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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 Gorlick30 Aug 202400:41:42

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.

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 @ Princeton28 Aug 202400:51:55

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.

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 in everyone's pocket? Where does he believe this theory is weak and falls down?

 

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 Ohanian07 Aug 202401:13:14

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.

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: From a $1.1M Acquisition to $1.4BN in Revenues; The Meteoric Rise of Hoka Running with Deckers CEO, Dave Powers22 Dec 202300:53:43

Dave Powers serves as President and CEO of Deckers Brands, a global footwear and apparel company where he focuses on the company's five high-performing brands: UGG®, Teva®, Sanuk®, HOKA One One® and Koolaburra®. Prior to Deckers, he held executive leadership roles at Converse and Timberland, where he led worldwide retail merchandising, marketing, visual and store design as well as the creation of a sustainable line of footwear and apparel.

In Today's Episode with Dave Powers:

1. The Unlikely CEO of a Global Footwear Company:

  • How did Dave make his way into the world of consumer and fashion from the ground up?
  • Why did Dave never think he was the type of person to be a CEO?
  • What does Dave know now that he wishes he had known when he started his career?

2. From $1.1M Acquisition to $1.4BN Revenues: The Hoka Story:

  • Why did Deckers acquire Hoka for $1.1M? What did they see in this, at the time, futuristic running shoe that no one else saw?
  • Was the growth of Hoka linear or were there needle-moving moments that propelled the brand?
  • What did they do so right that led to their success?
  • What would Dave have done differently in the Hoka journey if he had his time again?

3. From $14.7BN Acquisition to Oprah's Favourite: The UGG Journey:

  • How much of a needle mover was it for UGG when Oprah added it to her list of favourite items?
  • Why did UGG go through a tough period? What did they do wrong?
  • What does it take to resurrect a brand? How can they bring UGG back to life and make it cool?

4. From Abercrombie to LVMH: An Analysis of the Industry:

  • How does Dave analyse the rise and fall of Abercrombie and Hollister? Where did it go wrong?
  • What does Dave believe LVMH are the best in the world at? What does he learn from them?
  • How important is it for consumer companies to have a hero product?
  • How can consumer companies scale to mass markets without losing their core audience?

20VC Roundtable: Spotify, Adobe & Linkedin CPOs on How AI Changes The Future of Product, Why AI is Now the Product, How TikTok Changed Product, Why Cost is the Biggest Barrier to LLM Usage & Why Incumbents Can Adopt AI Faster Than Any Prior Innovation Cyc20 Dec 202300:50:23

Gustav Söderström is the Co-President, CPO & CTO at Spotify. Gustav has been instrumental in taking Spotify from a 30-person operation in Sweden when he joined to being the global leader of the space.

Scott Belsky is Adobe's Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud. Scott oversees all of product and engineering for Creative Cloud, as well as design for Adobe. 

Tomer Cohen is the Chief Product Officer @ Linkedin where he is responsible for setting and executing the global product strategy at LinkedIn.

In Today's Episode on How AI Changes The Future of Product and Design We Discuss:

1. Why AI Is Now the Product that UI Serves:

  • Why does Gustav believe that AI is now the product?
  • How has the importance of UI changed with the rise of AI?
  • How did TikTok change the product paradigm over the last few years?

2. What Matters More Models or Data:

  • What is more important the size of the model or the amount of data a company has?
  • Will companies use many models at the same time?
  • Why will companies using many models at once create a huge opportunity for startups?
  • Will every company have their own model? What will be the decision-making framework of whether to have your own model or leverage another?
  • How does the rise of AI change how companies approach data acquisition, collection and cleaning?

3. The Workforce Needs to Change with AI:

  • How do product leaders and teams need to change in an AI-first world?
  • What do designers need to do to stay up to date in an AI-first world?
  • What does it mean to be good at prompting? How can people get good at prompting?
  • Why will AI kill companies that charge by the hour?
  • Why will seat pricing die in a world of AI? What will be the business model for AI?

4. Incumbents vs Startups: Who Wins:

  • Do incumbents win in a world of AI or do startups?
  • Why is AI primed for incumbents to win and move fast in a way they could not in prior technology cycles?
  • What are the biggest hurdles and challenges incumbents have to face that startups do not?
  • What are the biggest barriers that startups have to win in a world of AI that incumbents do not have?

20VC: Why Now is the Best Time to Invest in Emerging Managers, Biggest Mistake Emerging Managers Make When Fundraising & Investing Lessons from Investing $1.5BN Per Year and Being Early Investors in Thrive, a16z and Founders Fund with Peter Lacaillade18 Dec 202301:02:30

Peter Lacaillade is a Managing Director @ SCS Financial Services where he leads its private investment program where he oversees the firm's activities in private equity, opportunistic credit and private real assets. Peter has been an early backer of Thrive, Founders Fund, a16z, Greenoaks and 20VC. Before SCS, Peter was an Associate at HarbourVest Partners in its Secondary Group where he analyzed venture capital, growth equity and buyout investments.

In Today's Episode with Peter Lacaillade We Discuss:

1. Becoming One of the Great LPs in Venture:

  • How did Peter make his way into the world of fund investing as an LP?
  • What does Peter know now that he wishes he had known when he started as an LP?
  • Why does Peter believe now is the best time to be investing in newer, emerging managers?

2. How to Pick the Best Venture Managers:

  • What are the commonalities in the best VCs Peter has invested in?
  • How important is track record for Peter when evaluating managers?
  • What mistakes has Peter made when it comes to manager selection? What did he learn?
  • How do the best managers build relationships with their LPs?

3. Building a Portfolio That Can 5x:

  • In a venture fund portfolio, what is the distribution between those that outperform, perform as planned and then underperform?
  • How does Peter invest in both large franchises and emerging managers with a barbell approach? How much in established franchises and how much in emerging managers?
  • Are managers actively marking down their portfolios in the last 18 months? Who has been the best at this and who has been the worst? How much should portfolios be marked down?
  • How does Peter evaluate the compression of deployment timelines we saw in the last 18 months?

4. A Breakdown of the LP Landscape:

  • Family Offices: What are the biggest dangers of having family offices as LPs? Why do multi-family offices tend to be better?
  • Endowments: Are they really as stable as people think they are? What separates a good vs great endowment? Who stands out?
  • Fund of Funds: Why does Peter think fund of funds deserve more credit? How should managers think about working with FoFs most effectively?
  • What is the right level of concentration managers should have between these different LP profiles?
  • What are the biggest mistakes emerging managers make when approaching LPs?

20VC: Cotopaxi: From Selling $6M of Pool Tables to Scaling $150M in Revenues and Challenging Patagonia, Fundraising Lessons from 100+ Rejections & What Founders Do Not Understand About VC with Davis Smith, Founder @ Cotopaxi15 Dec 202300:58:28

Davis Smith is the Founder and Chairman of Cotopaxi, an outdoor brand with a humanitarian mission. The company has assisted over 4 million people living in poverty. The company has been profitable for the last 4 years and is expected to do $160M in revenue in 2023, up from $55M just two years before. In April 2023, Davis resigned after 10 years as CEO to lead a mission for his church in Brazil for three years. Davis is an EY Entrepreneur of the Year and was recognized as Utah's Businessperson of the Year in 2022. He is an adventurer who has floated the Amazon on a self-made raft, kayaked from Cuba to Florida, and explored North Korea.

In Today's Episode with Davis Smith We Discuss:

1. From Selling $6M Worth of Pool Tables to the Amazon of Brazil to Founding Cotopaxi:

  • How did Davis scale a pool table business to $6M in revenue?
  • What were Davis' biggest takeaways from building the Amazon of Brazil, raising millions in VC funding and the business failing?
  • How did depression and 36 hours on a sofa lead to the a-ha moment for Cotopaxi?

2. The Billion Dollar Company, Rejected by 100 Investors:

  • How was the early fundraising journey for Davis with Cotopaxi? Why did so many investors say no?
  • What was the best VC meeting he has ever had? Why do women understand Cotopaxi better?
  • What does Davis believe are the biggest misalignments between VCs and Founders?
  • Why does Davis believe we need a new type of financial product to fund long term projects?
  • What are the biggest elements of fundraising that Davis believes founders do not understand?

3. Scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in Revenue:

  • What are Davis' biggest lessons on what works and what does not from scaling Cotopaxi to $150M in revenue?
  • Why did Davis not lay anyone off but decide everyone should take a pay cut instead? How did that go down?
  • Why does letting people leave work earlier lead to better talent wanting to join your company?
  • Why does Davis believe that you absolutely can build a huge business with balance in your life?

4. Life, Parenting, Marriage:

  • Why does Davis believe that so many entrepreneurs chase the wrong thing? What do they chase? What should they be chasing instead?
  • How does Davis analyze his relationship to money today? Does it make you happy?
  • What does great parenting mean to Davis? How has that changed over time?
  • How does marriage change when comparing pre-kids and post-kids?
  • Was Davis nervous about becoming a father for the first time at the age of 24?

20Sales: How to Close Sales When Selling to CFOs, How to Guarantee You Win Every Renewal, Core Questions All CFOs Ask Today When Buying, Why Revenue Operations is the Most Important Role in a Company with Steve Goldberg, CRO @ Salesloft13 Dec 202300:49:50

Steve Goldberg is the Chief Revenue Officer at Salesloft, the sales engagement platform that was acquired by Vista in 2022 for $2.3BN. Prior to Salesloft, Steve was Group Vice President of Enterprise at Yext and before that was a Senior VP @ InsideSales.com.

In Today's Episode with Steve Goldberg:

1. Becoming a Sales Leader:

  • When did Steve first fall in love with sales?
  • Why does Steve believe sales is more psychology than anything else? What can sales reps do to master the psychology of their prospects?
  • What does Steve know now about sales that he wishes he had known in the beginning?

2. How to Close Prospects Faster Than Ever:

  • How does Steve build relationships with prospects very fast? What questions does he ask?
  • How does Steve know if he is really speaking to a buyer? What are the signals?
  • How does Steve advise sales reps on getting multiple relationships within an account to prevent the potential of losing your champion?
  • How does Steve feel about discounting? When is the right time to do it?

3. How To Do The Best Deal Reviews:

  • What makes good vs great deal reviews? Who is invited? Who is not?
  • Who sets the agenda? Who is responsible for what?
  • How do deal reviews change throughout the quarter and throughout the year?
  • Is a deal slipping into the next quarter an acceptable excuse for a sales rep to give?

4. How to Ensure Renewals in a World When They are Not Guaranteed:

  • Have all budgets centralized back to the control of the CFO?
  • Are people right to say that no CFOs are buying new technology today?
  • What is the best way to show to customers the value you provide?
  • Why does Steve believe revenue operations is the most valuable role within an org?

20VC: Why Founders Should Take as Many VC Meetings as Possible, Should Founders Meet Associates, How to Get Intros to the Best VCs, How To Extract the Most Value From Your Investors, Why Post IPO Operators Are the Best Angels with Sam Corcos @ Levels11 Dec 202301:08:15

Sam Corcos is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Levels, the company helping you see how food affects your health with data from biosensors like continuous glucose monitors (CGMs). To date, Sam has raised over $89M for Levels from the likes of a16z (Jeff Jordan sits on his board), Founder Collective, Breyer Capital and Shrug Capital to name a few. Prior to Levels, Sam founded two prior companies, CarDash; a Y Combinator company that makes automotive repair and maintenance convenient. Before Cardash, Sam founded, Sightline Maps, an intuitive platform for 3D printing and visualizing topographical maps, marketed primarily towards the U.S. military.

In Today's Episode with Sam Corcos:

1. The Founding Moment:

  • What was the a-ha moment for Sam with the founding Levels?
  • What were the big mistakes Sam made with prior companies that he did not take with him to Levels?
  • What does Sam know now that he wishes he had known when he started Levels?

2. How to Fundraise Like a Pro:

  • Why does Sam believe that founders should take as many meetings with VCs as possible?
  • What are the biggest mistakes founders make when meeting investors?
  • Should founders meet with associates in the fundraising process?
  • What does Sam mean when he says, "you have to create theater" when pitching?

3. How to Extract the Most Value from Your Investors:

  • What have been Sam's biggest lessons on how to put your investors to work?
  • What is the right and most strategic way to ask investors for specific help?
  • How can founders create a competitive environment where VCs are competing to help?
  • Which investors have been the most helpful?
  • Why are post-IPO operators the best angels to have as investors?
  • How has the a16z platform team been such a needle mover?

4. How to Find Your Partner and Master Parenting:

  • What does Sam mean when he says he had a "one pager" in what he wanted in a partner?
  • What was in the one-pager? How did dates respond?
  • What are the biggest mistakes people make when dating?
  • What is Sam most nervous about on becoming a parent?
  • How does Sam think having a child will impact his marriage?

20VC: $18BN Market Cap and $1BN in ARR in 8 Years; Samsara | How to Find Product Market Fit Reliably | How to Create a Multi-Product Company | The Pros and Cons of Serial Entrepreneurship with Sanjit Biswas, Founder & CEO @ Samsara08 Dec 202300:53:09

Sanjit Biswas is the Founder and CEO @ Samsara, allowing businesses that depend on physical operations to harness Internet of Things (IoT) data. Over the last 8 years, Sanjit has scaled Samsara to $1BN in ARR and a public company with tens of thousands of customers. Before Samsara, Sanjit was the CEO and co-founder of Meraki, one of the most successful networking companies of the past decade. Sanjit grew Meraki from his Ph.D. research into a complete enterprise networking portfolio. Meraki's sales doubled every year from inception and in 2012, Cisco acquired Meraki for $1.2 billion. Huge thanks to Doug Leone for some fantastic question suggestions pre this episode.

In Today's Episode With Sanjit Biswas We Discuss:

1. From Founding to $1BN in ARR in 8 Years:

  • What was the founding a-ha moment for Sanjit with Samsara?
  • Sanjit sold his prior company Meraki for $1.2BN, what worked with Meraki that Sanjit took with him to Samsara? What did not work that he left behind?
  • What does Sanjit know now that he wishes he had known when he started Samsara?

2. The Man Who Found Product Market Fit Time and Time Again:

  • What is the one single moment that Sanjit believes you know you have product market fit?
  • What are the biggest mistakes founders make when chasing product market fit?
  • How does being a bootstrapped company change how a company approaches chasing PMF?

3. Mastering a Multi-Product Company:

  • How do you know when it is the right time to launch a second product?
  • Does the second product have to make the first product better?
  • What are the biggest mistakes companies make when going multi-product?

4. The Art of Great CEOship:

  • Does Sanjit believe that the best CEOs are the best capital allocators?
  • What has been the single best and single worst capital allocation decision in Samsara's journey?
  • What are the biggest mistakes Sanjit has made in leadership? How did he learn and grow from them?

20VC: Ramp's Product Playbook: How To Hire Product Teams, How to Run Sprints, How to Increase Product Velocity, When and How to Go Multi-Product with Geoff Charles, VP Product @ Ramp06 Dec 202300:52:55

Geoff Charles is the VP of Product at Ramp, leading the product management, operations, and support teams. Prior to Ramp, Geoff helped spin off Mission Lane and scale credit products to millions of consumers. He started his career advising Fortune 100 financial services companies.

In Today's Episode with Geoff Charles We Discuss:

1. How to Become a Product Leader:

  • How did Geoff make his way into the world of product?
  • What are the single most important skills for product people to learn early?
  • What are the biggest mistakes that product people make early in their career?

2. When and Who to Hire for the First Product Team:

  • When is the right time to hire your first product people outside of founding team?
  • Why are the best product teams in the early days professional services teams?
  • What is more important; the person has stage or sector experience, when joining?
  • Should you hire senior product people or junior product people as the first hires?

3. How to Increase Velocity Using Sprints:

  • How does Geoff and Ramp use two-week sprints to have insane product velocity?
  • How are they structured? How are goals set? Who is included?
  • What makes a good vs a bad sprint? How is accountability tied to sprints?
  • When do two-week sprints no longer become possible? What happens then?

4. Going Multi-Product, Will Incumbents Kill You and Product Re-Usability:

  • When is the right time to add a second product?
  • What are the biggest mistakes companies make when going multi-product?
  • Why is it unlikely that an incumbent is the one to kill you? What competitor should worry you?
  • What does Geoff mean when he speaks of "product re-usability"? Why is it crucial to velocity?

20VC: From Construction Worker to Billionaire CEO; The 21-Year Epic Journey of Procore to an $8.6BN Company, Advice from Tobi at Shopify on Being a Great CEO & Why The Idea of "Becoming an Entrepreneur" is BS with Tooey Courtemanche04 Dec 202301:14:15

Tooey Courtemanche, Jr. is the Founder, CEO, President, and Chairman of the Board of Procore. He founded Procore in 2002 with a mission to connect everyone in construction on a global platform. After 13 years of business, the company had just $9.6M in revenue, 8 years after that they have over $890M in revenue. Under his leadership, Procore has grown to become a leading global provider of construction management software, connecting over 2 million users across 150+ countries. Today Procore trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker PCOR. Huge thanks to Brian @ Bessemer and Will @ Iconiq for some amazing question suggestions today.

In Today's Episode with Tooey Courtemanche:

1. The Founding of a $8.5BN Company:

  • How did Tooey's wife, Hilary and their house-building lead to the idea for Procore?
  • What does Tooey know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
  • Did Tooey always know he would be a success? What was the moment of most doubt?

2. The 13-Year Journey to $9.6M in Revenue:

  • Why did it take so long to hit the $10M revenue mark? What changed in 2015?
  • What is Tooey's biggest advice to founders and investors who face market timing risk?
  • Why was Tooey laughed out of VC offices in 2008? What are his biggest pieces of advice to founders raising from VCs today?
  • How does Tooey advise founders on the balance between vision and sticking to a mission vs realising when it is not working and giving up?

3. The Art of Great CEOship:

  • What advice did Tobi @ Shopify give Tooey on being a great CEO? How did it impact his approach?
  • What are the biggest differences between the reality of being a CEO and the Instagram version?
  • What have been Tooey's biggest lessons on hiring? Why does hiring smart, ambitious but not humble people never work?
  • Why does Tooey believe the idea of "becoming an entrepreneur" to be BS?

4. Parenting, Money and Marriage:

  • Why does Tooey believe great parenting is like great CEOship?
  • How does one bring up children to be ambitious and humble in a very privileged upbringing?
  • What are the secrets to being there as a husband while also being a rockstar CEO?
  • How does Tooey reflect on his own relationship to money and wealth today?

20VC: HelloFresh CEO on Why When You Raise VC You Only Have Two Options, Why Your IPO Price is Irrelevant, Why Timing is So Important in Going Public & Why D2C is Not Dead with Dominik Richter01 Dec 202300:55:13

Dominik Richter is the Founder & CEO @ HelloFresh, one of the largest direct-to-consumer businesses of the last decade and the #1 recipe box delivery service. Fun fact, two of the three biggest cooking facilities in North America are HelloFresh facilities with the third being Disney World Orlando. Dominik has made over 40 angel investments in the EU and the US.

In Today's Episode with Dominik Richter We Discuss:

1. The Founding of One of the Largest D2C Companies:

  • How did Diminik's dreams of being a footballer translate to founding HelloFresh?
  • What does he know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
  • Why does Dominik respect the brands that large banks have built?

2. To Raise or Not to Raise:

  • Why does Dominik believe when you raise VC, you either have to sell or go public?
  • What are the single biggest differences between raising in the US vs Europe?
  • What are Dominik's biggest pieces of advice to founders raising today?
  • Why does Dominik believe so many of the D2C companies should not have raised venture funding?

3. The IPO: When, How and Why:

  • Why did Dominik decide to IPO the business so early?
  • Why does Dominik believe that the first-day trading price is irrelevant?
  • Why does Dominik believe that timing is so important when going public?
  • What are the biggest pros and cons of being public?

4. The Rise and Fall of D2C:

  • D2C has been crushed lately, why? Is this the end of D2C as a category?
  • Is D2C an investable category for VC? HelloFresh is one of the biggest and $2.5BN market cap?
  • What have been the best and worst resource allocations Dominik has made?
  • Do recessions help or hurt recipe box businesses?

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 AI05 Aug 202401:13:13

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.

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 companies in Sequoia? Who is the best at picking?
  • Why does David believe conviction, not picking is the hardest part in venture?
  • How do Sequoia want to shape and mould every investor in the firm?

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

20Growth: The Golden Rule to $100M in ARR, Why CAC to LTV is BS Early On, Why Your First Growth Hire Should Be a Former Founder & How Ramp Does 200 Growth Experiments Per Quarter with Guillaume Cabane29 Nov 202301:04:57

Guillaume Cabane is a growth advisor to high-growth SaaS Startups, including Ramp, Spot, Airbyte, G2, Gorgias, Metadata, Madkudu, and others. Guillaume held VP of Growth roles at Drift, Segment, and other successful startups, where he helped them grow from ~50 to 300. Prior, Guillaume spent 6 years at Apple.

In Today's Episode with Guillaume Cabane We Discuss:

1. Entry into Growth:

  • How did Guillaume make his way into the world of growth?
  • What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from him time at Segment where he 4x revenue?
  • What does Guillaume know now that he wishes he had known when he entered growth?

2. Enterprise vs SMB & CAC/LTV:

  • Why does Guillaume think it is harder to go enterprise down than SMB up?
  • What are the biggest mistakes companies make when scaling into enterprise?
  • What are the biggest mistakes startups make with product-led-growth motions?
  • Why does Guillaume believe it is impossible to analyse CAC/LTV in early companies?

3. Activation, Engagement and KPI Setting:

  • What are the biggest mistakes companies and teams make in activation?
  • What can growth and marketing teams do to guarantee engagement in prospects?
  • Why are all KPIs not tied to revenue BS?

4. Hiring the Growth Team:

  • What are the core characteristics of great growth hires?
  • How quickly does it become apparent when you have made a bad growth hire?
  • Why do founders make the best profiles when hiring your first growth hire?
  • What are the biggest mistakes Guillaume has made when hiring for growth?

5. Why Growth is Like Venture:

  • What is the secret to building a great growth portfolio?
  • Why is it impossible to scale to $50M ARR with only one good channel?
  • What is the right way to spread resources across channels?
  • When is the right time to add new channels and diversify?

20VC: Keith Rabois and Mike Shebat on Creating an Olympian Mindset to Work Ethic, Why First-Time Founders are Better Than Serial Entrepreneurs, Why Remote Work Does Not Work, Why the Best Founders Always Start in their Teens & Why Companies are Cults?27 Nov 202300:57:25

Keith Rabois is a General Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the world's best venture funds with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, SpaceX, Anduril, Tesla and many more. For the last 23 years straight, Keith has either invested in or founded a $BN company. Keith is also the Co-Founder and CEO @ Openstore, the company that will buy or run your Shopify business.

Mike Shebat is the Founder and CEO @ Traba, the company providing industrial staffing when and where you need it. To date, Mike has raised $49M with Traba from some of the best including Founders Fund, General Catalyst and Khosla Ventures.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

1. What it Takes to Build a Great:

  • Why does Mike expect everyone to work in office 12 hours per day, 4 days per week?
  • At what point does an extra hour of work not lead to more output?
  • What are the expectations in terms of emails, out of office, the weekends?
  • Keith, from the 23 BN companies you have worked with, is this insane work ethic aligned to all of them? Which had it? What did not?
  • What core components of PayPal's work ethic made it so strong? What does Keith mean when he says Linkedin could and should have been 5x bigger?

2. The Hiring Process for the Swat Team:

  • What does the hiring process look like for this type of work environment?
  • What are the signs that someone is really aligned to it vs faking it for the interview process?
  • What have been Keith's biggest lessons on both compensation and title in the hiring process?
  • Why does Keith believe that culture is like concrete? What are the biggest mistakes he has made on culture and what would he have done differently?

3. First-Time Founders, Innate Entrepreneurs & Europe's Failing:

  • Does Keith agree the best founders always show signs of early entrepreneurship in their teens?
  • Why does Keith prefer first-time founders to serial entrepreneurs? Why are they better?
  • Why does Keith believe that Europe has not created a $100BN company since 1990?

4. Remote Work, Network Effects and Baseball:

  • Why does Keith believe being great in venture is like baseball?
  • Why does Keith and Founders Fund not invest in remote teams? How does he explain Gitlab?
  • Why does Keith believe Airbnb has the best network effect he has ever seen?

20VC: AI's Biggest Questions: The Commoditisation of LLMs, Open vs Closed: Who Wins, Model Size vs Data Quality, Why Google are Vulnerable and Apple are the Dark Horse24 Nov 202300:33:24

Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom, and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support.

Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. He was the founding Director of FAIR and of the NYU Center for Data Science. 

Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity's potential.

Jeff Seibert is the Founder & CEO @ Digits, building the future of AI-powered accounting. Digits have raised funding from the likes of Peter Fenton @ Benchmark and 20VC.

Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages.

Douwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses.

Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation. 

Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce. Before that, Richard was the CEO/CTO of AI startup MetaMind, acquired by Salesforce in 2016.

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

  1. Foundational Models: Analysis

  • Will foundational models become commoditized?
  • Who are the major players? What are their different strengths?
  • Who will win? Who will lose?
  • How important is the size of the model vs the quality of the data?

2. Open vs Closed:

  • What are the biggest pros and cons of an open ecosystem for LLMs?
  • Why is it naive to think that open-source LLMs will prevail?
  • What will determine which method wins?

3. An Analysis of the Incumbents:

  • Why is Google the most vulnerable? What can they do to regain ground?
  • Why is Apple the sleeping giant? How could they win the next wave of AI?
  • What should Amazon do today to compete with Microsoft?

4. The Future: Doom and Gloom?

  • Why is it ridiculous to assume AI systems want to dominate?
  • Why will AI create a renaissance of creativity and human freedom?
  • What role should regulation play in the advancement and progression of AI?

20VC: Why OpenAI Will Become an Infrastructure Play, Why Apple Will Win in an AI World, Why Google is the Most Vulnerable Incumbent, Will LLMs Be Commoditised, Which Startups Are Thin vs Thick Wrappers on Top of LLMs with Jeff Seibert, Founder @ Digits22 Nov 202300:58:48

Jeff Seibert is the Founder & CEO @ Digits, building the future of AI-powered accounting. Digits have raised funding from the likes of Peter Fenton @ Benchmark and 20VC. Jeff previously served as Twitter's Head of Consumer Product, a position he came to following the acquisition of his prior company, Crashlytics. Today, Crashlytics is the de-facto mobile crash reporting solution for iOS and Android and runs on over 6 Billion monthly active smartphones worldwide.

In Today's Episode with Jeff Seibert We Discuss:

1. The Art of the Pivot:

  • What are Jeff's biggest pieces of advice to founders pivoting?
  • How do you know when you have enough data to make the decision to pivot?
  • What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when pivoting?

2. AI: Who Wins and Who Loses:

  • Why does Jeff believe that OpenAI will transition into an infrastructure play?
  • What are the most significant challenges OpenAI will face moving forward?
  • Why does Jeff believe that Apple are best positioned to win in an AI world?
  • Why does Jeff believe that Google are the most vulnerable incumbent?
  • What would Jeff do if he was CEO of Google?

3. LLMs: What Happens Now:

  • Will we see the commoditization of LLMs?
  • What are the biggest misconceptions people have on training and fine-tuning LLMs?
  • Will we see LLMs increasingly specialise to vertical-specific models or will they remain horizontal?
  • What is the difference between a thick and a thin wrapper when building on top of LLMs?

4. Angel Portfolio in Review:

  • How many angel checks has Jeff written? How many failed? How many home runs?
  • Does Jeff believe that company valuations are being kept artificially high?
  • How did Jeff make 200x selling through the secondary market for a now failing company?
  • What are Jeff's three biggest pieces of advice for angels today?

20VC: The Ultimate Hiring Playbook: Five Questions to Ask Every New Hire | What Makes Truly Great Leaders and How They Give Feedback | Do VCs Really Add Value; Lessons from Hard Fundraises with Matteo Franceschetti, Co-Founder @ Eight Sleep20 Nov 202301:39:02

Matteo Franceschetti is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Eight Sleep, a company dedicated to fueling human potential through optimal sleep. To date, Matteo has raised over $160M for the business from the likes of Founders Fund, Ryan Petersen, Naval Ravikant, Kevin Hart, AROD and many more.

In Todays Episode with Matteo Franceschetti We Discuss:

1. Why Did Sleep Need "Solving":

  • Why did Matteo decide he wanted to spend decades of his life-solving sleep?
  • If Matteo has known how hard it was going to be, would he do it again?
  • What does Matteo know now that he wishes he had known at the start of the journey?

2. Hiring the Best Team:

  • What is Matteo's playbook for hiring?
  • What are the five questions that Matteo asks in every interview?
  • What are big red flags? What are strong signals of great talent?
  • If people have been let go in a RIFF, is that a concern?
  • How does Matteo construct hiring panels? What vote count is enough for an approved hire?
  • What are Matteo's biggest lessons on title and pay a new hire receives?
  • What are some of Matteo's biggest lessons when it comes to firing people?

3. Funding the Business:

  • What was the hardest round to raise? Why?
  • Are investors justified in their skepticism of hardware?
  • What are the single biggest pieces of advice Matteo would give to founders on raising?
  • How impactful has it been having Keith Rabois and Founders Fund as an investor?
  • Do VCs really add value?

4. Mastering Health, Sleep and Nutrition:

  • How does your diet impact the quality of sleep you have?
  • How does exercise and the time of exercise impact your sleep?
  • What are some common rules on sleep that are BS and myths?
  • What are some of the most non-obvious truths about getting great sleep?

20VC Will Seed Pricing Remain High | Where is the Funding Crunch? | Three Core Elements Required to Raise a Series B/C | Why AI is Like the Lottery Today | Why Now is the Best Time to be Investing in Crypto | Why Investors Do Not Want to Reprice Companies17 Nov 202300:40:49

Rebecca Kaden is a Managing Partner @ Union Square Ventures, one of the leading early-stage firms of the last decade with investments in Twitter, Twilio, Coinbase and many more.

Nicole Quinn is a General Partner @ Lightspeed where she has led investments or sits on the board of Calm, Cameo and LunchClub to name a few.

Eurie Kim is a Managing Partner @ Forerunner Ventures, the leading early-stage consumer fund. Eurie has led investments and sits on the board of Oura, The Farmers Dog, Curology and more.

In Today's Roundtable We Discuss:

1. Seed Rounds:

  • Is it even possible for traditional seed funds to play in a world of multi-stage funds investing so aggressively at the seed stage?
  • Is seed immune to the macro environment? Will seed pricing remain as high as ever?
  • What advice does the team have for seed founders approaching a Series A? What do they need?

2. Series A:

  • How is the Series A market looking today? Is there a crunch at the Series A?
  • To what extent are valuations compressed at the Series A?
  • What 3 core elements do companies at the A stage, looking for a Series B next, need to focus on?

3. Series B and Beyond:

  • Is the real crunch at the Series B?
  • Why are down rounds so much better than structured rounds for companies raising?
  • Will we see a wave of M&A in the next 12 months?

4. Crypto, AI and Hot Takes:

  • Why is now the best time to be investing in crypto?
  • Why is investing in AI a lottery right now?
  • What is the most controversial thing that each believes today?

20VC: How to Survive and Thrive in a World of OpenAI, Are LLMs Being Commoditised, Where Does the Value Lie; Infrastructure or Application Layer, How Apple Could Win in a World of AI, How Amazon Could Threaten OpenAI and Why Google Struggle with Des Trayn15 Nov 202301:18:09

Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom, and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support. Today Des leads all Intercom's R&D efforts, and parts of Intercom's marketing.

In Today's Episode with Des We Discuss:

1. From Consultancy to Founding a Unicorn:

  • What was the founding a-ha moment for Des and the team with Intercom?
  • Why does Des believe that most startup advice is BS and outdated in 5 years?
  • What does Des know now that he wishes he had known when he started?

2. LLMs: The World is Not Equal:

  • What does Des mean when he says the world of LLMs is not equal?
  • How do the different LLMs very in quality, price and speciality?
  • Does Des agree with Alex @ Nabla, "the best companies in the future will work with many LLMs at the same time and switch between them for different things"?
  • To what extent does Des believe LLMs will be commoditised and it will be a race to the bottom?
  • Would Des be a buyer of OpenAI at a $90BN price? Why not?

3. How to Survive in a World of OpenAI:

  • What two simple questions will determine if Open AI will kill your existing business?
  • What 3 criteria will determine if there is a new business to be built on top of OpenAI?
  • What is the different between a thin layer on top of an LLM and a thick wrapper with real value?
  • Which traditional incumbents are most vulnerable? What should they do in this new world?
  • How long does it take for incumbents to really be impacted?

4. The Titans of Tech: Who Wins:

  • Why does Des believe that Apple could be a massive winner in the next wave of AI?
  • Why does Des believe that Google have not been impressive and failed to keep pace?
  • Why does Des think OpenAI should be wary of Amazon? What could they do to threaten them?
  • What opportunity does Facebook have here? How could Instagram and Whatsapp win?

5. Startup and Investing 101:

  • Why does Des believe that every founder should write a blog post per week?
  • Why does Des believe that most B2B marketing sucks? What makes great B2B marketing?
  • What are Des' biggest lessons from the Hopin journey?
  • How has Des' angel investing changed in the last year with the rise of AI?

20VC: Flexport's Ryan Petersen: Reflections on Leadership from 13 Years Leading Flexport, Why Velocity not Speed is Most Important in Company Building, How Money Creates Inefficiencies in Scaling, The Future of Trade with China & Why Remote Work is so Cha13 Nov 202300:57:33

Ryan Petersen is Founder & CEO @ Flexport, a leader in global supply chain technology. In 2022, Flexport moved more than $26 billion of merchandise. Over the last 10 years, Ryan has raised close to $2.5BN for the business with the latest valuation pegging the business at $8BN. Prior to starting Flexport, Ryan was the founder and CEO of ImportGenius, a premier provider of transaction data for the global trade industry.

In Today's Episode with Ryan Petersen We Discuss:

1. The Origins of a Generational Defining Leader:

  • What did Ryan want to be when he was growing up?
  • How did scooters and motorbikes in China lead to the idea for Flexport?
  • What does Ryan know now that he wishes he had known when he started Flexport?

2. Speed and Money: The Secrets To Execution:

  • Does Ryan believe speed is key to execution? What is the difference between speed and velocity?
  • What advice does Ryan have to founders who raise a lot of money? How should it impact hiring?
  • What are the most common ways founders become inefficient post-fundraising?
  • Why does Ryan look to invest in founders with jaded pasts and a chip on their shoulder?

3. The Art of Resource Allocation:

  • Are the best CEOs the best resource allocators?
  • What is the single best resource allocation Ryan has made? What did he learn?
  • What is the worst? What did he learn?
  • What have been Ryan's biggest hiring mistakes? How did that change his approach?

4. The Wider World:

  • Is Ryan long or short on China? Why?
  • Will we see global trade become nationalized? Why?
  • Will we see interest rates raised further? What impact does that have on trade?
  • What has been the impact of war on trade and the shipping industry?

5. Ryan Petersen: The Father and Husband:

  • How has having kids changed how Ryan approaches leadership and management?
  • How does Ryan juggle 2 young kids and leading a 2,500 person company?
  • How does Ryan retain romance with his wife while also being a full-on CEO of a large co?
  • Does money make you happy? What does it help with? What does it not help with?

20Sales: Five Lessons Scaling Snowflake to $1BN ARR, Why Customer Success is BS and Should Be Removed, Why All Sales Reps Should Do Eight Calls Per Week & Why You Should Hire a Head of Sales Sooner Than You Think with Chris Degnan, CRO @ Snowflake10 Nov 202300:57:47

Chris Degnan serves as Snowflake's Chief Revenue Officer and has been with the company since 2013. Starting as employee #13 and Sales employee #1, Chris built a go-to-market strategy from the ground up, driving sustained high growth and global reach. Under his sales leadership, Snowflake has grown its annual product revenue from $0 to over $1 billion. Prior to Snowflake, Chris served in Sales leadership roles at EMC and Aveksa, and worked in enterprise sales at Informatica and Covalent Technologies (acquired by VMware).

In Today's Episode with Chris Degnen We Discuss:

1. From SDR To World Leading CRO:

  • How did Chris first make his way into the world of sales?
  • What does he know now that he wishes he had known when he started in sales?
  • What are the single biggest mistakes young sales people make today scaling their careers?

2. The Secret to Hitting Quota in Sales:

  • Why does Chris believe all reps need to do 8 customer calls per week?
  • How do the best sales reps approach sales prospecting today?
  • Is cold outbound dead? How does Chris advise his teams on cold calls and emails?
  • What are the best reasons reps should say no to customers?
  • Should reps be discounting today? What is an acceptable level?

3. Sales and Product: The Most Important Relationship:

  • Why does Chris believe sales and product is the most important relationship?
  • What can leaders do to ensure sales and product communicate effectively?
  • How does Chris use sales calls today both with his sales team and with product?
  • What are the single biggest reasons comms between sales and product breaks?

4. Mastering Sales Leadership:

  • How does Chris approach sales forecasting? What works? What does not work?
  • Does Chris celebrate when quota is hit? How do you find the balance between pushing further and harder but also celebrating the wins?
  • How do the best sales leaders train and develop their talent? What do the worst do?

5. Customer Success is BS: Professional Services for the Win:

  • Why does Chris believe that customer succeed is BS and you should get rid of it?
  • Why are professional services so much better?
  • How should the org be structured then when removing CS and adding professional services?
  • Who is then responsible for upsell?

20VC: From Leading the BBC to Leading Venture Capitalist, The Biggest Similarities and Differences Between the Best Founders and the Best Actors & The Future of Media; Legacy vs New, The Creator Economy, The Rise of TikTok and more with Danny Cohen08 Nov 202300:50:43

Danny Cohen is the President of Access Entertainment, a division of Len Blavatnik's Access Industries. Access Entertainment's corporate investments include film and television studio A24; Europe's fastest-growing company Tripledot Studios; creator economy leader Spotter; and a new immersive arts' experience launched in collaboration with David Hockney and Lightroom. Before joining Access, Danny was the Director of BBC Television where he had responsibility for all of the BBC's network channels and the greenlighting and production of the BBC's drama, entertainment, comedy, arts, history, science, educational content and documentary. 

In Today's Episode with Danny Cohen We Discuss:

1. From Leading the BBC to Investing for Len Blavatnik:

  • How did Danny make his way from leading the BBC to investing for Len @ Access?
  • What was he most nervous about when making the transition to investing?
  • What has been the hardest investing skill to learn?

2. Great Founders are Like Great Actors:

  • What are the biggest similarities in what makes the best founders and the best actors?
  • How are the best founders different from the best actors?
  • Why does Danny believe the risk that an actor takes is so different to the risk founders take?
  • How does Danny feel both founders and actors can and should be managed?

3. The Future of Media:

  • What does Danny mean when he says he looks for "eyeballs and attention" when investing?
  • How does legacy media respond to the threat created by social media today?
  • How does AI change the future of content creation and distribution today?
  • How do the strikes in Hollywood impact the future of content supply?

4. Marriage, Children and Loneliness:

  • Why does Danny believe that loneliness will continue to be the biggest problem we face?
  • What are Danny's biggest pieces of advice from 17 years of happy marriage?
  • Why did Danny decide to not have children? What did that decision-making process look like?

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 @ Clari02 Aug 202400:55:04

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. 

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: From $4.1BN to $142M Market Cap; Why Public Markets Have Written Allbirds Off, What Allbirds Need to Do to Get Profitable, Why Growth has Slowed and The Bull Case for Allbirds Next Five Years with Joey Zwillinger, Co-Founder @ Allbirds06 Nov 202300:44:51

Joey Zwillinger is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Allbirds, the company behind the world's most comfortable shoe. In Nov 2021, Joey took the company public and the stock soared to an all-time high of $4BN, today the company has a market cap of $137M. Prior to Allbirds, Joey spent six years at biotechnology firm, Terravia, leading its renewable chemical business, developing and selling high-performance algae-based chemicals into various industries such as CPG, personal care, and industrials.

In Today's Episode with Joey Zwillinger We Discuss:

  1. The Founding Moment:

  • How did Joey's wife's friendship lead to the co-founding of Allbirds?
  • What does Joey know now that he wishes he had known at the founding moment?
  • What does Joey believe he is running away from? What is he running towards?

2. Public Market Performance Review:

  • Why has Allbirds lost 97% of it's value since going public? What mistakes were made?
  • Why has revenue declined for the first time this year?
  • What strategic investments have Allbirds pulled back on or paused entirely?
  • When will Allbirds be profitable?

3. The Competition:

  • How do Allbirds compete and catch up with On and Hoka?
  • What strategic mistakes did Allbirds make in COVID that allowed others to take the crown?
  • Was the movement into running and athletics a mistake for Allbirds?

4. Joey Zwillinger: The Leader and Person:

  • Did Joey take secondaries out during the Allbirds journey?
  • How does Joey reflect on his own relationship to money?
  • How has Joey dealt with the last 12 months personally? How does he manage the stress effectively?

20VC Roundtable: Why Early Stage Founders Should Not be Investing, Why Great Founders Have Low EQ, How the Structure of VC Firms Will Change, Will Founder-Led Funds Compete with Sequoia & Is Investing a Team Sport?03 Nov 202300:49:53

Jack Altman is the Founder and CEO @ Lattice, the #1 people management platform, last valued at $3BN. Jack is an investor through his founding of Jack Altman Capital where he has invested in WorkOS, NexHealth, Owner.com, Mercury and more.

Auren Hoffman is the Founder and CEO @ Safegraph, the most accurate database of global points of interest, last valued at $550M. Auren is an investor through his founding of Flex Capital where he has invested in Chime, Checkr, Coinbase, Flexport, Vercel and more.

Jason Lemkin is the Founder and CEO @ SaaStr, the world's largest SaaS community. Jason is an investor through his founding of The SaaStr Fund. In the past, Jason has invested in Pipedrive, Algolia, Salesloft, Front, GreenHouse, Owner.com, Gorgias and more.

In Today's Episode on Founder-Led Funds We Discuss:

  1. Why have we seen the rise of "Founder-led Funds"?
  2. Are founder-led funds more empathetic to the founders they invest in?
  3. How do founder-led funds source and pick investments in a way that traditional VC does not?
  4. Will we see founder-led Funds truly compete against the Sequoias of the world?
  5. How does being an operator make you a better investor?
  6. How does investing help you be a better founder and operator?
  7. How do you communicate your investing practice and firm to your company and team?
  8. What are the biggest excitements and concerns LPs have for Founder-led Funds?
  9. Will we see the face of venture changing much more broadly and structurally?
  10. How do founder-led funds manage both time and company conflicts?

20Product: Why You Should Not Go Into Product Management, Why the CEO is Always the CPO, How to Build the Best Product Teams & Why You Should Hire People Who Aren't In Product Already with Databricks SVP Product, David Meyer01 Nov 202301:02:04

David Meyer is the SVP Products at Databricks where he drives product strategy and execution. He previously ran Engineering and Product Management at OneLogin, where he grew the company to thousands of customers and market leadership. Before OneLogin, he cofounded UniversityNow, an accredited open university system, running Product and Engineering. Prior to that, David managed a $1 billion portfolio of business intelligence products at SAP and co-led cloud strategy. His first software journey was at Plumtree which went public before being acquired by BEA in 2005.

In Today's Episode with David Meyer We Discuss:

  1. Entry into Product:

  • How did David make his way into the world of product? Why did he not want to go into it?
  • Why does David advise everyone "do not go into product management"?
  • What does David know now that he wishes he had known when he entered product?

2. How to be a Great Product Leader:

  • Why does David think most leaders suck at leading?
  • Why is the most important thing to make your team feel seen? What can leaders do to ensure this?
  • Why does David help his team members to find other roles outside of the company?

3. Building the Best Product Team:

  • How does David hire for product today? What questions does he ask? What signals does he look for?
  • What are David's biggest hiring mistakes? How did they change his approach?
  • What are the biggest mistakes founders make when hiring for product?
  • Why should you hire people who are not in product today?

4. David Meyer: The Art or Science of Product:

  • Is product more art or science? If David were to put a number on it, what would it be?
  • Is simple always better when it comes to product?
  • Will AI remove the importance and focus on UI?
  • Why are the most impressive companies business model innovations not product innovations?

20VC: Should Large Crypto Funds Give Money Back to LPs | What Will the Next Generation of Crypto Funds Look Like | What Should Happen with FTX; Who Should be Held to Account | The Future of NFTs & What Happens to Opensea w/ Nick Tomaino @ 1confirmation30 Oct 202300:55:49

Nick Tomaino is the Founder and General Partner @ 1confirmation, one of the leading seed firms fueling the decentralization of the web and society. The fund started with $26M in backing from individuals including Peter Thiel and Mark Cuban and it has been reported that the firm now has over $1B in assets under management. Nick has led seed investments in OpenSea, dYdX, SuperRare, Polkadot and Cosmos among others. Prior to 1confirmation, Nick was a Principal @ Runa Capital and before that led business development and marketing at Coinbase in the early days of the company.

In Today's Episode with Nick Tomaino We Discuss:

  1. From Cryptokitties to founding the Leading Seed Crypto Firm:

  • How did Nick first come into contact with crypto and bitcoin specifically?
  • How did getting fired from Coinbase catalyse his move into venture?
  • What does Nick know today that he wishes he had known when he started investing?

2. The Landscape Today: Funds and SBF

  • Are the current generation of crypto funds too large? Should they give money back to their LPs?
  • Will the next generation of crypto funds be smaller? Are any crypto funds able to raise right now?
  • Why does crypto Twitter hate crypto VCs? Who are the worst VCs for pump and dump?

3. SBF & FTX: What Actually Happened, Who is to Blame, What Happens from here?

  • What is the biggest misconception on SBF and FTX today?
  • Who should be held accountable? What else would Nick like to see?
  • How should FTX change the way that LPs invest into venture managers?

4. How to Build the Best Crypto Portfolio in Venture:

  • How large are the funds? How does Nick determine the right size for a fund?
  • How many investments does Nick make per fund? How do loss rates look in crypto?
  • What have been Nick's biggest investment hits and losses? How did that impact his mindset?

5. The Future for NFTs and Opensea:

  • Why does Nick remain bullish on the future of NFTs?
  • How is Nick able to remain optimistic about the future of Opensea given their volumes?
  • Where does Nick believe the fair price for Opensea should be today?
  • Did Nick sell their Opensea at the $13Bn round?

20VC: The Three Types of Seed Round Today, Why Seed Has Never Been More Competitive, Why Pricing Has Never Been Higher, Why Boards at Pre-Seed Can Be Helpful & How Too Much Cash Too Soon Can Harm Companies with Ed Sim, Founder @ Boldstart27 Oct 202300:47:48

Ed Sim is one of the best seed round investors in venture as the Founder and Managing Partner @ Boldstart, Ed focuses specifically on developer, infra and SaaS at pre-seed and seed round. Over the last decade, Ed has backed some of the best including Snyk, BigID, Kustomer, Front and Superhuman.

In Today's Episode on Seed Rounds We Discuss:

  1. The Three Types of Seed Round:

  • What are the three different types of seed round today?
  • Has seed ever been this competitive?
  • Will seed be unimpacted by the macro decline we are seeing?
  • Why are growth and multi-stage funds being more active than ever in seed?

2. Too Much Cash Will Kill You!

  • Why does Ed believe that too much capital can kill companies at the seed round?
  • Why does Ed believe that the best founders are not always optimising for the highest price?
  • What are the single biggest negatives of taking a high price at the seed round?
  • What advice does Ed have for founders who have large offers from multi-stage funds at seed?

3. Is Growth Dead?

  • Why does Ed disagree and suggest that growth is not dead?
  • What do multi-stage and growth funds now what to see that they did not before?
  • How will the growth market evolve over the next 12-18 months?

4. IPOs, AI and M&A:

  • What will cause the IPO windows to crack open again?
  • Why does Ed believe that many investing in AI are simply giving money to Nvidia?
  • Does Ed agree that 95% of the cash going into AI from venture today will go to zero?
  • Will we see more or less M&A in the next 12 months?
  • How did Ed evaluate the Loom acquisition by Atlassian?

20Growth: Should Startups Hire Advisors? When is the Right Time? How Much Should They Be Paid? How Should Founders Approach the Hiring Process for Advisors? What Should They Expect From Them? What are the Biggest Mistakes Made and more with Ely Lerner25 Oct 202300:51:37

Ely Lerner is an EIR at Reforge and an advisor for startups transitioning from traction to hypergrowth. Previously he was Head of Consumer Product at Chime, and before that spent an incredible 8 years at Yelp in a number of different roles including Head of Product at Eat24, and Product Leader/GM at Yelp.

In Today's Episode with Ely Lerner We Discuss:

1. Entry into Growth:

  • How did Ely make his way from engineering manager to growth leader?
  • What are a couple of his single biggest takeaways from his time with Yelp and Chime?
  • Why do employees in large companies have to have P&L ownership when innovating within the larger company they are in?

2. Advisors: What, When and How:

  • What are the three different types of advisors founders can work with today?
  • When is the right time to engage with each of them?
  • Should the advisor have had direct experience with the problem you need help with?
  • How should these advisors be compensated; what is normal?
  • What are 1-2 of the biggest reasons startup advisory roles do not work out?

3. Offense vs Defence: The Tricky Balance:

  • What is the difference between offense and defense in product strategy?
  • What should the resource allocation be between the two?
  • What is the right amount of offensive strategies to have on at the same time?
  • How can leaders prevent their defensive teams from feeling like second-class citizens?

4. Ely Lerner: AMA:

  • Why does Ely disagree with many and suggest that horizontal products do have a core ICP?
  • Should growth teams sit on their own or within functions in the org?
  • What are the core reasons teams fail to ship fast?
  • What state should your data be in when you bring in your first growth hire?

20VC: Scaling to $50M ARR in 3 Years, Scaling to $20M ARR with Just $2M Invested; The Story of PhotoRoom, Is This YC's Most Capital Efficient Company with Matthieu Rouif, Co-Founder & CEO @ PhotoRoom23 Oct 202300:43:46

Matthieu Rouif is the Co-Founder and CEO @ PhotoRoom, one of the fastest-growing YC companies having scaled to an astonishing $50M in ARR in just 3 years. Their capital efficiency is immense having scaled to $20M in ARR on just $2M of invested capital. Prior to founding PhotoRoom, Matthieu founded several start-ups, including an app for ski resorts, HeyCrowd, and Replay, a video editor which was ultimately acquired by GoPro. Whilst at GoPro, Mattheiu led all image editing products.

In Today's Episode with Matthieu Rouif We Discuss:

  1. From GoPro to One of YC's Fastest Growing Companies:

  • How did Matthieu make the move from GoPro to founding PhotoRoom?
  • What are the big mistakes Matthieu made on prior companies that he did differently with PhotoRoom?
  • What does Matthieu know now that he wishes he had known when he started PhotoRoom?

2. Scaling to $20M in ARR with $2M of Cash:

  • What allowed Matthieu and PhotoRoom to be so capital-efficient in their scaling?
  • What are the biggest mistakes founders make when it comes to resource allocation and capital efficiency?
  • On reflection, what did Matthieu not spend money on that he wishes they had spent money on?

3. Consumer Subscription + Photo Editing: Is it a Good Business:

  • What are the customer acquisition costs by channel for PhotoRoom?
  • What are their payback periods on a per-customer basis?
  • How can it be a good business when the churn rate annually is 30-40%?
  • How does this space play out with Canva, Adobe, Veed, Kapwing? Who wins?

4. The Future of AI:

  • Who wins; incumbents or startups?
  • What matters more; data size or model size?
  • Will UI be more or less important in an AI-first world?
  • Why does Matthieu believe that everyone hates command line prompts?
  • Will we see $BN revenue companies created with just 10 people?

20VC: NEW FORMAT: Harry Stebbings on Why Seed Pricing is as High as Ever, Why Series A is the Best Place to Invest Today, Why Growth Founders Need to Reshape Expectations, Why M&A Windows Remain Shut and When Will IPO Windows Crack Open20 Oct 202300:27:35

Harry Stebbings is the Founder of 20VC, building the next great financial institution at the intersection of media and venture capital. 20VC has reached over 125M downloads in 100+ countries and has featured the likes of Doug Leone, Bill Gurley, Marc Benioff, Daniel Ek and more. On the investing side, Harry has raised over $400M and made investments in the likes of Pachama, Linear, TripleDot, Superhuman, AgentSync, Linktree, Sorare and more.

In Today's Episode We Cover:

  1. Are LPs Open for Business:

  • How has what LPs look for in new manager investments changed?
  • What type of funds will be able to raise? Which will not be able to raise?
  • What can managers do to significantly increase their chances of raising a new fund?

2. The Seed Investing Landscape: Harder Than Ever

  • Why is seed pricing as high as ever?
  • Why are multi-stage funds more active in seed than ever? How does this impact seed?
  • How will seed change and evolve over the next 6-12 months?

3. Series A + B: The Best Place to be Investing

  • Why is Series A the best risk/reward insertion point when investing today?
  • How has the competition level at Series A and B changed?
  • What do many people not see or know about this stage of the market today?

4. Is Growth Dead: Are Growth Deals Getting Done:

  • What two core elements are needed if you want to raise a growth round today?
  • How have growth round valuations been impacted over the last 12 months?
  • To what extent do founders need to change their expectations on the price of rounds they will be able to get done today?

5. M&A and IPOs: Tough Times Ahead

  • Why will we see continued low levels of activity in M&A markets?
  • What acquisitions are we seeing take place?
  • When will the IPO window crack open?
  • Why were Klaviyo, Instacart and Arm not enough to open the windows?

20VC: Are LPs Open For Business? What Does it Take to Raise a Fund Today? How Has What LPs Want to See in Fund Investments Changed? Why Do LP Incentive Mechanisms Need to Change? Which Funds Will be Hit Hardest with Beezer Clarkson @ Sapphire Partners18 Oct 202300:49:45

Beezer Clarkson leads Sapphire Partners' investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Beezer has invested in some of the best firms of a generation including USV and Point Nine to name a few. Beezer began her career in financial services over 20 years ago at Morgan Stanley in its global infrastructure group. Prior to joining Sapphire in 2012, Beezer managed the day-to-day operations of the Draper Fisher Jurvetson Global Network, which then had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide.

In Today's Episode with Beezer Clarkson We Discuss:

  1. LP Landscape: WTF is Going On:

  • Are LPs really all closed for business?
  • What has changed in what LPs want to see from managers they are looking to invest in?
  • What has changed about the size and pace of new commitments for LPs?
  • Are all LPs moving away from growth?

2. 2020-2022: Years in Review:

  • Are LPs frustrated by managers who reduced deployment timelines to 12-18 months?
  • Are LPs frustrated with managers who did not take liquidity when they could have done?
  • How does Beezer advise managers on when and how to take liquidity in their best positions?
  • Are managers accurately marking their portfolios to their LPs today?
  • Why does Beezer believe the incentive mechanism for LPs is broken today in many ways?

3. How To Build a Top Decile Firm:

  • Why does Beezer believe if you want to have the best returns, you have to have one company that returns the fund? Can you not do it with multiple half-fund returners?
  • Is ownership core to all the best firm's top performance? Is it the size of outcome or the size of ownership that drives the best performance across the board?
  • What does data show on how the best funds take significant risk? What are their loss ratios?
  • What are the core tradeoffs to Beezer between scaling AUM and providing top decile returns?

4. LP Markets: The Times They are a Changing:

  • Does Beezer believe LPs will remain cold on large $1BN+ growth firms?
  • Which segments of the market are hot? Which are cold?
  • What are the most significant changes we will see in the LP markets moving forward?
  • Is today the new normal or are we in a downturn that we will come out of?

 

20VC: The Two Biggest Mistakes Every Founder Makes, Why Founders Are Not Ambitious Enough Today, Why Having a Narrow Target Customer is Dangerous & The Three Possible Outcomes in Company Building with Matthew Prince, Co-Founder @ Cloudflare16 Oct 202300:54:06

Matthew Prince is the co-founder and CEO of Cloudflare, on a mission is to help build a better Internet. Matthew has scaled Cloudflare to over $1BN in revenue, $20BN in market cap, and over 3,200 employees. Today the company runs one of the world's largest networks, which spans more than 200 cities in over 100 countries. Matthew is a World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, winner of the 2011 Tech Fellow Award, and serves on the Board of Advisors for the Center for Information Technology and Privacy Law.

In Today's Episode with Matthew Prince We Discuss:

1. From Selling Fireworks to Public Company CEO:

  • How did Matthew first make money selling fireworks as a kid?
  • Does Mathew believe in the trope "you have to love what you do"?
  • What does Matthew know now that he wishes he had known when he started Cloudflare?

2. Money, Identity and Happiness:

  • Why does Matthew feel many of the most successful founders lose their way when they leave their companies? How does he assess Gates, Bezos and others?
  • Does Matthew tie his own identity to Cloudflare and the success of the company?
  • How does Matthew evaluate his own relationship to money today? How has it changed over time?
  • How does Matthew keep score today on how he is doing? What is success to Matthew?

3. The Three Outcomes for Companies Today:

  • What are the three outcomes available to companies today?
  • What is the worst and why?
  • What are the two biggest mistakes Matthew sees founders make today?
  • Why does Matthew know that diverse teams are more successful? What is the proof?
  • What is Matthew's single biggest advice to founders when it comes to selecting a co-founder?

4. Focus is BS: You Have to Have Mega Ambition:

  • Why does Matthew believe it is BS to have a very specific target customer from the offset?
  • What does Matthew believe are the benefits of not having an ICP in the early days?
  • What are the biggest pieces of VC advice to founders that Matthew knows to be wrong?

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 Mollick31 Jul 202401:08:50

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. 

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: Israeli Resilience From Tech and Beyond with Michael Eisenberg and Adi Levanon12 Oct 202300:44:18

Michael Eisenberg spent 15 years as a General Partner @ Benchmark working alongside Bill and the Benchmark partnership. Following Benchmark, Michael co-founded Aleph, one of the leading Israeli venture funds of the last decade with a portfolio including Lemonade, Melio and HoneyBook, just to name a couple of Aleph's unicorns.

Adi Levanon is the Founder & Managing Partner @ Selah Ventures, a solo-GP-founded venture fund investing $500k checks into AI-based solutions that enhance financial services, healthcare organizations, fintechs, and SMBs, with a focus on founders in the US and Israelis globally.

In Today's Episode on Israeli Resilience We Discuss:

  1. Where are we at today? What is it like on the ground, today?
  2. Have the international community reacted as expected? What more can be done?
  3. What does it mean to be called up for "reserve"?
  4. How are companies dealing with 25% of their teams being called into the armed forces?
  5. Are VCs investing still? Does work carry on?
  6. Whose reactions are exemplary and we should look to follow?
  7. Whose have been woeful and should be called out?
  8. What are the single biggest misconceptions of the situation?
  9. What can people do to help? What can be done?

20VC Roundtable: Are IPOs Back? Is Growth Dead? What Does it Take to Raise a Growth Round Today? How Do VCs Solve The Liquidity Challenge? Will We See a Massive Resetting of Valuations? AI Hype Growth Rounds?11 Oct 202300:50:42

Deven Parekh is a Managing Director at Insight Partners, one of the leading investing franchises of the last 25 years. Deven has made more than 90 investments since joining in 2000 including in the likes of Twitter, Alibaba, JD.com, Chargebee and Automattic (WordPress) to name a few.  

Woody Marshall is a General Partner @ TCV, one of the most successful growth funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Facebook, AirBnB, Spotify, LinkedIn and many more incredible companies.

Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds focused on SaaS. In the past, Jason has led investments in Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few. 

In Today's Episode We Discuss:

1. The Growth Landscape Overview:

  • Is growth dead? Are any growth deals getting done?
  • How has the price changed for growth deals that are getting done?
  • Which type of growth companies will vs will not be able to raise?
  • What happens to all of the growth companies with $300-$500M in cash but little revenue?

2. The Great Reset: Valuations Need to Change:

  • Why should companies be actively resetting their valuations? What are the benefits?
  • What will happen between VCs and LPs when there is no incentive for VCs to reset their portfolio valuations when they need to go out and raise from those same LPs?
  • Structure is often part of these valuation resets, is structure to rounds always bad? When is it good? What type of structure is acceptable vs unacceptable?

3. Are the Public Markets Creeping Open:

  • Should we take comfort from ARM, Instacart and Klaviyo and assume the public markets are going to open again? If not, what will cause them to open?
  • How should we analyze the performance of the IPOs above? Many have been negative, are they right to suggest this is not the response we wanted?
  • Why does Woody believe, like Instacart taking a 75% discount to their last round, we should have more and more companies go public at discounts to their last private round?

4. Late Stage Growth is Dead and Revenue Multiples:

  • Why is late-stage growth dead? How long do we think this will last?
  • How should we assess revenue multiples today? New normal? Same as always? How will revenue multiples look in 12 months from now?
  • How should we analyse the large late stage growth rounds for hyped AI companies? What happens there?

20VC: Atlassian Co-Founder Scott Farquhar on The Biggest Lessons Scaling Atlassian to $50BN Market Cap; The Four Roles of the CEO, The Funding Round That Net Accel $6BN, The Regrets of Omission and Commission & The Honeymoon Cut Short09 Oct 202300:53:01

Scott Farquhar is the Co-Founder & Co-CEO @ Atlassian. Scott co-founded the company with his university friend, Mike Cannon-Brookes, in 2002 from Australia. Over an incredible 20-year journey they have grown to a market cap of $50BN today, over 11,000 staff globally and serving over 260,000 customers. Scott is also a co-founder of Skip Capital, a private investment fund with a portfolio including Figma, Snyk, Canva and more.

In Today's Episode with Scott Farquhar We Discuss:

1. The 20-Year Journey to $50BN Market Cap:

  • How did Scott first make his way into the world of tech and come to co-found Atlassian?
  • What does Scott know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning?
  • From 20 years with Mike, what is Scott's biggest advice on choosing your co-founder?

2. The Fundraising Masterclass with Atlassian:

  • An emergency phone call, a honeymoon cut short; how did the first funding round for Atlassian come to be? Where was the business revenue-wise at the time?
  • Why did Scott not like the traditional fundraising process? What did he do to add game theory and ensure that they got the best deal as a company?
  • Why did Scott choose Accel with their offer? How did Peter Fenton lose a $3BN deal with Atlassian?

3. Lessons Scaling Atlassian to $4BN in Revenue:

  • What does Scott believe are the 4 core roles of the CEO? Is resource allocation the most important?
  • What are the single biggest acts of commission and omission that Scott regrets?
  • What are the biggest lessons Scott has from shutting down Stride, their Slack competitor?

4. Scott: The Father, Husband and Philanthropist:

  • What does great fatherhood mean to Scott today?
  • What is the secret to a truly successful marriage?
  • How does Scott assess his relationship to money today? How has it changed with time?
  • How does Scott think about bringing children up in a world of affluence and abundance?

Fun Fact: Every single 20VC episode is recorded with Riverside.FM. It is the one product that I could not live without. Try it today here (https://creators.riverside.fm/20VC) and use the code 20VC for 15% off.

20VC: Why Great Companies are Defined by How Many Things They Say No To, Why Being First Does Not Matter & Why Market Over Traction or Team is the Most Important Thing with Guillermo Rauch, Founder & CEO @ Vercel06 Oct 202300:58:45

Guillermo Rauch is the Founder and CEO @ Vercel, giving developers the frameworks, workflows, and infrastructure to build a faster, more personalized Web. To date, Guillermo has raised $312M from Accel, Bedrock, Greenoaks, GV and more. Prior to founding Vercel, Guillermo co-founded LearnBoost and Cloudup where he served the company as CTO through its acquisition by Automattic in 2013.

In Today's Episode with Guillermo Rauch We Discuss:

1. From Argentina to SF: The Boy Making Money Online:

  • How did Guillermo first get into computers and start making money online?
  • Does Guillermo still believe the US and SF offers the same opportunities it did when he came?
  • Did Guillermo feel the weight of responsibility of providing for his family at a young age?

2. Timing, Markets and Narrative Violations:

  • Why does Guillermo believe it does not matter being first but being right?
  • Why does Guillermo believe the most important thing for a company is market selection?
  • Why does Guillermo believe it is crucial that founders and companies have "narrative violations"?

3. The Future of AI:

  • What model will win in the future; open or closed?
  • Where does the value accrue; startups or incumbents?
  • How will the SaaS business model change in a world of AI?

4. Silicon Valley's Most Successful Angel You Did Not Know:

  • What are some of Guillermo's biggest lessons from angel investing?
  • What is his single biggest miss? How has it changed how he thinks?
  • What have been his biggest hits? How did they impact how he thinks about what it takes to win?

20Sales: Why the Founder Should Not Be the One to Create the Sales Playbook, Why You Should Hire a Sales Leader Before Sales Reps & Why You Should Not Hire Sales Leaders From Big Companies with Matt Rosenberg, CRO @ Grammarly04 Oct 202300:50:41

Matt Rosenberg is Grammarly's Chief Revenue Officer and Head of Grammarly Business. He leads all B2B revenue, operations, and growth for Grammarly Business, Grammarly for Education, and Grammarly for Developers. Previously, as CRO of Compass, he took the company into the Fortune 500 and contributed to a more than eightfold increase in business growth. Prior to Compass, Matt served as Eventbrite's CRO leading them to become the largest event platform in the world by event count.

In Today's Episode with Matt Rosenberg We Discuss:

1. From Miserable Lawyer to World Beating Sales Leader:

  • How did Matt make the transition from lawyer to sales leader?
  • What does Matt know now that he wishes he had known when he started in sales?
  • What are Matt's biggest pieces of advice for anyone who wants to make a career change and is lacking confidence?

2. The Playbook and Hiring The Team:

  • How does Matt define the "sales playbook"?
  • Should the founder be the one to create and execute V1 of the playbook?
  • Should the first sales hire be a rep or a sales leader?
  • When is the right time to make that all-important first sales hire?

3. Discounting, Champions and Urgency:

  • What can sales team do to create urgency in deal cycles? What works? What does not?
  • How does Matt approach discounting? When to do it vs when not to? What level is acceptable?
  • What are the biggest secrets to creating champions within prospects?
  • Why does Matt believe that deals are won and lost in prospecting?

4. Developing Great Sales Talent:

  • How does Matt use sales call recordings to train teams? What is his 3x3 matrix for coaching calls?
  • What is a good reason to lose a deal vs a bad reason? How does Matt do deal reviews?
  • What are the single biggest elements sales leaders can do to nurture sales talent?
  • What are the biggest mistakes sales leaders make when developing talent internally?

20VC: The Services Model of Venture Capital is Broken, The Best Founders Do Need Help, The Most Important Signals to Assess When Meeting Founders & Why Kids Bring Less Happiness and More Joy with Phin Barnes @ TheGP02 Oct 202301:01:59

Phin Barnes is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of The General Partnership (TheGP), a venture capital firm that's redefining what partnership means for founders. Previously, Phin spent over a decade at First Round Capital, where he was responsible for over 60 investments including Blue Apron, Notion, Clover Health, Gauntlet and Persona. Before First Round, he created an independent video game company and before that was an early employee at AND 1 Basketball where he helped scale the brand from $15 to $225 million in revenue and served as the Creative Director for Footwear.

In Today's Episode with Phin Barnes We Discuss:

  1. From Creative Director to Venture Capitalist:

  • How did Phin make his way into the world of venture having been a Creative Director at a basketball brand?
  • What does Phin know now that he wishes he could tell himself on his first day in venture?
  • What are 1-2 of Phin's biggest lessons from his 10 years at First Round which shapes how he invests?

2. The Venture Capital Model is Broken:

  • Why does Phin believe the current services model of venture is broken?
  • Do the best founders need your help?
  • What have been some of the biggest lessons in what the best founders want from their VCs?
  • What happens to this generation of firms with massive support teams?
  • Do VCs use these support teams merely to justify massive fund size scaling to LPs?

3. The Venture Landscape Today:

  • How can we compete in a seed landscape of $5M on $25M against large multi-stage firms?
  • What founders types are attracted to big brands? What founder profiles are taken in by large rounds and high prices?
  • Is Phin more or less excited about seed-stage investing now than he has been before?

4. Investing Lessons 101:

  • What is Phin's biggest hit? How did seeing their success impact his mindset?
  • What is Phin's biggest loss? How did the loss impact how he views investing?
  • Traction, team, market; how does Phin rank the three in prioritisation?
  • What should all young people know when entering the venture landscape?

 

20Product: Why Product Memes Are More Important Than a Product Roadmap, Why Writing is the Essential Skill for Product People, How AI Changes The Role of Product, Big Mistakes Founders Make When Hiring Product Teams with Kevin Niparko, VP Product @ Twilio29 Sep 202300:46:03

Kevin Niparko is the VP of Product @ Twilio. Kevin joined Twilio through the acquisition of Segment where he spent an incredible 8 years in numerous different roles including as Head of Product. Before entering the world of product, Kevin was a Management Associate at the world-renowned, Bridgewater Associates.

In Today's Episode with Kevin Niparko We Discuss:

1. From Bridgewater to Head of Product:

  • How Kevin made his way from the world of asset management and analytics to leading product teams?
  • What are 1-2 of Kevin's biggest takeaways from his time at Bridgewater with Ray Dalio?
  • How did the 8 year journey with Segment leading to their $3BN acquisition impact his approach to product?

2. What Makes a Great Product Person:

  • Does Kevin believe that product is more art or science? If he were to put a number on it? What would it be out of 100?
  • Why does Kevin believe that all product people should learn to write?
  • Why does Kevin believe that the best product people are generalists and not specialists?
  • Why does Kevin think that analytics is an insanely good start for product people?

3. How to Hire the Best Product People:

  • How does Kevin approach the hiring process for product hires today?
  • What are the non-obvious traits of hires he looks for? How does he test for them?
  • Does Kevin use case studies? Where do many fall down? What do the best do?

4. Product Reviews: Good vs Great:

  • How often does Kevin do product reviews? Who is invited?
  • How have product reviews changed in a world where the company is now fully remote?
  • What is the difference between good and great product reviews?
  • What is the single best product decision Kevin has made? What did he learn?
  • What is the worst product decision Kevin made? How did that change his approach?

20VC: "How Being a Founder Almost Killed Me"; We Have Lied to a Generation of Founders | The Hardest Truths About Being a Founder Revealed | Why AI Co-Pilot is BS, Seat Pricing is Over & User Interfaces are Stupid with Christian Lanng27 Sep 202301:09:21

Christian Lanng is the Founder and Former CEO @ Tradeshift, a company he took from garage to unicorn raising over $900M for with a latest price of $2.7BN in 2021. Just last month, Christian stepped away from the company and is now Chairman @ Beyond Work, building a better work experience through AI native software.

In Today's Episode with Christian Lanng We Discuss:

1. Burnout: When it Hits:

  • How did Christian know when something was really seriously wrong? What were the signs?
  • How did being a founder literally almost kill Christian? How was that not a wakeup moment?
  • How does being a founder make you so out of touch with reality?

2. The Things We Are Never Told:

  • Why does Christian think one of the biggest crimes is the myth that everyone can be a founder?
  • What are the single biggest things about VCs that founders are not told?
  • Why does Christian believe fundraising is absolutely a game? What are the rules to win it?
  • What makes the best VCs? What makes the worst VCs?
  • Why does Christian not like to take a discount for a brand name VC?

3. The Chaos That Happens Inside a Company:

  • Why does Christian believe politics should not be discussed within companies?
  • What are Christian's biggest lessons on working with friends? Why after 14 years does Christian only have 3 friends that still talk to him?
  • How did Christian fire 50% of his leadership team and productivity not change at all?
  • Why does Christian believe US startups are inherently better than European ones?

4. Parenting and Relationship to Money:

  • Does Christian regret not being a present father for his child when building Tradeshift?
  • What are the two options as a founder you have when bringing up kids?
  • Was Christian scared to leave Tradeshift? How does he reflect on his relationship to money?

5. AI: Co-Pilot is BS, The Future Business Model and more...

  • Why does Christian believe co-pilot is the last dying breathe attempt from incumbents?
  • Why does Christian believe that per-seat pricing will die? What will replace it?
  • Why does Christian believe that AI will negate the importance of consumer-facing brands?
  • In what way does Christian believe that UI is total BS? How does it change over time?

20VC: Marc Benioff on The Future of San Francisco and What He Would Do if in Charge? Marc Benioff's Five Step Process to Priorities and Why Money Does Not Make You Happy & Work From Home vs In-Person; How to Manage in Changing Worlds25 Sep 202300:32:26

Marc Benioff is Chair, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Salesforce and a pioneer of cloud computing. Under Benioff's leadership, Salesforce is the #1 provider of CRM software globally and one of the world's fastest-growing enterprise software companies. Benioff founded Salesforce in 1999, and it is now a Fortune 150 company with 70,000+ employees. Benioff is the owner and co-chair of TIME, and the founder of TIME Ventures. Benioff is the author of the New York Times bestseller Trailblazer: The Power of Business as the Greatest Platform for Change. Benioff was named "Innovator of the Decade" by Forbes and is recognized as one of the World's 25 Greatest Leaders by Fortune.

In Today's Episode with Marc Benioff We Discuss:

1. The Future of San Francisco:

  • What would Marc do if he were in charge of San Francisco today?
  • What would he change with regards to housing, policing and crime?
  • Why does Marc believe there are doomsday proclaimers on SF? What do they have to gain?
  • Will Dreamforce always be held in San Francisco?

2. Money and Ambition: The Mind Behind a $200BN Machine

  • Does Marc believe that money makes you happy?
  • How has Marc's relationship to money changed over time?
  • How does Marc think about bringing children up in a more affluent home?
  • What does Marc advise anyone who is seeking "happiness" today?

3. Mastering Decisions and Prioritisation:

  • How does Marc assess his own decision-making framework today? Has it changed with time?
  • What is Marc's 5 step process to understand your own priorities today?
  • What does Marc believe are the three biggest priorities for Salesforce today?
  • What are the single biggest blockers that would prevent Salesforce from achieving their goals?

4. Marc Benioff: AMA:

  • What does great fatherhood mean to Marc?
  • Who would win the cage fight, Zuck or Elon?
  • What does a day in the life of Marc Benioff look like?
  • What does Marc think about work from home?

20VC: Are Foundation Models Becoming Commoditised? Do OpenAI and Anthropic of the World Have a Sustaining Moat? Why Smaller Models May Work Better? Why Incumbents with Data Power Win the AI War with Christian Kleinerman, SVP Product @ Snowflake22 Sep 202300:44:34

Christian Kleinerman is the SVP of Product @ Snowflake. Before Snowflake, Christian spent close to 5 years at Google as a Senior Director of Product Management @ YouTube working on their infrastructure and data systems. Before YouTube, Christian spent over 13 years at Microsoft serving as General Manager of the Data Warehousing product unit where he was responsible for a broad portfolio of products.

In Today's Episode with Christian Kleinerman We Discuss:

1. Lessons from the Greats:

  • How did Christian first make his way into the world of product?
  • What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from working with Satya Nadella and Frank Slootman?
  • What are 1-2 of hs biggest product lessons from Google and Microsoft?

2. Generative AI: Real vs Fake:

  • How does Christian analyze the current generative AI landscape?
  • Which segments will be the fastest to adopt? Which will be the slowest?
  • What aspects of the ecosystems are overblown? Which are under-appreciated?
  • How does Christian respond to many VCs who suggest that many startups are simply wrappers on GPT?

3. Models 101: Why Size is Not Everything!

  • What matters more, the size of the data or the size of the model?
  • Will any of the models used today be used in a year?
  • Does Christian believe Alex @ Nabla is right in saying that "the most successful companies will be those that are able to transition between models the easiest"?
  • How are we seeing the evolution of model size impact the accuracy of result snad size of data required?

4. Incumbent vs startup & Open vs Closed:

  • Who is best positioned to win; startups or incumbents?
  • What are the nuances; which spaces are best served for startups to win vs incumbents?
  • Will open or closed source be the dominant mode?
  • What are the single biggest challenges preventing open from being successful?

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 Dead29 Jul 202401:15:49

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.

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 Delian that someone should ask him?

 

20VC Roundtable: Is the VC Model Broken? The Biggest Disconnect Ever Between TVPI & DPI, Why Market Size is Dangerous, Why "Go Fast" is Terrible Advice, The Dangers of Raising Large Rounds at High Prices & Why Next Year Will See the Biggest Hiring Spree i20 Sep 202301:17:36

Eric Paley is the Managing Partner at Founder Collective, one of the world's most successful seed funds with investments in the likes of Uber, The Trade Desk, Coupang and Airtable.

Mike Maples is one of the OGs of seed investing. As the Co-Founder of Floodgate, he has backed the likes of TwitchOkta, Lyft, Twitter and more.

Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr one of the best-performing early-stage venture funds with a portfolio including Algolia, Pipedrive, Salesloft, TalkDesk, and RevenueCat to name a few.

In Today's Episode on Is the Venture Model Broken? :

  1. Is the classic seed model dead? Can seed funds play in a world of $25M valuations?
  2. Why is having a firm grasp of the present the best thing an early-stage investor can have?
  3. Why does Mike Maples believe no company with true product-market-fit has ever failed?
  4. Why does Eric Paley believe "go faster" is the worst startup advice?
  5. Why does Mike Maples believe there is a direct relationship between price and risk?
  6. Why does Mike Maples believe that outliers by their very nature are lower priced?
  7. Why does Eric Paley not focus on ownership? Why can it be dangerous?
  8. What are the biggest risks for founders raising at valuations that are too high?
  9. Why does Eric Paley believe we will have the biggest chasm between TVPI and DPI in the prior vintage of venture capital returns?
  10. Why does Eric believe the majority of SPACs were BS and great companies can always go public?
  11. Why does Jason believe that if multiples do not reflate, the venture model is broken?
  12. Why does Jason believe we will see the biggest hiring spree in tech next year?
  13. How has illiquidity allowed Eric Paley to make some of the best investment decisions?
  14. What is Mike Maples biggest lesson from selling Twitter stock early at $1BN?

20VC: Benchmark General Partner, Miles Grimshaw on The Five Pillars of Venture Capital, Why Data Can Be a Trap When Early-Stage Investing, Investing Lessons from Missing Figma and Plaid & The New Business Model for AI & Why Co-Pilot is an Incumbent Strate18 Sep 202301:20:50

Miles Grimshaw is a General Partner @ Benchmark, widely considered one of the best venture capital firms in history. Prior to joining the Benchmark Partnership, Miles was a General Partner @ Thrive Capital where he led investments in Airtable, Monzo, Lattice, Github, Segment, Slack and Benchling to name a few.

In Today's Episode with Miles Grimshaw We Discuss:

1. Straight into VC From University: From Yale to Thrive

  • How did Miles come to land a role with Josh Kushner and Thrive right out of Yale?
  • What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from working with Josh @ Thrive for 8 years?
  • What does Miles know now that he wishes he had known when he started in venture?

2. The Pillars of Venture Capital: Sourcing, Selecting, Servicing:

  • What does Miles believe are the 5 core pillars of successful venture capital?
  • 1-5, what is his strongest and what is his weakest?
  • Does Miles really believe that VCs add value today?
  • What are the most clear ways that Miles have seen VCs destroy value in portfolio companies?

3. Investment Decision Making: From Github to Segment:

  • What is the single most important question that Miles has to answer to say yes to an investment?
  • How does Miles think about both market sizing risk and market timing risk?
  • What have been Miles' biggest hits? What did he learn from making those investments?
  • What have been Miles' biggest misses? What did he learn from missing Figma and Plaid?
  • What have been 1-2 of Miles's biggest lessons so far from working with Bill Gurley and Peter Fenton?

4. AI: What Happens Next:

  • Does Miles believe we are in an AI bubble today? How does he assess the landscape?
  • Why does Miles believe that the "Co-Pilot" strategy is an incumbent strategy?
  • Where does Miles believe the value will accrue; the application layer or the infrastructure layer?
  • What does Miles mean when he says the future is in "selling the work and not the software"?
  • What business model disruption and adoption disruption does Miles believe AI will enable?
  • Why does Miles believe that the analogy of AI to the rise of mobile is wrong?

20VC: The Biggest AI Leaders on What Matters More; Model Size or Data Size & Where Does The Value in AI Accrue; to Startups or to Incumbents15 Sep 202300:31:20

Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce.

Douwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses. Previously, he was the Head of Research at Hugging Face, and before that a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research.

Alex Lebrun is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nabla, an AI assistant for doctors. Prior to Nabla, he led engineering at Facebook AI Research. Alex founded Wit.ai, acquired by Facebook in 2015. 

Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages.

Sarah Guo is the Founding Partner @ Conviction Capital, a $100M first fund purpose-built to serve "Software 3.0" companies. Prior to founding Conviction, Sarah was a General Partner at Greylock where she made investments in the likes of Figma, Coda and Neeva.

Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity's potential. To date, Emad has raised over $110M with Stability with the latest round reportedly pricing the company at $4BN. 

Clem Delangue is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Hugging Face, the AI community building the future. To date, Clem has raised over $160M from the likes of Sequoia, Coatue, Addition and Lux Capital to name a few.

Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation. To date, Cris has raised over $285M for the company from the likes of Lux Capital, Felicis, Coatue, Amplify, and Nvidia to name a few.

Noam Shazeer is the co-founder and CEO of Character.AI. A renowned computer scientist and researcher, Shazeer is one of the foremost experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP). 

The Two Most Pressing Questions in AI:

  1. What matters more the size of the model or the size of the data?
  2. Where does the value accrue in the next 5-10 years; to startups or to incumbents?

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