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

Eric Feng is a Partner @ Kleiner Perkins, one of the world's leading venture capital firms with prior investments in the likes of Google, Amazon, Snapchat, Uber, Twitter and more. At Kleiner Eric focuses on consumer and incubation with his current being his co-founding role with Packagd, the startup building a family of apps offering a new mobile shopping experience. Packagd recently raised a $6m Series A led by Forerunner and GV. Prior to KPCB, Eric held the role of CTO at both Flipboard and Hulu. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Eric made his way into venture, all thanks to the help of Al Gore and Kleiner Perkins? 2.) What does Eric believe are the 2 opposing views of VCs? What side does it sit on? Has he always sat on that side? What was it that changed his mind? 3.) Why does Eric think consumer today is harder than ever before? How does the incumbency issue with regards to distribution affect Eric's thinking? Why does Eric believe we have never seen incumbents as strong as those of today? 4.) Why does Eric believe consumer companies are binary? How does this affect his attitude to price sensitivity? How does this influence his ownership requirements? 5.) How are VC funds building and using their own data platforms to find the best startups? Are we seeing the start of VC funds being disrupted by technology? What advantages does using this technology have? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Eric's Fave Book: Adventures in The Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood Eric's Fave Blog: TechMeme Eric's Most Recent Investment: Hollar As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Eric on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co

Ari Mir is the Founder @ Clutter, the startup that provides simple, painless solutions to your storage problems. They have raised over $90m in VC funding with their recent Series C round being a $64m round led by Atomico with participation from Sequoia, GV and the fantastic Brendan Wallace @ Fifth Wall. Prior to Clutter, Ari founded Gumgum, the world's largest image ad network in the visual AI space and PocketChange, a startup backed by Google. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ari made his way into the world of early stage startups and came to found Clutter? 2.) Why does Ari believe that you should build a sports team and not a family, with regards to your team? What does that really mean? How does that affect both hiring, training and objective attribution? 3.) Why does Ari say 'culture is not a happy hour'? How can one look to build a culture that is driven by humane performance management? Does this not instantly instill a culture of fear? 4.) Why does Ari believe that diversity of thought is so dangerous for early stage startups? How does this view change with the scaling of the team? What key inflection points has Ari noticed with the scaling of the Clutter team? 5.) Why did Ari only hire individuals with finance backgrounds in the early days of the company? What are the benefits of this, particularly for on-demand startups with a heavy focus on unit economics? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Ari's Fave Book: Sam Walton: Made In America Ari's Fave Blog: AVC As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ari on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co

Ethan Kurzweil is a Partner @ Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the world leading venture funds with prior investments including the likes of Skype, LinkedIn, Yelp and Pinterest just to name a few. As for Ethan, he focuses on consumer facing technology and developer platforms having made investments in the likes of Twitch, Periscope and Dropcam on the consumer side and Twilio, Intercom and SendGrid on the developer platform side, just to name a few from his outstanding portfolio. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ethan made his entrance into the world of venture and came to be a partner @ Bessemer? 2.) What was the developer roadmap that Ethan established a couple of years ago? Why was it controversial at the time? How have we seen this play out and come into fruition? What is the next frontier in developer focussed businesses? 3.) Ethan has previously said, 'history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme'. How does Ethan view pattern recognition? How does Ethan look to avoid biases and escape the echo chamber of Silicon Valley? 4.) How does Ethan see the world of eSports evolving? From an investment perspective, where does the equity value creation lie; the brands being built or the core underlying technology? 5.) Bessemer publishes their anti-portfolio, why is this? What does one need to take away when assessing the opportunities they have missed? How can one build a process of self-reflection around the anti-portfolio? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Ethan's Fave Book: The Namesake Ethan's Fave Blog: Nuzzel Ethan's Most Recent Investment: Periscope Data As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ethan on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co

Jeremy Levine is a Partner @ Bessemer Venture Partners, one of the world's leading venture funds with prior investments in the likes of Skype, Shopify, LinkedIn and Twitch, just to name a few. As for Jeremy, 4 of the companies he has invested in with Bessemer have become $Bn companies with 2 of the above; LinkedIn and Shopify, in addition to Yelp and MindBody. If that was not enough, Jeremy is also on the boards of some phenomenal companies in the likes of Pinterest, Yelp and Shopify to name a few. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jeremy made his entrance into the world of venture and came to be a partner @ Bessemer? 2.) What are the 2 rules Jeremy has with every founder he invests in, prior to making the investment? Why does Jeremy have these rules? At what stage of the pre-investment process are they illustrated? 3.) What are the 2 main reasons that Jeremy believes we are entering a fallow period for the world of consumer? What elements of the incumbency advantages of Facebook, Apple and Google concern Jeremy most? Where does he also see great opportunity? 4.) How has Jeremy seen his style of board member change over the last 16 years? How does Jeremy believe founders can optimize their board through strategic positioning of the VCs they have and where they are placed? 5.) Why does Jeremy believe that it is bogus that operational VCs can provide more value than non-operational VCs? What is the thesis behind this? Where are the core strengths of operational VCs? Where founders must be wary of operational VCs? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Jeremy's Fave Book: The Outsiders Jeremy's Fave Blog: Dan Primack Jeremy's Most Recent Investment: Toss As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jeremy on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co

Bart Lorang is the Founder & CEO @ FullContact, the leading contact platform for professionals, teams and businesses. They have raised over $45m in funding from some of the best in the business and dear friends of the show in the likes of Foundry Group with Brad Feld, David Cohen and Techstars and Howard Lindzen at Social Leverage just to name a few. As well as being the rockstar founder @ FullContact, Bart has a unique position as he is also Managing Director @ V1.vc, a seed stage VC fund based in Colorado and San Francisco, providing Bart unique insight into both founding and investing in companies at the same time. CLICK TO PLAY CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Bart made his way into the world of early stage startups and came to found FullContact? 2.) Bart is also a VC with V1, how does being both a founder and a VC affect how Bart views startups and operates @ FullContact? What have been the key learnings for Bart with regards to capital allocation and portfolio construction? 3.) Bart has a CEO coach being the famous, Jerry Colonna, so what was the catalyst for Bart's desire to have a CEO coach? What have been the inflection points in Bart's journey with Jerry? Should every CEO have a CEO coach? 4.) What does Bart believe are the core tenets to successful negotiation? What can be done to ensure a win-win situation for both parties? From what mindset should this be approached? Does Bart agree that you should only monetise to 30% of your value? 5.) Why does Bart pay every employee $7,500 per year to go on holiday on top of their standard salary? Whare the the key rules to ensure this is successful? What are the key benefits that can be derived from this essential vacation? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Bart's Fave Book: Jonathan Livingston Seagull Bart's Fave Blog: Abundance Insider by Peter Diamandis As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Bart on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co

Elad Gil is the Founder of Color Genomics, however, Elad is also one of the most prominent angel investors in the valley with a portfolio including the likes of Airbnb, Stripe, Square and Pinterest just to name a few. Prior to founding Color Genomics, Elad was VP of Corporate Strategy @ Twitter where he ran various product teams including geo and search. Before that, Elad spent 3 years at Google where he started Google's mobile team and was involved with 3 acquisitions including Android. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Elad made his way into the world of angel investing and came to invest in Airbnb, Square and Stripe? 2.) Why does Elad take a very market-driven approach to investing? Does this go against the very founder-first approach taken by many in the valley today? 3.) Why does Elad believe that people totally mislead themselves when sizing up potential markets? How should markets be addressed and evaluated? What are the core elements to look for? 4.) Should VC services always be bundled together? Is there a smarter way to decouple these services to make the best products for founders? How could this look in reality? 5.) How does Elad approach valuation? Does Elad agree with Peter Fenton that 'all best companies always seem expensive at the time and cheap in hindsight'? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Elad's Fave Book: The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle Elad's Most Recent Investment: Checkr As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Elad on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co

Peter Fenton is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the world's leading VC funds with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Uber, Snapchat, eBay, WeWork, Yelp and many more revolutionary companies of the last decade. Peter himself sits or has sat on the board of Twitter, previous guest Cockroach, Optimizely, New Relic and ZenDesk just to name a few. Prior to Benchmark, Peter was a Managing Partner @ Accel. It is clearly not just me that has a man crush on Peter though as he has been named to Forbes Midas List for many consecutive years with the last list placing Peter as No 3 in the world. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Peter made his way into the world of VC with Accel and came to be a General Partner @ Benchmark? 2.) How does Peter differentiate between the good and the great VCs? How can VCs use hyper-curiosity and hyper-competitiveness to improve their investing ability? Why does Peter not believe that operational experience is a necessity pre-VC? 3.) How does Peter view the importance of valuation in the investment decision making process? How much of a role does it play for him and what is his psychology around valuation, especially with regards to ownership levels? 4.) Why is Peter amused when he hears other investors say they must 'invest in big markets'? What were his big takeaways from watching the investment and hyper-growth journey of Snapchat? How did that influence his view on markets? 5.) Peter has previously said that he is a 'student of great board members'. What are the commonalities among the truly great board members? How do they engage and interact with the entrepreneur? How do they get the most out of their fellow board members? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Peter's Most Recent Investment: Zen.ly As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Peter on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. eShares is the No 1 Cap Table Management platform, allowing for equity management, 409A valuations, and liquidity, all in one place. eShares is made for companies of all sizes with over 5,000 trusted customers including the likes of Squarespace, Kickstarter, and DoorDash just to name a few. To try out the must have service of the industry, simply head over to esharesinc.com it is a must. Fond is the employee engagement suite with 3 core products, rewards: a recognition platform for rewarding achievements and milestones, perks: a premium corporate discounts program to show employees you care about them and then finally engagement IQ, a free employee engagement survey that allows you to measure the health of your organization. To check it out head over to fond.co

Nicolas Dessaigne is the Founder & CEO @ Algolia, the most reliable platform for building search into your business. Just last week they raised $53m in funding led by Accel with participation from Jason Lemkin @ SaaStr, Point Nine Capital, AppDynamic's Jyoti Bansal, Intercom's Des Traynor and InVision's Clark Valberg and more incredible investors. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Nicolas made his way from Paris to YC to founding one of the hottest SaaS startups of the day in Algolia? 2.) Tom Tunguz has said before that the Series B is the hardest to raise, having just raised his, does Nicolas agree with this? How did this round differ from others? How can founders know what is the right amount to raise? Is 18 months still the desired runway? 3.) Does Nicolas think he made the move to the US at the right time? Too early or too late? What advice would Nicolas give to founders making or thinking about making this move? What areas are Europe and vice versa the US better at hiring for? 4.) Which functional areas do both Europe and the US lead in their respective fields? Why does Nicolas think that it is harder to hire well in the US? Does Europe still have a fundamental lack of experienced sales and marketing professionals? 5.) How did Jason Lemkin train Nicolas to approach the fundraising process? What other than funds can founders gain from the process? How can these conversations be initiated? As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Nicolas on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Tony Conrad is a Partner @ True Ventures, one of the leading early stage funds on the West Coast with a portfolio including the likes of Automattic, Fitbit, Blue Bottle Coffee and recent unicorn, Peloton. Tony is also the Co-Founder & CEO @ About.me (acquired by AOL in 2010). They have since raised funding from some of our favorites in the industry including Brad @ Foundry, SoftTech and BullPen just to name a few. Prior to About.me, Tony founded Sphere (acquired by AOL) in 2008. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Tony made his way from founding About.me to moving into VC with True Ventures? 2.) How has Tony's investment mentality changed since being an incredibly successful angel to now writing institutional cheques with True? What has he learned about investing from the transition? 3.) Why does Tony look to straddle the divide between investor and founder? How does this help him to examine what true product/founder fit is? How does this affect his ability to source deals? Why should more investors look to do the same? 4.) How does Tony view party rounds/ why are they so dangerous? Why is it so wrong for founders to optimize for valuation? What are the later repercussions of doing so? What is a more effective way for founders to approach the raise? 5.) Having spent over 1,500 minutes in board meetings, what has Tony learned about what makes the beat board members? How can founders detect the board member that is truly aligned to them? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Tony's Fave Book: Endurance by Shackleton Tony's Most Recent Investment: Teamable As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Tony on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Kevin Rose is a Venture Partner @ True Ventures, one of the leading early stage funds on the West Coast with portfolio companies including the likes of Automattic, Blue Bottle Coffee, About.me and recent unicorn, Peloton. As for Kevin, he is a serial entrepreneur best known for founding Digg and Revision3. Following such success in the field of operations, Kevin made the move into VC becoming a General Partner and advisor @ Google Ventures. Kevin has also been a prolific angel investor with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Square, Facebook, Foursquare, and Zynga just to name a few incredible companies. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Kevin made his way from founding Digg to moving into VC with Google Ventures? 2.) How did Kevin alter his investment mindset when making the transition from angel to General Partner @ Google Ventures? How does the decision making process change? How does asset allocation change? How does portfolio theory change? 3.) Why is Kevin so bullish on the future of mobile? Why does Kevin believe that distribution channels are actually becoming more equal, allowing for greater startup access? Why does Kevin not believe in the future of VR? 4.) How does Kevin view the optimal relationship between VC and founder? Can a VC be a friend as well as an advisor and board member? What can the VC do to ensure their positioning alongside not above the founder? 5.) How does Kevin view the age old debate of work like balance? How does Kevin approach it? What does Kevin recommend to anyone looking to improve their worl life balance? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Kevin's Fave Book: Essentialism Kevin's Most Recent Investment: Lead.rs As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Kevin on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Chris O'Neill is the CEO @ Evernote, the productivity powerhouse allowing millions of users around the world to remember everything. They have raised over $160m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including the likes of Sequoia Capital. As for Chris, prior to Evernote, he spent over 10 years at Google including roles as Managing Director of Google Canada and global business operations at Google X. Whilst at Google Chris saw the hyper growth of the company from startup t a global behemoth. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Chris made his way into startups and came to be CEO @ Evernote? 2.) Chris has previously said 'the team you build is the culture you build'. How does Chris look to build high-performance teams that can scale differing stages of company growth? Are individuals destined to fit one stage of company growth? 3.) How does Chris look to balance the immediacy of short terms actions and events with the grander vision and longer term in mind? What are the challenges? What strategies can be done to ensure both short and long term goals are addressed? 4.) How does Chris approach product line expansion? When is the right time and reason to expand the product line? How can this be communicated and executed across the broader team? 5.) Chris has previously said he 'learned more from sport than he did from school'. What were Chris major takeaways from sport? How can they be applied to business and his role @ Evernote today? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Chris' Fave Book: A Prayer For Owen Meaney, Zone to Win Chris' Fave Blog: Benedict Evans As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Chris on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Anthony Pompliano is the General Partner @ Full Tilt Capital, the firm that wants to reinvent friends and family investingby democratizing access to opportunity for the thousands of founders who are underserved. They have done 22 deals in just 90 days and shows no signs of pulling back. Prior to VC, Anthony lead the growth team at Snapchat and before that ran product and growth teams @ Facebook. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Anthony made his way from leading startup exec with Facebook and Snapchat to being General Partner @ Full Tilt Capital? 2.) Anthony has previously said that he likes to 'prioritize the founder over the company', is this any different to the traditional 'founder-friendly VC'? How does Anthony like to stress test the founder's ability to withstand stress *& establish comfort with unpopular decisions? 3.) How does Anthony respond to suggestions that 39 investments in 9 months is 'spray and pray'? Why does Anthony believe that cheque size and follow on allocation does not matter? 4.) How does Anthony differentiate between 'picking' and 'building' investments? Why do most VCs go wrong with their thesis around this and the belief in the 'J Curve'? Is it possible that the traditional J curve does not correspond to outsized returns? 5.) How does Anthony respond to Hunter Walk's thesis around the presence of 'dark deal flow'? With such a growing portfolio, how does Anthony scale his ability to add value with the ever scaling portfolio number? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Anthony's Fave Book: Rich Dad Poor Dad Anthony's Fave Blog/Podcast: Polina Marinova: The Profile Anthony's Most Recent Investment: Everly Well As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Anthony on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Brian Singerman is a Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the world's most prestigious and successful VC funds with prior investments in the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, SpaceX, Spotify and many more incredible companies. Prior to Founders Fund, Brian spent 4 years at Google where, among other projects, Brian founded iGoogle. Whilst at Google, Brian also started his career as an investor, founding his own angel fund, XGYC Fund. Brian also currently sits on the board of Affirm, Oscar, AltSchool and Emerald Therapeutics. Due to Brian's immense success he was named No 5 on Forbes Midas List for America's Top VCs. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Brian made the way from Google, to his own angel fund to being General Partner @ Founders Fund? 2.) How has Brian seen his investment mindset shift over the years from angel investing to his angel fund, XGYC to now being a partner at Founders Fund? 3.) Why does Brian believe that success in VC is purely about upside maximization? What does Brian think downside minimisation is unimportant? 4.) What does the investment decision-making process look like at Founders Fund? How does this change with the scaling cheque size? What are Brian's views on conviction driven vs unanimous team voting structures? 5.) Why is Brian a staunch generalist when it comes to investing? For Brian, why does he believe that being a generalist will deliver outsized returns over being a specialist? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Brian's Fave Book: Snow Crash Brian's Fave Blog: Dan Primack Brian's Most Recent Investment: Affirm As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brian on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Rolf Schrömgens is the Co-Founder and Managing Director @ Trivago, the world's top hotel price comparison site. In 2012, Expedia acquired 62% of Trivago for $531m and in Dec 2016, Trivago raised $287m through their IPO on the NASDAQ. As for Rolf, he has been a serial entrepreneur since 1999 when he founded Amiro.de, later merged with Ciao.com. At Ciao, Rolf successfully led the product launch of the company in his role as Director of Strategy and Product Development. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rolf made his way into the world of startups and came to found Trivago? 2.) Having had one of Europe's best-funded startups with Ciao, what is Rolf's take on the number of startups taking large amounts of VC money today? What advice would Rolf give to those contemplating a more lean approach vs attaining large amounts of VC money? 3.) Why does Rolf believe transparency is so key for the flow of capital within a market? What can founders do to engender this basis of trust between the capital sources and them? 4.) Why does Rolf think it is unthinkable that the incumbents of today will survive the wave of disruption? Why does Rolf question their ability to a consolidator market environment? 5.) Why does Rolf think it is so important to destroy everything that is ego related? What are the dangers of ego in the company building process? How does Rolf look to stamp this out without damaging culture and internal morale? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Rolf's Fave Book: How To Create A Mind by Ray Kurzweil As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rolf on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Brian Ascher is a Partner @ Venrock, a leading fund with prior investments including Nest, Dollar Shave Club, AppNexus and many more. At Venrock, Brian invests broadly across enterprise and consumer markets and has enjoyed no less than 10 of his investments exit successfully. Due to this exit rate,Brian has been named to the Forbes Midas List multiple times, for the VCs who have backed the most profitable winners in the last four years. Prior to Venrock, Brian was a Senior Product Manager at Intuit responsible for Quicken and Quicken.com. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Brian made his way into the world of VC and came to be a partner at Venrock? 2.) Does Brian believe that in today's world of 'ask for advice and get money', that slide decks are necessary anymore? 3.) How does Brian like pitches to be structured? How should the deck start? Why should the deck not start with the team or the origin story? Should the deck include the amount being raised? 4.) What are the most common mistakes that entrepreneurs make in pitches? How can they turn these into an advantage and show the VC their unparalleled insight? 5.) How does Brian view the post-investment relationship with founders? What makes for the optimal relationship? Is it possible for VC to be both friend and board member? How does Brian look to scale the relationship curve when getting to know a founder? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Brian's Fave Book: Extreme Ownership Brian's Most Recent Investment: Socrates As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brian on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

MZ Zaveri is a Partner @ Kleiner Perkins, one of the world's most prestigious venture funds with prior investments in the likes of Google, Amazon, Twitter, Square and Airbnb just to name a few. Prior to KPCB, MZ was with Tencent, where he was part of the investment team in Palo Alto, working on investments in companies such as Vurb, Tile, Satellogic, and Weebly to name a few. Prior to Tencent, Muzzammil co-founded Proxino, a Y Combinator (S11) backed startup in the JavaScript error detection space. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How MZ made his way into the world of VC and came to be a partner at Kleiner Perkins? 2.) What were MZ's biggest takeaways from his time with Tencent? How does that inform how he evaluates and analyses startups today with KPCB? 3.) MZ has said before, 'success in venture is all about the 3 F's'. What does he mean by this? Question from Niko Bonatsos @ General Catalyst: How does MZ look ensure the best opportunities are in the pipeline? How does MZ then look to manage and optimise that pipeline? 4.) What are MZ's thoughts on deal heat? How does MZ look to avoid being sucked into echo chambers of Silicon Valley of what is "hot or not"? What does MZ mean when he says "deal heat can be a false positive when there are more seed funds than ever"? 5.) How does MZ evaluate the seed market today? Does he believe it is over financed with the 10x increase in funds we have seen over the last 10 years? What fund model innovations is MZ most excited by and why? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: MZ's Fave Book: Neverwhere by Neil Gaimon MZ's Fave Blog/Podcast: The Twenty Minute VC MZ's Most Recent Investment: UJet As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and MZ on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Sean Rad is the Founder & Chairman @ Tinder, the world's most popular app for connecting with new and interesting people around you. Every single day there are 26m matches made on Tinder. Alongside his role with Tinder, Sean is the Chairman of Swipe Ventures, the investment vehicle that will continue to grow Tinder's reach through acquisitions, investment opportunities and development of new business. Prior to Tinder, Sean was the Founder and President of both Adly and Orgoo. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sean made his way into the world of startups and changed the way people connect with Tinder? 2.) How has Sean seen his startup evaluation process evolve since his time angel investing to now, investing institutionally with Swipe Ventures? 3.) What are the character traits that Sean most looks for when evaluating startup founders? Why is humility key to success as a founder? How can this be balanced with passion and vision? 4.) How has Sean seen his leadership and mentality evolve with the growth of Tinder?What have been the major inflection points in his learning as CEO? 5.) Why does Sean believe that today's incumbents are different than any we have seen before? How does their mentality to startup competition differ from incumbents before them? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Sean's Fave Book: The Nurture Assumption Sean's Fave Blog: TechCrunch As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sean on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Mar Hershenson is a Founding Managing Partner @ Pear.vc alongside Pejman Nozad. After earning a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1999, Mar had developed a ground-breaking technique for optimizing the design of analog semiconductors. Having combined a hardware/software focus during her studies, she spent the next 13 years co-founding three startups in the mobile/e-commerce, enterprise software, and semiconductor industries, work that led eventually to her registering 14 separate patents. Mar has been recognized by MIT Technology Review as a Top Innovator Under 35 and named a Champion of Innovation by Fast Company. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Mar make her way from professor @ Stanford to startup founder to founding Pear.vc? 2.) Question from Matin @ Heap: How does Mar decide which founders have the highest potential? What are the seeds that suggest huge potential growth on initial screening? 3.) Question from Nicky @ Nova Credit: How does one look to balance the inherent challenge of vision and operations? What do the best founders do? 4.) How important is it for there to be role segmentation in a VC partnership? Why does it not matter at certain stages of the funding lifecycle? 5.) Why does Mar believe venture is an intensely service based industry? How does Mar look to maintain her scaling board roles with a scaling portfolio? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Mar's Fave Book: The Four Steps To The Epiphany Mar's Fave Blog: Elad Gil, Dan Primack Mar's Most Recent Investment: Nova Credit As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mar on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They'll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Kevin Hartz is a Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the world's most prestigious and successful VC funds with prior investments in the likes of Facebook, Airbnb, SpaceX, Spotify and many more incredible companies. Prior to Founders Fund, Kevin was Founder & CEO @ Eventbrite, the company that powers thousands of millions of events around the world with backing from the likes of Sequoia and SV Angel. Before that Kevin was the Founder of Xoom Corporation, the international money transfer company that went public in 2012 and was acquired by Paypal in 2015. Kevin has also been a prolific angel with a personal portfolio including Airbnb, Uber, Paypal, Pinterest and Yammer. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) Question from Brian Singerman: How did Kevin come to be the world famous Kevin Hartz? What was Kevin's entry into the world of VC? 2.) How has Kevin seen his investment decision making and evaluation process change when comparing his angel deals in Uber, Paypal and Airbnb to today, investing institutionally with Founders Fund? 3.) How does Kevin see believe his time in operations lends to him being a better investor today? Does Kevin agree with Pat Grady @ Sequoia in stating, 'the rate of decay on operating experience has never been greater'? 4.) With no Monday morning Partner meetings, if a Partner wants to push a deal through, how do you do it at Founders Fund? How do you structure those conversations internally? 5.) What have been Kevin's biggest learnings since joining Founders Fund? How did Kevin look to scale the VC learning curve as fast as possible? What elements did Kevin find most challenging? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Kevin's Fave Book: Peter Thiel: Zero To One Kevin's Most Recent Investment: HyperTrack As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Kevin on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom's their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. Vidyard is the video platform for business that helps marketing and sales teams drive more revenue through the use of online video. Going beyond video hosting and management, Vidyard helps businesses drive greater engagement in their video content, track the viewing activities of each individual viewer, and turn those views into action. Global leaders such as Microsoft, McKesson, Lenovo, and LinkedIn rely on Vidyard to power their video content strategies and turn viewer into customers. Check them out at vidyard.com.

Jonathan Downey is the Founder & CEO @ Airware, the startup that allows you to make better-informed decisions with aerial date, captured by drones. They have raised over $65m in VC funding from some of the very best in the industry including a16z, Kleiner Perkins and Google Ventures just to name a few. Jonathan is also the General Partner @ Commerical Drone Fund, making $250K-$1m investments in early stage companies in the commercial drone space. Prior to Airware, Jonathan was a commercial pilot and a flight controls engineer @ Boeing. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jonathan made the move from commercial pilot to startup founder with one of the hottest drone startups, Airware? 2.) What has been the catalyst for the rising belief in the potential for drones? What has changed about the landscape to make them now not only a commercially viable opportunity but also consumer viable? 3.) How does Jonathan view the commercial landscape today? Where does Jonathan see the highest potential for the commercial application of drones? How does one approach go to market strategy and business model in a completely undefined landscape? 4.) What are the current barriers to adoption for corporations with drones? What does it mean and entail for an organization to adopt drones in terms of new workflows and training? What are the key transformative technologies that will enable new applications and market expansion? 5.) With incumbents now heavily investing in the space, does Jonathan believe this will be a market of disruption or consolidation and acquisition by the exisiting incumbents? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Jonathan's Fave Book: Elon Musk by Ashley Vance Jonathan's Fave Blog: Chris Dixon As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jonathan on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Scott Raney is a Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, one of the valley's leading multi-stage funds with over 434 investments, close to $4bn in assets under management and 136 IPOs and M&A. At Redpoint Scott has made investments in the likes of Twilio, Stripe and Heroku, just to name a few. Prior to Redpoint, Scott was responsible for new products at NorthPoint Communications, and before that Scott worked at Bain & Company helping clients in the private equity and technology industries. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Scott made his first forays into the world of VC and came to be a Partner @ Redpoint Ventures? 2.) Why does Scott think it is a good thing that we have seen company funding down 6 quarters in a row? What does this mean for startups trying to raise? 3.) What 2 types of companies will continue to find it easy to raise in these markets? What types of companies will struggle to raise? Is there market cyclicality or a return to normal more sustainable times? 4.) Why are investors a lot less willing to take future fundraising risk? How does Scott view the optimal investment decision-making process for a VC partnership? Why does unanimity not work? 5.) Why does Scott believe it is dangerous to be a spreadsheet investor? With the bar being higher today, what are the milestones that startups need to reach in order to be attractive from an investment perspective? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Scott's Fave Book: Born To Run By Bruce Springsteen Scott's Fave Blog: Tom Tunguz Scott's Most Recent Investment: Hashicorp As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Scott on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Keith Rabois is an investment partner at Khosla Ventures where he has led investments in Stripe, Thoughtspot, HealthTap and Teespring among many others. He also started OpenDoor, which aims to transform the process of selling a home through technology. Keith's unparalleled operational track record does not stop there as he has forged several of the most important new social and commerce platforms over the last decade holding key roles at LinkedIn, Paypal and being COO at Square. As a board member, Keith guided Yelp [NYSE: YELP] and Xoom [NASDAQ: XOOM] from inception to successful IPOs. Simultaneously, he also invested in other like-minded entrepreneurs with early stakes in YouTube [acquired by GOOG], Yammer [acquired by MSFT], Palantir, Lyft, AirBnB, Eventbrite and Quora. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Keith made the move from key executive at LinkedIn, Paypal and Square to being a VC with Khosla? 2.) Question from Lee Hower: What were the biggest learnings from playing a key role at LinkedIn, Paypal and Square? How do they compare to learning from Slide, a not so successful project? Does one learn more from success or failure? 3.) Question from Jason Lemkin: How can founders assess the potential of their teams? How long is it possible to allow individuals to stretch to their roles? What are the signs that people are either exceeding or falling below expectations? 4.) Eric Yuan @ Zoom has previously illustrated the importance to me of sustainable growth. What is Keith's view of this? Why does he not like this term? What are his thoughts on the key constraints on growth for most startups? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Keith's Fave Book: The Upside of Stress Keith's Fave Blog: Stratechery Keith's Most Recent Investment: Forward As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Keith on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Harley Finkelstein is the COO @ Shopify, the e-commerce platform that has allowed a generation of people to become entrepreneurs and business owners. Harley joined the business with revenues of $5m, today the company has targeted this year for over $600m with over 400,000 merchants on the platform. They have raised over $120m in VC funding from very good friends of the show including Aydin @ Felicis, Jeremy @ Bessemer and Amish @ Firstmark. In May 2015, Shopify went public with a valuation north of $1bn. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Harley make the move from laywer to COO @ Shopify? 2.) Question from Aydin @ Felicis: What have been some strategic inflection points that at the time did not seem like a big deal? How have Harley and Shopify produced and maintained such consistent revenue growth? What is the secret? 3.) Why does Harley believe that the future of retail is not online vs offline? How does Harley react to the suggestion that retail stores need to transition from transaction based, to experience based? 4.) How does Harley view the rise of personal brand in today's technological world? How has this allowed previously non-monetized channels to be monetized? What are some good examples of this? 5.) Why did Harley and Shopify choose to IPO in 2015? How was the roadshow? What was the key learnings for Harley both pre and post-IPO? What does Harley believe it means to be a trusted public company? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Harley's Fave Book: High Output Management Harley's Fave Blog: Wait But Why Harley's Fave Shopify Store: Boosted Boards As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Harley on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Josh Wolfe is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Lux Capital, the fund that supports scientists and entrepreneurs who pursue counter-conventional solutions to the most vexing puzzles of our time, the more ambitious the project, the better. Josh is a founding investor and board member with Bill Gates in Kymeta, making cutting-edge antennas for high-speed global satellite and space communications. In 2008 Josh co-founded and funded Kurion, the company was among the first responders to the Fukushima disaster. In February 2016, Veolia acquired Kurion for nearly $400 million—more than 40 times Lux's total investment. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Josh make his way into VC from the science lab? What was it about venture that got Josh hooked? 2.) How does Josh view the rise of thematic investing? Why does Josh believe there are a lot of tourist VCs who are going to lose a lot of money? 3.) Investing in such frontier technologies, how does Josh view market creation? How does Josh look to build a thesis and a methodology when investing in a company without an existing market? 4.) What is the inflection point for Josh for when heavy science and R&D becomes investable? What is that tipping point where science becomes commercialized? 5.) Does Josh get concerned that with such heavy IP and corporations not investing in R&D that this is a market for acquihires? What are the pros and cons of this shortened liquidity cycles? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Josh's Fave Book: Sapiens Josh's Fave Blog: Media Redefined Josh's Most Recent Investment: Recursion Pharmaceuticals As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Josh on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Mattias Ljungman is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Atomico, one of Europe's leading VC funds which Mattias launched in 2006 alongside Niklas Zennstrom. Whilst at Atomico Mattias has been involved in significant exits and transcations including SUpercell (acquired by Softbank), Climate Corporation (acquired by Monsanto and 6Wunderkinder (acquired by Microsoft), just to name a few. As for Harry, Harry Stebbings is the founder of The Twenty Minute VC, the world's largest independent VC podcast with guests including Brad Feld, Andy Rachleff, Peter Fenton and many more. Harry also works very closely with Jason Lemkin @ SaaStr where they work to produce The Official SaaStr Podcast. More recently, Harry joined the fantastic team at Atomico as an EIR on the investment team. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Harry made his first foray into the world of entrepreneurship and then made the move into VC? 2.) From interviewing over 800 of the world's best investors, what have been the biggest takeaways for Harry, both in the realms of investing and interacting with entrepreneurs? 3.) What does Harry believes makes a truly great interview? Is it sheer intellectual rigour or does charisma and energy play a large role? Does Harry release all the episodes he records? 4.) What have been Harry's major takeaways since joining the team at Atomico? What have been the best moments both in terms of intellectual learning and then sentimental memories? 5.) How has Harry's perception and analysis of the VC market changed over the 800 interviews? What does Harry see as the fundamental emerging trends within the VC model itself? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Harry's Fave Book: Madame Bovary, What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars Harry's Fave Blog: Mattermark Daily As always you can follow Harry, Mattias and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Bill Clerico is the Co-Founder & CEO @ WePay, the most complete payments solution for platforms. To date, they have raised close to $75m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Max Levchin, Dave McClure and August Capital just to name a few. As for Bill, alongside his role with WePay, Bill is a part-time partner @ Y Combinator and an angel investor. Prior to startups, Bill cut his teeth in the industry at Jefferies in investment banking. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Bill made his way into the world of startups from investment banking? 2.) How does Bill assess the pivot? What is required to pivot successfully? How can this be communicated to both your board and your team? 3.) How does Bill look to relationship build with investors? What are the fundamentals to a healthy and sustainable investor relationship? 4.) Why should founders ensure they are not the only company representative with the board? What are the benefits of the board having many touchpoints within the family? How can this be done effectively? 5.) What does Bill mean he says you must have an 'opinionated culture'? How can this be conveyed to the team and across the organisation? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Bill's Fave Book: Failure Is Not An Option Bill's Fave Blog: The Information As always you can follow Harry, Bill and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Brendan Wallace is a Co-Founder of Fifth Wall, the fund that specializes in technology for the built world and real estate tech. Prior to Fifth Wall, Brendan was Co-founder & CEO of Identified, a data & analytics company that raised $33 million of venture capital and was acquired by Workday (WDAY) in 2014. Brendan also co-founded Cabify, the largest ridesharing service in Latin America, which has raised $143 million and operates in 14 countries and 50 cities. If that was not enough, Brendan has been an active angel investor and manages one of the largest syndicates on Angellist, having led over 50 angel investments including Bonobos, Dollar Shave Club, Earnest, Philz Coffee and Zenefits. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Brendan made the transition from the world of startup founding to investing with Fifth Wall? 2.) How does Brendan feel fund managers can approach LP composition in order to provide strategic value add to portfolio companies? How did he approach this? 3.) How do the differing sources of LP money differ when comparing corporate LPs to more traditional fund of funds and endowment funds? Why did Brendan decide it was optimal to have both in Fifth Wall? 4.) Brendan has previously said 'autonomous cars are the next meteor to hit the real estate industry'. What are the 3 differing types of risk that could prevent this rise? What timeline does Brendan believe we are looking at for self-driving? 5.) How does Brendan see the urban landscape evolving and developing over time? Will we see a renewed period of urbanisation or urban spread? How do the macro levers affect this? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Brendan's Fave Book: The Accidental Superpower Brendan's Fave Blog: CB Insights Brendan's Most Recent Investment: VTS: The Leading Asset and Asset Management Platform As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brendan on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Beezer Clarkson is Managing Director @ Sapphire Ventures where she leads Sapphire's investments in venture funds domestically and internationally. Prior to joining Sapphire, Beezer managed day-to-day operations @ DFJ's Global Network, which had $7 billion under management across 16 venture funds worldwide. She has also spent time at Omidyar Network created by Ebay founder, Pierre Omdiyar, Hewlett Packard and Morgan Stanley. Beezer also founded OpenLP.com, an effort to help foster greater understanding in the entrepreneur-to-LP tech ecosystem. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Beezer make her way into the world of limited partners? 2.) How has the venture industry performed as a whole for Q1 2017 both in funds raised and $ invested? How does this compare to previous years? 3.) How is the 1st time fund manager ecosystem developing? Is it fair to say that first-time funds and micro funds are now an established part of LP portfolios? To what extent does shortening fund cycles concern Beezer? 4.) What other areas of the market have we seen explosive growth in? Why was the # of $100-$250m down last year? Why is it different this year? 5.) How does Beezer analyze the recent activity in the public markets? How does this liquidity affect the fundraising market for both startups and GPs? Will we see a return to bubble like times? As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Beezer on Twitter here! The thoughts, comments and opinions in this podcast do not represent investment advice and do not necessarily reflect the views of Sapphire Ventures. Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Jason Brown is the Founder & CEO @ Tally, the startup that is building a better credit card experience giving power to the consumer. They have investment from some of the leading names in early stage finance including Shasta Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, Ludlow Ventures and Blake Byers @ GV just to name a few. As for Jason, prior to Tally, he founded 3 further startups including most recently Gen110 where helped to bring a new consumer debt product market that finances residential solar installs. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jason come to found Tally following his 3 prior startup founding experiences? 2.) Why does Jason think you should never settle with candidate hires? What shall startups do when they are growing fast and need someone now? Why does Jason believe you should never use external recruiters? 3.) As this is Jason's 4th startup and he has raised from the likes of Kleiner Perkins in the past, what has Jason learned in terms of fundraising through his past entrepreneurial experiences? What does Jason believe founders should look for from their VCs? 4.) Why does Jason believe that in the majority of cases 'move fast and break things is completely wrong'? What industries does Jason believe you have to lean into the regulators? 5.) How does Jason look to instill radical candor within Tally as a fast scaling startup? What does Jason think this is important for all startups to have engrained in them? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Jason's Fave Book: Science of Interstellar Jason's Fave Blog: First Round Review As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jason on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com - and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Gene Frantz is a Partner of CapitalG, Alphabet's growth investment fund which has investments in the likes of Airbnb, Snap Inc and Stripe. As for Gene, before joining CapitalG, Gene was a partner at TPG Capital, a global private equity fund. During his 13 years at TPG, Gene was responsible for multiple technology and telecom investments and represented TPG on multiple public and private company boards of directors. Prior to TPG Capital, Gene worked at Oracle Corporation leading its venture capital effort and previous to that in corporate development. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Gene made his way from the world of traditional private equity to investing with Google? 2.) Gene has seen many investment cycles, how has Gene experience of both the ups and the downs of the market affected how he invests today? 3.) What does a company need to show or provide today in order to get a large late-stage cheque or IPO? How has this changed over the years? 4.) Why does Gene think that late stage financing has been massively commoditized? How can late stage funds looks to differentiate themselves in today's market? 5.) How does Gene view the extension of private markets and the delayed IPO? Why does he think management teams are less willing to IPO today? Does it concern him? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Gene's Fave Book: The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided By Religion & Politics Gene's Fave Blog: The Information Gene's Most Recent Investment: Stripe As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com - and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Laela Sturdy is a Partner @ CapitalG, Alphabet's growth investment fund that have invested in the likes of Stripe, Snap Inc, Airbnb and many more incredible companies. As for Laela, she has made investment in category leaders such as language learning platform, Duolingo, payroll and benefits provider, Gusto and jobs site, Glassdoor. Prior to investing with CapitalG, Laela was a Director of Sales & Business Operations at Google where she helped start, scale, and lead teams in several emerging product areas including video and display advertising, local and SMB services, and mobile commerce. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Laela made the transition from an operator at Google to one of the industry's rising star investors with CapitalG? 2.) Market size is fundamental to CapitalG decision-making process so; what is a large enough market? How does Laela look to evaluate market size; bottoms up or top down? 3.) How does Laela look to assess product differentiation? Is brand significant enough IP to be classed as product differentiation? 4.) Why does ownership not play such a pivotal role in investment decision-making process? How crucial is unit economics to Laela at this stage of investment? 5.) With Google's obvious operational value add, does Laela believe we will see the further rise of operational value add within VC? What does this mean for entrepreneurs? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Laela's Fave Book: Americanah Laela's Fave Blog: Dan Primack: Axios Laela's Most Recent Investment: Care.com As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com - and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Leura Fine is the founder and CEO of leading online interior design service Laurel & Wolf. Driven by the desire to connect clients and designers through a digital platform, Leura launched Laurel & Wolf from her home dining room in 2014. Two years later, she has a rapidly growing team of more than 60 employees and a marketplace of more than 1,000 interior designers. They have raised over $30m in VC funding from some of the best in the business including Benchmark, CRV and former guest, Kent Goldman @ Upside Partnership. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Leura made her way from interior designer to founder of one of today's hottest marketplace startups, Laurel & Wolf? 2.) Why does Leura feel it is harder to be a female CEO than a male CEO? How are her actions compared and judged differently than those of her male counterparts? 3.) How does Leura approach the selection element of choosing her investors? What should matter to founders that their investors can bring? How does Leura look to select the best board member? 4.) How did Leura approach the chicken and egg problem of marketplaces in the beginning with Laurel & Wolf? What is her big advice to other founders building out their marketplaces? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Leura's Fave Book: Pride & Prejudice Leura's Fave Blog: Oh Joy As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Leura on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Leo Polovets is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Susa Ventures, one of the west coast's most exciting new seed funds. They have investments in the likes of previous guests RobinHood, Flexport, Andela, LendUp, and Qadium, just to name a few from their stellar portfolio. As for Leo, Prior to Susa, Leo was one of the first engineers at LinkedIn in 2003, then worked on payment fraud detection at Google, then designed and built the data cleaning and deduping engines at Factual. He is an angel investor in over a dozen companies, including DataFox, Boomtrain, Lumoid, and Momentum Machines. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Leo made the transition from the world of operations with LinkedIn to co-founding Susa Ventures? 2.) How does Leo evaluate the supposed success that comes from investing with a contrarian mindset? This that the only way? Is investing merely a game of access without picking? 3.) If one is to follow the crowd, there is often a high price? What is Leo's approach to valuation sensitivity? At what stage does price become unreasonable? How does Leo instill a sense of disciple and rigor in maintaining this mindset? 4.) How does Leo react to founders who raise large sums of capital on slowly increasing caps? How central should dilution be to the mindset of founders when raising? 5.) Why does Leo think there is very little valuable to be gained from enaging in technical due diligence at seed? What else does need to be examined pre-investment? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Leo's Fave Book: Traction: A Startup Guide To Getting Customers Leo's Fave Blog: Mattermark Daily, 25IQ Leo's Most Recent Investment: TalentIQ As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Leo on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Josh Felser is a Co-Founder and General Partner at Freestyle, one of SF's leading early stage seed funds with investments in the likes of About.me, Airtable, Intercom and Patreon just to name a few. As for Josh, prior to being in VC with Freestyle, Josh started two successful Internet companies, Spinner and Grouper/Crackle, which were acquired by AOL Time Warner and Sony for $320 million and $65 million, respectively. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Josh made the transition from the world of startups to founding Freestyle? 2.) Can founders really trust their VC? What is the sign that you can and then cannot trust your VC? How does this depend on the differing stages? 3.) When is the right time for founders to throw in the towel and sell? What are the signs? Is it the role of the board member to encourage and push the founder forward? 4.) Josh has said before that 'companies are sold and not bought'. What does he mean by this? How can founders optimize the acquisition process in terms of the dialogue with the acquirer? How should they approach the topic of valuation? How can they create a sense of urgency? Who are the certain stakeholders they must be talking to? 5.) How has Josh seen himself develop as a board member? What have been the inflection points in his learnings? What are the core components that make up a great board member? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Josh's Fave Book: Snowcrash Josh's Fave Blog: Five Best Ideas of The Day: The Aspen Institute Josh's Most Recent Investment: Carbon Robotics As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Josh on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Spencer Kimball is the Founder & CEO @ Cockroach Labs, the open-source database for building global, scalable cloud services that survive disasters. They have backing from some of the greats of the world of VC having raised from the likes of Sequoia, Benchmark, Google Ventures and Index. As for Spencer, prior to Cockroach he spent 10 years at Google where he oversaw their hyper growth transition from startup to global behemoth. He also spent two years at unicorn payments company, Square as well as co-founding 2 prior startups. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Spencer made his move from a decade @ Google to starting Cockroach Labs? 2.) Why does Spencer enjoy speaking to VCs? What has Spencer taken away from the best of VC conversations? What are the best ways Spencer feels investors can make initial contact? What are the signs of bad investor interactions? 3.) How does Spencer want his VCs and board members to interact with him? How do the best board members provide constructive advice and feedback? 4.) How can investors get into the best deals? If they fail the first time, what can be done on their behalf to show continued interest? 5.) How does Spencer implement a 4 day work week at Cockroach and remain so highly productive? What are the benefits of this for the team and culture? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Spencer's Fave Book: The History of The Decline & Fall of The Roman Empire Spencer's Fave Blog: Ben Bernanke, Paul Krugman As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Nagraj Kashyap is the Head of Microsoft Ventures, the early stage investment arm of Microsoft. They have made investments in the likes of Cahoot, CloudSimple and Outreach just to name a few from their fantastic portfolio. As for Nagraj, prior to Microsoft, he was a senior vice president and head of Qualcomm Ventures where he built Qualcomm Ventures from a US/China-focused team of three in 2003 to a global leader in corporate venture capital with 25 investment professionals and direct investments around the world. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Nagraj made his way into the world of corporate VC and came to be Head of Microsoft Ventures? 2.) Question from Matt Goldstein: What does it take to start a fund from scratch and build a team like Nagraj is doing with Microsoft Ventures? How does he look to establish mindshare for entrepreneurs with a new brand? 3.) Why does Nagraj feel that corporate VC is not viewed in the same regard as traditional VC? Why is this view wrong? What are the benefits of taking corporate VC money? 4.) Why does Nagraj feel it is imperative to let young VCs write cheques and learn from their mistakes? How does Nagraj structure the learning process for new and young VCs? 5.) What does the future hold for the world of corporate VC? Will we see an expansion of this capital source? Why is Nagraj so bullish? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Nagraj's Fave Book: The Omnivore's Dilemma Nagraj's Most Recent Investment: Kahoot As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Nagraj on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Naval Ravikant is the CEO and a co-founder of AngelList, where the world meets startups either to find great jobs, invest in startups or raise funding. Before AngelList, he co-founded Epinions, which went public as part of Shopping.com, and Vast.com. He is an active angel investor and has invested in more than 100 companies, including more than a few "unicorn" mega-successes. His deals include Twitter, Uber, Yammer, Postmates, Wish, Thumbtack, and OpenDNS, which Cisco just bought for $635 million in cash. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Naval made his way into angel investing and came to found AngelList? 2.) Question from Parker Thompson: How does Naval internalize the power law math and how does that affect his ability to pick the best companies? 3.) Why does Naval believe venture to be a bundle of advice, control and money? How does that affect his thought process surrounding what makes a good investor? 4.) Why does Naval believe we will see the unbundling of VC firm brands and the rise of personal partner brands? How will this affect access to proprietory deal flow? 5.) Question from Jonathan Abrams @ Nuzzel: What is the vision for AngelList? How much further up the funding stack can AngelList go? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Naval's Fave Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Naval's Fave Blog: Farnham Street As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Naval on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Anna Shedletsky is the Founder & CEO @ Instrumental, the startup that helps consumer electronics companies ship high-quality hardware, on time. They have funding from some of the best in the business including First Round Capital and a huge thanks to Phin Barnes @ First Round for the intro to Anna today. As for Anna, prior to Instrumental, Anna was a product design lead and manager for the Apple Watch and before that, a product design engineer for the Apple iPod. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Anna made the move from working on the Apple Watch to starting her own startup Instrumental? 2.) How does Anna approach the learning of new things? What is the methodology? What elements in particular has Anna found most challenging to grasp? 3.) Anna has experienced 2 very strange and different fundraising processes? What was strange about them? How did they differ? What did she learn from this experience? 4.) How can founders create a feeling of FOMO within their investors? What is core to this? What should founders be careful of when doing this? How should this be structured? 5.) Coming from Apple, Anna did not have a network among VCs and Founders. How did Anna build her network of VCs and founders? How can others founders do this? What is required for this to be done in a non-transactional organic way? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Anna's Fave Book: The Lord of The Rings Anna's Fave Blog: First Round Review As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Anna on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Josh Breinlinger is a Managing Director @ Jackson Square Ventures where he has made investments in the likes of Contently, OfferUp and rented.com, just to name a few incredible companies. He is also the ultimate master of all things marketplaces, especially when early stage startups must deal with the inevitable chicken and egg problem. Prior to life as a VC with JSV, Josh was part of the founding team @ ODesk, a co-founder @ Rev and the Head of Product and Marketing @ Adroll. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Josh made the transition from the world of startups to investing with Jackson Square? 2.) Josh previously said, 'data informed VCs will always beat data-driven VCs'. What makes Josh say this? What does being data-driven lead to weak investment decision making? 3.) Josh also said, 'we will see the rise of the master marketplace'. What does he mean by this? How is this different from current marketplace startups today? With such specialization does this not make it an unattractive sector for VCs with a smaller TAM? 4.) Following from Josh's statement that 'not all GMV is equal', how does that affect how Josh views; transaction size and frequency, share of wallet, value post-match being made and disintermediation? 5.) Why does Josh think rewarding VC activity is fundamentally wrong? What does it show that is, in reality, a falsehood? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Josh's Fave Book: The Wright Brothers Josh's Fave Blog: Bill Gurley: Above The Crowd Josh's Most Recent Investment: ScriptDash As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Josh on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Hunter Walk is a founding partner @ Homebrew, one of Silicon Valley's breakout seed funds of the last 5 years. They have investments in the likes of Shyp, the Skimm, Managed By Q just to name a few incredible companies. As for Hunter, prior to Homebrew, Hunter led consumer product management at YouTube, which he originally joined in 2003, managing product and sales efforts for Google Adsense. Hunter is also a thought leader in the industry and his excellent blog can be found here. CLICK TO PLAY In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Hunter made the transition from Google to VC with the founding of Homebrew? 2.) How does Hunter view the bridge round? Does he agree with Mike Maples @ Floodgate in stating, 'it is often not a bridge but a pier to nowhere'? 3.) How does Hunter look to package his portfolio companies for the next round of investors? Does Hunter agree with Jason Lemkin in stating, 'the best investors are those that specifically know the metrics required to achieve the next round'? 4.) Why does Hunter not believe there is a Series A crunch? How can founders look to describe their story in a narrative that is attractive for VCs? What one trait does Hunter look for in founders more than any other? 5.) What is the biggest challenge in the coming year for Hunter with Homebrew? How does he measure his success as a VC? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Hunter's Fave Book: Harold and The Purple Crayon Hunter's Fave Blog: Ben Thompson: Stratechery Hunter's Most Recent Investment: JoyMode As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Hunter on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Melody McCloskey is the Founder & CEO @ StyleSeat, the largest and fastest growing marketplace in the $78b beauty and wellness industry. They have raised over $40m in challenging funding conditions from some of the true greats of the business including Alfred Lin @ Sequoia, Chris Sacca, Jeff Clavier, Aileen Lee, Lightspeed, the list goes on. As for Melody, as well as running StyleSeat she is also a mentor for the Thiel Fellowship working with some of the brightest and best next generation entrepreneurs. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What was the origin story of StyleSeat for Melody and how did Travis Kalanick and Garrett Camp come to be angel investors? 2.) Melody has previously stated that 'CEOs do not have all the answers'. What did Melody find most challenging that she struggled to answer? How has her approach to decision making and delegation changed over the last few years? 3.) Melody has been CEO for 6 years, a rarity in tech today, so what has been the core to her success long term as the leader of StyleSeat? 4.) With $40m in funding over 3 rounds, how did Melody find the fundraising experience? How did she feel the rounds differed? What does Melody believe she did well and what would she improve for further rounds? 5.) How does Melody approach transparency internally with fundraising? Should founders tell the team about fundraise opportunities? When is the right and wrong time to do so? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Melody's Fave Book: Hard Thing About Hard Things As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Melody on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Jared Friedman is a Partner @ Y Combinator, the world's most successful accelerator with portfolio companies including the likes of AirBnB, Dropbox, Stripe, Zenefits, Twitch, the list goes on. Prior to YC, Jared was Co-Founder & CTO @ Scribd, the digital library and document sharing platform, which has over 80 million users and attained funding from the likes of Marc Andreessen, Redpoint and CRV. As well as his time in operations, Jared is also a prolific angel investor with investments in the likes of Instacart, FundersClub and Cruise Automation just to name a few. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jared made his way from founding the immensely successful, Sribd, to being a YC partner? 2.) What is the process behind the invites for YC demo day? What does it take for one to get a hotly anticipated seat? Is there really a black list? 3.) A lot of investors suggest that if you are seeing the company at demo day it is too late, what is the thesis around letting friends and family in to view and invest in the companies before demo day? 4.) How can investors look to get into the best YC companies? What can the investors do to show their value to both the companies and the YC partnership? How do you look to advise companies with regards to selecting investors? 5.) Demo days have scaled massively so I have to ask, is there enough capital to go into the 120+ companies now being produced at YC demo days? What are the strategies for scaling YC effectively? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Jared's Fave Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Jared's Fave Blog: HackerNews Jared Most Recent Angel Investment: Starcity As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jared on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Saar Gur is a General Partner @ CRV, one of the nation's oldest and most successful VC firms now on their 16th fund. At CRV, Saar has made investments in some incredible companies including DoorDash, Dropbox, Patreon and Ring to name a few. His brilliance in VC is not just acknowledged by us but Forbes and Venture Capital Journal who named Saar to the top 8 up and coming Venture Capitalists and a top 10 VC under the age of thirty-six. Prior to VC, Saar was the Founder of Brightroll, a leading video ad network that was acquired by Yahoo for a reported $640m. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Saar made his way into the world of VC and came to be a GP at CRV? 2.) When can VCs know when to pull the plug on an investment? How does Saar balance financial prudence with vision and belief in the startup and founder? 3.) What does Saar's relationship building process look like? How does Saar build relationships with founders in natural and organic ways? 4.) How can VCs handle founder disputes? How does Saar look to be as helpful and productive in this process as possible? What does Saar recommend to other VCs in this situation? 5.) How does Saar view the inflection points in the growth of startups? At what moments is their the potential for elements to break? How should this be mitigated? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Saar's Fave Book: The Wright Brothers Saar's Fave Blog or Newsletter: TechCrunch As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Saar on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Foundersuite makes the leading CRM for raising startup capital. Since March of 2016, Foundersuite customers have raised over $130M in seed and venture capital. Foundersuite's CRM sits on a database of over 50,000 investors, which will help you quickly populate your fundraising funnel including a beautiful and easy-to-use investor update tool, and the recently launched a new portal that helps investors and accelerators track their portfolio companies on a single dashboard. For a whopping 40% off a Monthly or Annual subscription use the code "20MinuteVC" at checkout. Greenhouse Software designs tools that help companies hire great people and ultimately build better businesses. Greenhouse works with over 1,500 of the world's most innovative companies such as Airbnb, Slack, Snap Inc. and Lyft. A wrong hire is not only costly for a company but can also turn an employee into an unhappy one. With Greenhouse's Applicant Tracking System, companies can make well-informed decisions and hire qualified candidates who are empowered to do the best work of their careers. Anybody who has a company that's scaling quickly but has trouble hiring and retaining the right people. Visit www.greenhouse.io today to discover how your company can grow.

Christian Lanng is the Founder & CEO @ Tradeshift, the startup with the vision to transform the way businesses work together. With 250+ people, offices in 9 countries and over $200m in funding from some of the best including Data Collective, HSBC and Intuit, they are likely one of the biggest and best startups you might not have heard of. As for Christian, he is one of the most visionary European entrepreneurs of the last decade having grown from digitising invoices in Denmark when he was at Uni to working on digitizing the EU later. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Christian made his way from Denmark to founding one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley? 2.) What does Christian mean when saying, "we should be discussing the globalization of technology"? How will we see the evolution of manufacturing over time? What is the bottleneck for automation? 3.) Christian has previously stated that his competitors have 'hostages not customers'. Why does he say this and how does that affect his view of competition and customer service? 4.) Christian has raised over $200m in varying fundraising climates, how did the rounds differ? What were Christian's keys to fundraising success? What does he know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? 5.) How does Christian approach networking in a very unconventional style? What are the benefits of doing so? What does Christian advise startup founders looking to expand either their founder network or their investor network? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Christian's Fave Book: The Subtle Art Of Not Giving A Fuck Christian's Fave Blog: SaaStr As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Christian on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. But before we dive into the show today, there are some products that you simply cannot remember what life was like before them—for me that is x.ai. They bring you Amy and Andrew, the AI-powered personal assistants who schedule meetings for you. The beauty of Amy or Andrew is that you interact with them just like you would any other person, in plain English. You hand over meeting scheduling, and they get the job is done. Which means that you can avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong usually required to schedule a single meeting. Even better though, there is no sign in, no password, nothing to download. All you do is cc [email protected] Beautiful! And you can check it out now on https://x.ai/20vc/ It really is a must! Link: https://x.ai/20vc/ Code for your first month free: 20VC Workable is the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.

Alex Mittal is the Founder & CEO @ Funders Club, the company that uses software and networks to provide investors with access to the world's most promising startups. Their portfolio includes the likes of Slack, Greenhouse, Shippo and Flexport just to name a few. They are backed by some of the world's leading investors themselves with the likes of Andreessen Horowitz, Y Combinator, Felicis Ventures and First Round Capital. Prior to starting FundersClub, Alex was the founding CEO of Innova Dynamics, a VC-backed touchscreen hardware company, leading the company from university laboratory to securing design-in collaborations with today's major consumer electronics companies. Previously, he was the founding CTO of Crederity, a VC-backed identity and credential verification enterprise software company. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Alex made his way from YC founder to revolutionizing seed stage investing with Funders Club? 2.) Why is Alex still so bullish on the on-demand space? How does Alex evaluate on-demand startups? What metrics are attractive in the space? What do good unit economics look like for on-demand startups? 3.) Does Alex agree that we are experiencing a AI bubble? Where are the shortcomings in the current state of AI and machine learning? How does Alex expect the space to play out and what does Alex advise entrepreneurs in the space? 4.) What does Alex make of the rise of investing in hard science startups? Why does he get concerned to see traditional software VCs investing in the space? How should VCs view the rise of nontech businesses both in hard science and consumer? 5.) You have said before that 'the API is not in the past but is still to come'. Why are you so bullish on the continued expansion of APIs? Where do the inherent oportuities and use cases remain? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Alex's Fave Book: The Art of War by Sun Tsu Alex's Fave Blog: Eric Newcomer, Mattermark Daily As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Alex on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. X.ai is AI-powered personal assistant for scheduling meetings bringing you Amy or Andrew. The assistant you interact with like you would to any other person and it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. Even better, there is no sign in, no password, no download, all you do is cc [email protected] beautiful! And you can check it out now on x.ai it really is a must! Workable is the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.

Jason Lemkin is the Founder @ SaaStr, now with the $70m SaaStr Fund, Jason has paved the way for the new wave of VC in what I describe the 'platformification of VC'. Jason has led or sourced the first VC investment in some of the fastest growing SaaS companies of today with the likes of Algolia, TalkDesk, Rainforest QA and PipeDrive. Prior to being in VC, Jason was the Co-Founder @ Echosign, leading to the very successful acquisition by Adobe where he oversaw Jason oversaw the growth of Adobe Document Services ARR from $50m in 2012 to $100m in 2013. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jason made his way into the world of VC from being a $100m+ exit founder to founding SaaStr and SaaStr Fund? 2.) What is it like for Jason having his own fund vs being part of a bigger fund? What does the investment cheque size say to founders about the fund? Should they be concerned if the investment represents less than 1% of the fund? 3.) What was the fundraising process and environment like for Jason with SaaStr? Is all LP money the same? What differentiated value-add elements can LPs provide fund managers? 4.) Does Jason agree that most VCs do not add value? How does Jason look to add value with his 3 pronged approach? Where does Jason believe that most startups need help and advice? 5.) How does Jason evaluate the micro-VC stage at present? Where does Jason see opportunity? Where does he believe the space is over-heated? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Jason's Most Recent Investment: Automile As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jason on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. X.ai is AI-poweredered personal assistant for scheduling meetings bringing you Amy or Andrew. The assistant you interact with like you would to any other person and it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. Even better, there is no sign in, no password, no download, all you do is cc [email protected] beautiful! And you can check it out now on x.ai it really is a must! Workable is the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.

Kevin Chou is co-founder and CEO of Kabam, a world leader in mobile free-to-play games. At Kabam, Kevin catapulted revenue to $400 million and a valuation of more than $1 billion in 2014. Under Kevin's leadership, Kabam has raised more than $240 million from venture and strategic investors, including some of the world's largest entertainment and internet companies such as Alibaba, Google, Intel and Warner Brothers. Before Kabam, Kevin worked at Canaan Partners, Kabam's initial investor and where he invested in 14 consumer technology and online media companies. In 2014 Kevin was named one Fortune magazine's prestigious "40 Under 40" and, in 2012, was identified by Fortune as one of the "Smartest People in Tech." In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Kevin came to found the wildly successful Kabam from a life in VC with Canaan Partners? 2.) How does Kevin respond to investors that say games is so challenging as it is so hits driven? What are the requirements to build an enduring and successful games company? 3.) What are the metrics that define success in gaming? Why does Kevin believe that gaming is unlike any other in terms of metrics? 4.) To what extent does Kevin believe it is right to monetise games from the beginning vs the free to play market? What are the features and challenges required for success in the premium end of the market? 5.) How does gaming alter both in terms of design and monetisation when comparing the East to the West? What feature sets are preferrable in both? Why doe the East want to pay for as much up front as possible? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Kevin's Fave Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Kevin's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Dean Takahashi: VentureBeat As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Kevin on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. X.ai is AI-poweredered personal assistant for scheduling meetings bringing you Amy or Andrew. The assistant you interact with like you would to any other person and it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. Even better, there is no sign in, no password, no download, all you do is cc [email protected] beautiful! And you can check it out now on x.ai it really is a must! Workable is the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.

Carl Eschenbach is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world's leading funds with investments in the likes of Google, Apple, Whatsapp, Paypal and Stripe just to name a few. As for Carl, prior to Sequoia, Carl was President and CEO @ VMWare where he grew the team from 200 to 20,000 people. If that was not enough Carl has also stepped in as CFO at a $5Bn company and transitioned 3 CEOs. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Carl made the move from President and CEO @ 20,000 person company, VMWare to Partner @ Sequoia? 2.) Question from Alfred Lin, Partner @ Sequoia: How did Carl look to build a culture of performance at VMWare? 3.) Question from Pat Grady, Partner @ Sequoia: What were Carl's biggest learnings with regards to high performance teams? What are the common mistakes in scaling a go to market strategy? 4.) How does Carl view the internal workings at Sequoia to the external perception? Was the move to Sequoia everything he expected? What was different or challenging? 5.) What does Carl believe are the core components that make a great board member? How has Carl's time in operations affected his view of boards and their working? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Carl's Fave Book: Half Time Carl's Most Recent Investment: Zoom As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Carl on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. X.ai is AI-poweredered personal assistant for scheduling meetings bringing you Amy or Andrew. The assistant you interact with like you would to any other person and it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. Even better, there is no sign in, no password, no download, all you do is cc [email protected] beautiful! And you can check it out now on x.ai it really is a must! Workable is the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.

Pat Grady is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world's leading funds with prior investments in the likes of Apple, Google, Whatsapp, Paypal, Stripe and many more. At Sequoia, Pat has made investments in many past guests of this show and the SaaStr podcast including Zoom, Namely and Qualtrics, just to name a few. Prior to Sequoia, Pat spent 3 years with the team at Summit Partners. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Pat made his way into the world of VC and one of the most famous funds in the world, Sequoia? 2.) How does Pat view the apprenticeship model in VC? How can VCs attempt to develop and convey the founder empathy when they have not been a founder? Do 'career VCs' get the same respect from founders? 3.) What does Pat believe to be the defining characteristics of the next generation of great software? What are the commonalities? 4.) Pat has said before that 'data is the new oil', what makes Pat think this? How does this affect his investment thesis going forward? Are there elements of being 'data long' that make Pat nervous? 5.) How does Pat think the data incumbency advantage can be mitigated? What can startups do to build a moat? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Pat's Fave Book: The Boys In The Boat Pat's Fave Blog: CB Insights Pat's Most Recent Investment: Namely As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Pat on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. X.ai is AI-poweredered personal assistant for scheduling meetings bringing you Amy or Andrew. The assistant you interact with like you would to any other person and it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. Even better, there is no sign in, no password, no download, all you do is cc [email protected] beautiful! And you can check it out now on x.ai it really is a must! Workable is the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.

From 1995 until 2004 Andy Rachleff was a co-founder and General Partner of Benchmark Capital, who have backed the likes of Twitter, Snapchat, Dropbox, Uber and Instagram. Upon his retirement from Benchmark, Andy joined the faculty of the Stanford Graduate School of Business to teach a variety of courses on entrepreneurship. In 2008 he co-founded Wealthfront Inc, the online financial advisor and investment management solution, where he now serves as Executive Chairman. In just 3 years, Wealthfront now have over $2bn AUM. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Andy made his way into the world of VC, became the Co-Founder @ Benchmark and what was the origin story behind the founding of Wealthfront? 2.) On rejoining Wealthfront as CEO Andy stated, 'I am an investor, not a CEO but what I did not realize was that I am a founder'. At what point did Andy realize this? Would Andy say that this is a strategic inflection point for Wealthfront with his return? 3.) What are the few elements that will make or break Wealthfront in the coming years? It it the best CEOs that are able to both balance the challenges with the opportunities? 4.) What does the future hold for Wealthfront? What is the exciting news? What does this mean for the road ahead and the world of automated personal finance? As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Andy on Twitter here! X.ai is AI-poweredered personal assistant for scheduling meetings bringing you Amy or Andrew. The assistant you interact with like you would to any other person and it allows you to avoid the tedious hours of email ping pong in order to schedule one meeting. Even better, there is no sign in, no password, no download, all you do is cc [email protected] beautiful! And you can check it out now on x.ai it really is a must! Workable is the all-in-one recruiting software for ambitious companies. From posting a job to tracking and managing candidates, Workable provides everything you need to hire better. Transparent communication, organized candidate profiles, structured interviews and a full reporting suite gives hiring teams the information they need to make the best choice. Workable is available for desktop and mobile and you can find out more on workable.com where you can try it for free.