20VC: The Snapchat Memo: Lightspeed's Jeremy Liew on The 4 Key Elements To Consider When Evaluating A Consumer Social Product, What is Good/Great/World Class For Retention, Usage and Downloads in Consumer Social Today & The Core Insight Development of Eva
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 02/24/2021
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
AGENDA: 00:00 – $400B in AI CapEx: Rational Investment or Madness? 05:00 – Figma's IPO: Rule of 80, $1.5B in cash, 40% margins. Unreal. 08:00 – Adobe Screwed the Deal—Should They Have Just Bought Canva? 16:00 – Pay-to-Play Deals: Heroic Hail Mary or Guaranteed Write-Off? 21:30 – How Index Is Returning $3.5B on 2 Deals 24:00 – Melio’s $2.5B Exit: Insane Growth… So Why Did They Sell?! 35:00 – Massive Penthouses and the Death of Focus: AI Founders Beware 39:00 – Chime, Anthropic, Menlo & The Art of Selling LPs the Future 41:00 – Couchbase Acquired: PE Buyers Are...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Philipp Freise is Co-Head of European Private Equity at KKR, where he manages the largest private fund in Europe with $8BN in the latest fund. Philip has led KKR's investments in FGS Global, Superstruct, Axel Springer SE, BMG Rights Management, Fotolia, GetYourGuide, GfK SE, Leonine, Mediawan SAS, Scout24 Switzerland and Trainline. Previously, Philip worked at McKinsey & Company in and co-founded Berlin-based VC firm Venturepark, Europe's first pan-European incubator. Agenda: 00:00 – "We Lost $500M in Turkey. Here’s Why We’ll Never Do It Again." 01:40 – Inside Europe’s Biggest PE...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Kim Graves is GM, Americas at Notion, where she oversees all Sales and Customer Success efforts across the region. She brings extensive experience in building and scaling high-performing sales organizations, most notably at Slack where she helped grow revenue from $6M to over $1.5B. In addition to her operational role, Kim serves as a founding partner at 20SALES, a GTM-focused VC firm, where she advises early-stage companies on scaling revenue and optimizing sales processes. Agenda: 07:00 – The Secret to Winning a Discount Conversation 09:30 – Notion’s Wild New Sales Method: Mindsets...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Agenda: 04:21 - The Meta Acquisition Bombshell: Nat Friedman & Daniel Gross Join Facebook?! 06:00 - Facebook’s $100 Billion Gamble: Can Zuck Buy the Future? 09:27 - The “Magic Room” Theory: Why Only Insiders Get Billion-Dollar Paydays 11:27 - Is Loyalty Dead in Silicon Valley? The Great Talent Exodus 16:00 - Harvey’s $5 Billion Valuation: Genius or Bubble? 19:00 - The AI Gold Rush: Can Software Really Eat Human Labor? 22:00 - The B2B Unicorn Dilemma: Are There Enough $100B Companies? 25:00 - IPO Mania: Why Navan, Canva, and Circle Are Shaking Up the Markets 29:00 - Meme Stocks...
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Cem Kansu is the Chief Product Officer at Duolingo, where he leads product strategy for over 90 million monthly active learners. Since joining Duolingo, Cem has played a pivotal role in driving record user engagement, revenue growth, and product innovation, including the launch of Duolingo Math and the wildly successful Duolingo Music. Under his leadership, the company has consistently ranked as the #1 education app globally. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 04:12 – Cem’s Origin Story: From Google Ads to Saving Duolingo’s Business 06:45 – “Mini CEO” Myth: Why PMs Need to...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Agenda: 00:00 – Meta’s $14.8B Deal for Scale: The Analysis 05:40 – Will Scale Lose Their $800M ARR? Will All Customers Leave? 13:00 – Who is the Winner from All Scale Customers Leaving? 21:30 – Who Made the Most Money From Scale? 24:00 – LPs Just Got $14B Back. Are They Reinvesting? 26:45 – Chime IPO: The Breakdown 29:20 – Ramp Hits $16B Valuation: Are We Back in 2021? 31:10 – Ramp vs Brex vs Mercury: Who’s the Real Winner? 34:00 – Gusto Going Public with $900M in ARR??? 36:40 – Dropbox vs Glean: Can the Old Guard Survive the AI Wave? 38:50 – Is Slack Dead as a...
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Larry Aschebrook is the Founder and Managing Partner of G Squared in what is one of the wildest stories of venture capital. Larry started G Squared with nothing, dialling for dollars having personally invested in Twitter and Uber. In his first fund, Larry made sizable bets into SpaceX, Palantir, Alibaba and Twitter. Larry has also had mega losses along the way (discussed in the show) in Getir, 23andme and more. Today, Larry manages over $5BN and has invested in all the best from Wiz to Spotify to Revolut and Anthropic. Agenda: 00:00 – From Broke to Billion-Dollar Bets 03:40 – The...
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Agenda: 00:03 – Circle’s IPO: Investors Just Left $BNs on the Table 00:06 – CoreWeave & Circle: Are We Back to Meme Stock Madness? 00:11 – Should Stripe and Databricks Finally Go Public? 00:17 – US Stock Markets: How They DOMINATE the Global Game 00:21 – 50% of Unicorns Are DOOMED. What Happens Now? 00:25 – Founders Fund Just Dropped $1B on Anduril. Why?! 00:29 – What Would You Do If LPs Let You Go Wild? 00:36 – What Missing Out on Millions for Docusign Taught Rory 00:44 – Cursor is 20% of SaaS Spend: The Shocking Data Behind the SaaS Slowdown 00:47 – AI vs. SaaS: The...
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Micha Kaufman is the Founder and CEO of Fiverr, the leading online marketplace for freelance services. Fiverr has had an insane ride in the public markets, in 2019 the company went public with a $650M market cap, at their peak that hit over $8BN. Today, facing a wave of AI, the company has a market cap of $1.121BN on an estimated $430M EOY revenues. Prior to co-founding Fiverr, Micha successfully founded and led several startups over the last 30 years. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: 00:00 – “Fuck you. It’s not my job to make you better.” Micha’s viral internal email...
info_outlineJeremy Liew is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the leading firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Affirm, Snapchat (Snap), Mulesoft, Epic Games, Carta and more amazing companies. As for Jeremy, in the past he has led deals and sat on the boards of Snap, Affirm, Blockchain.com and The Honest Company to name a few. Before Lightspeed, Jeremy was with AOL, first as SVP of corporate development and chief of staff to the CEO, and then as general manager of Netscape. Due to his incredible investing success, Jeremy has been featured on the Forbes Midas List multiple times.
In Today’s Episode We Dissect The Snapchat Memo:
I. How Jeremey first learned of Snapchat
How Jeremy Liew first heard about Evan Spiegel and Snapchat?
"It's actually kind of a roundabout story. We first heard about Snapchat, because one of my partners Barry Eggers is a very involved dad. And he noticed that his daughter had started taking weird selfies"
What was the process to first get in touch with Evan?
"The challenge was, the website only had info at Snapchat email address was the only info The only contact info available. So I emailed them, and I never heard back.
Why was it such a challenge?
"I then looked up Snapchat on LinkedIn, and I couldn't find any contact information. And I was in a little bit of a loss, I wasn't getting any responses from the email, there was nothing listed on LinkedIn. So I ended up doing a who is look-up to try to find out who had registered the Snapchat URL, and I got an info@ snapgrouplimited email. So I emailed that. And then as again, I didn't get any response.
What was the breakthrough in the end?
"....Finally, what I decided to do was since Evan was a student at Stanford, and since I graduated from Stanford for business school, at that time, Facebook allowed you to message people who were in the same network, and Stanford constituted that. So I messaged him through Facebook, and I finally got a response. But this time, I got a response within five minutes."
II. The Analysis Of Snapchat's Early Market
What are the 4 things Jeremy looks for when making an investment in consumer?
- Can this become part of pop culture?
- Does this create new habits?
- Is there a scalable way to grow?
- Does the founder have a unique insight that explains the success?
Why does Jeremy believe that usage with young females is the biggest predictor of future consumer social success?
"Generalising, Women build their relationships through, you know, conversations, and they build those relationships through sharing information with each other. And obviously, that sort of conversation or relationship is a fantastic conduit for word of mouth for anything that people really appreciate."
In what ways does Jeremy like to see consumer social companies become part of pop culture?
"Today, if you think about whether it be social networking, apps, messaging, e commerce, streaming media, it's all part of pop culture. And so as much as movies or television or music or dance, and so if you ask yourself who are the early adopters of pop culture"
What are examples of this?
"Social networking, apps, messaging, e commerce, streaming media, it's all part of pop culture."
Did the market evolve the way that Jeremy thought it would?
"And one of the things that surprised us a little bit was that this was very strong in Southern California, Northern California, and Georgia, when we first invested and parts of the South"
What was a surprise to Jeremy Liew in terms of market evolution?
"In Norway, which had actually transcended, that sort of high school and college-age population, in fact, become the number three most downloaded app, most popular app, in Norway at that time. So ahead of Instagram, ahead of Facebook, and so forth. And so that's what I think gave us that early indication that the app was going to be able to break out beyond its high school, college student, initial starting point, not just in the US, but everywhere"
III. Reflections on Snapchat's Early Traction
What did the Snap user to install count look like at the time?
"In, you know, March, April of 2012, they had about 90,000, daily active users off of the base of 180,000 installs."
How does this compare with many others in the consumer social space?
"That's a very, very high ratio."
What were Snap's retention numbers at the time?
"50% retention after 90 days, which again, suggests high engagement, high retention, high growth that speaks to upside volatility"
How did Snap's frequency of usage on an individual basis look like at the time?
"So people were opening the app six times per day, they were opening at least once every second day."
Across, retention, usage and user to install, what are the benchmarks for great, good and average?
" I would say as a rule of thumb, in messaging and social networks, you would want to see at least a DAU to MAU ratio of north of 50%. And you would want to see at least a D 30 of say 30 to 40%, for your for something to really be working to be sort of at that outlier level."
IV. The Truth About The Snapchat Founding Team
What unique insight does Jeremy believe that Evan always held for the company and the product?
"One of the things that was so special about Evan, and that I think, has continued to contribute to the success of the company has been that he's always been able to do that to look at something with fresh eyes, and not iterate over what the current state of the art is that, you know, just from first principles basis"
How has Jeremy seen Evan change and evolve as a leader?
"I think his maturity as a business leader, as a leader of people, as a manager, you know, as a strategist, although he always had very good strategic instincts, but they've just continued to grow and evolve and blossom."
What were some of the big inflection points in his development?
"So you know, the feed has always been up until this point, in reverse chronological order, I think largely because that's what friendster do choose to do. And then Evan comes along. He says, How do you tell stories beginning, middle, end. Now go to social media? How do they tell stories in reverse chronological order means and middle beginning? Well, that doesn't make any sense. And so he said, we're going to create a whole new feed of stories, and they're going to be told in chronological order beginning middle end."
Who are some unsung heroes from the Snap journey that were transformational?
"Bobby doesn't get enough credit. From the very beginning from I think maybe a couple of months in was thinking about the breakthroughs that had been happening computer vision and the implications for what that could build....Imran Khan, he really helps take a lot of the load off of Evan allowed me to focus on product engineering, he took over sales and monetization Ops, he did a lot of the financing work in the time when Snapchat raised a lot of capital."