportunity: Why is the opportunity in the public markets, not the private markets today?
3. IPO Markets: When will IPO markets open? What will cause them to open?
4. Breaking Hedge Fund Rules: What are the biggest ways that Sequoia break the traditional rules of hedge funds?
5. Google: Why does Jeff believe that Google's cash cow of search is under threat?
6. Meta: Why does Jeff believe Meta will be the biggest competitor to Google?
7. NVIDIA: Why is NVIDIA's price today reasonable? What is the bull and bear case?
8. China: Is there a recovery for China? How do Sequoia play China in this market?
9. AI in Public Markets: How are Sequoia playing the AI game in the public markets?
10. Investing Lessons: What have been Jeff's biggest investing lessons from Mike Moritz, Doug Leone and Roelof Botha?
-
20VC: Raising $500M To Compete in the Race for AGI | Will Scaling Laws Continue: Is Access to Compute Everything | Will Nvidia Continue To Dominate | The Biggest Bottlenecks in the Race for AGI with Eiso Kant, CTO @ Poolside
7 oktober 2024 · 1 uur 11 min
Eiso Kant is the Co-Founder and CTO of Poolside.ai, building next-generation AI for software engineering. Just last week, Poolside announced their $500M Series B valuing the company at $3BN. Prior to Poolside, Eiso founded Athenian, a data-enabled engineering platform. Before that, he built source{d} - the world's first company dedicated to applying AI to code and software. Lees meer
1. Raising $600M to Compete in the AGI Race:
What is Poolside? How does Poolside differentiate from other general-purpose LLMs?
How much of Poolside's latest raise will be spent on compute?
How does Eiso feel about large corporates being a large part of startup LLM provider's funding rounds?
Why did Poolside choose to only accept investment from Nvidia?
Is $600M really enough to compete with the mega war chests of other LLMs?
2. The Big Questions in AI:
Will scaling laws continue? Have we reached a stage of diminishing returns in model performance for LLMs?
What is the biggest barrier to the continued improvement in model performance; data, algorithms or compute?
To what extent will Nvidia's Blackwell chip create a step function improvement in performance?
What will OpenAI's GPT5 need to have to be a gamechanger once again?
3. Compute, Chips and Cash:
Does Eiso agree with Larry Ellison; "you need $100BN to play the foundation model game"? What does Eiso believe is the minimum entry price?
Will we see the continuing monopoly of Nvidia? How does Eiso expect the compute landscape to evolve?
Why are Amazon and Google best placed when it comes to reducing cost through their own chip manufacturing?
Does Eiso agree with David Cahn @ Sequoia, "you will never train a frontier model on the same data centre twice"?
Can the speed of data centre establishment and development keep up with the speed of foundation model development?
4. WTF Happens to The Model Layer: OpenAI and Anthropic…
Does Eiso agree we are seeing foundation models become commoditised?
What would Eiso do if he were Sam A…
-
20Product: How the Best Teams Do Product Reviews | What Everyone Gets Wrong in Hiring Product Teams | Product Lessons Leading Facebook App Monetisation Team to Billions in Revenue with Maria Angelidou, CPO @ Personio
4 oktober 2024 · 51 min
Maria Angelidou is a seasoned product leader, having spent close to a decade at Meta where she was VP of Product and General Manager for some of the largest products such as Facebook Groups (2B+ users), Events, Profile, and Search. Before that, Maria led the Facebook App Monetization team, driving billions of dollars in revenue. Today, Maria is the Chief Product & Technology Officer at Personio, an HR tech company with an ambitious mission to unlock the power of people for SMEs. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Maria Angelidou
1. How to Hire the Best Product Teams:
What are the three different archetypes for PMs today?
What non-obvious traits does Maria look for in new product hires?
How does Maria structure the hiring process? What works? What does not?
Does Maria do take home assignments? How has her approach changed here?
What is Maria's biggest advice to candidates on both compensation and title?
2. How the Best Product Teams Do Product Reviews:
What does every team get wrong in how they do product reviews?
What are the four different type of product reviews?
How often does Maria do a product review? Who is invited?
Who sets the agenda? How is it structured?
What makes good vs great product reviews?
3. Europe vs US: How Product Teams Differ:
What is the single biggest difference when comparing product teams in the US vs EU?
Does Maria agree that the work ethic is less in the EU?
Which class of employee would Maria say is more entitled?
What could Europe do to be more competitive with the US?
What was the biggest surprise to Maria on returning to Europe from the US?
-
20VC: Bret Taylor: The AI Bubble and What Happens Now | How the Cost of Chips and Models Will Change in AI | Will Companies Build Their Own Software | Why Pre-Training is for Morons | Leaderships Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg
2 oktober 2024 · 1 uur 11 min
Bret Taylor is CEO and Co-Founder of Sierra, a conversational AI platform for businesses. Previously, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI. Lees meer
In Today's Discussion with Bret Taylor:
1. The Biggest Misconceptions About AI Today:
Does Bret believe we are in an AI bubble or not?
Why does Bret believe it is BS that companies will all use AI to build their own software?
What does no one realise about the cost of compute today in a world of AI?
2. Foundation Models: The Fastest Depreciating Asset in History?
As a board member of OpenAI, does Bret agree that foundation models are the fastest depreciating asset in history?
Will every application be subsumed by foundation models? What will be standalone?
How does Bret think about the price dumping we are seeing in the foundation model landscape?
Does Bret believe we will continue to see small foundation model companies (Character, Adept, Inflection) be acquired by larger incumbents?
3. The Biggest Opportunity in AI Today: The Death of the Phone + Website:
What does Bret believe are the biggest opportunities in the application layer of AI today?
Why does Bret put forward the case that we will continue to see the role of the phone reduce in consumer lives? How does AI make that happen?
What does Bret mean when he says we are moving from a world of software rules to guardrails?
What does AI mean for the future of websites? How does Bret expect consumers to interact with their favourite brands in 10 years?
4. Bret Taylor: Ask Me Anything: Zuck, Leadership, Fundraising:
Bret has worked with Zuck, Tobi @ Shopify, Marc Benioff and more, what are his biggest lessons from each of them on great leadership?
How did Bret come to choose Peter @ Benchmark to lead his first round? What advice does Bret have to other VCs on how to be a great VC?
Bret is on the bo…
-
20VC: How SHEIN Got So Big So Fast: Behind the Scenes at One of the Fastest Growing Companies in History with Donald Tang, Executive Chairman @ SHEIN
30 september 2024 · 56 min
Donald Tang is the Executive Chairman of SHEIN, with oversight of public affairs, business strategy, corporate development, and finance. Donald began his career at Merrill Lynch & Co. He later joined Bear Stearns & Co. Inc. in Los Angeles as Senior Managing Director of Investment Banking. At Bear Sterns, Donald quickly rose to become the Vice Chairman of the firm, as well as Chairman and President of Bear Stearns International Holdings, Chairman and CEO of Bear Stearns Asia, Ltd, and a member of the board of directors at Bear Stearns & Co. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Donald Tang We Discuss:
1. How SHEIN Became a Global Giant:
As specifically as possible, what did you and the SHEIN team do that enabled you to be one of the fastest-growing companies on the planet?
Real-Time Retail: What is this? How is it the core of SHEIN's growth and efficiency?
Supply Chain Innovation: How did SHEIN innovate on the supply chain to give them such an advantage over the competition?
Price King: How does Donald respond to the statement that SHEIN wins due to price, not quality?
Social Media: What social media tactics allowed SHEIN to grow so fast? What did not work?
Paid Media: How have SHEIN approached paid marketing? What works? What does not?
2. The Big Questions: IPOs, Impact on Climate and Worker Conditions:
IPO: Why does SHEIN want to go public? Is London the right place for the company to go public?
Climate: How does Donald respond to the common idea that "SHEIN is bad for the climate" and encourages fast fashion like never before?
Tariffs: How does Donald respond to the common question around tariffs and SHEIN benefitting from being under a certain tariff threshold?
3. Marriage, Fatherhood and Happiness:
Marriage: What have been Donald's biggest lessons on how to have a successful marriage?
Fatherhood: What does being a great father mean to Donald? If he could call himself up the night before his first child was born, what would he advise himself?
Happiness: How do…
-
20Sales: Scaling Hubspot from $3M to $1BN in ARR | How to Hire and Ramp Sales Teams | How to Scale Customer Success Successfully | How and When to Go International and Crush It with Jeetu Mahtani
27 september 2024 · 57 min
Jeetu Mahtani was an early member of the HubSpot team. Under his leadership and the sales organization, the business grew its non-US revenue from $3M ARR to close to $1B ARR. After running the International business as the global MD and Sales leader, he then moved to lead the customer success org which expanded to managing 1,500 people in customer success. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Jeetu Mahtani We Discuss:
1. How to Go International for Startups:
What are Jeetu's biggest lessons from Hubspot on what startups can do to make their international expansion a success?
What were the biggest mistakes Hubspot made in their international expansion?
How should every team in each new location be structured?
What should the ramp time and onboarding process look like or each new team and expansion?
2. Scaling Sales from $3M to $1BN in ARR:
What did Hubspot do so well to successfully scale to $1BN in international ARR?
What were the biggest mistakes Jeetu made in the expansion of Hubspot's sales teams?
What are the first things to break in sales teams? How do you handle them?
Why does Jeetu hate discounting? Why does Jeetu not like customer references?
3. Scaling Customer Success to 1,500 CS Reps:
When should founders make their first customer success hires?
What are the biggest mistakes people make in the scaling of CS teams?
Why should customer success be incentivised in the same comp plans that sales teams have?
How do the best CS teams work with sales and product teams most effectively?
4. Hiring the Best and Ramping Them:
What does Jeetu's hiring process look like for all new sales reps?
What are the must ask questions for Jeetu in all candidate interviews?
How fast do you know when you have made a mistake with a new hire?
What is the secret to effective onboarding? What are the biggest mistakes people make in onboarding?
20Sales: Scaling Hubspot from $3M to $1BN in ARR | How to Hire and Ramp Sales Teams | How to Scale Customer Success Successfully | Ho…
-
20VC: Benchmark's Eric Vishria on Where is the Value in AI: Chips, Models or Apps | Why Nvidia Will Not Be The Only Game in Town | The Commoditisation of Foundation Models | Which AI Apps Have Sustaining Value vs Hype and Short Term Revenue
25 september 2024 · 1 uur 2 min
Eric Vishria is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the world's leading venture firms. At Benchmark, Eric has served on over 10 boards including Confluent (CFLT), Amplitude (AMPL), Benchling, Contentful, Cerebras and several other private companies. Prior to joining Benchmark, Eric was the Co‐Founder and CEO of RockMelt, acquired by Yahoo in 2013. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Eric Vishria We Discuss:
1. How to Make Money Investing in AI Today:
How does Eric think through where value will accrue in the stack between chips, models and applications?
Why does Eric believe foundation models are the fastest commoditising asset in history?
Why does Eric believe that Nvidia will not be the only game in town in the next 3-5 years?
2. How to Invest in AI Application Layer Successfully:
How does Eric analyse between a standalone and deep product vs a product that foundation model will commodities and incorporate into their feature set?
How does Eric differentiate between the 10 different players all going after customer service, or sales tools or data analyst products etc?
How does Eric analyse the quality of revenue of these AI application layer companies? What does he mean when he describes their revenue as "sugar high"?
3. How the Best VC Firm Makes Decisions:
What is the decision-making process for all new deals in Benchmark?
As specifically as possible, how does the voting process inside Benchmark work?
What deal was the most contentious deal that went through? What did the partnership learn?
How has the Benchmark decision-making process changed over 10 years?
4. Does AI Break Venture Capital Models:
Does the price of AI deals and size of their rounds break the Benchmark model?
Will foundation model companies all be acquired by the larger cloud providers?
Unless multiples reflate in the public markets, does venture as an asset class have hope?
Why does AI make paying ludicrously high prices potentially rational?
-
20VC: From Potato Farm to $200M in Revenue: The Never-Before-Told Story of Flo Health: Scaling to $1BN Valuation, 75M Users & Getting 100s of No's From Investors Along the Way with Dmitry Gurski
23 september 2024 · 1 uur 26 min
Dmitry Gurski is the Co-Founder and CEO of Flo Health, the leading women's health app and the first European femtech unicorn. Launched in 2015, Flo Health has grown to over 70 million monthly active users and 5 million paid subscribers. The app is recognized as the #1 recommended tool for period and cycle tracking, and it recently achieved a valuation exceeding $1 billion. Beyond Flo, Dmitry is a partner at Palta, a co-founding company with a portfolio of successful startups including Simple App, MSQRD (acquired by Facebook), AIMatter (acquired by Google), and Wannaby (acquired by Farfetch). Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Dmitry Gurski We Discuss:
1. Why 99% of Startup Advice is BS:
Why does Dmitry believe that speed is not the most important thing?
Why does Dmitry believe that competition is actually a good thing?
Why does Dmitry believe that craziness not intelligence is the most important trait in founders?
Why does Dmitry believe that fundraising is simply a numbers game?
What does no one understand about retention that everyone should know?
2. From Potato Farms to Billion Dollar Apps:
What a childhood in potato farming taught Dmitry about leadership and technology?
How mushroom farming taught Dmitry about diversification and focus?
How does Dmitry advise people analyse the hardest moments in their life?
Why Dmitry does not believe in talent? What else is there?
3. Scaling to Flo's First 1M Users:
What were Dmitry's biggest lessons from two failed prior versions of Flo?
What is the secret to success in consumer subscription?
How did Flo acquire their first customers? What worked? What did not work?
Why does Dmitry not believe in brand and PR?
4. Building a $200M Revenue Market Leader:
What have been Dmitry's biggest lessons on monetisation?
How does Dmitry think about retaining product simplicity with time?
What are the first things to break in the scaling of a company?
What did they do with Flo that he wishes they had not done?
-
20Growth: The 7 Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription: Growth Loops, CAC + LTV Benchmarks, Pricing, Packaging, Notifications, Discounts, Paywalls | The Breakdown with Phil Carter
20 september 2024 · 1 uur 19 min
Phil Carter is one of the best growth leaders of the last decade helping world-class companies like Faire, Quizlet, and Ibotta accelerate their growth. Today, Phil is a growth advisor and angel investor who helps Seed - Series C consumer subscription businesses define their growth strategy. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Phil Carter We Discuss:
The Seven Core Levers to Win at Consumer Subscription:
How to Optimize Subscription Pricing and Packaging:
Step:
Single vs multiple subs tiers?
Monthly, weekly or annually?
How often should it be revisited?
Biggest mistakes companies make with pricing and packaging?
How to deliver immediate value through new user onboarding?
Target Metrics:
Best tactics for delivering value in the shortest amount of time?
Biggest mistakes companies make in user onboarding?
Thoughts on the very long surveys companies like Noom make people fill out pre getting access to the product?
How to boost paid marketing efficiency by investing in desktop web flows?
Target Metrics:
Why is now the time to be investing in desktop workflows?
What are the most effective and specific tactics to do so?
How to optimize paywall visibility and conversion?
Target Metrics:
Why is paywall view rate so important?
What is good vs bad?
What are the most common places to trigger paywall?
Thoughts on hard paywall vs consumer value first?
Specific tactics to refine paywall design to maximize conversion?
Single biggest mistakes companies make when it comes to paywall conversion?
How to distinguish and emphasize premium value props?
Target Metrics:
What are the most effective ways to do this?
Who does it best? Lessons from them?
How to leverage motivation tactics (stats, streaks, badges, leaderboards, notifications)?
Target Metrics:
What is the most effective?
Do we not have notification overload?
What used to work but now does not work?
Who does this best? Why them?
How to leverage strategic discounts and promotions?
Target Metrics:
What are …
-
20VC: Notion's Founder on "Founder Mode": When it Works & When it Doesn't | Why The Way Startups Fundraise & Construct Boards is Broken | Raising at a $10BN Valuation in Peak Bubble Times and How Notion Has More Money Than Ever Before with Akshay Kothari
18 september 2024 · 49 min
Akshay Kothari is Co-Founder at Notion, one of the fastest-growing companies of the last decade. Akshay has run every function in the company from sales, to marketing to finance and even led their fundraising efforts raising $340M+ from Sequoia, Index and Coatue with the latest round pricing them at $10BN. Before Notion, Akshay was VP Product at Linkedin for 5+ years, leading all of their content efforts. He joined LinkedIn when his previous company, Pulse, was acquired by LinkedIn in 2013. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Akshay Kothari We Discuss:
1. Founder Mode, Veto Powers and Focus:
Does Akshay agree with "founder mode"? What are the biggest downsides to founder mode that not enough people are discussing?
Why does Akshay believe that the single greatest power of a founder is their "veto power"?
What is the biggest opportunity that Notion jumped on that they should not have done?
What is the biggest opportunity that Notion did not jump on that they should have jumped on?
2. Raising $50M @ $2BN Valuation:
Why did Ivan and Akshay decide to do this raise when they did not even need the money?
How did the fundraising process for this round go? Why did they choose Coatue and Index?
Why did Sequoia say no to this round?
With the benefit of hindsight, what does Akshay wish that they had done differently?
3. Raising $270M @ $10BN Valuation:
How did Sequoia come back into the frame with this round? Why did they say yes here when they did not before?
Why does Akshay believe that of all the investor brands, Sequoia is the most powerful? In what way does having Sequoia as an investor change the trajectory of the company?
Is Akshay concerned about how he will be able to scale into the $10BN valuation?
How does Akshay address the challenge of bringing new team members in with stock options priced at $10BN? How much of a blocker is that?
4. Boards and Social Media are F*******:
How is the way in which boards are constructed broken?
How does Akshay believe that boar…
-
20VC: Index's Shardul Shah on Why Market Size is a Trap | Biggest Lessons on Pricing from Leading Rounds in Wiz & Datadog | Why Benchmarks & Averages in VC are BS | How Index Makes Decisions and Why Growth & Early are the Same Investing Style
16 september 2024 · 51 min
Shardul Shah is a Partner at Index Ventures and one of the greatest cyber security investors of the last two decades. Among his many wins, Shardul has led rounds in Datadog, Wiz, Duo Security, Coalition and more. Shardul is also the only Partner investing at Index to have worked in every single Index office from London, to SF, to NYC to Geneva. Prior to Index, Shardul worked with Summit Partners, focusing on healthcare and internet technologies. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Shardul Shah We Discuss:
1. Investing Lessons from Wiz and Datadog:
Why does Shardul believe that TAM (total addressable market) is BS?
Why does Shardul believe that every great deal will be expensive?
How does Shardul evaluate when to double down and concentrate capital vs when to let someone else come in and lead a round in an existing company?
How does Shardul think about when is the right time to sell a position in a company?
2. How the Best VCs Make Decisions:
How does Shardul and Index create an environment of truth-seeking together, that is optimised for the best decision-making to take place?
What are the biggest mistakes in how VCs make decisions today?
Why does Shardul believe that all first meetings should be 30 mins not 60 mins?
Why does Shardul believe it is so much harder to make investment decisions when partnerships are remote? What is better remote?
3. The Core Pillars of Venture: Sourcing, Selecting, Securing and Servicing:
Which one does Shardul believe he is best at? What is he worst at?
Does Shardul believe with the downturn we have moved into a world of selection and not just winning every new deal?
Does Shardul believe that VCs provide any value? What are the biggest misnomers when it comes to "VC value add"?
4. Lessons from the Best Investors in the World:
Who is the best board member that Shardul sits on a board with?
What has Shardul learned from Gili Raanan and Doug Leone on being a good board member?
What have been some of Shardul's biggest investing les…
-
20Product: What Facebook, Monzo and Deliveroo Do and Do Not Do To Build Great Products | How to Structure Product Teams For Success | Is Simple Always Better in Product and The Art vs Science of Product Design with Mike Hudack
13 september 2024 · 1 uur 7 min
Mike Hudack is the Co-Founder and CEO of Sling, a peer-to-peer payments app whose vision is to simplify the way the world connects financially. Previously, he held roles at Monzo Bank as Chief Product Officer, Deliveroo as Chief Product and Technology Officer, and Facebook where he led ads product and sharing product. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Mike Hudack We Discuss:
1. Product: Art vs Science:
What is the true art of product? What makes the great product leaders and PMs?
Is simple always better in product? How do you retain product simplicity with time?
When should data be used over intuition in product building?
2. Lessons from Leading Ads at Facebook:
What are Mike's single biggest product lessons from building the ads product at Facebook?
How did a meeting with Mark Zuckerberg discussing a product change, alter how Mike thinks about product today? What makes Zuck so special on product?
What are the biggest mistakes that Facebook made when it came to the ads product?
What did they not do that he wishes they had done?
3. Leading Product at Deliveroo: What I Learned:
What are Mike's biggest takeaways from his time at Deliveroo on how to make consumer products?
What did Deliveroo do from a product perspective that worked so well? What did he learn?
What were the single biggest product mistakes that Deliveroo made? What did he learn?
How fast do you know when a consumer app is working or not working? When do you go against data and follow your intuition?
4. Building the Biggest Bank in Britain with Monzo:
What are Mike's biggest lessons on product building from his time at Monzo?
What did Monzo not do that he wishes they had done?
Why does Mike think the US is crucial for Monzo?
How did Monzo change how Mike thinks about competition? What do you do when your competitor, Revolut, is outshipping you at such a speed?
-
20VC: Scaling ServiceNow to $5BN in ARR | Leadership Lessons from Doug Leone, Frank Slootman and Bill McDermott | VC Value Add: Is it Real and Why the Worst VCs are "Seagull VCs"
11 september 2024 · 1 uur 6 min
David Schneider is a General Partner @ Coatue and one of the great operators of the last 20 years. Prior to Coatue, David was instrumental in ServiceNow's growth to over $100B+ public market value. David led the growth of the company from $100M to $5BN in revenue. Before joining ServiceNow, David held senior positions at Data Domain, the company he joined at $0 in revenue and scaled to $1BN in revenue and an IPO and acquisition. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with David Schneider We Discuss:
ServiceNow: Secrets to Scaling to $5BN in ARR:
What are David's biggest lessons from scaling ServiceNow to $5BN ARR?
What worked? What did not work?
What are the most common reasons companies plateau?
How did ServiceNow roll out so many different products so effectively?
How did David hire and ramp 180 people in 90 days?
2. From OG Operator to Newbie Investor:
What have been the single most challenging elements of making the transition to VC?
What advice did David get from the biggest names on entering venture?
How long did it take David to do his first deal? What advice does he give other operators entering?
How does doing deals in 2024 compare to when David started doing deals in 2021?
3. VC Value: Do 90% of VCs Really Damage Companies:
Does David agree that 90% of VCs actually detract value?
What does David mean when he says that the worst VCs are "seagull VCs"?
What are David's biggest tips to founders on how to get the most out of their board?
What is enough ownership for David to really give the time needed to a company?
4. Lessons from the Greats: Doug Leone, Bill McDermott, Frank Slootman:
Doug Leone: What has David learned from Doug on what it takes to be a great investor and board member?
Frank Slootman: What has David learned from Bill on how to be the best leader of a mega company?
Bill McDermott: What has David learned from Frank about decision-making and execution.
-
20VC: Tinder Founder Sean Rad on Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Growing Consumer Social App in History | Leadership Lessons Scaling Tinder | The Future of Love, Dating and Social Media | The Secret to Your Relationship with Money and Marriage
9 september 2024 · 1 uur 4 min
Sean Rad is the Founder and former CEO of Tinder. Sean has made more romantic connections between humans than anyone in history with Tinder having matched 50BN different people. Sean is also the Founder of Rad Fund which has made over 100 investments in companies and funds. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Sean Rad We Discuss:
1. Lessons Scaling Tinder to the Fastest Consumer Social App:
Starting: How did the idea for Tinder come to Sean in a restaurant in LA?
Scaling: What are Sean's biggest lessons for consumer apps scaling to their first 10,000 users?
User Acquisition: How did a party change the entire user acquisition strategy for dinner?
What did Tinder not do that Sean wishes they had done?
What did Tinder do that with the benefit of hindsight, they should not have done?
2. Leadership Lessons from Tinder CEOship:
Annual Product Redesign: Why does Sean believe that every consumer company should have a complete redesign of the app every year? What are the benefits?
Detachment: How does Sean advise founders when it comes to detaching their happiness from the performance of the company? What works? What does not work?
Common Mistakes: What are the most common mistakes that Sean sees early-stage founders make when it comes to leadership?
3. Money, Wealth and Creating a Family Office:
How does Sean analyse his own relationship to money? How has it changed over time?
At what stage of wealth does Sean believe you have true financial freedom?
What is the single best investment Sean has made? What did he learn?
What is the worst investment he has made? What did he learn?
What have been the single hardest and most surprising elements of creating a family office?
4. Love, Death, Marriage:
In what ways does Sean think love has changed with time? How do we deal with the loneliness pandemic?
What does Sean believe are the most non-obvious but important secrets to a happy marriage?
How does Sean approach and think about his own spirituality today? Why does he not…
-
20VC: Why VC is a Ponzi Scheme Today | Why Most VCs are Bankers | Why Big VCs Ruin Startups | Why Incentives in VC are Broken | Why American Dynamism is a Tool for VCs to Raise Money with Nick Chirls, Asylum Ventures
6 september 2024 · 1 uur 1 min
Nick Chirls is the Founder of Asylum Ventures, a new venture firm dedicated to the creative act of building companies; treating founders like artists, not assets. Asylum raised $55 million to invest $1-2 million in early-stage founders practising the art of making startups. Prior to Asylum, Nick co-founded Notation Capital, one of NYC's most successful pre-seed firms. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Nick Chirls We Discuss:
1. Why Venture Capital is Broken Today:
Why is VC a ponzi scheme today?
Why are most VCs sheep and have lost all creativity?
Why are most investors today incentivised to get dollars out of the door and not to make great investments?
Why are services functions within VC firms total BS?
Why do no VCs provide significant enough value to a company that it is needle-moving?
2. How to Make Money in VC in 2024:
What are the two ways to make money at seed in 2024?
Why do founders in unloved markets care more than those in hot markets?
Why will large institutions lose a ton of money investing in the large firms of today?
Why does Nick believe VCs should always sell when their founders sell shares?
3. Lessons from 3xing a Fund on One Check:
Why does Nick think about not purchasing preferred shares and only buying common shares?
Why does Nick believe that investing in competitive markets is stupid?
What does Nick believe are the conditions you must accept if you are doing a $5M on $25M seed?
-
20VC: OpenAI's Newest Board Member, Zico Colter on The Biggest Bottlenecks to the Performance of Foundation Models | The Biggest Questions and Concerns in AI Safety | How to Regulate an AI-Centric World
4 september 2024 · 1 uur
Zico Colter is a Professor and the Director of the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University. His research spans several topics in AI and machine learning, including work in AI safety and robustness, LLM security, the impact of data on models, implicit models, and more. He also serves on the Board of OpenAI, as a Chief Expert for Bosch, and as Chief Technical Advisor to Gray Swan, a startup in the AI safety space. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Zico Colter We Discuss:
1. Model Performance: What are the Bottlenecks:
Data: To what extent have we leveraged all available data? How can we get more value from the data that we have to improve model performance?
Compute: Have we reached a stage of diminishing returns where more data does not lead to an increased level of performance?
Algorithms: What are the biggest problems with current algorithms? How will they change in the next 12 months to improve model performance?
2. Sam Altman, Sequoia and Frontier Models on Data Centres:
Sam Altman: Does Zico agree with Sam Altman's statement that "compute will be the currency of the future?" Where is he right? Where is he wrong?
David Cahn @ Sequoia: Does Zico agree with David's statement; "we will never train a frontier model on the same data centre twice?"
3. AI Safety: What People Think They Know But Do Not:
What are people not concerned about today which is a massive concern with AI?
What are people concerned about which is not a true concern for the future?
Does Zico share Arvind Narayanan's concern, "the biggest danger is not that people will believe what they see, it is that they will not believe what they see"?
Why does Zico believe the analogy of AI to nuclear weapons is wrong and inaccurate?
-
20Growth: Uber's Expansion Playbook for Scaling from 10 Cities to $10BN in Revenue | How Uber Acquired 1M Drivers | How Uber Solved the Chicken and The Egg Problem in New Markets and What Uber Would Be Like with Travis Still There with Scott Gorlick
30 augustus 2024 · 42 min
Scott Gorlick was employee #99 at Uber. Over 6 years, Scott built Uber in Atlanta and helped the company scale from 10 cities to $10B in revenue. Scott is also a prolific angel investor having written early checks into Lime and Standard Cognition to name a few. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Scott Gorlick We Discuss:
1. The Driver Acquisition Playbook: Scaling to 1M Drivers
How did Uber acquire 1M drivers? What was the playbook?
What worked? What did not work?
How much of a role did driver-to-driver referral payments have in driver acquisition?
What did Lyft do on the driver acquisition side that Uber should have done?
What did the retention look like for drivers on a 30, 60 and 90 day period?
2. The City Expansion Playbook:
What was the expansion playbook that Uber used for new cities?
What worked in ramping demand in a new city? What did not work?
How much of a role did promotions and discounting play? Lessons from them?
Why did Uber often let Lyft launch in a new market first? What was the benefit of this?
How did Scott see the maturation rate change with new markets opening? How fast did each subsequent market reach profitability?
3. Travis Kalanick and What Uber Could Have Been:
How would Uber be different today if Travis was still in charge?
What are the biggest mistakes that Dara has made with their M&A strategy?
What are some of Scott's biggest leadership lessons from working with Travis?
How did Travis create such strong followership and cult around him?
What were the single biggest management mistakes made by Travis?
-
20VC: AI Scaling Myths: More Compute is not the Answer | The Core Bottlenecks in AI Today: Data, Algorithms and Compute | The Future of Models: Open vs Closed, Small vs Large with Arvind Narayanan, Professor of Computer Science @ Princeton
28 augustus 2024 · 52 min
Arvind Narayanan is a professor of Computer Science at Princeton and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy. He is a co-author of the book AI Snake Oil and a big proponent of the AI scaling myths around the importance of just adding more compute. He is also the lead author of a textbook on the computer science of cryptocurrencies which has been used in over 150 courses around the world, and an accompanying Coursera course that has had over 700,000 learners. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Arvind Narayanan We Discuss:
1. Compute, Data, Algorithms: What is the Bottleneck:
Why does Arvind disagree with the commonly held notion that more compute will result in an equal and continuous level of model performance improvement?
Will we continue to see players move into the compute layer in the need to internalise the margin? What does that mean for Nvidia?
Why does Arvind not believe that data is the bottleneck? How does Arvind analyse the future of synthetic data? Where is it useful? Where is it not?
2. The Future of Models:
Does Arvind agree that this is the fastest commoditization of a technology he has seen?
How does Arvind analyse the future of the model landscape? Will we see a world of few very large models or a world of many unbundled and verticalised models?
Where does Arvind believe the most value will accrue in the model layer?
Is it possible for smaller companies or university research institutions to even play in the model space given the intense cash needed to fund model development?
3. Education, Healthcare and Misinformation: When AI Goes Wrong:
What are the single biggest dangers that AI poses to society today?
To what extent does Arvind believe misinformation through generative AI is going to be a massive problem in democracies and misinformation?
How does Arvind analyse AI impacting the future of education? What does he believe everyone gets wrong about AI and education?
Does Arvind agree that AI will be able to put a doctor i…
-
20VC: Why the IPO Market is not Closed | Why Revenue Multiples are BS and Founders Need to Change | Advice From Jack Ma, Jamie Dimon and Evan Spiegel | Lessons from Taking Snap & Alibaba Public with Imran Khan
26 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 5 min
Imran Khan is the OG of IPOs having taken some of the biggest companies public including Alibaba, Snap, Box, Weibo and more. Today, Imran is the founder and Chief Investment Officer of Proem Asset Management. Prior to co-founding Proem, Imran served as Snap Inc.'s Chief Strategy Officer. Under his leadership, Snap's annual revenue run rate increased to $1.6 billion from zero in less than four years. Previously, Imran was a Managing Director and Head of Global Internet Investment Banking at Credit Suisse where he advised on more than $45 billion-worth of Internet M&A and financing transactions. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Imran Khan We Discuss:
1. The IPO Market: When Does it Open:
How does Imran assess the state of the IPO market today?
Can companies really go out with $100-$200M in revenue?
Will we see revenue multiples reflate? Can venture continue as an asset class if they do not?
When does Imran expect the IPO market to really open?
2. Is M&A F******:
How does Imran assess the state of the M&A market today?
How do founders need to change how they think about M&A? Why are they to blame for the lack of M&A activity we have today?
To what extent can we blame Lina Khan for the lack of M&A?
Why would a company go do an M&A process today when it is unlikely to be approved by the SEC?
Why does Imran believe in the case of Wiz, it was a mistake for the company not to do the M&A?
3. AI's $600BN Question: Capex Spend:
How does Imran analyse the insane capex spend we are seeing from Meta, Google and Amazon?
How does Zuck not having his cash cow as the cloud business change how he can act?
How does this compare to Google's capex spend 20 years ago? What can we learn from that?
4. Going Public: The Process, The Players and Jack Ma & Jamie Dimon:
What is the literal process to take a company public?
Who sets the price? What do large institutions want in companies going public?
What are some of Imran's biggest lessons from taking Snap and Alibaba public?
What…
-
20Sales: How Snowflake Built a Sales Machine | Why You Have to Hire a CRO Pre-Product | Why Most Sales Reps Do Not Perform | Why Hiring Panels are BS in Interviews | Why Remote Sales Reps Do Not Care About Their Development with Chad Peets
23 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 4 min
Chad Peets is one of the greatest sales leaders and recruiters of the last 25 years. From 2018 to 2023, Chad was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill Ventures. Chad has worked with the world's best CEOs and CROs to build world-class go-to-market organizations. Chad is currently a member of the Board of Directors for Lacework and Luminary Cloud and on the boards of Clumio and Sigma Computing. He previously served as a board member for Astronomer, Transposit, and others. He was an early-stage investor at Snowflake, Sigma, Observe, Lacework, and Clumio. Lees meer
In Today's Discussion with Chad Peet's We Discuss:
1. You Need a CRO Pre-Product:
Why does Chad believe that SaaS companies need a CRO pre-product?
Should the founder not be the right person to create the sales playbook?
What should the founder look for in their first CRO hire?
Does any great CRO really want to go back to an early startup and do it again?
2. What Everyone Gets Wrong in Building Sales Teams:
Why are most sales reps not performing?
How long does it take for sales teams to ramp? How does this change with PLG and enterprise?
What are the benchmarks of good vs great for average sales reps?
How do founders and VCs most often hurt their sales teams and performance?
3. How to Build a Hiring Machine:
What are the single biggest mistakes people make when hiring sales reps and teams?
Are sales people money motivated? How to create comp plans that incentivise and align?
Why does Chad believe that any sales rep that does not want to be in the office, is not putting their career and development first?
Why is it harder than ever to recruit great sales leaders today?
4. Lessons from Scaling Sales at Snowflake:
What are the single biggest lessons of what worked from scaling Snowflake's sales team?
What did not work? What would he do differently with the team again?
What did Snowflake teach Chad about success and culture and how they interplay together?
-
20VC: Five Lessons Scaling Toast to $14BN Market Cap | The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make in Fundraising, Hiring and Selling with Aman Narang, CEO @ Toast
21 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 4 min
Aman Narang is the Co-Founder and CEO of Toast, one of the best-in-class vertical SaaS companies of our time with a market cap today of $13.5BN. Five astonishing stats that show the quality of the Toast business today: Lees meer
$1.2bn in ARR with 48.4% from payments.
Toast Capital has reached $1bn in annualised loans originated.
875k restaurants in the US (Toast has 112k: 13% market share)
75% of locations are coming from inbound channels
The first investor in the company invested $500K at a $3M price
In Today's Episode with Aman Narang We Discuss:
1. The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make:
Why does Aman believe that founders should spend more time fundraising and with investors early?
Why does Aman believe founders should hire managers before they think they need them?
Why does Aman believe that founders do not give up control early enough?
2. Lessons Scaling to a $14BN Market Cap:
What did Aman and Toast do so successfully that allowed them to scale to $14BN market cap in 12 years? What worked?
What are the single biggest mistakes Toast made that hindered their growth most?
What are the first things to break in hyperscaling companies?
What opportunity did Aman and Toast not take that with the benefit of hindsight, he wishes they had taken?
3. Crucible Moment Decisions: Expansion:
How did Aman and Toast know when was the right time to release a second product?
What has enabled Toast Capital to scale to $1BN in loans so efficiently?
How did Aman and Toast scale so successfully into both enterprise and SMB? What are the biggest lessons from doing so? What did not work?
How do Aman and Toast approach geographic expansion? How do they choose which countries to expand into?
-
20VC: Chips, Models or Applications; Where is the Value in AI | Is Compute the Answer to All Model Performance Questions | Why Open AI Shelved AGI & Is There Any Value in Models with OpenAI Price Dumping with Aidan, Gomez, Co-Founder @ Cohere
19 augustus 2024 · 59 min
Aidan Gomez is the Co-founder & CEO at Cohere, the leading AI platform for enterprise, having raised over $1BN from some of the best with their last round pricing the company at a whopping $5.5BN. Prior to Cohere, Aidan co-authored the paper "Attention is All You Need," which introduced the groundbreaking Transformer architecture. He also collaborated with a number of AI luminaries, including Geoffrey Hinton and Jeff Dean, during his time at Google Brain, where the team focused their efforts on large-scale machine learning. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Aidan Gomez We Discuss:
1. Compute vs Data: What is the Bottleneck:
Does Aidan believe that more compute will result in an equal increase in performance?
How much longer do we have before it becomes a case of diminishing returns?
What does Aidan mean when he says "he has changed his mind massively on the role of data"? What did he believe? How has it changed?
2. The Value of the Model:
Given the demand for chips, the consumer need for applications, how does Aidan think about the inherent value of models today? Will any value accrue at the model layer?
How does Aidan analyze the price dumping that OpenAI are doing? Is it a race to the bottom on price?
Why does Aidan believe that "there is no value in last year's model"?
Given all of this, is it possible to be an independent model provider without being owned by an incumbent who has a cloud business that acts as a cash cow for the model business?
3. Enterprise AI: It is Changing So Fast:
What are the biggest concerns for the world's largest enterprises on adopting AI?
Are we still in the experimental budget phase for enterprises? What is causing them to move from experimental budget to core budget today?
Are we going to see a mass transition back from Cloud to On Prem with the largest enterprises not willing to let independent companies train with their data in the cloud?
What does AI not do today that will be a gamechanger for the enterprise in 3-5 years?
4…
-
20VC: Capital G's Laela Sturdy on What Stripe, UiPath and Duolingo Taught Me About Company Building and Investing | How to Analyse Valuation, Market Timing, Sizing and Exiting | Life Inside Alphabet's $7BN Growth Fund
16 augustus 2024 · 56 min
Laela Sturdy is Managing Partner of CapitalG, Alphabet's $7 billion independent growth fund, where she has invested in Stripe, Duolingo (DUOL), Gusto, UiPath (PATH), Webflow and Whatnot. Laela joined CapitalG shortly after its inception in 2013 and was promoted to Managing Partner in 2023, making her one of few women to be promoted into the sole leadership role within an established multibillion-dollar venture firm. Before joining CapitalG, Laela served as Managing Director of emerging businesses at Google and held leadership roles on the YouTube and Google Search teams. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Laela Sturdy We Discuss:
1. Lessons from 10 Years Investing:
What does Laela know now that she wishes she had known when she entered VC?
What is the biggest miss for Laela? How did it change her mindset and approach?
What are Laela's biggest takeaways from Stripe and UiPath? How did they change what she looks for in companies today?
What is Laela's biggest advice to all new entrants to venture today?
2. How to Build a $100BN Company: Market Timing, Sizing and Staging:
What does Laela mean when she says she will never take a risk on a company being able to complete a "second act"?
How does Laela approach market sizing? How does Laela think about the notion that the best companies will always expand their markets?
Is Laela willing to take market timing risk? What have been her biggest lessons on timing?
Does Laela prefer founders who are new to a market and have optimistic naivety? Or prefer an expert in a market who knows every element of it?
3. The Deal: Pricing, Sizing and Upside:
How does Laela think about price today? When is she willing to pay up vs not?
What price did Laela pay that at the time seemed super high but turned out to be super cheap?
What price did Laela pay that seemed super cheap but turned out to be super high?
What upside is Laela underwriting towards? What does she need to see in base and best case?
4. VC Value Add: Is it all BS:
Does …
-
20VC: Lessons from Mark Zuckerberg, Keith Rabois & Tobi Lütke | Why Remote is a Bad Idea for 90% of Companies | The Framework for How Shopify Builds Product Today | What Humans Get Wrong About Marriage and Kids with Kaz Nejatian, COO @ Shopify
14 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 3 min
Kaz Nejatian is Shopify's VP of Product & Chief Operating Officer. Before Shopify, Kaz founded Kash, a payment technology company which was acquired in 2017 by one of the largest fintech companies in the U.S. Kaz then served as Product Lead for Payments and Billing at Facebook, reducing the barriers for businesses in cash-dependent markets to purchase digital ads without a credit card. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Kaz Nejatian We Discuss:
1. Learnings From the Greats:
Mark Zuckerberg: What are Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Zuck? Why does Kaz believe Zuck is massively under-appreciated?
Keith Rabois: What are Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Keith? How did it change how he operates on a day to day basis?
Tobi Lütke: What have been Kaz's biggest lessons from working with Tobi? What has he changed most significantly since working with Tobi?
2. Shopify: Why We Build Our Own Tools:
Why does Kaz believe it is crucial for Shopify to build their own tools?
When did he doubt this strategy most? What caused him to question it?
Why does Kaz believe the Stripe <> Shopify partnership is the most important in business?
What is the role of a PM at Shopify?
Why do Shopify focus on how not what product is built?
3. Eight Truths The Startup World Gets Wrong:
Why does Kaz believe "The Lean Startup" has done more damage than any other startup book?
Why does Kaz believe that 90% of companies do not know what they want when they hire?
Why does Kaz believe the way that companies pay their staff is totally wrong?
Why does Kaz believe that most companies pick fights they do not need to pick?
Why does Kaz believe that for 90% of companies remote work is a terrible idea?
Why does Kaz believe that everyone in sales and marketing should be able to code?
Why does Kaz believe that married people with kids are more, not less productive?
Why does Kaz believe that we totally misunderstand divorce rates?
-
20VC: Sequoia's Shaun Maguire: Will We See WW3 Shortly | Why DEI is a Cancer for Society | Why Iran is the World's Greatest Evil | Why Trump is the Only Hope for Peace in the Middle East | Trump vs Harris: Who Wins & What Happens
12 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 3 min
Shaun Maguire is a Partner at Sequoia Capital. At Sequoia he led their investment into SpaceX, The Boring Co and X among many others. Before Sequoia he co-founded a cybersecurity company called Expanse which Palo Alto Networks acquired for $1B. Before Expanse, Shaun worked at DARPA and was deployed to Afghanistan. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Shaun Maguire We Discuss:
1. Why Iran is the Greatest Evil in the World:
What specifically makes Iran the greatest danger to the world today?
How should the US respond to the threat posed by Iran?
Does the US have to go to war with Iran knowing that they now have nuclear weapons?
How did the Biden-Harris administration worsen relations both with Iran and Saudi?
Is Trump the best chance we have of bringing peace and stability to the Middle East?
2. Russia, Ukraine, Gaza and Israel: What is the Right Next Step:
Does Shaun believe that the US should remove funding from Ukraine?
How would Trump change the US' relationship with Putin?
What does Shaun believe is the right next step for the US in Gaza and Israel?
What does Shaun mean when he says the public have no idea how much crazy s**** happens?
3. Freedom of Speech and DEI: Remnants of the Past:
Does Shaun believe we live in a society with freedom of speech? How does it differ between the US and Europe?
Is Shaun negative on the future of Europe? Does he agree with Larry Summers that "it is a museum"?
How does Shaun evaluate the state of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI)?
Why does Shaun believe that wokeness and cancel culture is one of the greatest dangers to society?
When does Shaun believe that transgender becomes a problem in children? Where is the line?
4. The Election: Who Wins and What Happens:
Does Shaun agree that Kamala is pulling ahead and Trump is now chasing her?
How does Shaun analyse the chances of Trump winning?
To what extent is it a real threat that there will be civil unrest if Trump does not win?
Why does Shaun argue that too much blame i…
-
20VC: Why VC is Distorting a Generation of SaaS Companies & With $900M in ARR and a Market Cap of $2.6BN is Lightspeed the Most Misunderstood Public Company with Dax Dasilva, Founder & CEO @ Lightspeed
9 augustus 2024 · 46 min
Dax Dasilva is the Founder & CEO Lightspeed Commerce, one of the most incredible stories in startups. For 7 years they did not raise outside funding and ran a very profitable business. Ultimately they partnered with Accel and Innovia before going public on the Canadian Stock Exchange with just $70M in ARR. Lightspeed also undertook 9 acquisitions over the course of a four year period to consolidate the global market. Today they have a whopping $900M in ARR but are only valued at $2.6BN. Today we ask the question, is Lightspeed one of the public market's most misunderstood companies? Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Dax Dasilva We Discuss:
1. VC Funding is Distorting SaaS:
Why did Dax decide not to raise money for Lightspeed in the early days?
Does Dax believe Lightspeed would have been successful had they have raised a seed round like many do today in SaaS?
Why does Dax believe venture funding is distorting a generation of SaaS companies today?
How does Dax advise founders scaling their business today from $0-$1M in ARR?
2. What Went Wrong: The Founder Returns:
Why did Dax feel he had to come back to the role of CEO in 2024? What was not working?
What was the single biggest problem that the public markets had with Lightspeed?
What were some of the biggest challenges that came with the intense amount of M&A?
What would Dax most like to do that the public market will not allow?
3. What Makes a Great Leader: How it Changes:
What required skills in leadership change with the changing scale of the company?
What skill does Dax have that he is slightly ashamed of but has most contributed to his success?
What did Dax not know when he founded Lightspeed that he wishes he had known?
What question is Dax never asked that he should be asked more?
-
20VC: How a Angel City Makes $31M per Season | How Sports Teams Can and Should Be Better Businesses | Why Every Sports Team Will Look Like a Media Agency and Founding The Most Valuable Women's Sports Team with Alexis Ohanian
7 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 13 min
Alexis Ohanian is the Founder and General Partner of Seven Seven Six, an early-stage venture capital firm with $970M AUM. Prior to 776, Alexis was the Co-Founder of Initialized, one of the most successful early-stage firms in history with their first fund returning 56x DPI. Before Initialized, Alexis was a Partner at the world-famous Y Combinator and before that was one of the Co-Founders of Reddit. Lees meer
In Today's Discussion with Alexis Ohanian We Touch On:
1. $31M in Revenue: The P&L of a Sports Team:
What are the core revenue drivers for Angel City Football Team?
How did Alexis convince Tony @ Doordash to write the largest-ever brand sponsorship check to have the Doordash name on the Angel City shirt?
How much money does Angel City make from ticket sales per year?
What does the revenue from merchandise look like for Angel City? How has it changed with time?
2. How to Spend $31M Annually To Run a Team:
What are the single biggest costs in running a sports team?
Does Alexis believe that salary caps are good or bad for leagues?
How much money is spent by clubs on content and software today? How should that change?
3. More Cash in Sports Than Ever:
Prices for teams are at an all-time high. Are we in a bubble for sports assets?
What remains under-priced and what is over-priced today?
What are the pros and cons of private equity entering sports ownership in a meaningful way?
Who is the worst sports team owner who despite his mismanagement, still made billions?
4. Alexis Ohanian: AMA:
How did Alexis and Serena William's children become millionaires through sports team ownership?
How did Alexis turn a $10,000 check into $17.1M?
How did a $10,000 check into a shoe company make Alexis $7M?
Why does Alexis believe that sports becomes even more valuable in a world of AI?
-
20VC: Sequoia's David Cahn on AI's $600BN Question | Why the Data Centre is the Most Important Asset | Servers, Steel and Power: The Core Pillars Powering the Future of AI
5 augustus 2024 · 1 uur 13 min
David Cahn is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the great venture firms of the last 5 decades. Before joining the Sequoia partnership, David led Coatue's venture business as a General Partner and COO where he led investments in Hugging Face, Runway and Supabase. David also joined the boards of Weights & Biases and Replit. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with David Cahn We Discuss:
1. AI's $600BN Question:
What is the $600BN question in AI today?
Is it possible to believe "AI will change the world" and "Capex levels are too high" at the same time?
Why do the cloud players have to act now? When does the Capex reduce for them?
How does Meta not having a core cash cow in cloud change the way they can respond?
Why is all the risk today being borne by the large incumbents? Why is that good for startups?
How will we see Satya and Zuckerberg change their narrative towards their Capex spend to the public markets?
2. The Data Centre is the Most Important Asset:
Why does David believe that data centre is the most important asset?
What does he mean when he says "servers, steel and power" are the pillars of AI?
What happens when the development of models outpaces the construction of data centres?
Why does David believe no one will ever train a frontier model on the same data centre twice?
3. The Biggest Opportunities in AI:
Why does David believe the biggest opportunity right now is in the build-out of data centres?
What does the supply chain look like for the build-out of data centres? Who are the winners?
Why does David believe the biggest opportunity in finance is in creating new debt instruments that will allow the largest incumbents in the world to move this data centre spend off balance sheet?
Why does David believe that AI will drive more energy innovation than any policy has done?
4. The Secrets of Sequoia: Inside the Walls of the Greatest Firm in Venture:
What does David and Sequoia believe is the one definition of success in venture?
Who is the best at find …
-
20Sales: 12-Week Step-by-Step Framework to Crush Every Sales Quarter | Moving from SMB to Enterprise: How and When | Verticalised Sales Teams: Why They are a Gamechanger and How to Build Them with Ben Fiechtner, CRO @ Clari
2 augustus 2024 · 55 min
Ben Fiechtner is Chief Revenue Officer at Clari, where he drives global go-to market & revenue operations. Ben previously served as SVP at UiPath, growing their key accounts and regulated industry verticals from $150m to $450m. Before UiPath, Ben was at Salesforce where he held multiple senior roles, achieving significant year-over-year growth and always on the bleeding edge of Vertical teams. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Ben Fiechtner We Discuss:
1. How to Close Deals Faster:
What are the top 3 ways sales reps can increase urgency in a deal cycle?
Should reps be discounting? If so, what level can be appropriate?
What is the right way to ask prospects for their internal buy process? How do you know if you are dealing with a champion?
What are the single biggest reasons that deals are delayed in closing?
2. SMB to Enterprise: How and When:
When is the right time to move into the enterprise?
What are the single biggest mistakes startups make when making the transition?
How does Ben advise startups to do it but with minimal spend and investment?
3. Verticalisation: Why, When and How:
Why is it important for founders to consider a verticalised sales strategy? What are the benefits?
When is the right time to consider a verticalised approach?
What is the right way to resource each sales team for a verticalised approach?
What are the biggest mistakes companies make when verticalising sales teams?
4. How to Hire the Best Reps:
What are the top signals that a candidate will make for an amazing sales rep?
What question does Ben ask in every interview? What do the best answers have?
What are the biggest mistakes founders make when hiring sales reps?
How fast do you know when a hire is a good hire or not?
-
20VC: Is More Compute the Answer to Model Performance | Why OpenAI Abandons Products, The Biggest Opportunities They Have Not Taken & Analysing Their Race for AGI | What Companies, AI Labs and Startups Get Wrong About AI with Ethan Mollick
31 juli 2024 · 1 uur 9 min
Ethan Mollick is the Co-Director of the Generative AI Lab at Wharton, which builds prototypes and conducts research to discover how AI can help humans thrive while mitigating risks. Ethan is also an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship, and also examines the effects of artificial intelligence on work and education. His papers have been published in top journals and his book on AI, Co-Intelligence, is a New York Times bestseller. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Ethan Mollick We Discuss:
1. Models: Is More Compute the Answer:
How has Ethan changed his mind on whether we have a lot of room to run in adding more compute to increase model performance?
What will happen with models in the next 12 months that no one expects?
Why will open models immediately be used by bad actors, what should happen as a result?
Data, algorithms, compute, what is the biggest bottleneck and how will this change with time?
2. OpenAI: The Missed Opportunity, Product Roadmap and AGI:
Why does Ethan believe that OpenAI is completely out of touch with creating products that consumers want to use?
Which product did OpenAI shelve that will prove to be a massive mistake?
How does Ethan analyse OpenAI's pursuit of AGI?
Why did Ethan think Brad, COO @ OpenAI's heuristic of "startups should be threatened if they are not excited by a 100x improvement in model" is total BS?
3. VCs, Startups and AI Labs: What the World Does Not Understand:
What do Big AI labs not understand about big companies?
What are the biggest mistakes companies are making when implementing AI?
Why are startups not being ambitious enough with AI today?
What are the single biggest ways consumers can and should be using AI today?
-
20VC: Twitter's Most Controversial VC Delian Asparouhov on Inside the Walls of Founders Fund: What the World Does Not See | Why Western Europe Will Be Like the Third World | Why SaaS as an Industry Might Be Dead
29 juli 2024 · 1 uur 16 min
Delian Asparouhov is a Partner at Founders Fund and Co-Founder and President of Varda Space Industries, which is building the world's first space factories. At Founders Fund Delian has led deals in the likes of Ramp ($7BN) and Sword Health ($3BN) among others. Before joining Founders Fund, he was a Principal at Khosla Ventures, Head of Growth at Teespring, and Founder of a healthcare company called Nightingale. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Delian Asparouhov We Discuss:
1. Venture Capital: Winners, Losers and Everyone Else:
Who are the Top 3 venture firms in the world today according to Delian?
Why does Delian believe that Benchmark are not the firm they were?
Who will be the winners in venture in the next 10 years?
Who will be the losers in venture in the next 10 years?
2. Inside Founders Fund: What No One Sees:
What are the most important and impactful elements of Founders Fund that no one knows about?
What does Delian believe that the Founders Fund partnership will strongly disagree with him on?
Why does Founders Fund believe the path of most resistance is the best way to make decisions?
What single topic has Delian publicly disagreed with Peter Thiel on most? How did it go?
3. What Every Young VC Needs to Know:
What are Delian's single biggest tips to young VCs looking to scale the VC ladder today?
What are the five core pillars of venture according to Delian? What should young VCs focus on?
Why does Delian disagree with Founders Fund partners that "the best founders do not need the help of their VCs?"
Does Delian agree with Vinod Khosla that "90% of VCs do detract value?"
What are the biggest ways that Delian believes VCs can and do detract value?
4. Europe Will Be Third World, Parenting and Marriage:
Why does Delian believe that Western Europe will become like the third world?
What are Delian's single biggest tips on finding a life partner?
What have been the biggest changes to Delian since becoming a father?
What question does no one ask Deli…
-
20Growth: How Transferwise Acquired Their First 5M Customers: The Two Types of Content All Companies Must Create, How to Crush Competition With Performance Marketing, What Growth Hacks Worked and Did Not with Nilan Peiris, CPO @ Wise
26 juli 2024 · 48 min
Nilan Peiris is Chief Product Officer at Wise, where he leads on growth across channels including product and platform. Prior to Wise, Nilan was VP Growth at HouseTrip, in charge of scaling the company's growth in the European market. He's also worked as Chief Marketing Technology Officer at Holiday Extras, where he was responsible for all areas of technology, marketing and customer acquisition. Nilan also advises a number of early-stage startups on growth and getting to traction. Lees meer
In Today's Episode With Nilan Peiris We Discuss:
Lessons Scaling Transferwise to the First 1M Users:
What growth tactics worked in scaling Wise to 1M users?
What growth tactics did not work? What did they learn?
What did Wise not do that Nilan wishes they had done?
What single product change completely changed the trajectory of their growth?
2. How to Use Content to Crush Competition:
What are the two different types of content that all companies must now make?
What are the single biggest mistakes companies make with content today?
What do you do when your competition can spend 7-8x more on marketing?
Is SEO and SEM dead today or does it still play the same prominent role?
3. Wise's Framework on How to Win at Performance Marketing:
What have been Nilan's single biggest lessons on how to win in performance marketing?
What are the biggest mistakes companies make today in performance marketing?
When is the right time to diversify and add new channels?
What level of channel concentration would concern Nilan to see?
4. The Secret to Adding More Products:
When is the right time to add a second product?
How does Nilan define great product marketing today?
How can one do amazing and targeted product marketing with several products aimed at different customers?
What are the single biggest mistakes that companies make with brand marketing?
-
This Week in SaaS: Should Wiz Have Accepted Google's $23BN Acquisition Offer, Crowdstrike: WTF Happens From Here: The Bull and the Bear Case & $1BN into Legal Tech in a Day with Clio and Harvey with Jason Lemkin
24 juli 2024 · 51 min
Jason Lemkin is one of the OG SaaS investors with all of his first five investments turning into unicorns with Pipedrive, Algolia, Talkdesk, Salesloft and RevenueCat all in his portfolio. SaaStr is the largest global community in SaaS and he has taught a generation the fundamentals of SaaS on saastr.com. Lees meer
In Our Second Episode of This Week in SaaS:
1. Wiz Rejects Google's $23BN Acquisition Offer:
How does Jason analyse the price of the offer? $23BN for a $500M ARR business growing 120% YoY?
What is the reasoning for Google in pursuing the acquisition?
If Wiz had of proceeded in the process, what are the chances it would have made it through regulators?
Why did Wiz walk away from the offer? If Jason were on the board, what would he have done?
Is there a correlation between the downfall of Crowdstrike and Wiz turning down the offer?
What does this mean for the M&A market moving forward?
Will there be a secondary round now in place for Wiz at $23BN?
2. Crowdstrike: WTF Happens from Here:
Did Crowdstrike manage the crisis in the right way? What would Jason have done differently?
What is the bull case for Crowdstrike moving forward from this point?
What are the bear case for the company? Could this snowball and be the end?
What will this do to company requirements on having single point of failure solutions?
Where will the market cap of Crowdstrike be at the end of 2024?
3. LegalTech: Show Me the Money: $1BN in a Single Day:
Clio announced a $900M round at a $3BN valuation. How does Jason analyse this?
What does Jason make of Harvey's $100M raise at a $1.5BN valuation?
Why does Jason think 2025 will be the year for AI parity? Why will we see the majority of SaaS features be commoditised in 2025?
What is the single biggest regret that Jason has in his investing career?
-
20VC: How I Lost Airbnb at Seed Because of an Exploding Term Sheet | Investing Lessons from Roelof Botha & Peter Thiel | Why VC is Less Collaborative Than Ever and Great Companies Are Being Destroyed by Too Much Cash with Kevin Hartz @ A*
22 juli 2024 · 1 uur 3 min
Kevin Hartz is a Co-Founder and General Partner at A*, an early-stage venture capital firm. Prior to founding A*, Kevin co-founded Eventbrite, a publicly traded company, and served as the CEO for the first 11 years of the company. Before Eventbrite, Kevin co-founded Xoom, a money remittance company that was acquired by PayPal in 2015 for over $1BN. Kevin is also a prolific angel investor having backed companies such as PayPal, Airbnb, Pinterest, Ramp, Trulia, and Anduril at the seed stage, and was an early investor in Uber, Palantir, SpaceX, Square, Gusto and many others. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Kevin Hartz We Discuss:
1. What Makes the Best Founders:
What questions does Kevin always ask founders in the investment process?
Does Kevin prefer serial or first time founders? Why?
Does Kevin prefer founders who are new to a problem or who are insiders and experts?
When Kevin has gotten a founder bet wrong, what did he not see that he should have seen?
2. The Exploding Term Sheet That Cost $10BN:
How did an exploding term sheet for the seed round of Airbnb cost Kevin $10BN?
What did Kevin see in the seed round of Airbnb that so few other investors saw?
Does Kevin agree that the best businesses often start off as ridiculous or toys?
3. From World's Greatest Angel to VC with $600M AUM:
Why does Kevin think a barbell strategy of Seed and Series C is best today?
Does Kevin agree that the Series B and growth stage is dead today?
Why does Kevin strongly disagree that seed is the hardest stage of the market?
Why does Kevin think that venture is less collaborative than ever?
How does Kevin approach when to sell vs when to hold a position?
What are his biggest lessons from seeding and holding Opensea?
4. Learning From the World's Best Investors:
What have been Kevin's lessons from his relationship with Peter Thiel?
What have been Kevin's biggest takeaways from investing alongside Roelof Botha in many deals?
What have been Kevin's biggest lessons from watching…
-
20Product: How Canva Builds Products: Lessons Learned, What Works? What Flopped? The Top 5 Product Lessons in Scaling to 185M Monthly Active Users with Canva Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Cameron Adams
19 juli 2024 · 50 min
Cameron Adams is Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Canva where he is responsible for heading up the design and product teams. Since launching in 2013, Canva's global community has grown to over 185 million monthly users in over 190 countries. In 2021, Canva was valued at $40 billion, following a $200m funding round. This saw it become one of the most valuable private software companies in the world. Prior to joining Canva, Cameron found himself working closely with Lars and Jens Rasmussen (co-founders of Google Maps) to realise the design vision for Google Wave. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Cameron Adams:
1. From Accidental Joining to Most Valuable Private Company:
How did Cameron go from working on Google wave with Lars Rasmussen to co-founding Canva with Mel and Cliff?
What was the single closest near-death experience in the life of Canva?
Why did Canva fail as a social network? What did Cameron learn from that?
2. How to Create Users that Truly Love Your Products:
What have been Canva's biggest lessons on what it takes to do world class onboarding?
What is Cameron biggest advice to founders on how to create moments of delight in your product?
Is simplicity always best in product? What, when made more complex, is better for the user?
3. Scaling Canva into the Enterprise:
What are the biggest product changes that are required to move into enterprise?
What does Cam know about moving up market that he wishes he had known when he started?
What are the biggest product and design mistakes founders make when making the transition from PLG to enterprise sales?
4. AI Changes Everything: More Money or Better Products Only
Who will win the foundation model layer landscape? What will it be in 10 years?
Will companies actually make more revenue from having AI in products or will it just create better products?
How does Canva's implementation of AI in their products impact the margins of their products?
-
20VC: Brex CEO Pedro Franceschi on What Brex Needs to do to be a Public Company | Brex vs Ramp: Who Wins and How Does it Play Out | Battling Founder Mental Health and The Importance of Secondaries for Founders
17 juli 2024 · 50 min
Pedro Franceschi is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Brex, the AI-powered spend platform with tens of thousands of customers, including DoorDash, Coinbase, Robinhood and Roblox. Pedro has raised over $1.2BN for the company from the likes of Greenoaks, Ribbit, DST, Bond and YC. The latest reported valuation was $12.3BN. Before Brex, Pedro was the first person to "jailbreak" the iPhone 3G in Brazil and co-founded payments company Pagar.me with Dubugras when he was 15. In three years, Pedro scaled it to over 100 people and US$1.5 billion in transactions processed. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Pedro Franceschi We Discuss:
1. The Challenge is in Your Own Head:
Why does Pedro believe all founders underestimate their own mental health?
When was Pedro most anxious/depressed in the Brex journey? Why?
What have been the single biggest needle movers for increasing his own mental health?
How does Pedro advise other founders struggling with their own mental health?
2. From a 13-Year-Old Hacker in Brazil to Billionaire in LA:
How did Pedro come to make $200K on the internet when he was just 12?
Does Pedro agree that the best founders always started entrepreneurial pursuits young?
How does Pedro reflect on his own relationship to money today? How has it changed?
Pedro has famously taken large secondaries, how did that impact his mindset?
How does Pedro advise other founders and VCs when it comes to secondaries?
3. The Importance of the Idea: What Everyone Misunderstands:
What does Pedro mean when he says everyone does not appreciate enough how important the idea selection process is? How does he advise founders entering this process?
Why does Pedro believe it is not that easy for founder to just pivot to a new idea?
How did YC almost miss out on investing in Brex, now a $12BN company, due to the original idea?
4. Brex vs Ramp: Who Wins:
How does Pedro feel when I say, "Ramp have gotten ahead on marketing and visibility"?
Why does Pedro believe that "Ramp is a marketing comp…
-
20VC: Why We Are in a Bubble & Now is Frothier Than 2021 | Why $1M ARR is a BS Milestone for Series A | Why Seed Pricing is Rational & Large Seed Rounds Have Less Risk | Why Many AI Apps Have BS Revenue & Are Not Sustainable with Saam Motamedi @ Greylock
15 juli 2024 · 1 uur 6 min
Saam Motamedi is a General Partner at Greylock, where he has led investments in Abnormal Security (incubated at Greylock), Apiiro Security and Opal Security, as well as AI companies like Adept, Braintrst, Cresta, Predibase, Snorkel, and more. Before Greylock, Saam founded Guru Labs, a machine learning-driven fintech startup, and worked in product management at RelateIQ, one of the first applied AI software companies. Lees meer
In Today's Conversation We Discuss:
1. Seed Today is Frothier than 2021:
How does Saam evaluate the seed market today?
With seed pricing being so high, how does he reflect on his own price sensitivity? When does he say too much and does not do it?
Despite seed pricing being higher than ever before, why does Saam believe it is rational?
How has the competition at seed changed in the last few years?
2. Series B and Growth are not a Viable Asset Class Today:
Why does Saam believe that you cannot make money at Series B today?
Why has pricing gone through the roof? Who is the new competition?
When does it make sense to "play the game on the field" vs say this is BS and do something else?
What would need to happen in the public markets for Series B to be a viable asset class again?
3. Markets vs Founders: The Billion Dollar Mistake and Lessons:
How does Saam prioritise between founder vs market?
What have been Saam's biggest lessons when it comes to market sizing and timing?
What is Saam's biggest miss? How did it change his approach and company evaluation?
Which other VC would Saam most like to swap portfolios with? Why them?
4. Saam Motamedi: AMA:
What does Saam know now that he wishes he had known when he got into VC?
Saam has had a meteoric rise in Greylock, what advice does Saam have for those younger investors look to really scale within a firm?
Sourcing, selecting and servicing: Where is he best? Where is he worst?
Why does Saam believe that most VCs do not add value?
20VC: Why We Are in a Bubble & Now is Frothier Than 2021 | Why…
-
20Sales: Biggest Lessons Scaling Hubspot from $0-$100M in ARR, The Framework for How Startups Should Scale into the Enterprise, How to do Channel Partnerships Right and How to Construct Sales Comp Plans Early On with Mark Roberge
12 juli 2024 · 40 min
Mark Roberge is a Co-Founder and Managing Director at Stage 2 Capital and a Senior Lecturer at the Harvard Business School. Prior to these roles, Mark was the founding CRO at HubSpot, where he scaled ARR from $0 to $100 million and expanded his team from 1 to 450 employees. Mark was ranked #19 in Forbes' Top 30 Social Sellers in the World. He was also awarded the 2010 Salesperson of the Year at the MIT Sales Conference. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Mark Roberge We Discuss:
1. Biggest Lessons Scaling Hubspot to $100M in ARR:
What are Mark's biggest lessons in what worked in their sales strategy in scaling to $100M in ARR?
What elements of Hubspot's sales strategy did not work? What would he have done differently with the benefit of hindsight?
What does Mark know now that he wishes he had known when he started at Hubspot?
2. How the Best Startups Scale into Enterprise:
What are the single biggest mistakes startups make when scaling into enterprise?
When is the right time? What do founders get most wrong on timing of scale into enterprise?
What do you need to have in place both from a team and product perspective to make the transition?
3. Second Product and Second Channel:
When is the right time to launch the second product?
Why does Mark believe that you should be turning down customers in the early days? Why is not every customer right for your company?
How does Mark think about channel diversification? Does Mark agree you only need one channel to scale to $50M in ARR and two to scale to $100M in ARR?
4. 99% of SaaS Founders Do Partnerships Wrong:
What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when doing channel partnerships?
What can and should they do to set channel partnerships up for success?
What do the channel partners need to have to be equipped to sell the partner solution?
What level of buy-in and from who on the channel partner side is needed for the partnership to be successful?
What did Mark learn from Hubspot's partnership with Salesf…
-
20VC: ServiceTitan Would Not Be the Success if We Raised VC Earlier: How to Build a Dominant Vertical SaaS Business, How to Master Going Into Enterprise, When & How to Launch Second Products with Ara Mahdessian, Co-Founder @ServiceTitan
10 juli 2024 · 51 min
Ara Mahdessian is the Co-Founder and CEO @ ServiceTitan, one of the great vertical SaaS business of the last decade. Today the company powers over 11,800 trade customers and has raised over $1.4BN from some of the best including Bessemer, Battery, Index, ICONIQ and more. Their latest valuation pegged the business at a reported $7.3BN. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Ara Mahdessian We Discuss:
1. We Did Not Want To Raise VC Money:
Why did Ara not want to raise VC funding in the early days?
What convinced Ara to change his mind? Why did he choose Byron and Bessemer?
Does Ara believe that ServiceTitan would have been the success that it is, if it had raised in today's market, a $5M on $25M seed round? What would they have done differently?
2. How to Master Going Upmarket:
What are Ara's biggest lessons on what it takes to go upmarket?
How does the product need to change? How does the org of the company change?
When is the right time to go upmarket?
What did ServiceTitan get wrong in their move into enterprise? What did Ara learn from this?
3. How to Build a Brand in SaaS and Have Premium Pricing:
What are some of Ara's biggest lessons in how to build the best brand in vertical SaaS?
What works in brand building in SaaS? What does not? What would he do differently?
What have been Ara's biggest lessons on pricing? ServiceTitan is 3x their competitors, how does Ara think about what is required to have such premium pricing?
4. How to Master the Second Product & Be the Best at Customer Success:
When is the right time to do a second product? Why is it too late to wait for PMF with your first product to do the second product?
What product did ServiceTitan wait too long to release? What did they learn?
What product did they release too early? What did they learn?
What are the two core reasons why customer success is the most important element in a business?
5. The Core Pillars of Great Leadership:
Why do product builder founders have such an increased chance of s…
-
20VC: The Sequoia Investment Process | Investing Lessons from Doug Leone, Roelof Botha & Alfred Lin | Sequoia's Framework for Analysing Founders | The True Benefit of Having Sequoia on a Cap Table & Sequoia's Biggest Threat with Pat Grady
8 juli 2024 · 1 uur 9 min
Pat Grady is one of the most successful growth investors of the last decade. As the Head of Sequoia's growth investing practice, Pat has invested in companies with a combined market cap exceeding $250BN. Among Pat's immense portfolio is Hubspot, Snowflake, ServiceNow, Okta, Amplitude, Zoom and Qualtrics. Pat is also one of the best acquirers of talent in venture hiring Andrew Reed, Matt Huang, Julien Bek. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Pat Grady We Discuss:
1. The Sequoia Investment Process:
What is the Sequoia investment process today? How has it changed over time?
What could be improved about the process? Where is it weak?
What is the biggest strength of the process?
How do Sequoia remove politics from the investment decision-making process?
Are the best deals "contrarian"? What does Pat mean when he says you do not "get extra points for being contrarian and right"?
2. What Sequoia Look for When Investing:
What is Pat's framework for assessing founders? How does it differ when investing early vs late?
Team, traction, TAM, how does Pat rank the three when investing?
What have been Pat's biggest lessons on market sizing? Does Pat take market timing risk?
How much weight does Pat place on "traction" when investing? How sustainable is PMF?
3. The Three Core Pillars of Venture:
Sourcing: What does Pat rank Sequoia for sourcing? Who is the best at sourcing in the firm?
Selecting: How does Pat rank Sequoia at picking? How has it changed over time? What could Sequoia do to improve their picking ability?
Servicing: What does Pat give Sequoia for their "value add"? To what extent does Pat truly believe that venture investors do add value?
4. Pat Grady: AMA:
Pat has hired some of the best in the next generation of venture investors; what are his biggest lessons in what he looks for when hiring investing talent?
What is his single biggest takeaway from working with Alfred Lin, Roelof Botha and Doug Leone?
What are his biggest takeaways from working with Hubspot,…
-
20VC: Turning a $15M Investment in Monday into $1.5BN in Cash | The Strategy Behind a 37x DPI $45M Fund | The Three Step Process to Selling Positions that has Netted Top Percentile Returns with Avi Eyal, Co-Founder @ Entrée Capital
3 juli 2024 · 59 min
Avi Eyal is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of Entrée Capital, an early-stage VC fund with a portfolio including the likes of Monday.com, Stripe, Coupang, PillPack, and Snap. From their $15M investment into Monday, Entrée distributed a whopping $1.5BN, one of their $45M funds is a whopping 37x DPI. Avi is one of the greatest venture investors you might not have heard about. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Avi Eyal We Discuss:
1. The Biggest BS "Rules" in Venture Capital:
Why does Avi believe that it is BS for every deal to need to be a homerun and return the fund?
Why does Avi believe that signalling is real and it is BS to suggest otherwise?
Why does Avi believe that it is BS that ownership is crucial to make mega venture returns?
Why does Avi believe that you do not have to win every deal to be one of the best in venture?
Why should venture investors not manage the positions of their companies when they go public? Why is it BS to think they have asymmetric information when the company goes public?
2. What Makes the Best Founders:
Does Avi prefer first or second time entrepreneurs? Why?
Would Avi rather back a founder that is an expert in a market or one that is new to a market and has the naivety to not know what is hard?
Are the best CEOs the best fundraisers?
How does Avi rank the following when investing; team, market, traction and technology?
When Avi has misread a founder, what was it that he missed?
3. The Biggest Hits and Biggest Misses:
Monday: How did Entrée build such a large position in Monday over time? How did a Series A lead dropping out leading to a $1.5BN gain for Entree?
Stripe: Entrée has now 50% of his Stripe position. Why? What is the three step process for Avi in selling positions? How does he know when to and what is the right amount?
PillPack: Entrée made $15M from PillPack's exit. What did that teach Avi about ownership?
Cazoo: How was Entrée the only one to make money from Cazoo? How did Entrée's sell strategy help him make mill…
-
20VC: LLMs Are Reaching a Stage of Diminishing Returns: What is the Next S Curve | The Bull & Bear Case for China's Ability to Challenge the US' AI Capabilities | How AI Changes the Future of War & How Agents Will Reshape Society with Matt Clifford @ EF
1 juli 2024 · 1 uur 3 min
Matt Clifford is the Co-Founder of Entrepreneur First (EF), the leading global talent investor and incubator. EF has incubated startups worth over $10bn, including Cleo, Tractable and Aztec Protocol. Matt is also Chair of ARIA, the UK's Advanced Research and Invention Agency, and advises the UK government on AI and in 2023 served as the Prime Minister's Representative for the AI Safety Summit at Bletchley Park. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Matt Clifford We Discuss:
1. The Most Important Questions in AI:
Are we seeing diminishing returns where more compute does not lead to a significant increase in performance?
What is required to reach a new S curve? What do we need to see in GPT 5?
Why does Matt believe that search is one of the biggest opportunities in AI today?
2. The Biggest Opportunities in AI Today:
How does Matt see the future for society with a world of autonomous agents?
What is the single biggest opportunity around agents that no one has solved?
Is society ready for agentic behaviours to replace the core of human labour?
How does warfare change in a world of AI?
Does AI favour states and good actors or criminals and bad actors more favourably when it comes to offence and defence?
3. China and the Race to Win the AI War:
Does Matt believe that China are two years behind the US in terms of AI capability?
What are Matt's biggest lessons from spending time with the CPP in China working on AI policy?
In what way is the CCP more sophisticated in their thinking on AI than people think?
What is the bull and the bear case for China in the race for AI?
What is the core impact of US export controls on chips for China's ability to build in AI?
Does a Trump vs a Biden election change the playing field with China?
4. What Makes Truly Great Founders:
Does Matt agree that the best founders always start an entrepreneurial activity when they are young?
What is more important the biggest strength of one of the founders or the combined skills of the founding …
-
20VC: Raising $126M Across 3 Rounds in Just 6 Months, Being the Youngest Founder of a Unicorn Company | But Everything Was Not as it Seemed: The Real Story of Vise: The Regrets, Mistakes and Mis-Hires with Vise's Samir Vasavada
28 juni 2024 · 59 min
Samir Vasavada is the Co-Founder & CEO of Vise, a technology-powered asset manager. Samir and his co-founder, Runik founded Vise from the Midwest at 16 years old. They bootstrapped the company before dropping out of high school and raising $128M in just 6 months from some of the best including Sequoia Capital and Founders Fund. The company achieved unicorn status when the pair turned 20 years old, making them the youngest founders of a $BN company at the time. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Samir Vasavada We Discuss:
1. The Biggest Hiring Mistakes That Broke Us:
Why is hiring people who come with a playbook one of the most damaging things you can do?
Why is it impossible to build a remote company that performs the same as in person?
Why is it the worst thing to hire people who have a reputation they are obsessed with maintaining?
Why do you never want to hire people who join because of who your investors are?
Why does Samir regret not firing people faster? How much time is enough time to know?
Why is hiring in a hot market one of the most dangerous things you can do?
2. Fundraising: 3 Rounds and $126M in 6 Months:
Does Samir regret raising so much money so soon in the company life?
What did Samir do that he regrets doing, having had so much money so early?
How did the need for free food at an event lead to a term sheet and $50M from Sequoia?
Did Samir feel that he could talk to investors when things were going really badly?
Why does Samir believe that liquidation preference matters more than valuation?
3. The Depression, The Pressure and Wisdom From Jensen Huang:
What did Jensen Huang teach Samir when it comes to wealth and leadership?
How did Samir deal with the pressure of raising $126M in 6 months and being the youngest unicorn founder, ever at the time?
Was Samir hurt when people he thought were his friends, no longer stuck with him when the company was no longer "hot"?
What was Samir's darkest time? How did he overcome and get out of it?
Does Sami…
-
20VC: Klaviyo's Andrew Bialecki on Going Public in an IPO Winter, Is Klaviyo Under-Priced in Public Markets and Why, Why Every VC Turned Klaviyo Down in the Early Days & How Shopify's Partnership Changed the Game
26 juni 2024 · 51 min
Andrew Bialecki is the Co-Founder and CEO of Klaviyo, the platform that powers smarter digital relationships for businesses and their data. To date, Klaviyo has raised over $778M from the likes of Accel, Summit Partners, Sands Capital, and Shopify, and raised an additional $700M after its IPO in September 2023. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with Andrew Bialecki We Discuss:
Founding a $6.23BN Machine in Klaviyo: The Aha Moment
What was the aha moment for Klaviyo?
How important does Andrew think it is for founders to stick with their initial vision vs when is the right time to pivot?
Does a great product sell itself? If you build it, will they come?
Bootstrapping Klaviyo: Would it Have Worked with More VC Cash Earlier?
Why did Andrew decide to bootstrap & not take VC money with Klaviyo?
Does Andrew think Klaviyo would have been successful if they raised a seed round? What would they have done differently?
Why does Andrew believe companies should take their time to find product-market fit? What are the most common mistakes founders make?
What is Andrew's advice to founders on fundraising?
When did Andrew decide to raise a seed round when he did?
How to IPO in an IPO Winter: Advice & Lessons
Why did Andrew decide to take Klaviyo public in a bad public market?
How was the IPO roadshow process? What were Andrew's lessons from it?
How has Andrew's role as CEO changed after taking Klaviyo public?
Does Andrew think Klaviyo is undervalued today?
What is Andrew's advice to founders on secondaries?
Behind the Shopify Partnership
How did Klaviyo's partnership with Shopify happen? What were Andrew's lessons working with Tobi Lütke & Harley Finklestein?
How does Andrew define a win-win partnership?
What does Andrew mean by "Partnerships are like a tug of war?"
What does Andrew think are the most common reasons partnerships go sideways?
-
20VC: Why Foundation Model Performance is Not Diminishing But Models Are Commoditising, Why Nvidia Will Enter the Model Space and Models Will Enter the Chip Space & The Right Business Model for AI Software with David Luan, Co-Founder @ Adept
24 juni 2024 · 56 min
David Luan is the CEO and Co-Founder at Adept, a company building AI agents for knowledge workers. To date, David has raised over $400M for the company from Greylock, Andrej Karpathy, Scott Belsky, Nvidia, ServiceNow and WorkDay. Previously, he was VP of Engineering at OpenAI, overseeing research on language, supercomputing, RL, safety, and policy and where his teams shipped GPT, CLIP, and DALL-E. He led Google's giant model efforts as a co-lead of Google Brain. Lees meer
In Today's Episode with David Luan We Discuss:
1. The Biggest Lessons from OpenAI and Google Brain:
What did OpenAI realise that no one else did that allowed them to steal the show with ChatGPT?
Why did it take 6 years post the introduction of transformers for ChatGPT to be released?
What are 1-2 of David's biggest lessons from his time leading teams at OpenAI and Google Brain?
2. Foundation Models: The Hard Truths:
Why does David strongly disagree that the performance of foundation models is at a stage of diminishing returns?
Why does David believe there will only be 5-7 foundation model providers? What will separate those who win vs those who do not?
Does David believe we are seeing the commoditization of foundation models?
How and when will we solve core problems of both reasoning and memory for foundation models?
3. Bunding vs Unbundling: Why Chips Are Coming for Models:
Why does David believe that Jensen and Nvidia have to move into the model layer to sustain their competitive advantage?
Why does David believe that the largest model providers have to make their own chips to make their business model sustainable?
What does David believe is the future of the chip and infrastructure layer?
4. The Application Layer: Why Everyone Will Have an Agent:
What is the difference between traditional RPA vs agents?
Why is agents a 1,000x larger business than RPA?
In a world where everyone has an agent, what does the future of work look like?
Why does David disagree with the notion of "selling the …