The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

Henrique Dubugras is the Founder and CEO @ Brex, the company re-imagining financial systems so every growing company can realize its full potential. To date, Henrique has raised over $1.1BN for Brex from some of the best including Ribbit, Greenoaks, DST, IVP, Caffeinated Capital and Elad Gil to name a few. Henrique is also a board member at Mercado Libre. Prior to co-founding Brex, Henrique co-founded Pagar.me, there he scaled the company to $15BN in GMV and over 100 people before selling the company in 2016. In Today's Episode with Henrique Dubugras You Will Learn: 1.) The Founding of Brex: What was the founding a-ha moment for Henrique and Pedro with Brex? What advice did Evan Spiegel give Henrique when it comes to being a great CEO? 2.) Hiring: The Trials and Tribulations What have been Henrique's biggest hiring mistakes? How do founders know when they are ready to bring in the seasoned exec vs the younger jack of all trades candidate? What have been Henrique's biggest lessons in what it takes to hire true A* talent? Where does Henrique see other founders make big hiring mistakes? 3.) Product Expansion and Marketing: How does Henrique assess when is the right time to release a second product? What have been Henrique's biggest mistakes and lessons when it comes to product marketing? How can one retain the simplicity of product messaging with scaling the product? Brex expanded the product too far, too fast. How did they walk it back so successfully? 4.) Henrique: The Leader How does Henrique approach his own relationship to money today? How has it changed over time? What luxury expenditure has Henrique made over the last 12 months that he feels is worth it? How does Henrique think about ego management? What does he do to keep his in check? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Henrique Dubugras Henrique's Favourite Book: The Innovator's Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth

Domm Holland is the Founder and CEO @ Fast. Last week Fast announced they would be shutting down the company. In this exclusive 20VC episode we discuss: What really happened with Domm's towing business in Australia? What are the 1-2 biggest mistakes made at Fast? Why has Bolt worked in a way that Fast has not worked? What is it like having Stripe as an investor in your company? Could the board have done more to prevent what happened at Fast?

Avichal Garg is Co-Founder & Partner @ Electric Capital, last month Electric announced they had raised $1BN for their new fund making them one of the largest independent and crypto-native VC firms in the world. As for Avichal, prior to Electric, he was an investor in crypto projects such as Anchorage, Bitwise, Lightning Labs, and OpenSea and unicorns such as Airtable, Cruise, Deel, Figma, Notion and many more. On the operating side, Avichal successfully sold his last company to Facebook where he became Director of Product Management for the Local product group, a team of 400 engineers responsible for billions in revenue. In Today's Episode with Avichal Garg You Will Learn: 1.) Origins into Venture: How did Avichal make his way into the world of startups and angel investing? How did Avichal make the pivot from software to crypto investing? Was Avichal nervous when making the move to institutionalize what had been personal investing? What does Avichal know now that he wishes he had known at the start of Electric? 2.) The Landscape: Crypto Investing How does Avichal assess the crypto fund landscape today? Will we continue to see a small number of firms (a16z, Katie Haun, Paradigm, Electric) dominate the market? What happens to all the small crypto funds that have been raised in the last year? Why does Avichal believe crypto investing is much more collaborative than venture investing? How can venture size returns be made if the ownership levels are so much smaller? 3.) Crypto Firms vs Traditional VC Firms: Why does Avichal believe that crypto is software eating money? What does this mean for traditional venture? Who will survive? Who will die? Who will thrive? Why can generalist firms not compete with crypto native firms? How are the teams of crypto native firms structured so differently to those of traditional VCs? Do crypto projects and investments need the same level of service and help that generalist VCs provide with their platform services? 4.) Tokens - Equity - Liquidity: How does Avichal advise investors on how to think through token vs equity investing? When does it make sense to have a token vs not having a token? How are crypto tokens priced and valued? What do you need to know when buying tokens? How does the liquidity of crypto markets make it challenging for investor psychology? What is the biggest lesson Avichal has learned on when is the right time to sell? 5.) DAOs: 101 What are DAOs? Are they not just another form of government? What makes one DAO successful and another not? What tooling and infrastructure are required to manage a DAO successfully? What does Avichal believe the vision of a DAO should be? How should they define success? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Avichal Garg Avichal's Favourite Book: The End of the World Is Just the Beginning: Mapping the Collapse of Globalization Avichal's Most Recent Investment: Magic Eden

Eric Liaw is a General Partner @ IVP, one of the leading later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms of the last decade with $8.7 billion of committed capital and a 40-year IRR of 43.1%. At IVP eric has led investments in Datadog, Github, Klarna, Robinhood and UiPath to name a few. Prior to joining IVP, Eric was with Technology Crossover Ventures (TCV) and was actively involved in originating, executing and managing investments, including Netflix, Zillow and eHarmony. As a result of his investing success, Eric was recognized by GrowthCap as one of the Top 25 Software Investors of 2021 and 2020. In Today's Episode with Eric Liaw You Will Learn: 1.) Origins into Venture: How did Eric make his way into the world of venture way back over 20 years ago? What were some of Eric's biggest lessons from his early years at TCV? What are the most significant changes in venture over the last decade? 2.) Eric Liaw: The Investor: How has Eric changed as an investor over the last decade? What caused those changes? How does Eric reflect on his own relationship to price? How does he determine when to pay up vs when to remain disciplined? What has been Eric's biggest miss? How did it alter his style of investing? From UiPath to Supercell, what has been Eric's favourite story of travelling around the world to win a deal? 3.) The Market: Venture How does Eric expect IPO markets to behave as we move further in 2022? How does Eric expect large M&A to play out for the rest of the year? With the public markets crashing; how does this impact the large growth rounds of 2021? What does Eric expect to happen to early stage pricing with the crash at late stage? How does Eric expect crossover funds to behave in this new environment? 4.) Eric Liaw: The Person How does Eric think about being an awesome Dad and also not losing an inch on being a world class investor? How does Eric reflect on his own ego when having such large investing wins? Where does he feel he is most insecure? How did having children really impact his mindset towards investing and working with founders? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Eric Liaw Eric's Favourite Book: No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention Eric's Most Recent Investment: Aiven

Brian Hale is Vice President of Consumer Product & Growth @ Doordash. Before joining Doordash, Brian spent an incredible 10 years at Facebook, most recently as VP of Product Growth working across Instagram, Messenger, Whatsapp and more. Prior to Facebook, Brian was Director of Growth @ Uptake.com and it all started for Brian in 1999 working at ACDSee in Canada where he was asked to "figure out that search engine thing". In Today's Episode with Brian Hale You Will Learn: 1.) Brian Hale: Entry into Growth: How Brian made his way into the world of growth from being a "marine ceramic engineer"? What were 1-2 of his biggest takeaways from his 10-year journey with Facebook? What are 1-2 of the biggest misconceptions about the Facebook growth team? 2.) When is the Right Time: When is the right time for startups to hire their first growth leads or reps? How should the founder allocate resources to the growth team? Hire new designers, engineers etc for the team or pluck them from existing teams within the company? What are the biggest mistakes startups make on the timing of this hire? How can startups accurately assess whether they have product-market-fit? What levels of retention suggest PMF? How does this change by industry? 3.) Who To Hire: Step by step, how does Brian structure the interview process for all new growth hires? What are the must-ask questions for growth leaders to ask candidates in interviews? What are the clear signs and answers that suggest a 10x growth hire? How do the very best interact with data? What do they really hone in on? What literal tests does Brian do to determine the quality of a hire? How do the best perform? 4.) Onboarding and Integration: What is the optimal onboarding process for all new growth hires? What can leaders do to set their new growth teams up for success? What are the biggest ways new growth hires can mess up in the first 60 days? What have been some of the biggest challenges for Brian in his onboarding at Doordash?

Thomas Tull is a leading entrepreneur and investor as the Founder, Chairman and CEO of Tulco, LLC. he has made notable investments in the likes of FIGS, Colossal, IL MAKIAGE, Pinterest, Zoox and Oculus Rift. Previously, Tull was the founder, CEO and Chairman of Legendary Entertainment, the film company that produced blockbusters including The Dark Knight trilogy, 300 and The Hangover franchise. Outside of his investment work, Thomas is a trustee of Carnegie Mellon University, Yellowstone Forever, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution. If that was not enough, Tull is also part of the ownership group of the Pittsburgh Steelers, the six-time Super Bowl champions. In Today's Episode with Thomas Tull You Will Learn: 1.) From Laundromats to Legendary Entertainment: How did Thomas first make his way into the world of business starting with laundromats? How did growing up without money impact Thomas' early mindset? What advice does Thomas give to young people today on starting their own business? 2.) Thomas Tull: The Investor: How does Thomas approach risk today? Where is the boundary of acceptable vs unacceptable risk? How does Thomas assess his own relationship to money? How has it changed over time? How does Thomas protect himself from people and occasions where one is being used for their money or status? To what extent does Thomas believe success is luck vs skill? 3.) Legendary Entertainment: How did Thomas make his way into the movie business with the founding of Legendary Entertainment? How did Thomas first meet Chris Nolan? What did the early days of making Batman Begins look like? What were some of the most memorable times from making 300 with Gerard Butler? What were some of the most challenging elements of scaling Legendary? With the benefit of hindsight, is there anything that Thomas would do differently? 4.) The Macro: Why does Thomas believe public markets are the least rational they have ever been? From geo politics to climate change, what is Thomas most worried about today in the world? What does Thomas believe we should focus on as positives moving forward? What should we be excited about? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Thomas Tull Thomas' Favourite Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Thomas' Most Recent Investment: Colossal

Eduardo Vivas is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Curated, a network where product experts monetize their passion and help consumers make the perfect purchase. To date, Eddie has raised over $141M from some of the best including CapitalG, Greylock and Forerunner to name a few. Eddie is also a stellar angel investor with a portfolio including Telegram, Truebill, AppLovin and Dollar Shave Club among others. Prior to Curated, Eddie spent 3 years at Linkedin as Head of Talent Solutions, following his startup, Bright, being acquired by them in 2014. In Today's Episode with Eddie Vivas You Will Learn: 1.) The Founding of Curated: What was the aha moment for Eddie with Curated? What were Eddie's biggest takeaways from his prior companies? What did he take with him that worked? What did he disregard that did not work? What were some of Eddie's biggest lessons from Linkedin? How did it impact his mindset? 2.) The Compound Startup: Why did Eddie decide it was right to build so much of the tooling themselves? How does Eddie determine when to buy vs build? What are the biggest mistakes Eddie sees founders making when building multiple internal tools at the same time? How does build a compound startup increase the strategic value of a company? 3.) Hiring: Missionaries not Mercenaries How does Eddie structure his hiring process at Curated? Why does he not believe that startups are for everyone? What are the biggest signals that a person is a missionary and not a mercenary? How do mercenaries act in a way that is different to missionaries? What questions in an interview process show these traits? What are some of the biggest mistakes Eddie has made when hiring? 4.) Equity and Compensation: What is Eddie's biggest advice to founders when it comes to equity allocations for the team? Why does Eddie believe it is crucial to offer and provide secondaries for the team? How does Eddie feel about the amount of secondaries founders take today so early? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Eddie Vivas Eddie's Favourite Book: Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions

Olivia Nottebohm is the Chief Revenue Officer @ Notion where she leads the Sales, Marketing, Customer Success and Customer Experience teams. Prior to Notion, Olivia was the COO @ Dropbox where she achieved the first 4 quarters of profitable growth. Before Dropbox Olivia spent over 5 years at Google including as VP Cloud GTM Operations and Global SMB Sales. Finally, before Google, Olivia spent a whopping 15 years at McKinsey & Company. In Today's Episode with Olivia Nottebohm You Will Learn: 1.) Origins: How Olivia made her way into the world of startups and tech? What are 1-2 big takeaways Olivia has from her 5+ years at Google? How have they shaped her operating mindset today? How does Olivia balance her love for analysis and data with speed and agility of decisions? 2.) Good vs Great Operations (Ops): What does great ops really mean to Olivia? What are the 1-2 things founders can implement today to improve their ops immediately? What are the core mistakes founders make when instilling ops for the first time? How does Olivia coordinate the global Notion team to be as effective as possible? What has worked? What has not worked? 3.) The Hiring Process: Why does Olivia believe all leaders will have to accept they will not have all the talent they need over the coming years? With that in mind, is it best to hire B players or always keep the bar high? If and when can the bar be lowered? How does Olivia construct the hiring process? What are the core questions she will always ask? What is the secret to great referencing? How does Olivia enable the other side to feel safe telling her everything they know about the candidate? 4.) Cross-Functional Communication: How does Olivia advise founders on the best way to get different functions working together? What works? What does not? What are some big mistakes Olivia sees over and over? At what point in company scaling does this comms begin to breakdown? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Olivia Nottebohm Grow Fast or Die Slow: The role of profitability in sustainable growth

Jeff Lieberman is the Managing Director @ Insight Partners, one of the leading investing franchises of the last 25 years with their most recent flagship fund announced earlier this year being a staggering $20BN. As for Jeff, over the last 24 years at Insight, he has led investments in leading companies such as Qualtrics, DeliveryHero, HelloFresh, Cvent, Mimecast, and Udemy. As a result of his many investing successes, he has been selected by AlwaysOn as a Venture Capital 100 winner and by Forbes as a member of the Midas List. In Today's Episode with Jeff Lieberman You Will Learn: 1.) Origins into Venture: How did Jeff's roommate at college open his eyes to the world of venture capital? What were Jeff's biggest lessons from seeing the work ethic of his parents? How does Jeff imbue the same level of ambition on his children that he had growing up with no money? Why is Jeff keen for his children not to go to college? How does he advise them? 2.) Jeff Lieberman: The Investor: What are Jeff's biggest observations on the current landscape given his seeing first hand the dot com bust and 2008? How is now different? How is it the same? Price Sensitivity: How does Jeff reflect on his own price sensitivity? How has it changed over time? Deployment Pace: How does Jeff analyse deployment pace today both for the industry and for Insight? Does Jeff agree with the notion of "playing the game on the field"? The Biggest Miss: What have been some of Jeff's biggest misses? How did those misses impact the process with which he invests? 3.) Insight: The Firm What are the most challenging elements of firm building today? Why do all juniors have control over the Partners calendars? How does this work in practice? How does Jeff create an environment of safety where very young, junior people feel like they can challenge anyone and have discussion? How do Insight train young people? What is the process? What works? What does not work? 4.) AMA: What does Jeff know now about venture that he wishes he had known when he started? What would Jeff most like to change about the world of venture capital? What advice does Jeff give to young people today entering the industry? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Jeff Lieberman Jeff's Favourite Book: Man's Search For Meaning Jeff's Most Recent Investment: Choco

Casey Winters is the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite where he leads the PM, product design, research, and growth marketing teams. Prior to Eventbrite, Casey spent close to 3 years at Pinterest where he led the growth product team. Andy Johns is one of the pre-eminent growth leaders of the last decade. Andy's career started in growth at Facebook when the company scaled from 100M-500M active users. Since he has worked in some of the leading growth orgs at companies like Twitter, Quora and more recently at Wealthfront as Head of Growth and President. Bangaly Kaba is the Head of Platform Growth @ Popshop Live, a live streaming mobile marketplace that combines commerce, entertainment, and social. Prior to Popshop, Bangaly led the product growth and consumer product orgs at Instacart and before Instacart was Head of Growth @ Instagram, where he built and led the product team that helped grow Instagram from 440M to > 1B monthly actives in 2.5yrs. Elena Verna is a master when it comes to all things starting and scaling growth organizations. Previously, Elena spent over 7 years as SVP Growth @ SurveyMonkey where she ran product, growth marketing, and data teams. Post SurveyMonkey, Elena worked with the rocket ship that is Miro both as Interim CMO and as an advisor. Ed Baker is an angel investor and growth advisor to various startups including Lime, Zwift, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer, and Playbook. Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013-2017. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook. Rob Schutz is Chief Growth Officer and Co-founder at Ro, the healthcare technology company building a patient-centric healthcare system. Under Rob's growth leadership, Ro has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the country. Prior to Ro, Rob was VP of Growth at Bark, the makers of BarkBox, and helped scale revenue from zero to $100 million. In Today's Episode with Ed Baker You Will Learn: 1.) Casey Winters: How does Casey define "growth"? How does it differ from product? How do the best growth leaders decide between art vs science when making growth decisions? 2.) Andy Johns: What is Andy's biggest advice to founders looking to build their first growth team? What unexpected choice did Andy decide to make at Twitter that moved the needle for new user acquisition? 3.) Bangaly Kaba: What were some of Bangaly's biggest takeaways from scaling Instagram from 440M users to 1BN? What decisions did Bangaly make without data? How did they go? What did he learn? 4.) Ed Baker: What are Ed's biggest takeaways from facebook around structuring growth teams? What are Ed's biggest pieces of advice for startyups looking to grow internationally? What were some of Ed's biggest learnings from working with Travis @ Uber? 5.) Elena Verna: What is the difference between a good vs great growth model? When does one need to change or amend their growth model? How does one know when it is working? 6.) Rob Schutz: Why does Rob believe that startups should not diversify their customer acquisition channels too quickly? How does Rob assess resouirce allocation and spend on new channels? How did this process look when partnering with the MLB for Ro?

Grant LaFontaine is the Founder & CEO @ Whatnot, the fastest-growing marketplace in the US, empowering people to make a living off their passion. To date, Grant has raised over $225M for Whatnot from the likes of CapitalG, a16z, YC, Scribble Ventures and Wonder Ventures to name a few. Prior to Whatnot, Grant was a PM @ Facebook working on the Oculus App Store and before that was the founder of Kit.com, ultimately acquired by Patreon. In Today's Episode with Grant LaFontaine You Will Learn: 1.) The Founding of Whatnot: How did Grant make his way into the world of tech and startups? What were some of his biggest lessons from Facebook? How did that impact how he has built Whatnot? 2.) Impossible To Hire Product Managers: Why does Grant believe it is impossible to hire product managers today? How does this impact the decision-making powers of engineers? How does Grant test for this product knowledge in all engineers he adds to the team? What are clear signals of 10x engineers in hiring processes? 3.) A/B Testing and Risk Mindset: Why does Grant not believe in the effectiveness of A/B testing? Why does it not work? Why does Grant believe one of the biggest reasons for startups failing is they do not take enough risk? How does Grant try to ensure that his team takes as much risk as possible with everything that they do? How does mindset to risk change with scale of company and with leadership? 4.) AMA: Why does Grant disagree with founders angel investing? What are the biggest challenges Whatnot has faced in scaling? CEO coach? Who? When? What is the biggest lesson? What is the single driving metric of Whatnot? How does Grant advise founders to determine their North Star metric? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Grant LaFontaine Grant's Favourite Book: Foundation: 1/3 (Foundation Trilogy)

Luciana Lixandru is a Partner @ Sequoia, one of the world's most renowned and successful venture firms with Sequoia-backed companies accounting for more than 20% of NASDAQ's total value. As for Luciana, at Sequoia she has led investments in the likes of PennyLane, Xentral, Veed and Ledgy to name a few. Prior to joining Sequoia in 2020, Luciana was a Partner @ Accel where she made investments in Hopin, Miro, UiPath, Tessian and Deliveroo. As a result of such investing success, Luciana was #2 on the Midas List in 2021. In Today's Episode with Luciana Lixandru You Will Learn: 1.) Origins: How did Luciana make her way from a small town in Romania to being Partner @ Sequoia? What were the 1-2 crucible moments in her life that changed the course of her life? 2.) Luciana: The Investor How has Luciana's investing style changed and developed over the years? How does Luciana reflect on her own relationship to price? What misses caused these changes? Hopin, Miro, Deliveroo, UiPath, how did having such winners so early impact Luciana's investing mindset? What would Luciana say is her biggest insecurity today? What drives this? 3.) Sequoia: The Team What are Luciana's biggest takeaways from working with Doug Leone, Alfren Lin, Roelof Botha and Pat Grady? What does the decision-making process look like for new deals within Sequoia? How does the Sequoia partnership create an environment of safety where everyone can discuss and debate freely? How does Luciana approach training and mentorship? What works and what does not? 4.) Sequoia in Europe + Sequoia's Arc: What is Arc? Why was now the right time for Sequoia to do it? What is the structure for the program? How many startups are part of it? Who is able to apply? How much capital do the startups receive? What else do they receive in mentoring etc? In 5 years time, what would success look like for Luciana with Arc? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Luciana Lixandru Luciana's Favourite Book: The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War

Lenny Rachitsky is one of the OGs of product, having spent over 7 years at Airbnb as a product lead he left to start his newsletter, find it here. This has scaled to thousands upon thousands of readers and is one of the most popular newsletters on Substack. Lenny is also an extremely active angel investor with a portfolio including Figma, Sorare, Clubhouse, Vanta, WhatNot and many more incredible companies. If that was not enough, Lenny also has the best course on product management, check it out here. In Today's Episode with Lenny Rachitsky You Will Learn: 1.) Origins in Product: How did Lenny make his way iunto the world of product management at Airbnb? What were some of his biggest takeaways from his time at Airbnb on product? What mistakes did he make on product at Airbnb? How did it impact his product thinking? 2.) Product Management: 101 How does Lenny define product management today? How is the role of PM changing? When is the right time to hire your first PM as a startup? What is the difference between Head of Product and CPO? When do you hire each? What are the biggest mistakes founders make when hiring their first product hires? 3.) The Hiring Process: How should founders breakdown the process of hiring for their first in product? What does the interview process look like? How should founders structure it? What core questions should teams ask of prospective candidates? What are red flags when interviewing potential product hires? 4.) The Onboarding Process: How should founders structure the onboarding process for new product hires? What can founders do to make PMs successful in their first 30 days? Where do many product hires make the biggest mistakes in the first 30 days? What can product hires do to build trust with their new team? Items Mentioned in Today's Episode with Lenny Rachitsky Lenny's Fave Book: The Mom Test

David Friedberg is Founder and CEO of The Production Board (TPB), a holding company established to solve the most fundamental problems that affect our planet, by reimagining global systems of production. Prior to founding The Production Board, David founded The Climate Corporation, a 10-year journey that culminated in their $930M acquisition by Monsanto. If that was not enough, David is the Founder and Chairman at Metromile and also sits on the board of Soylent, Clara Foods, Tillable, Cana Technologies and more. In Today's Episode with David Friedberg You Will Learn: 1.) Origins: How David made his way into the world of startups and technology from academia and physics? What were David's biggest takeaways from scaling The Climate Corp to $930M exit to Monsanto? How did the exit put pressure on David for all future companies he builds? How does he manage that? 2.) The Macro: Venture + The Economy How does David foresee the impending rate hikes? What impact will this have on venture and the economy? What segment of the market will be first to be hit? Why is growth investing last to be hit? How does early stage play out in this very new environment? How will we see the velocity of capital deployment change in this new period? What does David believe are some of the crucial flaws of the venture model? How does David reflect on his own price sensitivity? What lessons has he learned from deals he has done or missed that have changed his perspective? 3.) David Frankel: The Business Builder What is David's rubrik for business value creation? How has this changed with time? How mentally plastic does one have to be around the time it takes to see margins, unit economics etc change from negative to positive? How does David and the team approach building new companies at TPB? Where do they find the founding teams? How do they incentivise them? How does TPB approach continuous funding for the companies they create? What milestones need to be hit? How do they assess them? How does David approach liquidity with regards to exits for the companies they create? Why does their holding company structure mean they have different incentives to VCs? 4.) David Friedberg: Father and Husband How does David reflect on his own relationship to money today? How has it changed over time? What have been David's biggest realisations on what provides him true happiness? How did having children change his operating mentality? What does being a great father mean to David? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with David Friedberg David's Favourite Book: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Sid Sijbrandij is the Co-founder & CEO @ GitLab. GitLab's single application helps organizations deliver software faster and more efficiently while strengthening their security and compliance. Prior to their IPO last year, Sid raised funding from some of the best including ICONIQ, GV, Tiger, Coatue and D1 to name a few. Under his leadership, the company has grown to over 1,500 employees and over 30 million registered users. If that was not enough, Sid is also an active angel and sits on the board of Meltano, a spinout of Gitlab that allows you to manage all the data tools in your stack. In Today's Episode with Sid Sijbrandij You Will Learn: 1.) The Founding of Gitlab: How did Sid make his way into the world of tech and startups? What was it about Gitlab as a project that excited Sid so much from Day 1? How did Sid convince his co-founder to turn Gitlab from a project into a company? 2.) The Future of Work: Why does Sid believe it is a fallacy that everyone will go back to the office? What are the 1-2 most important things for companies to do when moving to a remote work environment? Where does Sid see many make mistakes? What have Gitlab done to create a remote working environment so successfully? What have they tried that has not worked? What stage of company building does remote work best for? When is it most challenging? 3.) Sid: The Leader How has Sid changed and evolved as a leader over the Gitlab journey? How does Sid look to get as much feedback as possible on his leadership? How does Sid create an environment of safety where everyone feels they can provide feedback? How does Sid work with his CEO coach? Should every CEO have one? What should one look for in them? How do you know when you need to change your CEO coach? 4.) Sid: The Board Member: What have been Sid's biggest lessons on what makes successful board management? In prep for the meeting, what materials does Sid provide? When does he send them? Does he present to the board? What mistakes do founders make in boards? From being on the other side as a board member, what does Sid believe the best members do? What would Sid most like to change about board meetings today? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Sid Sijbrandij Sid's Favourite Book: High Output Management

Jeanne DeWitt Grosser is Head of Americas Revenue & Growth @ Stripe. In this role, Jeanne is responsible for all sales functions across the region including Sales Development, AEs, Solutions Architects, and many more. Jeanne also continues to spearhead Stripe's Enterprise strategy. Prior to this role, Jeanne was Stripe's Head of North America Sales where she built out Stripe's Acquisition Sales teams. Pre-Stripe, Jeanne was CRO @ Dialpad and also spent many years at Google in numerous different roles including most recently as Director of GSuite SMB & Mid-Market Sales, North America and LATAM. In Today's Episode with Jeanne DeWitt Grosser You Will Learn: 1.) Entry into Sales: How did Jeanne make her way into her first sales job in tech? What did Jeanne learn from her many years at Google about how sales should interact with engineering? In hindsight, what would Jeanne have done differently/improved from her time with Dialpad? How did the role with Stripe come about? 2.) The Playbook: Does the founder need to be the one to create the sales playbook? When is the right time to bring in the first sales hire? Should they be a sales leader or rep? How does both the playbook and the type of sales hire change when hiring for a product-led-growth motion vs a traditional enterprise motion? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when hiring their first in sales? 3.) The Hiring Process: How should founders structure the hiring process for their first sales hires? What did Dialpad do in the sales hiring process that worked well? How has Jeanne taken that to her hiring process at Stripe? What should be achieved or learned in each consecutive interview? How can founders use sales case studies most effectively? How can founders know if sales candidates truly have a strong grasp of the product? What are early signs of a 10x sales hire? What are red flags to look out for in the process? 4.) Sales Onboarding: What does the ideal onboarding process look like for new sales hires? What tasks and duties should all sales hires perform in the first 60 days? What are early signs that a new hire is not performing to the right standard? How does the first few months differ for sales reps when comparing a product-led-growth company to an enterprise company? What should sales leaders do to ensure that new hires engage with product and customer success efficiently?

Harley Finkelstein is the President of Shopify, the platform modern commerce is built on. Over the last 12 years, Harley has partnered with Tobi to the tune of building Shopify's revenue to over $4.6BN in 2021 and the team to over 10,000 employees. On the side, Harley is an Advisor to Felicis Ventures and in the past has held board seats at CBC, Omers Ventures and The C100. If that was not enough, you can see Harley on a screen near you as one of the "Dragons" on CBC's Next Gen Den. In Today's Episode with Harley Finkelstein You Will Learn: 1.) The Founding Story: What was Harley's first entrepreneurial endeavour? How did seeing his family lose everything impact Harley's mindset and ambition? How did Harley first meet Tobi @ Shopify? How did the Shopify journey begin? 2.) Leadership Lessons: How has Harley changed as a leader over the 13 years with Shopify? How does Harley embrace vulnerability and authenticity in his communication with the team? What is Harley most insecure about when he looks at leadership today? What have been some of the biggest lessons Harley has learned from his board on what great leadership is? 3.) The Art of Marriage: What does Harley believe makes the most successful marriage? Why have Harley and his wife been seeing a marriage therapist from the early days? What is the biggest mistake people make when communicating with partners? How has Harley changed as a husband over the years? 4.) The Joy of Fatherhood: Does Harley always believe he has been a good father? What was his realisation moment that he was not being the father he wanted to be? What core elements of his behaviour did he change? How did that impact his relationship with his kids? How does Harley ensure he performs at the highest level while also being there and being present for his family? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Harley Finkelstein Harley's Favourite Book: The Book of Ichigo Ichie: The Art of Making the Most of Every Moment, the Japanese Way

Scott Dietzen is Vice Chairman of the Board of Pure Storage and served as the Company's CEO from 2010 to 2017. Under his leadership, Pure grew to thousands of employees and completed an IPO in 2015. Dietzen is a four-time successful entrepreneur with WebLogic, Zimbra, and Transarc. Before Pure, he was President and CTO of Zimbra (now part of VMware), but originally acquired by Yahoo!, where Dietzen served as interim SVP of Communications and Communities. Prior to Zimbra, Dietzen was CTO of BEA Systems, where he helped craft the technology and business strategy for WebLogic that drove BEA from $61m in annual revenues prior to the WebLogic acquisition to over $1B. In Today's Episode with Scott Dietzen You Will Learn: 1.) The Journey to Pure Storage CEO: How did Scott make his way into the world of tech and startups? What was the hardest element of making the transition from CTO to CEO? What advice would Scott give to more technical leaders looking to make the move to CEO? Where do so many make mistakes? 2.) How To Build Trust in a Team: What are the most important ways that leaders can build trust with their teams? How can leaders be honest and share the hard truths without damaging role? What is the right tone to communicate both the big wins and big losses? Why does Scott always believe the losses teach more? How does Scott approach post-mortems? 3.) The Biggest Mistakes Founders Make: What are the single biggest hiring mistakes that founders make? What are the single biggest firing mistakes executives make? Why should founders sometimes say no to customers? How should founders approach investor selection and valuation for rounds? 4.) How to Optimise a Board: What specifically can founders do to optimise their board? What are the biggest errors founders make when communicating with their board? What is the value per word framework? How does it tell which board member is the best? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Scott Dietzen Scott's Favourite Book: The 22 Immutable Laws Of Marketing

Sahil Bloom is the Founding Partner @ SRB Ventures, a $10M fund that leverages the 500K followers Sahil has amassed to invest at the intersection of venture and media. Previously, Sahil spent 7 years at a large investment fund managing >$3.5 billion in capital and serves on the board of 4 companies. He has also been an active angel investor in over 30 companies. In Today's Episode with Sahil Bloom You Will Learn: 1.) How Sahil made his way from a career in traditional finance to building a media company and leveraging that to raise the latest SRB fund? How does Sahil advise others is the best way to "find their zone of genius"? 2.) How To Build a Media Engine: What have been some of Sahil's biggest lessons on what works on Twiter and what does not work? What is the golden rule for Twitter? How does Sahil plan and come up with ideas for his Twitter threads? What tools and software does he use? How long does each thread take? 3.) The End of the Road for Traditional Venture: Why does Sahil think traditional venture is dying? What newcomers will take the place of the existing incumbents? Why does he think they are weak? What do new players provide that they do not? Which existing players will remain and be strong? Which will fade out? Does Sahil believe that VCs really provide any value? 4.) SRB Ventures: Why did Sahil decide to raise the new fund? How did he decide on size of the fund? What is the strategy? What is the portfolio construction? How does SRB provide media services others do not? How did Sahil meet Tim Cook and get him to invest in the fund? What is the biggest thing Sahil believes most people misunderstand about luck? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Sahil Bloom Sahil's Favourite Book: When Breath Becomes Air: Kalanithi Paul Sahil's Most Recent Investment: Wander

Tiger Global are one of the most discussed venture firms on the planet. With a deal cadence and capital deployment speed that is unmatched, they have made their mark on the venture landscape like no other over the last 24 months. Today we are joined by leaders from Sequoia, Benchmark, Thrive Capital, General Atlantic, GGV and Aleph to discuss the rise of Tiger and how it impacts the venture ecosystem. In Today's Episode on Tiger Global You Will Learn: 1.) Doug Leone: Sequoia Capital Why we need to change the words when use in venture? Why we need to get rid of "the game"? How does the rise of Tiger compare to the rise of prior entrants with the same approach? Why does Doug believe that the craft of venture will persist despite these new entrants? 2.) Bill Gurley: Benchmark Capital How does Bill analyse the change in late stage venture today? What are the main drivers of the increased competition in late stage venture? Why does Bill get concerned not by Tiger but how others respond to Tiger's model? How does Bill analyse the entry of hedge funds and PE funds into traditional venture models? 3.) Michael Eisenberg: Aleph How does Michael think about the "weaponisation of capital"? What are the significant benefits for a fund of having more capital than their competitors? How does this capital advantage change in boom and bust times? 4.) Anton Levy: General Atlantic Why does Anton believe that funds are leveraging their assets more efficiently than ever? How does Anton approach the mindset of AUM scaling without lowering returns? Why does Anton never want to compete on price? How does GA think about competing in a world of Tiger and hedge funds investing in tech? 5.) Hans Tung: GGV Why did Hans always believe the model to look at moving forward was Tiger? Why does Tiger's business model allow them structural and financial advantages over their competitors? What does Hans make of the data network effects of Tiger with their strategy? 6.) Kareem Zaki: Thrive Capital Why does Kareem think Tiger's approach makes absolute sense? Why does Kareem believe so many in venture like to try and discredit the Tiger model? How does Tiger's approach differ to Thrive's?

Max Rhodes is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Faire, the online marketplace where retailers discover their next bestsellers from independent brands across the globe. To date, Max has raised over $1.1BN with Faire from some of the best including Sequoia, Founders Fund, DST, Forerunner, Lightspeed and many more. Prior to starting Faire, Max spent close to 5 years at Square in numerous different roles including Director of Consumer Product at Caviar. In Today's Episode with Max Rhodes You Will Learn: 1.) The Founding Story: How Max made his way into the world of startups with his joining an early Square team? How did his 5 years at Square impact how he approaches company building with Faire? How did Square's approach to product and mission impact Max's thinking? 2.) How To Hire Effectively: How does Max construct the hiring process? Where do many founders make mistakes? What does Max mean by "deep behavioural interview"? What questions does he ask? What are the signals of 10/10 candidates? What are red flags he looks for? How does Max determine capability? What literal tests can be done to test for this? 3.) How To Reference People: How does Max approach the referencing process when hiring people? How does Max make the other side feel comfortable, so they will open up and share everything? What have been some of Max's biggest lessons on what it takes to do referencing well? Where do many make mistakes with referencing? How does Max use an "out of 10" system to determine the quality of the candidate? 4.) How to Strategise: How does Max use strategy docs to orient the direction of the company? How often does Max write them? How long do they take to write? What are the core components of the strategy docs? Who else is involved in their writing? Once written, what is the right format to discuss with the team? How does Max approach how rigid he is to the strategies outlined? How does he determine whether he should change strategy or stick to plan? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Max Rhodes Max's Favourite Book: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Who: The A Method for Hiring

Ed Baker is an angel investor and growth advisor to various startups including Lime, Zwift, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer, and Playbook. Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013-2017. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook, a company he joined after they acquired a startup he co-founded called Friend.ly, which had grown to over 25 million users. In Today's Episode with Ed Baker You Will Learn: 1.) Ed Baker: Entry into Growth: How Ed made his way into the world of growth from his start founding a dating site while at Harvard? How he made his way to lead international growth at Facebook? How his time with Facebook led to his joing Uber to start Uber's growth team? What were Ed's biggest lessons from Uber and Facebook? How did his approach to growth and mindset change as a result of his time there? 2.) When is the Right Time: When is the right time for startups to hire their first growth leads or reps? How should they determine whether to promote from within or hire externally? What are the biggest mistakes startups make on the timing of this hire? How can startups accurately assess whether they have product-market-fit? 3.) Who To Hire: Step by step, how does Ed structure the interview process for all new growth hires? What are the must ask questions for growth leaders to ask candidates in interviews? What are the clear signs and answers that suggest a 10x growth hire? What literal tests does Ed do to determine the quality of a hire? How do the best perform? 4.) Onboarding and Integration: What is the optimal onboarding process for all new growth hires? How do the best growth hires start in the first 60 days? What do they achieve? What are some of the early signs that a growth hire is not working out? How should the relationship be between the CEO and the Head of Growth? How can the Head of Growth foster a strong relationship between growth and product teams?

Geoff Lewis is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Bedrock, now with over $1BN in AUM, Bedrock invests in breakout technology companies that are incongruent with popular narratives. In the past, Geoff has backed some generational defining companies such as Wish, Lyft, Nubank, RigUp, Vercel, Anduril and many more. Prior to founding Bedrock, Geoff was a Partner @ Founders Fund. In Today's Episode with Geoff Lewis You Will Learn: 1.) How Geoff made his way into the world of venture with his joining Founders Fund? How his time with Founders Fund led to his co-founding Bedrock with Eric? 2.) Geoff Lewis: The Investor: How does Geoff reflect on his own relationship to price? How does he determine when to pay up vs walk away? How does Geoff approach the re-investment decision-making process? Where do most go wrong when it comes to allocating reserves? What have been some of Geoff's biggest misses? How did they impact his investing mindset? Why does Geoff not believe that ownership is as crucial as other VCs suggest? 3.) Bedrock: The Firm What have been some of the biggest challenges in building Bedrock? Where does Geoff believe many firms make core mistakes in firm building? What are the differences between principles and rules? Why does Geoff believe all firms need to have principles? How does Geoff approach internal talent building? What are the signals of people that will succeed in venture? How do they approach learning? 4.) The Market: How does Geoff analyse the current state of the venture market? Does Geoff agree with the notion of "play the game on the field"? Why does Geoff think markups are BS and just VCs looking for external validation? How has Geoff learned to isolate from the VC community and retain that purity of mindset working with great entrepreneurs? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Geoff Lewis Geoff's Favourite Book: Friedrich Nietzsche Geoff's Most Recent Investment: Praxis

Aaron Levie is the Founder and CEO @ Box, the company incorporating the best of secure content collaboration with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people work today. Prior to their IPO in 2015, Aaron raised from some of the best in the business including the main man Mark Cuban, a16z, Emergence, DST, Coatue, DFJ and many more. Aaron founded the company from his dorm room at the University of Southern California and has led the company to 1,900 employees and over $770M in revenue, as of 2021 data. In Today's Episode with Aaron Levie You Will Learn: 1.) How Aaron founded Box from his dorm room at the University of Southern California? What was that founding a-ha moment? What did the first year look like? Does Aaron agree, "serial entrepreneurship is overrated"? 2.) Phases of Leadership and Company Growth: How does Aaron define the different phases of leadership required as a company grows? Which phase did Aaron find the most challenging? How did he overcome it? What are the first things to break when companies grow? What can founders do to prevent this? Does Aaron agree, "the best CEOs are the best resource allocators"? 3.) The Market: How does Aaron thinkj about the dislocation between private company valuations and public company market caps? What does Aaron believe are the biggest challenges founders face when they are over-capitalised? What does Aaron mean when he says, "raise when cash is cheap, spend as if it was expensive"? How does Aaron advise founders on fundraising today? 4.) The Team and Culture: How does Aaron create a safe space where all team members can come to him with anything? How does Aaron approach effective goal setting? How does one balance between achieveable and also aggressive goals? How does Aaron approach the art of delegation? What is his decision-making framework for what to delegate vs what to control? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Aaron Levie Aaron's Favourite Book: Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)

Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, investor, and currently serves as 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. In 2006, Scott founded Behance, the leading online platform for the creative industry, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Behance now has over 25M members. Scott is also an early advisor and investor in Pinterest, Uber, Sweetgreen, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, and several others. Finally, if that was not enough, Scott is the author of two national bestselling books - Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle. In Today's Episode with Scott Belsky You Will Learn: 1.) Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality: What does Scott believe is the core challenge in product? What was the single biggest product challenge Scott faced at Behance? How did they overcome it? When should product teams listen to customer feedback vs ignore it? What are the core questions product teams should ask user groups to extract the most feedback and value? 2.) The Importance of the First Mile: What does Scott believe makes a great first mile when it comes to the product experience? Where do so many companies go wrong in creating the first mile user experience? Which company at scale has retained this simplicity of the first mile? How did they do it? What does Scott mean when he says, "the devil is in the defaults"? What can product teams learn from this? 3.) The Makings of a Great Product Leader: What are the 3 core questions every great product leader should ask on every screen? How do the best product leaders structure product reviews? Who is invited to product reviews? How often are they? Who sets the agenda? When is it sent? What do the best product leaders do to retain direction and productivity in reviews when there are many people and many ideas? How do they stay on track? 4.) The Hirings of a Great Product Team: How can founders know whether to hire the product leader or retain the role? When is the right time? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when hiring their first product hires? How should founders structure the hiring process for product hires? What should they look to gain from each interview? What are the must ask questions in those interviews? How do the best respond? What case studies or physical tests can be done to determine the quality of a candidate?

David Frankel is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Founder Collective, one of the great seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Uber, Coupang, Airtable, Whoop and many more incredible companies. Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT. David is also a founding board member of Endeavor SA and in the past has been selected by the World Economic Forum for the Global Leader of Tomorrow (GLT) program. In Today's Episode with David Frankel You Will Learn: 1.) How David made his way into the world of angel investing? How his mindset changed when making the transition from angel to an institutional investor with the founding of Founder Collective? 2.) Building the Firm: Founder Collective What are the biggest challenges in venture firm building today? Why is "deploy" and "the game" banned as words within Founder Collective? What terms are promoted as an alternative? How does David construct investment decision-making in the partnership? How does David create a safe space where all team members can share their thoughts in a non-judgemental, safe environment? What are the biggest mistakes or challenges that David sees firms make when building? 3.) David Frankel: Investor Mindset How does David analyse the current seed market today? What does he like? What worries him? Does David agree that early stage investing has never been less collaborative? How does David reflect on his own relationship to price today? How does he determine when to pay up vs when not to? How does David think about the compression on fund deployment timelines? Will this change? How does David keep a fresh and clean mind when viewing new opportunities, having seen many work and not work? How does one retain that mental purity when investing? What have been some of David's biggest misses? How did it impact his style of investing? 4.) The Partnership: What was the most recent disagreement David had with the partnership? How was it resolved? How does David approach self-doubt and insecurity within the partnership? How can this be managed successfully? What have been some of David's biggest lessons on how to give effective feedback without being judgemental? In a world of Zoom, how did the partnership retain the same level and quality of connection that they had in person? What works? What does not work? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with David Frankel David's Favourite Book: The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race David's Most Recent Investment: PairTree

Mark Cuban is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Today we are focused on Mark's latest entrepreneurial endeavor, starting Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company, the online pharmacy taking out the middlemen, meaning no price games and huge drug savings. As mentioned, Mark is also the proud owner of Dallas Mavericks, since his taking over they have competed in the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history in 2006 – and became NBA World Champions in 2011. Before Dallas Mavericks, Mark co-founded Broadcast.com – streaming audio over the internet. In just four short years, Broadcast.com (then Audionet) was sold to Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars. If that was not enough, Mark is also one of ABC's "Sharks" on the hit show Shark Tank. In Today's Episode with Mark Cuban You Will Learn: 1.) Cost Plus Drugs: Origin Why Mark decided to build Cost Plus Drugs? Why has no one done it before? How does Mark think about resource and time allocation with Cost Plus? 2.) Building the Team: Hiring How does mark analyze his approach to hiring? Where is he weak? Where is he strong? What one motto does Mark always use when it comes to hiring? What is the most common mistake Mark sees founders make when it comes to team build? How does Mark identify stress removers? What are the core signals? 3.) Brand + Capital + Business Strategy: Why is the current cost structure of healthcare so damaged in the US? How does Cost Plus change this? How does Mark think about what it takes to build great brand today? Why will Cost Plus not be doing big TV and traditional media advertising? What types of guerilla marketing is Mark most excited by? Why will Mark never have a billboard in Times Square? 4.) AMA with Mark Cuban: What 3 traits does Mark most want his children to adopt? What worries Mark most today? What are Mark's biggest strengths? What are his biggest weaknesses? What single purchase has brought Mark the greatest joy?

Dannie Herzberg is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital and one of the great sales leaders of the last decade. Prior to entering the world of venture, Dannie spent 4 years at Slack as their Head of Enterprise Sales, there Dannie built & scaled the self-serve / SMB, mid-market, and enterprise sales orgs across the Americas as Slack grew from $100M - $1B in revenue. Before Slack, Dannie spent over 5 years at Hubspot building sales, opening an SF office, and then joining product to launch CRM & platform. In Today's Episode with Dannie Herzberg You Will Learn: 1.) How Dannie got her first job in sales at Hubspot through being a waitress in a Boston Diner? What were her biggest lessons from her 5 years scaling sales at Hubspot? How did Dannie's 4 years at Slack impact her operating and sales mindset today? 2.) The Playbook: Does the founder need to be the one to create the sales playbook? When is the right time to bring in the first sales hire? Should they be a sales leader or rep? When is the right time to bring in a CRO, sales enablement and revenue ops? What are the single biggest mistakes founders make when hiring their first in sales? 3.) The Hiring Process: How should founders structure the hiring process for their first sales hires? What should be achieved or learned in each consecutive interview? How can founders use sales case studies most effectively? What are early signs of a 10x sales hire? What are red flags to look out for in the process? 4.) Sales Onboarding: What does the ideal onboarding process look like for new sales hires? What tasks and duties should all sales hires perform in the first 60 days? What are early signs that a new hire is not performing to the right standard? How does the first few months differ for sales reps when comparing a product-led-growth company to an enterprise company? How can new sales hires really engage with broader functions within the team in the first 30 days? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Dannie Herzberg Inbound Marketing, Revised and Updated: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online

Roger Ehrenberg is a Founding Partner @ IA Ventures, one of the most successful seed funds of the last decade with $475 million across their four funds. Previous investments include The Trade Desk, Datadog, Digital Ocean, Wise and Recorded Future. Most recently, Roger took a step away from the day-to-day running of the firm, since he started IA Sports Partners, investing in sports franchises and other sports-related assets. Last month, Roger, alongside his two sons, started Eberg Capital, an investment vehicle focused on web3, crypto, NFTs and next-gen infrastructure. In Today's Episode with Roger Ehrenberg You Will Learn: 1.) How Roger made his way into the world of angel investing and venture having had a successful career on Wall St? How did seeing the booms and busts of the dot com and 2008 impact his investing mindset today? How does today compare to those times? 2.) The Investor Mindset: What is Roger's #1 rule when it comes to managing investor psychology in volatile times? What does Roger do to calm his mind and prevent worry and fear when markets crash? What works? What does not work? How does one assess how close we are to the bottom? Why does Roger believe there is more "blood on the streets to come"? When does Roger believe is the right time to pullback vs when to be aggressive in deployment? What company profiles will do well vs poorly moving into this new cycle? 3.) Investing Strategy: How does this new market impact the three different investing categories; early, Series A & B and growth? Why does Roger believe deployment timelines will be extended? How will pricing be impacted? Why does Roger believe that the Series A & B crunch is the most worrisome? How will their bar for what makes a great company change? Should early stage managers alter their reserves strategy in the face of more stringent Series A rounds? Why does it not make sense to invest in "pay to play" rounds? How does Roger adivse the companies that he works with today on burn vs growth? 4.) AMA: How does Roger evaluate his own relationship to money today? How has it changed over time? What does Roger believes makes a truly successful marriage? What can one do to foster extreme trust and safety in a marriage? What does Roger believe have been some of the biggest insecurities he has had to overcome over the last decade? How did he overcome them? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Roger Ehrenberg RIP Good Times by Sequoia Capital

Scott Sandell is the Managing General Partner of NEA, one of the leading firms of the last 3 decades with now close to $24Bn under management and a portfolio including Salesforce, Robinhood, Plaid, Databricks and more. As for Scott, since joining the firm in 1996 he has led investments in Salesforce.com, Tableau Software, WebEx and Workday and serves on the board of Robinhood, Cloudflare, Coursera and Divvy to name a few. Rick Yang is a General Partner and Head of Consumer Investing @ NEA, since joining in 2007 he has led investments in the likes of Masterclass, Plaid, Robinhood and many more. In Today's Episode with Scott Sandell and Rick Yang You Will Learn: 1.) How Rick came to meet Vlad, Robinhood Founder, for the first time? What impressed Rick most in that first meeting? How did the internal discussions proceed at NEA? Was it a unanimous decision to make the investment? 2.) The Market: How did Rick and Scott evaluate the market at the time? Bottoms up, top down? How did the market change and evolve both in ways they did and did not expect? How do Rick and Scott evaluate market timing risk today when investing? How did Rick and Scott approach outcome scenario planning with Robinhood? 3.) The Traction: What core signals and datapoints made Rick realise Robinhood had product-market-fit? How did Rick and NEA analyse Robinhood's early organic customer acquisition? How did the board advise on how to spend their first marketing dollars? How does the cost structure of the business compare to Charles Swaab and eTrade? Why is Robinhood such a superior model? 4.) The Team: How has Vlad evolved and developed as a leader over time? How did Vlad handle the 36 hours in Feb 2021 when he had to go and raise $3BN+? Who is the unsung hero of the Robinhood team? What have they done to deserve this?

Jonathan Neman is Co-Founder & CEO of Sweetgreen, the mission-driven restaurant brand that serves healthy food at scale. Alongside his co-founders, Jon has scaled Sweetgreen from one small restaurant to one of the US' leading food brands with over 5,000 employees, over 140 locations and $300M+ in revenue. If that was not enough, Jon is also an active board member of MeUndies. In Today's Episode with Jonathan Neman You Will Learn: 1.) How Jon took the decision to leave his "dream job" as a consultant at Bain to start Sweetgreen? What did his Bain boss tell him that persuaded Jon it was the right decision to leave? How does Jon think about and advise people when it comes to choosing the safe vs the risky path? 2.) How Sweetgreen was not an Overnight Success: At what moment did Jon really not think that Sweetgreen would make it? Why? How did he deal with those moments of intense stress and pressure? How does Jon test for true grit and resilience both in hires and in founders today? 3.) Brand + Capital + Business Strategy: How does Jon think deeply about what brand means today? What did Sweetgreen do right when it comes to their brand building? How did they marry art and science in the right way? What do the unit economics look like on a per store basis? What is the payback period on a per store basis? How has this changed over time? How does the store design impact the profit per store? How has store design changed over time? What have been some of the biggest lessons in terms of when, where and how to open new stores? 4.) Leading Through COVID: What were some of Jon's biggest lessons from leading a consumer brand through COVID What were some of the toughest elements for Jon? How did he overcome them? How can founders bring people along with their thought process and inspire? Who is Jon's biggest mentor? What has he learned from them? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Jonathan Neman Jon's Favourite Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman

Anne Wojcicki is the Founder & CEO @ 23andme, offering DNA testing with the most comprehensive ancestry breakdown, personalized health insights, and more. To date, Anne has raised over $1BN for the company from the likes of Sequoia, GV, NEA and many more incredible names. Prior to founding 23andMe, Anne spent a decade on Wall Street investing in healthcare and felt frustrated by a system built around monetizing illness instead of incentivizing prevention. If that was not enough, Anne is also on the board of Cazoo and The Anne Wojcicki Foundation and is an active angel investor with investments in the likes of Embark and Maven Clinic. In Today's Episode with Anne Wojcicki You Will Learn: 1.) How Anne made her way from Wall St healthcare investing to founding one of the leading healthcare companies of the last decade in 23andme? 2.) Trust and Friendship: How does Anne determine whether someone is genuine or is being transactional? What are the signs? How does Anne approach trust in relationships? Start from a base of full trust and it is to be lost or start with none and it is to be gained? What does Anne believe are the core of the best and most healthy relationships she has? 3.) Leadership: How does Anne reflect on her own decision-making processes today? How does Anne create a safe space where her team feel they can pushback on her and tell her how they feel? How does Anne approach internal role migration? What does Anne do to get the very best out of her team? How has Anne's leadership style changed over the years? How has being on the board of Cazoo changed how Anne reflects on her own board leadership? What have been some of her biggest lessons from Alex Chesterman? 4.) AMA: What is the hardest element of Anne's role with 23andme? What is Anne's morning routine? What 3 traits would Anne most want her children to have? Anne can have a billboard anywhere, what do it say on it and why? What would Anne most like to change in the world of healthcare over the next decade?

Ali Partovi is the CEO @ Neo, a mentorship community and communal VC fund that announced their new $150M fund last year on the back of early hits from Fund I including Vanta and Kalshi. As an angel, Ali has made personal investments in Dropbox, Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Convoy and many more. Prior to investing, Ali founded 2 companies, the first; LinkExchange which he sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1998 and the second, iLike which was acquired by Microsoft in 2009. In Today's Episode with Ali Partovi You Will Learn: 1.) How Ali made his way into the world of startups with the founding of his first company? How Ali made his way into angel investing and then starting and raising Neo, as a fund? 2.) How To Kill a $125M By Being Too Honest: How did Ali lose this $125M with Jerry Yang and Yahoo? What led Ali to believe that Paul Graham was so special in 1995? What would Ali have done differently with the benefit of hindsight? How does Ali feel about investment misses today? What are his biggest misses? How has it impacted his mindset and approach to investing? 3.) The Meeting with Steve Jobs Did Not Go Well: Why did the meeting with Steve Jobs not go well? What was wrong with the way Ali phrased his final statement? What did this teach Ali about how founders should communicate the difference between hype and reality? What did this experience teach Ali about how founders should run both fundraising and M&A processes? How does Ali build trust with every touchpoint? 4.) U2, Airbnb and Google at Seed: How did Bono come to save the day for Ali for his startup in 2009? What did this teach Ali about how to frame risk and when to go all in vs hold back? How did Ali miss investing in the seed for Airbnb? How did he make up for it with a later investment? How did Ali come to miss investing in the Google seed round? Does FOMO haunt Ali today? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Ali Partovi Ali's Favourite Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Rob Schutz is Chief Growth Officer and Co-founder at Ro, the healthcare technology company building a patient-centric healthcare system. To date, Ro has raised over $870M with a last reported valuation of $5BN and under Rob's growth leadership, Ro has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the country. Prior to Ro, Rob was VP of Growth at Bark, the makers of BarkBox, and helped scale revenue from zero to $100 million. He also founded a Washington DC-based daily deals site that was acquired by kgbdeals in 2011. In Today's Episode with Rob Schutz You Will Learn: 1.) How Rob made his way into startups and growth through the world of daily deals? How that led to his leading growth for Bark and ultimately founding Ro? How did leading marketing for Bark impact his growth strategy today with Ro? 2.) What is "Growth" and When to Hire For It: How does Rob define "growth and "Head of Growth"? When is the right time to start thinking about a growth team? Should founders hire a "Head of Growth" first or hire younger growth reps? Where should the growth team sit within the organization? 3.) How to Hire Growth Leader and Reps: What is the step-by-step process to hire growth leaders and reps? How does it differ when hiring growth leaders vs reps? What questions does Rob always ask? What separates good from great answers? What case studies does Rob like to use to determine candidate quality? How can one tell whether marketeers and growth candidates truly understand data? 4.) How to Structure the Onboarding Process: What does the optimal onboarding process look like for new hires? What tasks and duties do you expect reps and growth leaders to complete in the first month? What are some early red flags that the candidate you have is not good enough? How can leaders deliberately manufacture moments for growth teams to interact with other teams? What are the biggest mistakes growth teams and leaders make in the early days?

Frank Slootman currently serves as Chairman and CEO at Snowflake and has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the enterprise software industry. Prior to Snowflake, Frank served as CEO and President of ServiceNow taking the company from around $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. Before ServiceNow, Frank served as President of the Backup Recovery Systems Division at EMC following the acquisition of Data Domain Corporation/Data Domain, Inc., where he served as the CEO and President, leading the company through an IPO to its acquisition by EMC for $2.4B. You must check out Frank's book, Amp It Up. It can already be pre-ordered here. In Today's Episode with Frank Slootman You Will Learn: 1.) Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality: How does Frank determine what to focus on? What does the prioritisation process look like? What one question does Frank ask his team to ensure they are focused? What are the best answers? What are the worst? When should you change focus? 2.) When There is Doubt, There is No Doubt: What does Frank mean by this? What does it apply to? When is there nuance? How long does Frank give people who are underperforming? How does he communicate their underperformance to them directly but productively? What is the right way to fire someone? Why are performance reviews BS? 3.) Make The Good People Great: How does Frank get the very best out of his teams? How does he make the good great? How does he use compensation and equity structures to supercharge his teams? How does Frank set stretch targets that are both ambitious but also attainable? 4.) The Art of Leadership and Board Management: Why does Frank believe every CEO should be anxious? How has Frank changed as a leader over time? What is the biggest mistake founders make when it comes to board management? How can founders actively manage and control their board? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Frank Slootman Frank's Favourite Book: Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favours the Brave, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything

Devin Finzer is the Founder & CEO @ Opensea, the world's first and largest NFT marketplace allowing you to discover, collect, and sell extraordinary NFTs. To date, Devin has raised over $423M for the company with their last $300M round valuing Opensea at $13.3BN. Before changing the world of NFTs, Devin co-founded ClaimDog which was acquired by Credit Karma and before founding ClaimDog, Devin was an engineer at Pinterest. Do want to say, I always love Semil Shah's startup of the year, for 2021 it was Opensea, check out his piece here. In Today's Episode with Devin Finzer You Will Learn: 1.) How Devin made his way into the world of NFTs and came to found the first and largest NFT marketplace in the form of Opensea? 2.) The Scaling Story: What were the first early signs that Opensea was working when they were in YC? What core metrics did they look at to determine success? Given NFTs not being "hot" at the time, how was the fundraising process for Opensea coming out of YC? What were the early investors most excited about? What was the inflection point when Opensea and NFTs really started to take off? What most surprised Devin about the way in which the inflection point happened? When scaling from $150M to $4BN in GMV, what are the first things to break in a company? How does Devin maintain company morale with such volatile crypto and NFT markets? 3.) The Next Decade of NFTs: How does Devin predict large brands and companies will utilise NFTs for their businesses? In what ways does Devin think creators and celebrities will use NFTs moving forward to create more efficient business models? How does Devin respond to the statement, "NFTs do more to harm than help income inequality?" What are Devin's biggest concerns moving forward when analysing the NFT market? How does Devin see the future for the development and experimentation of NFTs? 4.) The Future of NFT & Gaming: How does Devin see NFTs impacting the world of gaming most? How does Devin think about interacting with these gaming communities that are external to the centralised Opensea marketplace? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Devin Finzer Devin's Favourite Book: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Ralf Wenzel is the Founder & CEO @ JOKR, a global platform for instant retail delivery at a hyper-local scale serving both the US and LATAM. Ralf has raised over $260M for the company, most recently valuing it at $1.2BN. Prior to JOKR, Ralf spent 7 years as the Founder & CEO @ foodpanda, as well as, enjoying roles as Chief Strategy Officer @ Delivery Hero, Interim Chief Product and Experience Officer @ WeWork and even moving to the other side of the table as a Managing Partner with Softbank. In Today's Episode with Ralf Wenzel You Will Learn: 1.) What is the unit economic breakdown for quick commerce business models? What levers can be used to improve it over time? 2.) Comparing the US to LATAM: What is the AOV (average order value) in the US vs LATAM? What is the order frequency in the US vs LATAM? How does labour cost vary when comparing LATAM to the US? How does real estate cost for fulfilment centres differ when comparing LATAM to the US? How do product margins on a per product basis differ when comparing US to LATAM? 3.) New Market Growth and Maturation: What is the payback period for new markets? How has this changed over time? How does the payback period reduce with every new market being opened? What % of AOV is spent on marketing when a new market is opened? How does this marketing spend change over time? In mature markets, how much new customer acquisition is organic vs paid? What is the average weekly growth rate in new vs mature markets? 4.) Business Model Expansions: How does Ralf and JOKR approach the potential for private label goods? How does private label change the margin structure of the goods? What have been their lessons from starting their first private label goods? How does Ralf approach the ability to integrate advertising and paid search? What is needed for paid search and advertising to be a meaningful part of the business?

Mark Carney is Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management and Head of Transition Investing. Prior to Brookfield, Mark served as the Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, and prior to that as Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 until 2013. Mark was also Chairman of the Financial Stability Board from 2011 to 2018. Mark is a long-time and well-known advocate for sustainability and is currently the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. If that was not enough, Mark serves on numerous other boards including Stripe, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum to name a few. In Today's Episode with Mark Carney You Will Learn: 1.) How Mark made his entrance into the world of finance and came to the role of Governor of the Bank of Canada? How did that role lead to his becoming Governor of the Bank of England? How did seeing multiple booms and busts impact Mark's investing mindset? 2.) Governments, Central Banks and Regulation: How do governments and central banks retain control in a completely decentralized financial world? Can traditional currencies and digital currencies peacefully co-exist? What are Mark's predictions for central bank digital currencies? How does Mark expect governments and central banks to regulate digital currencies in the coming years? 3.) The Winners and Losers: What does the future hold for crypto exchanges? How do competitors for digital gold perform? Why does Mark believe in crypto "only the niche will survive"? What does the rise of Defi mean for traditional banks? What will determine those that survive? What does Mark mean when he says the winners will decide "what is my interface with this crypto world?'' 4.) The Future of NFTs: Do NFTs do more to help or to harm income inequality? How does Mark see the future for the development and experimentation of NFTs? Who are the winners and losers in the next decade for NFTs? How does Mark feel about the pause between productivity gains and real wage benefits that exist today? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Mark Carney Mark's Favourite Book: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard

Will Ahmed is the Founder and CEO @ Whoop, the company on a mission to unlock human performance with their wearable device that is your digital fitness and health coach. To date, Will has raised over $400M for the company with the last round valuing Whoop at $3.6BN and with a cap table including the likes of Softbank, Accomplice, Founder Collective, Foundry Group, IVP and more. In Today's Episode with Will Ahmed You Will Learn: 1.) How Will went from being a professional athlete and college student to founding one of the hottest startups in fitness and healthcare? What are the similarities and differences of being an athlete and being a CEO? 2.) What does Will mean when he says, "there is value in the struggle early on"? How does Will advise founders on when to give up vs when to stay the course? If Will had not struggled with funding in the early days, would the Whoop journey be different? How does Will advise founders when it comes to taking funding when it is on the table? What are the nuances to this? 3.) In what way does Will believe "realism is overrated"? When does Will believe it is good to be realistic? In what ways can it be good to be idealistic? How did Will get some of the largest sports stars on the planet to use Whoop in the early days? Why did Will always refuse to pay sports stars to use Whoop? What were the benefits of doing this? 4.) How does Will define high performance? Why does Will believe it is crucial for leaders to disassociate their own personal feelings from the progress of their company? What advice does Will give to leaders in an attempt to do this? What has Will done to be a better CEO in the last year? What does Will believe are his biggest weaknesses as a CEO? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Will Ahmed Will's Favourite Book: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE

Bangaly Kaba is the Head of Platform Growth @ Popshop Live, a live streaming mobile marketplace that combines commerce, entertainment, and social. Prior to Popshop, Bangaly led the product growth and consumer product orgs at Instacart and before Instacart was Head of Growth @ Instagram, where he built and led the product team that helped grow Instagram from 440M to > 1B monthly actives in 2.5yrs. If all of this was not enough, Bangaly has also spent time investing as a Sequoia Scout having made investments into Career Karma, Binti.com and Squad App to name a few. In Today's Episode with Bangaly Kaba You Will Learn: 1.) How Bangaly made his way into the world of growth and came to lead some of the largest growth orgs in tech at the likes of Instacart and Instagram? 2.) How does Bangaly define the rule of "Head of Growth"? When is the right time for founders to start hiring a growth leader? How do they know whether to hire a growth leader or junior growth reps? Where should founders place these first growth hires in the org? Product or marketing? 3.) How would Bangaly structure the hiring process for any growth hire? What are the must-ask questions? What case studies would Bangaly ask all candidates to complete? What are the signals of a 10x growth hire? What are some core red flags that show in the interview process? 4.) What does the ideal onboarding process look like for new growth hires? What are the signs that a new growth hire is hitting target and expectations? What are some early warning signs that a growth hire is not meeting expectations? 5.) What is the ideal relationship between the Head of Growth and the CEO? How often should they meet? How should they structure the discussion? How should the growth team work with product teams to be successful? How should growth teams work with marketing teams?

John Doerr is an engineer, venture capitalist, the chairman of Kleiner Perkins, and the author of the #1 New York Times best-seller Measure What Matters. For over 40 years, John has helped build some of the most generational defining companies of our generation. He was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon, helping to create more than a million jobs. A pioneer of Silicon Valley's cleantech movement, John has invested in zero emissions technologies since 2006. Check out his latest book, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now. In Today's Episode with John Doerr You Will Learn: 1.) What was John's entry into climate change investing? Having backed the likes of Amazon and Google, why did John decide then was the right time to do a climate fund, a pandemic fund, an iPhone fund? How does John think about market timing risk today? How does John determine between risks he is vs is not willing to take? 2.) What was one of John's biggest lessons on risk and upside from working alongside Tom Perkins? How did the Google deal come together? Where did John first meet Larry and Serge? What convinced John to write them a $12M check for 12% of the company? Why was it a contested deal within the partnership? How did the discussion go internally? 3.) Why and how is climate innovating and investing different today than it was in 2008? What are the core OKR's laid out in the book, that we need to achieve as a society? Why does John believe that governments are the biggest problem to us achieving these objectives? What does John mean when he says, "I am hopeful but not optimistic"? 4.) What does truly great listening mean to John? How would John describe his style of board membership? What do the truly special board members do? What does John do that makes him often cited as one of the best at recruiting? What is John's biggest investing miss? How did it change his mindset and approach? What investment is John most proud of, that no one knows? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with John Doerr John's Favourite Book: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need

Kyle Parrish is VP Sales @ Figma, the company that connects everyone in the design process so teams can deliver better products, faster. At Figma, Kyle built the sales engine from scratch to today, with over 100 incredible people in sales. Before Figma, Kyle spent over 5 years at Dropbox in numerous different roles including Head of Sales, where he scaled the Austin, Texas office from 3 to over 80 people to Global Partnerships lead, where he was responsible for growing Dropbox's partner ecosystem. In Today's Episode with Kyle Parrish You Will Learn: 1.) How Kyle first made his way into the world of sales and came to be one of the 3 performing sales reps in a 300+ sales team? How that led to his joining the hypergrowth journey of Dropbox? What led Kyle to make the move from Dropbox to the rocketship that is Figma? 2.) When and Who: Does the founder need to be the person to create the sales playbook? How can a founder know whether it is right to hire sales reps or a Head of Sales first? In terms of ARR, is there a time when you have to have a Head of Sales? Does Kyle agree with Jason Lemkin in terms of bringing in reps, two at a time? Where do founders make the biggest mistakes when it comes to the timing of these hires? 3.) How To Know and Test: What non-obvious characteristics do 10x sales hires have? What questions or case studies does Kyle find to be most revealing in identifying these non-obvious traits? How should founders structure the process for new reps and a Head of Sales? Meeting by meeting, what should we look to achieve? 4.) Setting Up for Success: What does the ideal onboarding process look like for new sales reps? What tasks and processes would Kyle expect new reps to complete within the first month or two on the job? What are the clearest signs of a new rep hire not working out? How should founders approach 1-1 and 360 reviews with their new reps? 5.) Working Together: What is the ideal relationship between the founder and the new Head of Sales? How often should they meet? What should the founder expect from the new Head of Sales? How should the Head of Sales work with the Head of Marketing most efficiently? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Kyle Parrish Kyle's Favourite Sales Blog Post: The Sales Learning Curve

Bill Gurley is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, Modern Treasury, Snapchat, StitchFix, and many more. As for Bill, widely recognized as one of the greats in venture having worked with GrubHub, NextDoor, Uber, OpenTable, Stitch Fix, and Zillow. Prior to Benchmark, Bill was a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. 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. In Today's Episode with Bill Gurley and Michael Eisenberg You Will Learn: 1.) How does the current market activity in venture today compare to the dot com bubble? What elements are different? What elements are the same? What were the ramifications of the dot com bubble? Would Bill and Michael expect to see the same again? Is there anything good that comes from bubbles? How did the prior bubble impact Michael and Bill's investing mindset? 2.) Does Bill Gurley agree that Benchmark are the only firm to have retained price discipline in this crazy market? How do Bill and Michael think about their own relationship to price today? How does Bill try and answer the question, "what could go right?" when he meets entrepreneurs today? On reflection, what have been Michael and Bill's biggest miss? How did it change their approach? 3.) How does one compete in a world of Tiger and crossover funds? When it comes to capital deployment and pacing, do Michael and Bill agree with the suggestion of "playing the game on the field"? What are the nuances to this statement? What companies does Bill believe capital can be a moat for? What companies is capital not a moat and they should be conservative with raising and pre-emptive rounds? 4.) Do Bill and Michael believe that ownership still matters today with outcomes being larger than ever? How do Bill and Michael feel about the importance of temporal diversification today in a world of compressed deployment cycles? What investing lesson learned over 25 years in the business do Bill and Michael wish they had known when they started? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Bill Gurley and Michael Eisenberg Bill's Favourite Book: The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human

Adam Foroughi is the Co-Founder and CEO @ AppLovin, the company that allows developers to market, monetize, analyze and publish their apps. Under Adam's leadership, he has taken the company public, grown the team to over 1,000 people around the world, and scaled revenue in 2020 to $1.5Bn. Prior to AppLovin, Adam founded two companies—Lifestreet Media and Social Hour, and before that Adam started his career as a derivatives trader. In Today's Episode with Adam Foroughi You Will Learn: 1.) How Adam made his way into the world of startups and came to found one of the world's largest gaming, advertising and marketing companies in the form of AppLovin? 2.) Adam founded 4 companies before AppLovin, does Adam believe in the benefits of serial entrepreneurship? What has he done differently with AppLovin having learned from past experience? What did he do the same, having seen it work before? 3.) Why does Adam advocate for as few meetings as possible within the company? Why does Adam believe meetings are unproductive? How do decisions get made internally without meetings? What is the structure and process? How does Adam create an environment where people make decisions without the fear of the repercussions? What are the breakpoints in company scaling? 4.) Why does Adam think that VCs did not want to invest in the early rounds? What were his biggest takeaways from those early fundraising days? How has Adam found the transition to being a public markets CEO? What does he like? What does he not like? How does Adam feel about pleasing the street but also having a long-term mindset? 5.) How does Adam structure his day? With 5 children, how does Adam approach work/life balance? What does his exercise and sleep routine look like? How does he do both weights and running without losing the productivity of the weights? What changes has he made in the last year that have made a significant difference? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Adam Foroughi Adam's Favourite Book: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It

Christoph Janz is the Co-Founder and General Partner @ Point Nine, one of Europe's leading early-stage firms with a portfolio including the likes of Zendesk, Algolia, Revolut, Nex Health, Loom and of course, Contentful. Prior to co-founding Point Nine, Christoph was a prolific angel investor and also the Co-Founder @ Pageflakes, leading the company from inception to their acquisition by LiveUniverse in 2008. Christoph is also one of the most thoughtful writers in SaaS and you can find his writing here. In Today's Episode with Christoph Janz You Will Learn: 1.) How did a cold email from the solo founder of Contentful convince Christoph to lead their first round? What was it about the email that made Christoph excited? How does Christoph advise founders today when it comes to crafting cold emails to VCs? 2.) The Market: How did Christoph analyze the market when making the investment? How much of a role does market sizing and analysis play in determining whether Christoph will make an investment? What matters more team or market? How did the market change in a way that Christoph was not expecting? How did it evolve in a way he was expecting? 3.) Business Model: How does Christoph advise SaaS founders today in crafting variable pricing mechanisms? How can you create a pricing mechanism that does not disincentivize usage but also optimizes for value extraction? Where does Christoph see many founders go wrong when it comes to pricing? 4.) Fundraising: How did the early fundraising rounds for Contentful come together? How does Christoph advise founders today on whether to take pre-emptive rounds? When can they be helpful? In what circumstances can they be very damaging? What is the best outcome that founders should be optimizing for today with fundraising?

Eugene Wei is one of my favorite thinkers, writers, and strategists in tech today. Having spent the majority of his professional career at consumer internet companies, Eugene started his career with a 7-year stint at Amazon with a focus on product. He then joined Hulu leading the product, design, editorial, and marketing teams. Post Hulu, Eugene co-founded Erly, later acquired by Airtime, and then joined Flipboard as Head of Product. Finally, Eugene's last position was with Oculus as Head of Video. You have to check out Eugene's blog and can find his writing here. In Today's Episode with Eugene Wei You Will Learn: 1.) How Eugene made his way into the world of tech and startups with his first position at Amazon? What did Eugene do differently that made him stand out to the recruiters at Amazon? 2.) Decision-Making: Why does the process and medium by which decisions are made matter so much? How has Euegene's decision-making process changed over time? Where do many people go wrong in constructing and optimising their decision-making process? What are Eugene's biggest takeaways and lessons from Jeff Bezos and Steve Jobs on messaging? 3.) The World of Social: What does Eugene believe is the graph design problem for so many social apps today? What does Eugene believe are the best and the worst design choices social media incumbents have made? How does Eugene encourage the next generation of consumer social founders to think through design decisions? 4.) Status as a Service: What does the concept of "Status as a Service" mean to Eugene? What is the biggest misunderstanding people have with the concept? What has fundamentally changed this concept in the last 2-3 years? How does the rise of crypto and NFT's impact the notion of "status as a service"? How does Eugene believe this will look in 10 years? 5.) The World of Media: How does Eugene think through the attention economy today? Why is media and content harder than ever today? Why does Eugene believe media has now become zero-sum? What does Eugene believe will be the future business model for media? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Euegene Wei Eugene's Favourite Book: The Sound and the Fury, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information

Andy Johns is one of the pre-eminent growth leaders of the last decade. Andy's career started in growth at Facebook when the company scaled from 100M-500M active users. Since he has worked in some of the leading growth orgs at companies like Twitter, Quora and more recently at Wealthfront as Head of Growth and President. Andy is also an active angel investor and advisor with companies such as Poshmark, Robinhood, Webflow, Blue Bottle Coffee, and Opendoor. If that was not enough, Andy is currently a Venture Partner @ Unusual Ventures where he focuses on consumer social and network-driven startups. In Today's Episode with Andy Johns You Will Learn: 1.) How Andy made his way into the world of startups and growth with his joining the Facebook growth team? What were the biggest takeaways from his time with Facebook, Twitter and Quora? How did that impact his mindset today? 2.) How does Andy define "VP and Head of Growth"? When is the right time to start hiring for your growth team? How should founders determine whether they need a growth leader or growth engineers in the early days? What is the core question founders need to ask on network effects to answer this question? Should the growth team be incorporated into the product team? 3.) How does Andy structure the hiring process for growth hires? What does the structure of the interviews look like? How does Andy test for real depth with candidates? What case studies does he do to really understand their quality? Where do many go wrong with the interview process? What are Andy's biggest suggestions for how to optimise the process? 4.) What does the optimal onboarding process for new hires look like? What takes and processes should they complete in their first month? What are early signs of a poor candidate? How long should one give them if they are not performing? How does Andy approach structure post-mortems within the team? What is the ideal relationship between CEO and Head of Growth?

Kareem Zaki is a General Partner @ Thrive Capital, with a portfolio including Stripe, Instacart, Instagram, Nubank, Github, Glossier and many more, they have cemented their position as one of the leading venture firms of the last decade. As for Kareem, he is a co-founder and board member to Cedar, Nava, Scope Security and Cadence and has invested in the likes of Affirm, Lemonade, Ramp and Trade Republic. Prior to entering venture, Kareem spent 3 years in private equity with Blackstone. In Today's Episode with Kareem Zaki You Will Learn: 1.) How Kareem made his way from the world of private equity to backing some of the most innovative next-generation companies with Thrive Capital? 2.) Portfolio Construction: What is the one rule that drives all decision-making at Thrive? How does Kareem think about maintaining focus with such a broad mandate? How do Thrive think about asset allocation internally with such a broad mandate? How does incubating companies also help Kareem be a better investor? 3.) Investing Style: How has Kareem's investing style changed over the last 10 years? What does he focus on now that he did not before and visa versa? How does Kareem assess his own relationship to price? Through what lens does Kareem approach market sizing and timing? Where do many investors make mistakes here? 4.) The Landscape: How does Kareem respond to the activity and cadence of Tiger? In what way does Kareem believe the venture landscape will have changed most significantly in the next 10 years? How do the existing incumbent firms need to change in the wake of this? How do Thrive respond to the pace and cadence of check writing today? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Kareem Zaki Kareem's Favourite Book: How Will You Measure Your Life Kareem's Most Recent Investment: Cadence

Brian Singerman is a General Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the most prominent venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Anduril, SpaceX, Tesla, Palantir, Stripe, Affirm, Airbnb, Facebook, and many more. As for Brian, he has led investments in the likes of Affirm, Oscar Health, Wish, Asana, Oculus, and Postmates to name a few. Brian also sits on the board or is an observer to The Long Term Stock Exchange, Solugen, Cloud9, Modern Health, and of course, Anduril. Prior to Founders Fund, Brian spent a very successful 4 years as an engineer and executive at Google. In Today's Episode with Brian Singerman on Anduril, You Will Learn: 1.) How did Brian first come to meet Palmer and the Anduril team? Where did the meeting take place? How did the discussion go? Did Brian instantly feel that Palmer was special? What about the way Palmer presented, suggested this to Brian? 2.) The Market: What gave Brian the confidence Anduril would be successful where so many others had failed? How did the market change or evolve in a way Brian did expect? In what ways did the market surprise Brian? Does Brian think we will see the relationship between Silicon Valley and the DOD change over time? 3.) Anduril: The Business: Why is Anduril as a business, so hard to copy? How did Brian gain comfort around their defensibility? What does Brian think is the biggest misconception people have of Anduril as a business? How does Brian think about when is the right time to add secondary and ancillary products? 4.) Investing Today: Why is Brian no longer Zoom investing today? What does Brian mean when he says you have to, "play a different game to the hedge funds today"? In what way does he and Founders Fund look to do this? How does Brian think about the current levels of pricing? How does he determine when to pay up vs when to be disciplined?

Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz founded Accel in 1983. Under their leadership, they have built Accel into one of the most prominent venture firms of the last 4 decades. Starting with Arthur, as the lead investor, Arthur has helped management teams develop companies into market-defining leaders over an incredible four decades. Prior to co-founding Accel, Arthur was a General Partner of Adler & Company with his career in venture starting at Citicorp Venture Capital. As for Jim, Jim has been the lead director of more than 50 successful companies. He was instrumental as a founder/mentor of Accel London and in the founding of Meritech Capital. Before Accel, Jim was the founding general partner of Adler & Company, which he started with Fred Adler in 1978 after his tenure as a vice president of Citicorp Venture Capital. In Today's Episode with Arthur Patterson and Jim Swartz You Will Learn: 1.) How Arthur and Jim made their first entry into the world of venture capital in the 70's? What was the founding moment for them with Accel? Where did the first discussion happen? Did they align on strategy? Why did they decide to name the firm Accel? 2.) What did the venture ecosystem look like when Arthur and Jim founded Accel in 1983? Why does Arthur believe the specialist always beats the generalist? What was the hardest Accel fund to raise? Why was it the hardest to raise? When did the Accel brand hit an inflection point and fundraising became easier? Where do Arthur and Jim disagree on this? 3.) How do Jim and Arthur feel about the current frothiness of the venture market? Why does Jim believe we are entering a market correction? How do they feel about the inflation of asset value? Through what lens is now the same vs different to 1999/2000? What have been their biggest lessons from experiencing 5 macro booms and busts? 4.) How did Jim and Arthur think about when to expand with a new Accel product? What did Accel do specifically to make the expansion to London and India so successful? What is the key to doing generational transition well? Where do many go wrong here? Do Jim and Arthur agree with Doug Leone, "when you lose seed, you become private equity"? 5.) How do Jim and Arthur think about partner selection within the firm? How have they structured decision-making to ensure politics do not get introduced? How does one create a decision-making framework of accountability without fear to take big risks? What do Arthur and Jim mean when they speak of "the prepared mind"? How does it help them think and operate better?