20VC Rising Star: Why Founders Should Expect More From Their VCs | How To Know Pre-Investment Whether a VC Will Be Valuable and How to Get the Most Value Out of Them | Is There a Misalignment Between Founders and VCs with Oana Olteanu, Partner @ SignalFir
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Release Date: 11/18/2022
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Orlando Bravo is a Founder and Managing Partner of . He led Thoma Bravo’s early entry into software buyouts and built the firm into one of the top private equity firms in the world. Today, Orlando directs the firm’s strategy and investment decisions. Orlando has overseen over 420 software acquisitions conducted by the firm, representing more than $235 billion in transaction value. Forbes named him "Wall Street’s best dealmaker" in 2019, and he was dubbed "Private equity’s king of SaaS" by the Financial Times in 2021. In Today's Episode with Orlando Bravo We Discuss: 1.) From...
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is the CPO @ , the company that makes scheduling meetings simple and painless. Before Calendly, Annie led Glassdoor’s product vision and user experience, managing a 70-person product and design org. is an investor, advisor, and all-around product OG. Most recently Shreyas spent over 5 years at Stripe where he was Stripe’s first PM Manager and helped grow the PM function (from ~5 to more than 50 people). Before Stripe, Shreyas was a Director of Product Management @ Twitter. is one of the product OGs of the last decade. As the founder of Bump David pioneered...
info_outlineThe Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Alex Bouaziz is the Co-Founder and CEO @ , the all-in-one platform made to simplify all things HR, built for global teams near and far. In the last year alone, Alex has scaled Deel from $57M in ARR to $295M, EBITDA positive since Sept 2022, 85%+ gross margins, and over $5BN paid out to 250,000 people. Alex has raised over $679M with Deel, pricing the company at the last round at $12.1BN. Investors in the company include , Spark Capital, Coatue, and many more. In Today's Episode with Alex Bouaziz We Discuss: 1.) From Student in London to Decacorn Founder: How Alex made his way into the...
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and are Co-Founders and Partners @ Homebrew, one of the leading seed funds of the last decade. Following 10 years of stellar returns with investments in the likes of Chime, Plaid, Gusto and many others, they decided to not accept any further LP capital and to only invest their own money moving forward through . In Today's Discussion on Homebrew We Breakdown: 1. ) The Foundings of a Great Partnership: What was the moment when Hunter and Satya decided they were going to go out and raise their first fund with Homebrew I? What are the core principles that all founding partners need to...
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Cliff Obrecht is the Co-Founder & COO @ , the free-to-use online graphic design tool that makes it easy for anyone to design anything from presentations to videos and social media. Cliff and Mel have scaled Canva to over 60 million monthly users, 2,000 employees, and 500,000 teams from companies like Intel and using Canva. During this incredible growth journey, they have raised over $580M with their last round valuing the company at over $40BN. In Today's Episode with Cliff Obrecht 1.) From Teacher to Billionaire Tech Founder: How did Keith make his way into the world of tech...
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Stevie Case is the CRO @ where she oversees Vanta’s go-to-market team to support the company’s rapid growth. Prior to joining Vanta, Stevie was Vice President of Mid-Market Sales at , joining as one of their first account executives, Stevie helped to grow the sales team from a dozen to over 1,000 team members and played a pivotal role in establishing Twilio’s enterprise business with key Fortune 500 customers, generating more than $400 million in annual recurring revenue. If that was not enough, Stevie is also a Founding Operator @ Coalition Network and a prominent angel investor. In...
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Albert Wenger is a managing partner at , one of the most successful venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including , Twitter, Twilio, Etsy, and many more. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor (Etsy, Tumblr). He previously founded or co-founded several companies, including a management consulting firm and an early-hosted data analytics company. In Today's Episode with Albert Wenger We Discuss: 1.) From Failed Startup Founder to Leading VC: How Albert transitioned from being a failed...
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Mike Cessario is the Founder and CEO @ , the man hacking the healthy beverage market with the first hilarious water brand. It is working, Liquid Death's latest valuation was over a staggering $700M and Mike has raised over $200M since founding the company from the likes of Science Inc. Away's Jen Rubio, Dollar Shave Club's Michael Dubin, Swedish House Mafia and Tony Hawk to name a few. Prior to founding Liquid Death, Mike was in the advertising industry at a number of dirrect firms including VaynerMedia. In Today's Episode with Mike Cessario We Discuss: 1.) From Canned Water to $700M...
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Hila Qu is one of the leading growth execs of the last decade. Hila helped scale from 1 million to 5 million users as their VP of growth. Hila then joined , where she launched their PLG motion (on top of an established sales motion), and built their first-ever growth team. Today Hila is an advisor to amazing companies like Replit and funds like Mucker Capital, Openview and . In Today's Episode with Hila Qu We Discuss: 1.) From Biology and Explosions to Growth: How Hila made her way into the world of growth with growthhackers.com? What are 1-2 of the biggest takeaways...
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Jeff Jordan is a General Partner @ where he serves on the boards of Airbnb, Incredible Health, , Lookout, and Pinterest, just to name a few. Before a16z, Jeff was CEO OpenTable, where he led the company during a period of hyper-growth and oversaw its IPO. Prior to OpenTable, Jeff was Senior VP and General Manager of eBay North America where he oversaw eBay's early growth into one of the Internet's leading commerce brands. In this role, he drove the successful acquisitions of PayPal and Half.com and went on to become President of PayPal, where he was responsible for establishing the company...
info_outlineOana Olteanu is a Partner @ SignalFire where she focuses on enterprise software at Seed, Series A and Series B. Prior to joining SignalFire, Oana was at Scale Venture Partners where she invested in applied ML and developer tooling. Oana sourced Scale’s investments in Observe.ai, Flatfile, and Proscia. She was part of the deal teams for Honeycomb and AllyO (acquired by HireVue). She also supported existing portfolio companies such as Dialpad, Matillion, and BigID. Prior to Scale, Oana was an AI seed investor at SAP.io, SAP’s $35M seed fund, where she sourced the investments in Plum.io, Oto.ai, and Akorda.
In Today's Episode with Oana Olteanu We Discuss:
1.) From Tank Driving in Romania to VC's Rising Star:
- How Oana made her way from driving tanks in Romania to becoming a VC?
- How did leaving Romania for Germany and then moving to the West Coast impact her mindset?
- What does Oana know now that she wishes she had known when she entered VC?
2.) How to Assess a VC: The Founders Guide:
- Pre-investment, how can founders know whether a VC can add value? What are the signs?
- What three core questions will reveal how much value a VC can add?
- Post-investment, what can founders do to extract the most value from their VCs?
- What should the founders ask their investors for help with? What should they do themselves?
3.) The VC <> Founder Relationship:
- Oana has the highest founder NPS of any VC I have ever had on 20VC, what does Oana believe makes her founders rate her contribution so highly? What works? What does not?
- How does Oana give sometimes very hard feedback to founders but retain that relationship of trust and safety at the same time? What mistakes do other VCs make in giving feedback?
- What does Oana believe are the single biggest misalignment between VCs and founders?
4.) VCs Behaving Badly: 101
- What are the single biggest ways Oana sees VCs behaving badly?
- How does Oana think founders expectations of the product of venture should change?
- Does Oana believe boards are valuable? What can be done to improve them?
Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:
Oana's Favourite Book: The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living: Featuring new translations of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius