20VC: Sequoia's Mike Vernal on His Biggest Lessons From 8 Years of Hyper-Growth at Facebook, Why The Strength of Data Moats Is Over-Rated Today and The Challenge of "Overthinking Investments" In Venture
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 08/26/2019
20VC: Haystack’s Semil Shah on Whether Founders Are Bypassing Seed Funds in Favour Of Less Dilutive Multi-Stage Funds, How Fund Strategy Changes With Fund Scaling & Why The Hardest Challenge is Price Discipline
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Semil Shah is the Founder & General Partner @ Haystack, one of the valley's leading seed funds of the last 5 years with a portfolio including the likes of Instacart, DoorDash, Carta, OpenDoor, Hashicorp and more $Bn companies. Alongside his role at Haystack, Semil is also a Venture Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to founding Swell, Semil was on the operating side as an early advisor and employee at Concept.io (Swell), acquired by Apple in August 2014. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Semil make his way into the world of venture from his...
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20VC: Clearbit Founder Alex MacCaw on How To Successfully Negotiate with Investors, What Value-Add Do VCs Really Bring & Why You Should Only Have Operators on Your Board
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Alex MacCaw is the Founder & CEO @ Clearbit, the marketing data engine for all of your customer interactions, from customer understanding to prospect identification to personalising every sales and marketing interaction. To date, Alex has raised $17m in financing from some incredible people including Geoff Lewis @ Bedrock, Ash Fontana @ Zetta Venture Partners, First Round Capital, Battery Ventures and then former guest Ilya Sukhar, Naval Ravikant and Josh Buckley. Prior to founding Clearbit, Alex spent time in the engineering teams at both Twitter and Stripe. In Today’s...
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20VC: Matrix’s Ilya Sukhar on How The Seed Ecosystem Could Be Optimised, Why The Bar For The Break-Out Series A Has Risen & The Art of Effective Referencing
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Ilya Sukhar is a General Partner @ Matrix Partners, the firm steeped in 40 years of history with over $4Bn invested enjoying 110 acquisitions and 65 IPOs. As for Ilya, at Matrix he has led deals in the likes of FiveTran, Flock Safety, Slab and Height just to name a few. Prior to Matrix, Ilya was a part-time investing partner @ Y Combinator and before that was Head of Developer Products at Facebook. His time at Facebook came about as a result of his former company, Parse, being acquired by them for close to $100m in April 2013. If that was not enough, Ilya also has one of the best...
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20VC: Scale Founder Alex Wang on How To Hire Incredible Talent Before You Are A Hot Company, Why Beating Competition Is Not As Clear Cut As Investors Believe & Why AI Is Under-Hyped Today In Terms of Total Impact
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Alex Wang is the Founder & CEO @ Scale, the data platform for AI providing high-quality training and validation data for AI applications. To date, they have raised over $123m in financing from some of the best investors in the business including Founders Fund, Index Ventures, Thrive, Spark and Coatue and then also some of the world's best operators and founders of Dropbox, Instagram, Quora, Github and Twitch to name a few. Prior to founding Scale, Alexandr was a Tech Lead at Quora, directly responsible for all speed projects and before that a software engineer at...
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20VC: How Founders Can Gain Leverage in Fundraising Negotiations, The Metrics You Need To Raise Your Series A in Consumer & What We Have To Change About Cap Table Construction with Jana Messerschmidt, Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jana Messerschmidt is an investor @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the best performing funds of the last decade with a portfolio including Snapchat, Mulesoft, Max Levchin's Affirm, Cameo, StitchFix and many many more incredible companies. Prior to LSVP, Jana co-founded #Angels in 2015, a first of its kind investment collective specifically designed to get more women on the cap tables of successful companies. Her portfolio includes the likes of Carta, Lambda School, Bird, Forward and Cameo to name a few. In addition to #Angels, Jana spent 6 years at Twitter as VP of...
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20VC: InVision Founder Clark Valberg on Why True Leadership is Like Writing, How To Be Truly Self-Aware & The Fundamental False Premise of Entrepreneurship
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Clark Valberg is the Founder & CEO @ InVision, the digital product design platform powering the world's best user experiences. To date, Clark has raised over $350m with InVision from some of the world-leading investors including Iconiq, Spark Capital, Accel, Battery Ventures, Tiger Global, FirstMark and even Atlassian. Prior to founding InVision, Clark spent 8 years as the Co-Founder of Epicenter Consulting, a leading web application design business. If that was not enough, Clark is also a leading angel with a portfolio including Algolia, Voiceflow, Unsplash and BentoBox, just to...
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20VC: Sequoia's Mike Vernal on His Biggest Lessons From 8 Years of Hyper-Growth at Facebook, Why The Strength of Data Moats Is Over-Rated Today and The Challenge of "Overthinking Investments" In Venture
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Mike Vernal is a General Partner @ Sequoia, one of the world’s leading and most renowned venture firms with a portfolio including WhatsApp, Zoom, Stripe, Airbnb, Github and many more incredible companies. As for Mike he has led and sits on the board of Citizen, rideOS, Rockset, Threads and Houseparty (acquired by Epic). Prior to venture, Mike spent 8 years at Facebook as VP of Product & Engineering leading multiple different teams including Search, Commerce, Profile, and Developer product groups. Prior to Facebook Mike spent 4 years at Microsoft as a PM lead in Microsoft's...
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20VC: Cruise's Daniel Kan on Lessons From Scaling The Team From 40 To 1,500 People, How Daniel Thinks About Continuous Learning & Self-Development and Why CEOs Hiring Themselves Out Of Roles Is Wrong
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Daniel Kan is the Chief Product Officer @ Cruise, the company building cutting-edge hardware and software that work seamlessly together to transform the way we all experience transportation. In 2016, Cruise was acquired by GM for a reported $1Bn. Since the acquisition Cruise has raised $7.25 billion in committed capital and has attracted SoftBank, Honda, and T. Rowe Price as investors. As for Daniel, he started his career at a startup called UserVoice. He then founded Exec, an on-demand hospitality service company, and successfully sold Exec to Handy. As a result of...
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20VC: True Ventures' Puneet Agarwal on Why EQ Is Going To Separate The Best Firms In Venture Over The Next Decade, The Negatives of Attribution in Venture & What Makes A Truly Efficient Venture Partnership
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Puneet Agarwal is a Partner @ True Ventures, one of the leading early-stage VC funds of the last decade with big wins including Fitbit, Peloton, Ring, Hashicorp, Duo Security and Blue Bottle Coffee, just to name a few. As for Puneet, at True he has led deals in Duo Security, Tray.io, Lumity, Solo.io and more. Before the world of VC, Puneet spent 6 years in product management with Geodesic Securities and BEA. Before product management, Puneet actually cut his teeth in the world of VC as an associate at Mayfield which he joined post a 2-year stint at JP Morgan. In Today’s Episode You...
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20VC: Hiten Shah on The Right Way To Think About Depression, Control and Burnout, Why Nobody Really Knows What They Are Doing and How One Should Receive Advice As A Result & How To Gain Self-Awareness As A Leader
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Hiten Shah is the Co-Founder @ FYI, the startup that allows you to find your documents in 3 clicks or less. Before FYI, Hiten co-founded QuickSprout alongside Neil Patel, together they scaled the platform to over 500,000 readers every month. Before QuickSprout, Hiten was the Co-Founder and CEO of KISSmetrics, raising over $19m in the process for the company from the likes of True Ventures, Uncork Capital and Felicis Ventures just to name a few. Finally, Hiten is also the Co-Founder @ Crazy Egg, the heat mapping tool used by thousands to improve the effectiveness of their...
info_outlineMike Vernal is a General Partner @ Sequoia, one of the world’s leading and most renowned venture firms with a portfolio including WhatsApp, Zoom, Stripe, Airbnb, Github and many more incredible companies. As for Mike he has led and sits on the board of Citizen, rideOS, Rockset, Threads and Houseparty (acquired by Epic). Prior to venture, Mike spent 8 years at Facebook as VP of Product & Engineering leading multiple different teams including Search, Commerce, Profile, and Developer product groups. Prior to Facebook Mike spent 4 years at Microsoft as a PM lead in Microsoft's Developer Division.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Mike made the move from VP of Product & Engineering at Facebook to General Partner at the world-famous, Sequoia Capital? What were Mike's biggest takeaways from his 8 years at FB seeing the hyper-growth first hand?
2.) Mike has previously said that he has struggled in the past when it comes to "overthinking investments". What does he mean by this? How does it play out in reality? How does Mike balance between trusting his gut and relying on the data? How does Mike think venture partnerships should participate in this balancing act?
3.) Why does Mike believe decision-making in venture to be fundamentally different to decision-making in operations? How do they compare? How does the decision-making process and approach change as a result of this contrast? How does Mike think about his own time allocation now in venture? What is the most challenging element?
4.) How does Mike evaluate the proliferated SaaS landscape today? Why does Mike believe that the notion of SaaS as a construct will fade over the coming years? What does Mike believe is the reasoning for SaaS apps becoming more and more niche? What problem does that pose for VC? Will we enter a period of consolidation in SaaS? What size do the incumbents have to be to really engage in the M&A process moving forward?
5.) Why does Mike struggle to see the strength of data moats? What are the major downfalls associated with the argument of their strength? At what point is the asymptotic point of the utility value of the data for models today and how does that change over the coming years? What does Mike instead see as durable and sustainable moats?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Mike’s Fave Book: One Hundred Years of Solitude
Mike’s Most Recent Investment: Verkada
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