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

Ann Miura-Ko has been called "the most powerful woman in startups" by Forbes and is the Co-Founder of Floodgate, one of the valley's leading early stage funds with investments in the likes of Twitter, Twitch and TaskRabbit. Some of Ann's investments at Floodgate include Lyft, Ayasdi, Xamarin, Refinery29, Chloe and Isabel, Maker Media, Wanelo, TaskRabbit, and Modcloth. Ann is also a lecturer in the School of Engineering at Stanford University, where she got her PhD focused on mathematical modeling of computer security. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ann made her way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) Ann's 2nd day in VC was 9/11, how does Ann view investing in times of crisis and downturn? How does this effect the macro-economy and her investing cadence? Floodgate state that all venture bankable high growth companies share 4 very common characteristics with regards to power. Here we break them down: Proprietary Power: What is it? What are it's characteristics? Product Power: What does this imply about product market fit? What are the nuances and complexities? Company Power: What does it take to be created and maintained? How have so many unicorns established themselves without credible and sustainable business models? Category Power: Why it is so important to create a new category? How can this be done and who has done it well in the past? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Ann's Fave Book: The Poisonwood Bible Ann's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Benedict Evans Ann's Most Recent Investment: The Greatist As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Ann on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here! This episode was brought to you by DesignCrowd, the online marketplace for custom graphic, logo and web design that helps startups, entrepreneurs, web developers and agencies outsource design projects to designers from around the world. How Does It Work? Once you have launched your brief, designers will begin submitting quality designs for you to review. With some constructive feedback, you can quickly generate a large gallery of designs that really do fit your needs. You can have exactly what you need within just three days. Once you have selected your favourite design, you will be sent all the files you require to update your branding. If you don't like any of the submitted designs, then DesignCrowd offers a money back guarantee. So checkout designcrowd.com/VC and enter the promo code VC100 to get an astonishing $100 off your next project.

Josh Udashkin is the Founder and CEO @ Raden, essentially making the unsexy sexy with a design-forward app-connected piece of luggage that provides a superior end-to-end travel experience. Prior to founding Raden, Udashkin practiced law and did international development for Canadian shoe company, Aldo. To date, Raden have raised funds from our friends @ First Round Capital, Lerer Hippeau, Pritzker Group and many more incredible investors. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Josh came to found Raden and what the a-ha moment was for him? 2.) Why does Josh believe in the benefits of the dual approach to selling both being online and with physical retail stores? 3.) Why have we seen such innovation in the space in the last 30 years? The incumbents have said, they are bad at selling online, what are they doing wrong? What is Josh doing to optimise the process? 4.) Why is Josh bullish on omni-channel retail? What are the benefits? 5.) How are hardware products innovating on the hardware as a service model and integrating physical retail products with superior mobile experiences? 6.) What trends have we seen in investing in hardware products in the last 5 years or so? Why is hardware becoming more attractive an investment field? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Josh's Fave Book: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE Josh's Fave Blog: Business of Fashion As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC and Harry on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! If you are looking to make your move into the world of VC or improve your investing skills, Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing is a must! It is a 2 week crash course at Stanford run by Stanford Professional Development Centre and 500 Startups. You will learn the mechanics of all things Silicon Valley investing, check it out here. The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa. Lees is like the TOMS Shoes or Warby Parker of the mattress industry. Here are 3 reasons why they are the best place to get your new mattress: Leesa has done away with the awkward mattress showroom experience by allowing a fully online experience, shipping to your doorstep for free. Their 10 inch mattresses come in all sizes and is crafted with 3 unique layers o foam including2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of really cool latex like foam design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are made 100% in the US or UK and they give you a 100 night trial, to make sure the mattress is perfect for you. Go to leesa.com/VC and enter promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Wesley Chan is a Manging Director @ Felicis Ventures where he has led investments in the likes of Canva, Flexport and Luma, just to name a few. Prior to Felicis, Wesley was a General Partner @ Google Ventures. Before Google Ventures he was an early employee at Google, where he founded and launched Google Analytics and Google Voice, resulting in his being awarded Google's Founders Award–the company's most prestigious recognition–for leading the development of Google's early client efforts, which led to the development of Google Chrome. Fun fact about Wesley he is a massive hacker and IOT enthusiast with over 100 connected devices in his home. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Wesley made the transition from Foundering Google Voice and analytics to being a VC? 2.) What were Wesley's biggest takeaways from leading investment at Google Ventures? When looking at his investment in Nest, what makes Nest such a truly phenomenal connected device? 3.) Wesley previously said, 'I look for patterns similar to Google Analytics in how if you build something great.' What are those patterns and what does that thought process lead to in terms of thought outcome? What is a good example of this? 4.) Where does Wesley think we are on the programmable interface element of consumer hardware? What would he like to see change or improve in the space? 5.) How has Wesley seen the investor sentiment to hardware change over the last decade? What have been the rivers in the rising positivity of investing in hardware? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Wesley's Fave Book: The Big Short Wesley's Most Recent Investment: Luma As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Wesley on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here! If you are looking to make your move into the world of VC or improve your investing skills, Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing is a must! It is a 2 week crash course at Stanford run by Stanford Professional Development Centre and 500 Startups. You will learn the mechanics of all things Silicon Valley investing, check it out here. The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa. Leesa is like the TOMS Shoes or Warby Parker of the mattress industry. Here are 3 reasons why they are the best place to get your new mattress: Leesa has done away with the awkward mattress showroom experience by allowing a fully online experience, shipping to your doorstep for free. Their 10 inch mattresses come in all sizes and is crafted with 3 unique layers o foam including2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of really cool latex like foam design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are made 100% in the US or UK and they give you a 100 night trial, to make sure the mattress is perfect for you. Go to leesa.com/VC and enter promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

David Cohen is the founder and managing partner at Techstars, so a few amazing stats on techstars first, they have a total of 762 companies of which 90% are active or have been acquired, having raised more than 2bn in funding, as for David he is a serial entrepreneur having founded Pinpoint Technologies which was acquired by ZOLL Medical Corporation in 1999. and David was also the founder and CEO of earFeeder.com, a music service which was sold to SonicSwap.com in 2006. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How David made the transition from Founder to VC with Techstars and Fund I? 2.) Fund I is one of the most successful funds in history; what was the structure with Fund I? Why did David choose a $5m fund size? How did he decide initial to follow on ratio? 3.) Why was David so valuation sensitive with Fund I? Why was David so rigid on a consistent cheque size on Fund I? 4.) Why did David decide to expand from being a solo GP fund? What are the challenges and complexities of fund scaling and did David approach this? 5.) Question from Ari Newman: What does David think about uncapped notes? Why does David like big boring companies? Brett Jackson: How did you meet Ryan Graves @ Uber and how did the Uber deal come about? Jason Seats: Where does David still see inefficiencies in the current venture model? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: David's Fave Book: The Soul Of Money David's Fave Blog: Mattermark Daily As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and David on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Snapchat here! If you are looking to make your move into the world of VC or improve your investing skills, Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing is a must! It is a 2 week crash course at Stanford run by Stanford Professional Development Centre and 500 Startups. You will learn the mechanics of all things Silicon Valley investing, check it out here. The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa. Leesa is like the TOMS Shoes or Warby Parker of the mattress industry. Here are 3 reasons why they are the best place to get your new mattress: Leesa has done away with the awkward mattress showroom experience by allowing a fully online experience, shipping to your doorstep for free. Their 10 inch mattresses come in all sizes and is crafted with 3 unique layers o foam including2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of really cool latex like foam design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are made 100% in the US or UK and they give you a 100 night trial, to make sure the mattress is perfect for you. Go to leesa.com/VC and enter promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Dennis Mortensen is the CEO and Founder of X.ai, the artificial intelligence driven personal assistant that lets people schedule meetings using plain English and nothing more than a CC to [email protected]. Their female persona Amy is so lifelike that users have asked her on a date at a rate of one request per month! X.ai is now one of the best funded AI startups having raised over $30m from our friends at FirstMark and a big thanks to Matt Turck for making the intro and from DCM, who also helped us with some of the questions for Dennis! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Dennis came to found X.ai and what the a-ha moment was for him? 2.) What did the training look like for X.ai? How long did it take? How much data did you have to painstakingly annotate? What is more important; data or algorithms? 3.) Many VCs are concerned about large incumbents having proprietary data sets. Does this concern Dennis and what can be done to mitigate this 4.) Question from David Cheg @ DCM: How will AI startups interact with giant corporates also investing heavily in AI research? 5.) How was the fundraising journey for Dennis? How did he approach it strategically? What challenges did he face? How did he go about choosing his investors? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Dennis' Fave Book: How To Get Rich by Felix Dennis Dennis' Fave Blog: Wait But Why As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Dennis on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! If you are looking to make your move into the world of VC or improve your investing skills, Venture Capital Unlocked: Secrets of Silicon Valley Investing is a must! It is a 2 week crash course at Stanford run by Stanford Professional Development Centre and 500 Startups. You will learn the mechanics of all things Silicon Valley investing, check it out here. The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa. Lees is like the TOMS Shoes or Warby Parker of the mattress industry. Here are 3 reasons why they are the best place to get your new mattress: Leesa has done away with the awkward mattress showroom experience by allowing a fully online experience, shipping to your doorstep for free. Their 10 inch mattresses come in all sizes and is crafted with 3 unique layers o foam including2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of really cool latex like foam design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are made 100% in the US or UK and they give you a 100 night trial, to make sure the mattress is perfect for you. Go to leesa.com/VC and enter promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Annie Kadavy is a General Partner @ Charles River Ventures. The prestigious VC fund that is now on it's 16th fund and has backed the likes of Twitter, Yammer and Mailbox just to name a few. At CRV, Annie focuses on all things consumer and has either led or sourced their investments in ClassPass, Cratejoy, Patreon, Laurel & Wolf and DoorDash. Prior to CRV, Annie spent time with SV Angel and Warby Parker. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Annie made her way into the world of VC? 2.)Why have we seen the explosion of marketplaces in recent years? What are the inherent challenges of two sided marketplaces; typically consumers and micro-entrepreneurs? Does Annie agree with Jeff Jordan in stating that these marketplaces need to nurture and manage conditions of perfect competition? 3.) What are the core components to growing traditional producer consumer marketplaces? How do they broach the chicken and the egg problem of supply and demand? 4.) Why is Annie so excited for the potential of bots? Will the transition to bots and conversational interfaces represent a major point of disruption or more of an evolution in the interface paradigm? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Annie's Fave Book: Mindset: How You Can Fulfill Your Potential by Carol Dweck Annie's Fave Blog: The Skimm Annie's Most Recent Investment: Roam

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 and what was the origin story behind the founding of Benchmark? 2.) Andy took the opposite route to most having been a VC and then founding Wealthfront. So what does Andy make of doing VC first and then becoming an operator? 3.) Why does Andy believe Ivy League endowments are the best managed pools of capital? What do they do well and what separates the good from the great? 4.) Andy has worked with some of the world's best CEO's and board members, so what makes the best board member and what makes the best CEO? 5.) How has Andy seen the VC industry evolve and develop over the last 20 years? How has Andy seen his own investment decision making process and patter recognition alter over that time? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Andy's Fave Book: The Innovator's Dilemma As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Andy on Twitter here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Sasha Orloff is the CEO and Co-founder of LendUp, a fintech startup offering online and mobile personal loans and credit cards in the United States. Prior to launching LendUp Sasha was on the other side of the table as a VC with Citi Group's corporate venture capital arm. On the topic of VC funding, LendUp raised an incredible $150m in Jan 2016 from likes of SV Angel, Yuri Milner our friends at Susa and Google Ventures just to name a few. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Sasha come to found LendUp following a stint in VC with Citi Group? 2.) What Sasha learnt from VC about running a successful startup and how he applied them to his founding of LendUp? 3.) Was it difficult leaving the security of a VC job to found a startup? Would you have done the same had you had children at the time? 4.) What trends in FinTech is Sasha most excited for? Why does Sasha think banks are in so much trouble? Is there the potential to co-operate rather than replace banks? 5.) How was the fundraising process for Sasha? What was his preferred round and how did they differ from stag to stage? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sasha's Fave Book: Banker To The Poor Sasha's Fave Blog: Sam Altman As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Sasha on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Chris Douvos is Managing Director @ Venture Investment Associates (VIA) where he is a member of the Firm's Investment Committee and has responsibility for the management of relationships with the funds' managers and its limited partners, as well as the identification and development of new relationships for the Firm. Prior to joining VIA, he spent time at The Investment Fund For Foundations (TIFF). where he was responsible for over $1 billion. Prior to that, Chris worked on Princeton University's endowment team. One of Chris' most notable investments is his pre-first fund investment in First Round Capital. Chris is also the author of the fantastic blog, www.SuperLP.com, definitely check that out if you have not had the chance yet. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Chris make his way into the world of limited partners? 2.) How does Chris respond to FOMO as an LP? Does it affect his decision making process? How does he look to avoid it? 3.) What patterns and processes has Chris developed to asses the ability of potential GPs? 4.) Is Chris concerned by the increasing time it is taking for startups to exit? How does this affect his think as an LP and cash on cash relationship to this asset class? 5.) In 2013, Chris aid micro VC was the most exciting space in VC, where is he most excited for now? Where will we see innovation in the VC market? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Chris' Fave Blog: RedEye VC, Tomasz Tunguz Chris' Fave Book: The Great Gatsby Chris' Most Recent Investment: Other Lab As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Chris on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

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 runs the incredible openlp.com which is really opening up the world of LPs and if you have not checked that out, it really is a must! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Beezer make her way into the world of limited partners? 2.) How do LP's find a new and talented fund manager? Is it a similar referral process as in startups with? How does the sourcing element of the LP world work? 3.) How do GPs raising a fund differ from startups raised their round? What are the similarities and differences in the processes? 4.) What does the investment decision making process look like for Beezer? Are their commonalities in the process of great LP's processes? What do you at Sapphire focus on when investing?? 5.) At Sapphire you have extensively researched the formulas of what makes a great VC, what have been your findings? What are the commonalities amongst the great VCs? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Beezer's Fave Blog: Term Sheet, Strictly VC, The Information Beezer's Fave Book: The Tale of the One Way Street As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Beezer on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Melanie Perkins, Founder & CEO at Canva the disruptive online platform allowing anyone to create professional quality designs. They have over 10m users from 179 countries and have funding from our friends at Shasta, Felicis and upcoming guests Blackbird Ventures and Airtree in Australia. Prior to Canva, Melanie was the Fusion Yearbooks which she grew to be the largest Yearbook publisher in Australia. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Melanie come to found Canva, what was the a-ha moment for her? 2.) How has Melanie looked to scale the team whilst maintaining the same core startup values and company ethos? What are the strategies at play here? 3.) What does it take to grow in international markets? Where were the benefits of founding Canva in the isolated tech ecosystem of Perth?? 4.) What did Melanie look for in her investors? As a newbie to the VC scene how did she approach the fundraising process and what would she like to improve on? 5.) How can products that have both a free and a paid model offer enough in the free version to entice users, whilst retain enough for the paid to justify the price? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Melanie's Fave Book: Designing The Obvious As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Melanie on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Nabeel Hyatt is a venture partner at Spark Capital where he invests in entrepreneurs using that rare combination of design and technology to transform markets. He is currently on the board of Spark Capital's investments in Cruise (acquired by General Motors), Fig, Harmonix, Postmates, Proletariat, and Thalmic Labs. Nabeel was previously cofounder and CEO of Conduit Labs, which was sold to Zynga in 2010, where he then became General Manager up through the IPO. Prior to that he was variously cofounder, head of product, and CEO at a variety of hardware and software companies including MIT Media Lab spin-out Ambient Devices, Teamtalk (BSkyB), and Interphase. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Nabeel make his way into the world of VC? 2.) What are the biggest lessons Nabeel can apply from his time in the trenches to being a VC at Spark? How has his investment strategy and decision making changed over time? 3.) What were the biggest takeaways for Nabeel as an observer and investor in Oculus? 4.) What is the story behind Spark's investment in Cruise (recently acquired by GM)? How did Nabeel come to meet Kyle and the team? What was the product like? How did it evolve? 5.) What does Cruise's acquisition mean for the autonomous car industry? What are the inherent challenges for the industry as a whole? How will they be overcome and what timeline are you placing on the industry to come into fruition? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Nabeel's Fave Blog: AVC Nabeel's Most Recent Investment: Fig As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Nabeel on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Bijan Sabet is General Partner @ Spark Capital where he primarily invests in digital canvases and online communities for people at work and at play. Bijan led early investments for Spark in the likes of Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, OMGPOP and Runkeeper just to name a few. Before becoming an investor, Bijan led product management and business development at GameLogic (acquired by Scientific Games), Moxi Digital (acquired by Digeo) and WebTV Networks (acquired by Microsoft Corporation). In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Bijan make his way into the world of VC? 2.) How did the Twitter and Tumblr deals come about? What made you say yes? 3.) Looking at Bijan's thesis, is it true that Bijan has a preference for first time founders? What are the commonalities of all great first time founders? 4.) Often first time founders nail product market fit but struggle to scale the operations to suit the growth of the product. How does Bijan as a VC lend to this situation? 5.) Does Bijan agree with Fred Wilson's assessment of the consumer downturn? Why does Bijan think that David must beat Goliath in the end? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Bijan's Fave Blog: Ready Player One Bijan's Fave Blog: AVC Bijan's Most Recent Investment: Lily: Your Throw and Go Camera As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Bijan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Jessica Mah is Founder and CEO of inDinero, which she started back in 2010 to help entrepreneurs with all their accounting and tax needs after going through the same challenges with her own businesses. Jessica has grown inDinero from zero to multi-million dollar revenues with over 100 full-time employees and has been featured in the Forbes and Inc 30 Under 30 Lists. The company has raised over $10M to date and is growing rapidly. Her goal is grow inDinero into being the leading accounting provider for businesses. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jessica come to found Indinero, an SMB accounting startup when she was at University? 2.) Why did Jessica decide to raise funding from angels over VC's? What were the benefits of this? 3.) Why does Jessica believe that institutional capital is never patient capital? What additional value add do angels bring that VCs and HNW's do not bring? 4.) How does Jessica like to involve her investors in the hiring process? How can founders do this and why should they? 5.) Why does Jessica believe it is better to have a board that works for the founder and not the other way round? Does this not lead to conflict? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jessica's Fave Book: A Guide To The Good Life As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jessica on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Nikhil Basu Trivedi is an early stage investor with Shasta Ventures, where he focuses on consumer, mobile and SaaS. Prior to joining Shasta, Nikhil was a member of the Insight Venture Partners team in NYC. Before making the move into venture, Nikhil co-founded Artsy in his sophomore year at Princeton University, Artsy now employs over 100 people and has raised over $50m in venture financing. One of Nikhil's main passions is self driving cars and so today's show will be centred around the proliferation of autonomous vehicles and what that means for us as a society? In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Nikhil come to be a VC in SF having spent his early years in the UK? 2.) Why is Nikhil so excited about self-driving cars? What is the enabler that is allowing this mass rise of the autonomous vehicle? 3.) What happens in a world of little mechanical engineering at all, where repairs can be achieved with software updates? How does this change the complexity of production? How does this change what the supply chain might look like? How does this change the capital structure required? 4.)How does the rise of the autonomous vehicles effect the sharing economy? Is Nikhil bullish on Lyft, Uber, Didi? With on demand, when will we reach a point of equilibrium when the supply of drivers that gets drawn in and the price that attracts consumers will be equivalent? 5.) Who is the leader, is this a winner take all, will the acquisition of GM and Cruise mean a dominance? Who has Nikhil been impressed by? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Nikhil's Fave Book: Leading by Sir Alex Ferguson and Michael Moritz Nikhil's Fave Blog: Mattermark Daily, CB Insights Nikhil's Most Recent Investment: Tally As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Nikhil on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Matt Turck is Managing Director of FirstMark Capital where he invests across a broad range of early-stage enterprise and consumer startups. Prior to FirstMark, he was a Managing Director at Bloomberg Ventures, the investment and incubation arm of Bloomberg LP. Previously, Matt was the co-founder of TripleHop Technologies, a venture-backed enterprise search software startup that was acquired by Oracle. Matt organizes two large monthly events, Data Driven NYC (focuses on Big Data and AI) and Hardwired NYC(focuses on IOT, AR/VR, drones). At Firstmark, Matt has made investments in the likes of Sketchfab, Sense 360 and the much loved X.ai with Amy Ingram as your personal secretary. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Matt make his way into the world of VC? 2.) What does big data really mean? With the cool kids in the data world moving on to obsessing over AI, is big data still a 'thing' in 2016? 3.) Why is now the time for big data? What has enabled big data to have sudden mass utility across a variety of applications? 4.) How does Matt view the integration of big data and AI? Is AI helping big data deliver it's promise? 5.) How can we combat the incumbency advantage of large companies owning the majority of datasets? How can startups access similar datasets? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Matt's Fave Blog: AVC, Chris Dixon, Brad Feld, Wait But Why Matt's Most Recent Investment: Hyperscience As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Matt on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Jessica Lessin founder and Editor in Chief of The Information. Prior to The Information, she covered Silicon the technology industry for eight years at the Wall Street Journal where she wrote nearly 1,000 articles for the paper, consistently breaking news about major products, management changes and strategy shifts. Jessica was also part of a team that was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Now you can follow both Jessica and me on Snapchat on @jlessk and @hstebbings In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jessica come to found The Information following The Wall Street Journal? 2.) Marc Andreesen: 'print journalism is converging in quality and technique with blogs and Wikipedia'. Does Jessica agree with this? Has revisability has led to a lower quality initial publication? 3.) How does Jessica view the competitive landscape for journalism today? Who are competitors and what would Jessica say is complimentary to The Information?? 4.) We have seen the decentralization away from the central forms of authority in journalism. What effect has this decentralization had on distribution? Competition? Market size? 5.) What is the monetisation strategy for The Information? Why choose that strategy over the more prevalent others such as advertising? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jessica's Fave Book: Ben Bradlee: A Good Life Jessica's Fave Blog: Doug Young As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jessica on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Sam Lessin is a Partner at Slow Ventures who have made investments in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Mattermark, AngelList,Dropbox and many more. On top of this, Sam is also the Founder and Co-CEO at Fin, which is basically like Siri Echo or Google now except it actually works, truly a phenomenal product. Prior to Fin and Slow, Sam was VP of Product Management at Facebook following the acquisition of his company, Drop.io by Facebook in 2010. Sam is also an intern at The Information where he reports directly to the boss Jessica Lessin! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Sam come to found Fin and what was his route into VC with Slow? 2.) What are the fundamental shifts that have occurred in the world of tech? How has this affected the wider tech and investing ecosystem? 3.) Will the transition to bots and conversational interfaces represent a major point of disruption or more of an evolution in the interface paradigm? 4.) How can bots establish the same relationship and stickiness with the user as apps? In a world of bot domination where strong data sets is the ultimate weapon, are we not at a fundamental incumbency disadvantage? How can the platforms react to this? 5.) What will the effect of self driving cars be on society? How long before this was be possible? How does the sharing economy and capitalism survive in unison? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sam's Fave Book: The Three-Body Problem Sam's Fave Blog: The Information Sam's Most Recent Investment: Common As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Sam on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Manu Kumar founder and Chief Firestarter at K9 Ventures, a pre-seed and seed stage micro-VC fund based in Palo Alto, according to K9 they invests 'frighteningly early' and like to be the first institutional capital invested in a startup. K9 is an investor in Lyft, Twilio, Occipital, eShares, and their companies have been acquired by the likes of Linkedin, Facebook, Dropbox, Paypal and more. Prior to K9, Manu was either the founder or co-founder of 4 companies, 3 of which with successful exits and the 4th being the fantastic eshares! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Manu come to found K9 and what was his route into VC? How does Manu define entrepreneurialism and how did this play out in his early life? 2.) "The best buys are found in things most people don't understand or believe in." How does this play out in Manu's investment strategy? ? 3.) "The riskiest thing is the belief there's no risk." How does risk assessment feature in Manu's investment mentality? How does Manu transition this to your portfolio construction? ? 4.) Josh Koppelman states "What has to be remembered is the defining role of price." How much of a role does valuation play in Manu's investment decision making process? 5.) "An absence of losses can give you a great start toward a good outcome." As a seed fund how does Manu approach inevitable losses? How does Manu try and minimize mortality rate? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Manu's Fave Book: The Cuckoo's Egg by Clifford Stoll Manu's Fave Blog: Strictly VC, Dan Primack: Term Sheet Manu's Most Recent Investment: GradeScope As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Manu on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Rod Drury is the Founder & CEO @ Xero, essentially beautiful accounting software for small business. Xero has received funding from some of the best investors in the world including the likes of Peter Thiel, Accel and Matrix Partners. Prior to Xero, Rod has founded and exited several successful startups including being acquired by QuestSoftware (later acquired by Dell). This success has led to a mass of awards including the likes of NZ Entrepreneur of The Year and NZ High Tech Hall Of Fame. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rod came to found one of New Zealand's breakout tech startup in Xero? 2.) What were the very first days of Xero like? How and why did Rod decide to IPO from the start? How did Rod convey the narrative so well from day 1? 3.) What does it take to transition a firm like Xero from a 50 man startup to a 500 an company? What are the challenges? How do you assure a consistent hiring quality and mechanism? 4.) How are Xero doing in the US in terms of fighting Intuit? Is it a winner take all market? 5.) How was the fundraising process for Rod? How did Rod choose and meet his investors? What was important for Rod when making the selection? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Rod's Fave Book: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future Rod's Fave Blog: Feedly, Techmeme As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Rod on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Jenny Lefcourt is a Partner @ Freestyle where she invests in early stage tech companies. Prior to Freestyle, Jenny was the Founder of Weddingchannel.com and Bella Pictures which were both acquired. During this time, Jenny raised funds from titans of VC including Kleiner Perkins, Trinity Ventures, Amazon and more. Jenny has also angel invested and advised some incredible entrepreneurs with the likes of Minted and Style Seat. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jenny made his way into VC from founding and exiting 2 startups? 2.) What were the differences in raising money as a founder and as a VC? What learnings as a founder did Jenny have that have helped her move into VC? 3.) How have the large macro-economic changes affected Jenny's investing style? Has she seen a change in her investment cadence? Does Jenny place more emphasis on burn reduction now? 4.) Why does Freestyle not invest with a thesis? What are the benefits of this? How does Jenny make investment decisions going forward without a thesis? 5.) What does Jenny mean when she says that VCs suffer from duck syndrome? What can VCs do to make them the best and their founders life easier? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jenny's Fave Book: Dreamland, Blinkist (Harry's Suggestion) Jenny's Most Recent Investment: CREXi As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jenny on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Rob Go is a co-founder and Partner at NextView Ventures, Next View are hands on, high conviction true seed stage investors. Prior to founding NextView, Rob was at Spark Capital and focused on early stage investments in consumer web and mobile. Before joining Spark Capital, Rob worked at Ebay as the Business Product Lead for "Finding". In this role, he oversaw the launch of major products that enhanced the search, browse, and product discovery experience for tens of millions of users. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Rob come to found NextView and what was his route into VC? 2.) NextView are seed investors but what does that really mean today? Why has the entire seed stage moved further down the funnel? 3.) With regards to runway, there are two side son the table, those like Jeff Clavier and I who believe 36 months is optimal. What side of the table is Rob on? Longer or shorter runway? 4.) Why are smaller rounds optimal according to Rob? What do they allow you to do that you cannot do with larger rounds? What does the rise of pre-seed do for Rob as a true seed investor? 5.) Regadless of label competition between VC is now larger than ever, what does Rob make of the personalisation of VC and branding tactics used by Mark Suster etc? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Rob's Fave Book: Ready Player One Rob's Fave Blog: Wait But Why Rob's Most Recent Investment: Dia & Co As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Rob on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! Attend one of the best conferences of the year, Sunrise, with speakers from the likes of Atlasssian, Canva and Planet Labs. Check it out here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!\

Aaron Hirschhorn is the founder, CEO and "Top Dog" of DogVacay, the leading online and mobile pet sitting company. DogVacay connects pet parents in need of services with more than 25,000 vetted and insured pet caregivers in 10,000 cities across the country. Founded in March 2012 and based in Santa Monica, CA, the company has over 80 employees and has raised $47M from investors including Omers, Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. Prior to DogVacay, Aaron spent several years in venture capital and technology, working at Monitor Group, Upfront Ventures, and Monitor Ventures. Previously, Aaron was an analyst at Kayne Anderson Capital Advisors. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Aaron come to found one of the startup hits to come out of LA? In the beginning what was the harder element the demand or the supply side? 2.) How did Aaron know when he had achieved product market fit with DogVacay? What were the signs and how did he follow this up? How did Aaaron react to VCs laughing at his concept and how did he stay energised and positive? 3.) How was the fundraising process for Aaron with DogVacay and Benchmark, Andreesen and First Round? How can founders look to control the dialogue? How many investors should founders look to target? What makes Aaron want and not want a particular investor? 4.) What business fundamentally work in the on demand economy and what don't ? How should marketplace founders be approaching the issue of unit economics and should growth still be the priority? 5.) What is it like having Bill Gurley as a broad member ? What will be the enabler that will allow DogVacy to achieve that market penetration required? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Aaron's Fave Blog Or Newsletter: Bill Gurley, Jason Calacanis: Inside As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Aaron on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Matt Clifford is co-founder and CEO of Entrepreneur First, Europe's leading pre-seed investment programme for founders of deep technology startups. Founded in 2011, EF backs the world's top technical talent pre-company. EF's startups have raised over $100m in funding and are breaking ground in artificial intelligence, robotics and infrastructure, among other fields. Outside EF, he is co-founder and non-executive director of Code First Girls and non-executive director of Techfortrade. Before starting EF, Matt worked at McKinsey & Co. as a strategy consultant, and studied at the University of Cambridge and at MIT. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Matt come to found the world's top technical talent pre-company programme? 2.) Should everyone be an entrepreneur? How can a founder determine whether this is the right path for them? Can entrepreneurialism be taught or is it an innate skill within? 3.) What does Matt think of the idea and fear of many founders that they are simply not ready? How do we know when one is ready? What are the signs? 4.) How important is mindset for founders? Matt has previously stated the importance of a growth mindset? What does he mean by this and how does he advise founders to approach this? 5.) What is the most common mistake Matt sees entrepreneurs in EF make? How does he help to combat this? 6.) What does the future of work look like? Where will jobs be at this century? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Matt's Fave Book: Sapiens (Same as Parker Thompson @ AngelList) Matt's Fave Blog: Marginal Revolution Matt's Most Recent Investment: Cloud NC, Third Eye As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Matt on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!\

Charles Hudson is the Managing Partner with Precursor Ventures, an early-stage venture capital firm focused on first check investments in strong teams developing innovative hardware and software products and services. Prior to founding Precursor, Charles was a Partner with SoftTech VC, one of the most active seed stage investors in Internet and mobile startups. Prior to SoftTech, Hudson spent time at Google, IronPort Systems, and In-Q-Tel. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Charles made his way into VC from working with the CIA? What were Charles biggest takeaways from his operational experience? 2.) Why have we seen the rise of the solo GP fund? What tools and services can be used by solo GPs to make their lives easier? 3.) Chris Sacca said, 'you have to be a moron to launch a solo VC fund'. What does Charles think about this and what was it about Precursor that made him want to leave SoftTech? 4.) How does Charles' market requirements change now as a pre seed investor, a 100m exit is excellent. Do you you still need unicorns? 5.) How does Charles look to differentiate with Precursor in the sea of emerging VC funds? What is the most important thing for him about pr-seed investing? 6.) What is Charles' vision for Precursor? What would success look like for him? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Charles' Fave Book: Alec Ross: Industries of The Future Charles' Fave Blog: The Information As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Charles on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Chris Morton the Founder & CEO @ Lyst, the fashion aggregation and discovery app and universal checkout cart that has pulled in more than $60m in funding from the likes of Balderton, Accel and DFJ. Chris was previously in the wonderful world of venture himself as an early stage investor with Balderton Capital where he focused on consumer internet companies. Prior to that Chris worked on various projects from making custard suits to working in renewable energy! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Chris come to found one of the hottest fashion startups, Lyst? What was the interview process with Benchmark like? 2.) Why did Chris become a VC first before an entrepreneur? What does being a VC allow you to become a better entrepreneur with? 3.) Chris has said before that we have not scratched the surface of e-commerce, so why have we not? What is the vision and what are the challenges that stand in the way? Question from Harry Briggs: Will we see physical retail stores largely disappear? 4.) Lyst place heavy emphasis on data collection and usage. Why is this? What does it power to Lyst to do? What interesting consumer trends and behaviours have been revealed from the data? 5.) How was the fundraising process for Chris? What did being in VC teach him about the process that he could implement in entrepreneurship? What were the challenges? What would he do differently if he were to raise again? As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Chris on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Brian O'Malley is a Partner @ Accel Partners, where he spearheads Accel's work with next-generation marketplaces and consumer-focused companies. He led the firm's investments in Amino, Gametime, HotelTonight and Luma, as well as disruptive software-as-a-services businesses Duetto and Narvar. Brian joined Accel from Battery Ventures, where as a general partner he led investments in companies like Dollar Shave Club, BazaarVoice (public), Coupa, Skullcandy (public) and TradeKing (acquired by Ally). Prior to Battery, Brian led sales efforts and built some of the first web service-based API integrations for Bowstreet, Inc. (acquired by IBM). In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Brian make his way into one of the world's leading VC firms? What were Brian's biggest takeaways from being in the trenches during the bust of the dot com bubble? 2.) What is the macro economic view to value compression? How should startups being approaching and dealing with this? 3.) How can startups maintain growth as the priority whilst maintaining investor expectations on burn rates? What is Brian's approach to the growth vs retention theory? 4.) What retention metrics would Accel look for indifferent products? How does this vary from category to category? What are the commonalities Brian has seen in products that have insane retentive ability?? 5.) Where does Brian stand on market size and the potential for market transition down the line? Does the market even need to be there today for it to be investable today? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Brian's Fave Book: Zero To One By Peter Thiel Brian's Most Recent Investment: Luma: Fast, Reliable Wifi As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Brian on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Byron Deeter is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners. Prior to being a VC, Byron himself was a veteran cloud CEO & Founder returning to venture capital in 2005 to lead Bessemer's global cloud practice where he has been actively involved with over 100 cloud investments representing a third of the market cap of all public cloud companies. Byron has lead investments in the likes of Box, Twilio, Intercom, Cornerstone On Demand and many many more. Byron's pedigree is recognised globally as he is consistently ranked one of the top global investors across all industries. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Byron make his way into VC from being a veteran cloud CEO and Founder? 2.) What are the commonalities angst the truly exceptional operators that Byron has worked with? What is it that makes the likes Aaron Levie so special? 3.) We saw a $63bn drop in late stage SaaS valuations, so what does this really mean for the early guys? In these markets should founders be placing greater emphasis on unit economics? 4.) With the increasing importance of customer retention will we see further increased growth in the field of customer success? How important is it really now for startups? 5.) How does Byron define efficient growth, what does cash is king mean? Where does Byron stand on the bottoms up sales approach, is this the new sales method of the 21st century? 6.) What have been the biggest takeaways for Byron of watching Box, Sendgrid, Twilio go into hyper growth mode and scale into the rocketships that they are Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Byron's Fave Book: The Everything Store Byron's Fave Productivity Tools: Clutter Byron's Fave Blog: Bleacher Report, Techcrunch Byron's Most Recent Investment: Rainforest QA As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Byron on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Mike Mignano is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Anchor, the app that allows you to share and engage with your network via audio, essentially radio for the people. Prior to founding Anchor, Mike was Head of Product @ Aviary, prior to it's acquisition by Adobe. Anchor was one of the hottest products at SXSW this year and has received funding from our good friends at Homebrew, SV Angel, Betaworks, Eniac Ventures, Scott Belsky and many more. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Mike come to found one of the hottest new audio startups, Anchor? 2.) Why have we seen such a renaissance of podcast listening? Will this continue in the long term future and if so, what will drive the long term future growth? 3.) How did Mike use the beta testing phase to learn and iterate on customer behaviour? Following this, how did he implement this feedback to create a community that could be harnessed on launch? 4.) When examining alongside Sarah Tavel's hierarchy of engagement, how does Mike address retention and the creation of virtuous loops within Anchor? 5.) How does Mike fundamentally attempt to menthes Anchor? At what level of growth can the cash taps be turned on? How can Anchor be made to be revenue generating for both the platform and content creators? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Mike's Fave Blog: The Skimm Mike's Fave Book: Cat's Cradle Sarah Tavel's Hierarchy of Engagement Jakob Nielsen UX Designer As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Mike on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

John Frankel is the founding partner of ff Venture Capital and has been an early-stage investor since 1999. He has served on the boards of more than 35 companies and has led investments in more than 80 companies, including Cornerstone OnDemand (CSOD), Indiegogo, Ionic Security, Unikey, Socure, Skycatch, Plated, 500px, Distil Networks, and Bottlenose. Prior to founding ffVC, John worked at Goldman Sachs for 21 years in a variety of roles that involved technology development, reengineering and capital markets. At Goldman Sachs, he worked closely with some of the world's leading hedge fund managers and developed a keen understanding of emerging technologies and portfolio risk/return management. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did John make the move from Oxford grad to NYC venture capitalist? 2.) How has the massive decrease in startup costs affected the seed funding environment? How does David identify the startups he invests in with the plethora that are now available? 3.) How much of an extent is portfolio a branding tool for VCs? In recent years we have seen the rise of the operational VC model with the likes of Andreesen, will this continue as a prominent model in VC? 4.) How as a seed investor does John advise his founders when chasing a valuation that will only lead to a down round? What is John's views on the dreaded down round? 5.) Many companies pivot in the process? Does John like to see pivots? If pivoting what is it important for founders to remember and focus on? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: John's Fave Book: The Accidental Superpower John's Most Recent Investment: Wade and Wendy As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and John on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

James Wise is a partner at Balderton Capital, one of Europe's leading early stage venture funds with $2.5B in funds. The youngest partner at a Series A fund in Europe, at 29 James has already led on deals including the likes of Crowdcube, SketchFab, 3D Hubs, Sunrise and Workable amongst others. He discusses his unusual background, coming into VC after previously setting up and running a charity, why he thinks geography matters less than every and why he continues to focus on areas in healthtech and edutech as well as many other emerging sectors. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) As Europe’s youngest venture partner, is venture capital a viable career going forward? What makes James say this? Has there been a time when you doubted this thesis and why? 2.) So it is a viable career, where do we go from here? Why should we choose venture in Europe over venture in the US? What are the inherent pros and cons? Does James get the itch to head to the Valley? 3.) So VC in Europe is the place to be, so why did James choose Balderton? There are a plethora of great and emerging funds in Europe, what attracted James to Balderton? 4.) What does the next 10 years of VC look like? Where we are heading? Although a viable career now, will this continue to be with increasing power of crowd sourced financing and decreasing startup costs? 5.) What advice would James give a young individual looking to get into the industry? How can an individual show their passion and inherent interest for VC and startups in a tangible way? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: James' Fave Blog: The Morning Paper by Adrian Colyer, Nathan Benaich Newsletter James' Fave Book: Score Takes Care Of Itself: Bill Walsh, Nick Bostrum: Superintelligence James' Most Recent Investment: Magic Pony As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and James on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Nicolas Dessaigne is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Algolia. Algolia are a brilliant case study for the successful pivot, having started off life as an offline search engine for mobiles but really took off by helping companies deliver an intuitive search-as-you-type experience on their websites and mobile apps. They participated in Y Combinator's Winter 2014 batch and raised $18.3M in May 2015 from the likes of Accel Partners, Point Nine Capital, Storm Ventures and many more incredible investors. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jonathan make his way into tech and come to found the likes of Friendster and Nuzzel? What were his biggest lessons from working at Netscape? 2.) How did Algolia go about crafting their company culture and how have they approached maintaining it as they have gone into hyper growth mode? 3.) What des Nicolas think are the most common challenges with regards to the building and maintenance of a company culture? What pitfalls and advice would Nicolas give to an early stage founder looking to build that culture from the offset? How can investors determine the strength and sustainability of the company culture when viewing startups? 4.) How was the fundraising process for Nicolas? How did the rounds differ from round to round? What elements surprised or challenged him? For Algolia, an incredibly hot startup, how did Nicolas go about about selecting which investors to have? 5.) Talking of the highly competitive round and the very excitable startup community, how do you respond to all of this insane hype and positivity. How do you ensure that you do not fall into the trap of drinking your own cool aid and remain grounded and humble? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode: Nicolas' Fave Blog: SaaStr Nicolas’ Fave Book: Creativity Inc As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Nicolas on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Logan Bartlett is an investor @ Battery Ventures, where he focuses on growth investments for B2B software companies. He is currently involved in Battery’s investment in Pendo and StreamSets. Before joining Battery, Logan was in investment banking with Spurrier Capital Partners, a boutique merchant bank focused on the technology sector. There, he sourced application-software deals with a focused on the marketing-automation sector as well as sales force automation, human-capital management, work management/collaboration, front-office analytics and data-services companies. Prior to that, Logan served as an investment banking analyst at Deutsche Bank focusing on financial technology. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Logan made his way into the wonderful world of venture capital? 2.) So as young chap entering the industry, I would love to hear how you have gone abut trying to build your brand and identity? What are the key personal marketing strategies for you? How important do you think the brand of the VC is? How do you address the juxtaposition of branding and marketing yourself and battery? 3.) How does Logan approach the deal sourcing aspect of the job? What is his approach to this vital thesis? 3.) Moving to more financial matters I want to address both the seed end and the later stage end of the market today. So starting with the seed funding environment, in recent years we have seen a massive drop in the cost of company creation in conjunction with a large rise in seed funding,. What is the effect of this for you as a Series A-B investor, potentially located in what some may call the funding gap? 4.) You are very much located in the B2B space, d I am intrigued wht kind of ARR do you look for at the stage you are investing and what price point per customer do you believe allows for that ARR metric to be hit within a reasonably short amount of time? 5.) Moving to the later stages of the market I have seen in a slide of yours from the past that you stated that more institutional investors have made their way into the private markets and startups are staying private longer. You followed up by staying that this is a win win for all? Why do you think that is? Does it not mean later stage VCs are priced out of rounds due to the inflow of public money? Does it not mean later stage startups attain inflated valuation that will only lead to a down round at follow on or IPO? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Logan's Fave Book: Gang Leader For A Day Logan's Fave Blog Or Newsletter: Dan Primack: Term Sheet As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Logan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Neeraj Agrawal is a general partner at Battery Ventures investing in SaaS and Internet companies across all stages. He was a founding investor in BladeLogic in 2001 and has invested in several other companies that have gone on to stage IPOs, including Bazaarvoice, Guidewire Software, Marketo, Omniture, RealPage and Wayfair. His current, private investments include AppDynamics, Catchpoint, Chef, Cohesity, Coupa, Glassdoor.com, Nutanix, Optimizely, Pendo, SmarterHQ, Sprinklr, StellaService, Tealium and Yesware. For the last six years, Neeraj has been recognized on the Forbes Midas List, which ranks the top 100 venture capitalists in the world. Click To Play In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Neeraj made his way into the world of VC? 2.)Question From Logan Bartlett: 'What is your thought process on what makes a good vs a bad deal? Also, how have you developed your ability to process deals and poke holes in logic?' 3.) How can early stage Saas founders determine the extent to their product market fit?? 4.) What is it like to back rocketships like GlassDoor or Marketo and helping scale operations when you’re in hyper growth mode? Does Neeraj agree with Sheryl Sandberg’s statement, it doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as you have a seat on the rocketship? 5.) Neeraj previously stated in a Nasdaq article that it is all about the team and the market. So I am intrigued what are Neeraj's thoughts on VC founder alignment? Neeraj also places emphasis on the market, so how does Neeraj view the juxtaposition between current and future market? 6.) One hurdle preventing some companies from growth is the ability to attain later rounds of funding so as a largely Series B investor, why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Neeraj's Fave Blog: Brad Feld, Jason Lemkin Neeraj's Most Recent Investment: Pendo.io As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Neeraj on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Jonathan Abrams is the founder & CEO of the social news service Nuzzel. Jonathan is also co-founder and Managing Partner of Founders Den, a shared office space and private club for experienced entrepreneurs and their friends. Previously, Jonathan was the founder & CEO of Socializr, Friendster, and HotLinks, and a software engineer at companies such as Netscape and Nortel. Jonathan is a board member at Girls in Tech, an advisor to CodeNow, and has previously been a mentor in Steve Blank's entrepreneurship classes at Stanford and Berkeley, a top-rated mentor at The Founder Institute and a member of the advisory board of the Silicon Valley Association of Startup Entrepreneurs. Jonathan is also an angel investor in over 50 startups including AngelList, Docker, Front, HelloSign, Instacart, Sapho, Seed, Slideshare, Socialcam, and Vouch. Click To Play In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Jonathan make his way into tech and come to found the likes of Friendster and Nuzzel? What were his biggest lessons from working at Netscape? 2.) How can founders determine the customer stickiness and value proposition in the early days of product testing with friends and family? 3.) How does Jonathan view the competitive landscape for news aggregation? Why is consumer app such a competitive space? 4.) Question From Matt Mazzeo: How does Jonathan compare this moment in time to previous points in the innovation curve? 5.) Having worked with both the old and the new guard of VC, how does working with Lowercase, Homebrew and Softtech compare with the old guard of Benchmark and Kleiner Perkins? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jonathan's Fave Book: Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure, Jerry Kaplan As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jonathan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Roy Bahat is the head of Bloomberg Beta, a new venture fund backed by Bloomberg L.P. Prior to Bloomberg, Roy was chairman of OUYA, a new kind of game console, where he was the first investor. Before that Roy spent five years leading News Corporation’s IGN Entertainment, an online media company with a monthly audience of 70 million people, a top 10 YouTube channel, and the leading website in its category in almost every market globally. Roy served on the board of Revision3 (acquired by Discovery) and was a board observer at Flixster (acquired by Warner Bros). Before joining News Corp., Roy was in the public sector in the office of New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg and at New York’s 2012 Olympic bid. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Roy made his way into the world of VC from working alongside Mayor Michael Bloomberg? 2.) What do all these definitions within AI mean? What does artificial intelligence include? What is machine learning? What is deep learning? 3.) When we talk about AI are we talking pure AI , with the likes of Watson and DeepMind or are we talking consumer centric software with elements of AI? 4.) With data playing such a huge role in the efficiency of AI, do large incumbents like Google and Facebook not have a massive advantage? How can startups get access to datasets? Is AI not fundamentally an acquihire industry? 5.) How important has open source in allowing and encouraging the progression of the machine intelligence ecosystem? What more can be done to further it's growth? 6.) With the rise of machine intelligence, what does the future of work look like? How will we live in a world where 47% of white collar jobs will be replaced by machines and AI? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Roy's Fave Book: Watershed Down Roy's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Media ReDefined by Jason Hirschhorn, Asim Azar, the exponential view As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Roy on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Director of Felicis Ventures. An original “super-angel” investor, he was named to Forbes’ 2014 and 2015 Midas List and previously appeared as one of the top 15 tech angels by Businessweek. Aydin is well-known as an early backer of a number of iconic companies including Shopify (NYSE:SHOP), Fitbit (NYSE:FIT), Adyen, Clearslide, Credit Karma, and Rovio. More than 55 Felicis companies such as Brightroll, Climate Corp, Dropcam, Twitch, and Meraki, have been acquired by industry leaders such as Google, Amazon, Cisco, Apple, Microsoft, AT&T, Disney, Yahoo and Ebay. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Aydin made his way into the world of VC from being a Senior Manager @ Google? 2.) What does Aydin suggest to all those looking to make the move into VC who have potentially, an unconventional background?? 3.) What caused Aylin's shift from angel investor to VC ? What was Aydin's investment strategy look like at the beginning and how has that evolved over time? How does Aydin look to differentiate Felicis from the plethora of seed funds? 4.) How does Felicis' stage agnosticity work in practicality for Aydin and the fund itself? How much of a role does valuation play in Felicis' investment decision making? 5.) Question from Rob Hayes @ First Round: How did the Rovio investment come about? Why do you say you are most proud if it? 6.) Question From Hiten Shah: How do you approach the topic of growing the organisation, whilst still supporting founders with the same time and quality? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Aydin's Fave Book: Anti-Fragile Aylin's Most Recent Investment: Diffbot As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Aydin on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Gagan Biyani is the CEO and Co-Founder @ Sprig, on a mission to build the world's largest restaurant providing healthy and sustainable food. Sprig has attained funding from the likes of Greylock Partners, Accel and Battery Partners. Prior to Sprig, Gagan was the Interim Head of Marketing @ Lyft, where he wrote the first Lyft new market launch playbook and launched Lyft LA. Before that Gagan, was the Co-Founder and CEO of the world's largest online teaching and learning marketplace with the founding of Udemy. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What was the origin story for Sprig? What was the aha moment? 2.) Question from Josh Elman: What lessons have Sprig and Gagan learnt from Chipotle, both in terms of their growth and their food? 3.) What are the coolest things that Gagan has learnt about foods that have learnt and not worked from user and product testing? 4.) On TWIST Gagan stated that the food delivery market is a winner take all market , so what makes Gagan believe that and what will ensure that Sprig is the startup that will be victorious? 5.) How do Sprig address expansion theory? Are they the Uber or the Lyft in terms of aggressive market expansion? How do Sprig choose which new market to enter? Is there a scientific approach? 6.) From having raised 9 rounds of VC and angel funding, what are Gagan's biggest tips and takeaways to anyone entering the VC or funding process? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Gagan's's Fave Book: The Tragedy of Great Power Politics As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Gagan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!

Sarah Tavel is a Partner at Greylock Partners. Prior to Greylock, Sarah was a product lead at Pinterest. As one of the first 35 employees, her first order of business was to launch Pinterest internationally and close the Series C financing. Sarah then moved into product, becoming Pinterest’s founding PM for search and discovery, and launching Pinterest’s first search and recommendations features. She also led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hyper-growth. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. She spent six years at Bessemer, investing in a wide range of businesses from Quidsi to Cornerstone OnDemand. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her way into the world of VC from selling ads in college? 2.) What is the deal sourcing story behind your sourcing of Pinterest for Bessemer? What made Sarah so excited about the product? At what stage did Sarah realise the huge potential Pinterest did have? 3.) How did Sarah decide Greylock was the right VC to choose over the plethora of other options? 4.) How does Sarah try and appeal to the inner founder? What does she do to make sure she is the first person they call? What forms of communication does Srah like to communicate with? 5.) What is Sarah's attitude to VC's personal brand? How has Sarah seen the personalisation of VC in recent years? Why the shift from blog to Medium? 6.) What is the most important attribute for a consumer product to have? Does it have to be both 10X better and cheaper? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sarah's's Fave Book: Creating The Kingdom Of Ends Sarah's Fave Blog or Newsletter: A Crowded Space by Josh Breinlinger As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Josh on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Josh Elman is a Partner at Greylock Partners, which he joined the team in 2011 and invests in entrepreneurs building new consumer products and services. Josh specializes in designing, building, and scaling consumer products, having been part of multiple companies that have grown to more than 100 million users. Before joining Greylock, Josh was the product lead for growth and relevance at Twitter, growing Twitter’s active user base by nearly 10x. Prior to Twitter, Josh worked on the platform at Facebook and was an early employee at LinkedIn helping establish models for user growth and launched v1 of LinkedIn Jobs. Josh currently serves on the boards of Medium, Meerkat, Operator, Discord, and Jelly. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Josh made his move into the VC world from Twitter, Linkedin and Facebook? 2.) What were the biggest takeaways of watching fb, Linkedin and Twitter to hyper growth mode? 3.) Question from Jeff Seibert: What would Josh do with the Twitter product today?? 4.) How would Josh apply his principles of the on boarding process to Twitter? What does he mean when he refers to the ladder of engagement? 5.) How does Josh respond to Fred Wilson's out on the consumer downturn? Is consumer really as hard as Fred makes it out to be? What sort of metrics really get Josh excited when viewing consumer startups? 6.) How has Josh's own investment decision making process been honed and refined since joining Greylock? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Josh's Fave Book: Built To Last: Successful Habits Of Visionary Companies Josh's Most Recent Investment: Discord: Free Voice and Text Chat For Gamers As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Josh on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Baiju Bhatt is the Co-Founder and CEO at RobinHood, the wildly successful stock market trading app with absolutely no commission fees. Since launching RobinHood there have been many amazing milestones including being awarded an Apple Design Award (first Finch company ever to achieve this), funding from the likes of Index, Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and even movie star Jared Leto. They were also nominated for best mobile app at The Crunchies by TechCrunch this year. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Baiju made his way into the world of tech and came to found RobinHood? 2.) How did Baiju deal with the regulatory hurdles heading into the fintech and trading world? 3.) How did Baiju go about building the waitlist for RobinHood to 1m people? What were the defining strategies and channels that made the difference? 4.) What is the thesis behind the design of RobinHood? Will this design enable previously untouched markets to tap into the growing trading market? 5.) What are the biggest challenges for Baiju and RobinHood going forward? What keeps Baiju up at night? What is Baiju's biggest piece of advice to a founder scaling their startup? 6.) How can early stage founders really determine whether they have product market fit and what does this look like? What re the metrics required to suggest serious traction? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Baiju's Fave Blog or Newsletter: TechCrunch Baiju's Fave Productivity Tool: Slack Baiju's Fave Book: The Case For Mars As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Baiju on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Paige Craig is a Founder and General Partner of Arena Ventures. He is an experienced angel investor who has invested in over 110 startups in the last seven years, including companies like Lyft, AngelList, Wish, Postmates, Twitter, Styleseat, Zenpayroll, Quizup and more. Paige spent the first half of his career in the Marine Corps and US Intelligence Community and later launched a defense contractor, driving alone into Iraq in 2003 with just $10,000 and expanding operations across the Middle East, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Africa and Southeast Asia. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Paige made his way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) What were Paige's biggest takeaways from his previous career in the military? How did this shape his investment thesis? 3.) Arena VC have both the fund and the AngelList syndicate, why did Paige choose this dual model? What have been the drivers of it's success? 4.) What does Paige believe makes a great VC? What aspects of himself would he like to improve upon? Is an inherent fight mode common among VCs? 5.) What advice would Paige give to someone looking to start a syndicate? What would Craig recommend to someone looking to join a syndicate? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode: Paige’s Fave Book: Ender's Game Paige’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: Mattermark Daily As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Paige on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Satya Patel is a Partner @ Homebrew alongside Hunter Walk. Prior to Homebrew, Satya was VP Product at Twitter, building and leading the Product Management and User Services teams. Before Twitter, Satya was a Partner at Battery Ventures, where he co-led the seed and early stage investing practices. In 2003, Satya joined Google and was responsible for AdSense product management and partnerships. Before heading to Silicon Valley for Google, I worked for DoubleClick, in venture capital and as a strategy consultant. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Satya made his way into the world of tech and came to Partner with Hunter @ Homebrew? 2.) Is hustle the key component of a great VC? What does Satya believes makes a great investor? 4.) How can startups present emotion and depict their narrative to the VC? What are the benefits of doing so? What founder is most 5.) From Satya's experience, what are the most common reasons startups fail at the seed stage? What can they do to maximise their chances of survival? 6.) We always hear that products should focus on a niche but how then do you attract VC money that is looking for a broad opportunity that can return the fund? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Satya’s Fave Blog or Newsletter: CB Insights, Fred Wilson, Brad Feld Satya’s Fave Book: A Fine Balance As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Satya on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Branko Cerny is the Founder and CEO at Immediately, the mobile platform for modern sales professionals whose mission is to elevate sales back to it’s core foundation, a relationship driven craft. Immediately has some of the US’s finest backing in terms of investment with the likes of Naval Ravikant @ AngelList, Ryan Holmes @ Hootsuite, Jonathan Abrams @ Friendster and Nuzzel and previous guest Kate Shillo @ Galvanize. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Branko made his way into the world of tech and came to be CEO @ Immediately? 2.) How does Branko find being one of the youngest enterprise CEO in the business? What are the challenges and what are the benefits? 3.) What can enterprise companies learn from the likes of Tinder and Equinox? How important is brand building for emerging enterprise sales companies? 4.) To what extent will we see the bottoms up sales process continue in enterprise sales? How does this change Immediately approach to UX, UI and brand building? Why did Branko choose to focus on a mobile platform with Immediately? 5.) How did Branko come to meet his stellar lineup of investors? What value add was he looking for when assembling the lineup? Is he concerned by the large number of investors Immediately has at an early stage? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Branko's Fave Blog or Newsletter: First Round Review, Nir Eyal Branko's Fave Productivity Tool: Intercom, Moleskin Notebook (Harry's Productivity Tool too!) Branko's Fave Book: American Gods by Neil Gaiman As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Branko on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A hundred? A thousand? The answer is too many. But here’s the thing—even though I knew I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how. It’s called SaneBox. SaneBox sorts through your email and moves all of the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. Visit sanebox.com/20VC today and they’ll throw in an extra $20 credit on top of the two-week free trial.

Rebecca Kaden is a Partner at Maveron where she identifies emerging consumer-focused entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Southern California, and New York. Rebecca also plays a leading role in Maveron's seed program, where they partner with emerging consumer companies at their earliest stages. She’s a Board Observer at August, Common, Darby Smart, Dolls Kill, Eargo, Earnest and General Assembly. Her outstanding achievements have been recognised by Forbes who included Rebecca is their annual '30 Under 30'. As always we would like thank the awesome team at Mattermark for providing us with all the data and analysis for the show today, check out Mattermark search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rebecca made her way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) Maveron have shown their belief in the consumerisation of IOT. What are Rebecca's thoughts on the space, how it is progressing, barriers that are preventing mass adoption? 3.) What is your take on the integration of messaging and chat with IOT? Whis there a recent broader market positivity towards chat interfaces at the moment? 4.) Maveron have also shown their likeability towards hardware investments so why is this? Why do Maveron not feel the broader VC market concerns of shipping, logistics? Are we seeing a shift in investing patterns in hardware? 5.) How do Rebecca approach the common problem with consumer startups transtioning from an early adopter market to a mass market product? What does Rebecca feel is the tipping point? What is necessary to make the transition from SF hipster client to everyone? 6.) What are the benefits are of having a narrow investing thesis (only consumer)? How has Rebecca found it? Is it challenging when finding companies you would like to invest in but are outside the mandate? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Rebecca's Fave Book: Pale Fire, Vladamir Nobokov Rebecca's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Sarah Tavel, Brad Feld, Wait But Why Rebecca's Most Recent Investment: Booster Fuels As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Rebecca on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A hundred? A thousand? The answer is too many. But here’s the thing—even though I knew I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how. It’s called SaneBox. SaneBox sorts through your email and moves all of the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. Visit sanebox.com/20VC today and they’ll throw in an extra $20 credit on top of the two-week free trial.

Rob Hayes is a partner at First Round Capital where he opened up the firm's San Francisco office. Over the past eight years, he has led investments in companies such as Mint.com (acquired by Intuit), Gnip (acquired by Twitter), Square, Uber, eero, and Planet Labs. Prior to joining First Round, Rob became the first venture investor at Omidyar Network, the investment firm started by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. While there, he led most of the initial venture capital deals and later built and ran the technology investing group. Before that, Rob worked at Palm, where he product managed Palm OS and started the company's corporate venture fund. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rob made his move into the VC world from working with Palm in the heyday? 2.) Question From David Hornik : How did Rob's seed investment in Uber originate? What made Rob invest? Did Rob realise the potential for Uber when he invested? When did Rob realize it was going to be huge? 3.) Has the investment in Uber changed how Rob views seed investing? Talking of the Uber’s of the world, how do you ensure that you find and decide to invest in the next Uber, when it raises a seed round? 4.) In terms of deal closing, how does Rob approach that element of the deal and what was the competition and closing environment around the Uber deal? 5.) Question from Satya at Homebrew: Stepping back and looking at First Round, what has changed in FRC’s approach as the firm has grown? How does the firm think about managing generational transition? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Rob's Fave Book: Travels with Charley: John Steinbeck Rob's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Dan Primack: Term Sheet Rob's Most Recent Investment: eero: Blanket Your Home In Fast, Reliable Wifi As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Rob on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A hundred? A thousand? The answer is too many. But here’s the thing—even though I knew I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how. It’s called SaneBox. SaneBox sorts through your email and moves all of the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. Visit sanebox.com/20VC today and they’ll throw in an extra $20 credit on top of the two-week free trial.

Puneet Mehta, Founder @ Msg.ai, an artificial intelligence startup for conversational commerce and for an AI founder you don’t get much better than starting your career at IBM's TJ Watson Center, which is exactly what Puneet did. He then went on to build predictive platforms to power large-scale trading systems aka bots on Wall St. It is clearly not joust us who think he is awesome as Advertising Age named Puneet to the Creativity 50 list in 2014, honoring the most creative and innovative thinkers and doers. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Puneet made his way into the world of AI and came to be the founder of YC's latest, Msg.ai? 2.) How has the YC experience been for Msg.ai and for Puneet as a founder? Have YC been able to keep the same quality of mentorship with the largely expanding number in their latest batch? 3.) VC funding is usually very available to YC alums graduating, how will Puneet go about picking his investors? What are the fundamental determinants? 4.) What have been the biggest takeaways for Puneet? What has been the highlight? What has been tough? What was surprising and unexpected? How did Puneet deal with the requirement for 10% weekly growth? 5.) Taking a step back now, Puneet has stated before about building the Turing test for money. So what does he mean by this and how does he look at AI as a key driver for conversational commerce? 6.) What is it about messaging that makes Puneet believe this is the platform of the future? What is it that bots provide that has never been possible before? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Puneet's Fave Book: Peter Thiel: Zero To One, The Power of Now: Eckhart Tolle Puneet's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Paul Graham: Blog As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Puneet on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.

Ciaran O'Leary is the General Partner at one of Europe's newest funds, BlueYard. A $120m fund located at the early stage, centring around 3 key areas: The decentralisation of markets, the democratisation of capabilities, and the liberation of data. Prior to BlueYard, Ciaran was a Partner at Earlybird with investments in the likes of Peak Games (emerging markets social gaming), 6Wunderkinder (productivity apps), Moped (private messaging), B2X Care Solutions (outsourcing platform), madvertise (mobile targeting network) and simfy (digital music distribution company). Before Earlybird, Ciarán co-founded a startup and gathered operational experience at others. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ciaran made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What is the thesis with BlueYard? What is the preferred cheque size, sector and geography? 3.) With the mass of VCs emerging, how can startups at the early stage determine whether a VC really is early stage? Are there any defining characteristics? 4.) For startup founders out there who always hear from fellow founders that everything is going gangbusters, how should they react to that? How can you determine whether a startup really is doing well? 5.) Say the startup really is going well and they are looking to scale and hire, we always hear we need a world beating, world class X? How can they communicate that hire better to their current team and their board? What should the CEO or Head of Talent be focusing on when viewing talent? Is there anything they should look out for in particular? 6.) Now when a startup really scales, board meetings become a big part of a CEO’s life. So how can CEO’s turn useless board meetings into very useful value added meetings? How can they optimize that time? What should they look for? What should they ask for? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Ciaran's Fave Book: The Road Ciaran's Fave Blog: The Economist Espresso As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Ciaran on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Matt Mazzeo is Managing Director at Lowercase Capital, alongside legendary angel investor, Chris Sacca. At Lowercase Matt leads a seed and series A investment strategy managing a portfolio of over forty investments including Uber, Twitter, Stripe and Optimizely just to name a few. Prior to joining Lowercase Capital, Matt spearheaded many of the digital and venture efforts at Creative Artists Agency (CAA). Matt helped shape the agency’s seed stage investment strategy and played an integral role in the founding of CAA’s incubated start-up companies, including Funny or Die, WhoSay, and Moonshark. Matt has been recognized as an innovative force across technology, entertainment, and advertising for which Fast Company named Matt one of the Most Creative People in Business. In addition to making Forbes Midas Brink List in 2014, Matt has been recognized on both Ad Age’s 40 Under 40 List in 2013, and The Wrap’s Inaugural Innovators List. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Matt made the transition from the world of celebrity management to the world of venture capital? 2.) How have we seen the personalisation of VCs in the emerging eco-system? Are VCs themselves brands now? How does Matt look to establish his brand? 3.) What are the required KPI's to make a successful investor? What is Matt pleased with in himself and what would he like to improve? 4.) Why will we see the decentralisation of VC away from the traditional Sand Hill Road? How does being in LA affect the operations and deal flow of Lowercase? 5.) What are Matt's biggest learnings from being partner with Chris? What has Matt founded the most challenging in making the transition from CAA to VC? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Matt's Fave Book: Fooled By Randomness Matt's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Jessica Lessin: The Information Matt's Most Recent Investment: Mobcrush As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Matt on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here! This episode was supported by Wunder Capital, the leading online investment platform that allows individuals to invest in large scale solar projects across the U.S. Wunder’s solar investment funds allow you to earn up to 11% annually, while diversifying your portfolio, curbing pollution and combating global climate change. Do well by doing good and sign up for a free account here and join the thousands of people that are already achieving their investment targets.

Niccolo De Masi is the CEO & Chairman @ Glu Mobile, one of the world’s hottest gaming companies with title including the current No 1 Game in the App Store with the Kendall and Kylie Game, Glu is also the maker of the Kim Kardashian game and the likes of Deer Hunter and many more. Prior to Glu, Niccolo was CEO at mobile entertainment company Hands On Mobile and before that Niccolo was the CEO at London listed mobile entertainment company, Monstermob Group Plc. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What does Niccolo make of the wildly unrealistic pricing applied to early stage startups today? What will result from this incredibly optimistic pricing? 2.) If Niccolo were a VC today, how would he respond to the impending implosion of the early stage startups? What are the best VCs currently doing and what can startups do to preserve as much value as possible? 3.) How central a role does first mover advantage become in a down turning market? Will we see large scale consolidation and if so what will the effects of this be? How can startups position themselves to be the consolidator not the consolidated? 4.) How do Glu pick the celebrities that are featured for their celebrity feature games? What are the KPI's? What are the requirements in terms of existing brand and audience for a celebrity game to be a success? 5.) Why are women better at establishing larger social following than men? What celebrities would Niccolo most like to have on Glu's platform who they currently do not have? As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Niccolo on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!