Libsyn Directory

20VC: The Biggest Indicators Of Success In Founding Teams, How To Balance Both Vision and Operations & Taking Money From "The Man At The Rug Store" with Mar Hershenson, Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Release Date: 05/24/2017

20VC: Etsy CEO, Josh Silverman on 2 Defining Traits of Great Leadership, The Danger of Attaching Happiness To Milestones, How To Structure Teams To Optimise for Experimentation and Agility &Whether You Learn More From Success Than Failure

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is the CEO @ , leading the company as it builds a platform that empowers creative entrepreneurs around the world. Prior to their IPO, Etsy raised funding from some of the best in the business including Danny Rimer @ Index, Albert Wenger @ USV and Jim Breyer @ Accel to name a few. Prior to Etsy, Josh served as President of Consumer Products and Services at American Express, was the CEO of Skype, and CEO of shopping.com, and he held various executive roles at eBay. Josh is also currently on the board of directors of Shake Shack. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Josh made his entry...

20VC: Databricks CEO, Ali Ghodsi on The 3 Phases of Startup Growth, How to Evaluate Risk and Downside Scenario Planning & Who, What and When To Hire When Scaling Your Go-To-Market

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is the Founder & CEO @ , bringing together data engineering, science and analytics on an open, unified platform so data teams can collaborate and innovate faster. To date, Ali has raised over $897M for the company including from the likes of a16z, NEA, Microsoft, Battery, Coatue, Greenbay and more. Prior to Databricks, Ali was one of the original creators of open source project, Apache Spark, and ideas from his research have been applied to Apache Mesos and Apache Hadoop. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ali made his way from fleeing Iran as a refugee to living in a Swedish...

20VC: Annie Duke on Reversible vs Irreversible Decisions, How To Evaluate Risk, The Theory of Sunk Cost in Venture & How to Optimise Both the Discussion and Quality of Investment Decisions

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is a former professional poker player and the author of National Bestseller, "Thinking in Bets" & "How To Decide". During her poker playing days, Annie was a World Series of Poker bracelet winner, the winner of the 2004 Tournament of Champions and the only woman to win the NBC National Poker Heads Up Championship. Today, Annie is also the founder of How I Decide, a non-profit that creates curricula and tools to improve decision making and critical thinking skills for under-served middle schoolers. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Annie made her way from professional...

20VC: Twitter Co-Founder Biz Stone on The 3 Stages of Wealth, The Return To Twitter in 2017 and the Associated Missions and Challenges & Why Silicon Valley is not an "Insiders Only" Universe?

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is best known as the Co-Founder of Twitter and Medium. Biz is also an investor in the likes of Slack, Square, Intercom, Beyond Meat and Blue Bottle Coffee. Biz also co-founded Jelly, a "human in the loop" AI search service, which was acquired by Pinterest. Due to his many successes, Biz has been recognized as INC Magazine Entrepreneur of the Decade and one of TIME's 100 Most Influential People in the World. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Biz make his way into the world of startups and come to found Odeo/Twitter one day on a car trip with Ev Williams? 2.) How does Biz...

20VC: Bill Gurley and Howard Marks: What Happened In 2020? What Can We Expect Looking Forward to 2021?

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is co-chairman and co-founder of , a leading investment firm with more than $120 billion in assets. Prior to founding Oaktree, Howard spent 10 years at The TCW Group, where he was responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. Howard has also written two books, most recently , and it was Warren Buffet who said, “When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they’re the first thing I open and read. I always learn something.” is a General Partner @ , one of the most successful funds of the...

20VC: Lessons From Working with Bill Gates, How To Lead Without Authority and The Difference Between Leadership and Management & How Fundraising Changes In A COVID World with Quentin Clark, Managing Director @ General Catalyst

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is a Managing Director @ , one of the most prominent firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Stripe, Airbnb, Snap, Anduril, Deliveroo and Cazoo to name a few. As for Quentin, at GC he has led deals in the likes of Kernel, Coda, Commure just to name a few. Before entering the world of venture Quentin was the CTO @ Dropbox and before that he was the Chief Business Officer @ SAP. Finally, before SAP, Quentin spent an incredible 20 years at Microsoft in a variety of different roles play a key part in their hyper-growth. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Quentin made...

20VC: Why the Theory of Pro-Rata is Often False, How Rolling Funds Impact Both Pricing and Competition & The Biggest Lessons from Working with Jack Dorsey with Avlok Kohli, CEO @ AngelList Venture

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is the CEO of which has facilitated the funding of over 5,000 startups including 47 unicorns and is home to 4,300 funds and syndicates with $2.2B in assets under management. This year, AngelList Venture launched the much-discussed, Rolling Funds and Avlok recently launched his own rolling fund, Avlok Capital. Prior to AngelList, Avlok built and sold two companies; FastBite, acquired by Square in 2015 and Fairy, also acquired. If that was not enough, Avlok is also an angel in 25 companies. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Avlok made his way...

20VC: Retool Founder, David Hsu on Why YC Is Helpful Pre Product-Market Fit but Not Post and Why VCs Are Not Helpful Pre-Product Market-Fit but are Post, Why it is Difficult to Become Unprofitable if You Set Yourself Up For Profitability Early & Why VC Th

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is the Founder & CEO @ , the company that allows you to build internal tools, remarkably fast. David has raised over $69M with Retool from the very best in startups including Sequoia, YC, Patrick and John @ Stripe, Henrique & Pedro @ Brex, Paul Graham, Nat @ Github, Peter @ Segment, Tomer @ Gusto and Elad Gil to name a few incredible names. Today Retool works with some of the biggest companies in the world from Amazon to Volvo to Mercedes Benz. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How David made his way from studying philosophy at Oxford to creating one of the valley's...

20VC: Figma Founder, Dylan Field on How Leadership Needs To Evolve with Scale, The Transition from Application to Platform & The Future of Remote Work, Education and Digital Spaces

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is the Founder & CEO @ , the company that helps teams create, test, and ship better designs from start to finish and is one of 2020's fastest-growing companies. To date, Dylan has raised over $132M with Figma from some of the best including Sequoia, a16z, Index, Greylock, Founders Fund and Kleiner Perkins. Figma's latest round valued them at a reported $2Bn. Prior to founding Figma, Dylan enjoyed internships at Flipboard, LinkedIn and O'Reilly Media. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Dylan made his way from an internship at O'Reilly Media and a Thiel Fellowship to...

20VC: Hopin, The Breakout Startup of 2020 on Scaling from 10 to 230 People and $174M in Funding in just 13 Months, The 3 Phases of Startup Scaling, How To Lead Remote Teams Effectively, The Future of Events Post-COVID and more

The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

is the Founder & CEO @ , one of the fastest-growing companies on the planet, providing an online events platform where you can create engaging virtual events that connect people around the globe. In the last 13 months, Johnny has raised over $174M for Hopin from the likes of Accel, IVP, Slack, Northzone, Coatue, Salesforce and of course, 20VC Fund. With the funding, again in just 13 months, Johnny has grown the team from 10 people to over 210 people in 37 countries. In October of this year, Semil Shah awarded Hopin the label, . In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Johnny...

Mar Hershenson is a Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc alongside Pejman Nozad. After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1999, Mar had developed a ground-breaking technique for optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Having combined a hardware/software focus during her studies, she spent the next 13 years co-founding three startups in the mobile/e-commerce, enterprise software, and semiconductor industries, work that led eventually to her registering 14 separate patents. Mar has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35 and named a Champion of Innovation by Fast Company.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How did Mar make her way from professor @ Stanford to startup founder to founding Pear.vc?

2.) Question from Matin @ Heap: How does Mar decide which founders have the highest potential? What are the seeds that suggest huge potential growth on initial screening?

3.) Question from Nicky @ Nova Credit: How does one look to balance the inherent challenge of vision and operations? What do the best founders do?

4.) How important is it for there to be role segmentation in a VC partnership? Why does it not matter at certain stages of the funding lifecycle?

5.) Why does Mar believe venture is an intensely service based industry? How does Mar look to maintain her scaling board roles with a scaling portfolio?

Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:

Mar’s Fave Book: The Four Steps To The Epiphany

Mar’s Fave Blog: Elad Gil, Dan Primack

Mar’s Most Recent Investment: Nova Credit

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mar on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

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