Keith Rabois is a General Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the best performing funds of the last decade with a portfolio including Facebook, Airbnb, SpaceX, Stripe, Anduril, the list goes on. As for Keith, he has led the first institutional investments in DoorDash, Affirm and co-founded Opendoor. He has also led investments in Faire, Ramp, Trade Republic, and Stripe. As an operator, Keith has an unparalleled track record as a Senior Exec at Paypal, he then went on to influential roles at Linkedin and being COO at Square. Finally, as an angel, Keith made early investments into Airbnb, Lyft, Palantir, Wish and more.
1.) Buy Low, Sell High: What BS!
2.) The Current Landscape:
3.) Outcome Scenario Planning and Competitor Analysis:
4.) Time Allocation and Losing Faith in Founders:
5.) Do VCs Add Value?
6.) The Downfall of SF and Wokeness:
Keith's Most Recent Investment: Found
Aydin Senkut is the Founder and Managing Partner of Felicis. An original super angel turned multi-stage investor, he has been named on the Forbes Midas List for the past nine years (2014-2022). Felicis has been an incredible 16-year journey starting with a $4M Fund I back in 2006, their most recent fund in 2021 was $900M. Along the way, Felicis has invested in over 45 unicorns including Adyen, Canva, Shopify, Notion, Opendoor, and Plaid. Prior to starting Felicis, Aydin was a Senior Manager at Google where he spent an incredible 6 years.
1.) The Founding of Felicis:
2.) Fund Mechanics: Building a Portfolio
3.) Aydin Senkut: The Investor
4.) The Venture Landscape:
Aydin’s Favourite Book: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Oliver Jay (OJ) is one of the most successful sales leaders of the last decade. Most recently, OJ spent 6 years at Asana where he was hired as the company's first revenue leader. As CRO, OJ was responsible for product-led and sales-led revenue and grew the team from less than 20 to over 450. Before Asana, OJ spent 4 years at Dropbox in a period of hyper-scaling for the business where OJ was Head of APAC and LATAM. At Dropbox, OJ scaled the sales team from 0 to 50 while tripling ARR. If that was not enough, OJ is also an independent board member at Grab, the leading Super app in Southeast Asia.
1.) Entry into Sales:
2.) The Playbook:
3.) The Hiring Process:
4.) Sales Onboarding:
Oren Zeev is the Founding Partner @ Zeev Ventures and one of the OGs of solo capitalism. Oren has an incredible portfolio including investments in Audible, Houzz, Chegg, Riverside, Tipalti, TripActions, and Firebolt to name a few. Oren is also very unlike any other VC firm, he does not employ any associates, principals, or staff. He doesn't have partners or partner meetings. No LP meetings. No processes. No investment committees or memos. Nada. Oren is doing it differently. Prior to starting Zeev Ventures, Oren spent 12 years as a GP @ Apax Partners where he c-headed their technology practice in their Silicon Valley office.
1.) Origins into Venture:
2.) Deployment Pace:
3.) Ownership:
4.) Price Sensitivity:
5.) Diversification:
6.) Oren Zeev: AMA:
Oren’s Most Recent Investment: Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
Ian Siegel is the Founder and CEO @ ZipRecruiter, a leading online employment marketplace that uses AI-driven matching technology to actively connect millions of businesses and job seekers to their next great opportunity. Since co-founding the company in 2010, more than 1.8M employers have used ZipRecruiter to find their next great hire and over 500 million job applications have been submitted through the site. Prior to their IPO last year, Ian bootstrapped the company for many years to many millions in revenue before taking venture funding from IVP, Wellington Management and Basepoint Ventures to name a few. Before founding ZipRecruiter, Ian served in key leadership roles at CitySearch, Stamps.com, and Rent.com (an eBay company).
1.) The Founding of Olo:
2.) The Art of Great Storytelling
3.) CEO's Do As Little As Possible
4.) The Art of Hiring:
5.) Parenting and Marriage:
Ian’s Favourite Book: Living with a SEAL: 31 Days Training with the Toughest Man on the Planet
Darius Contractor is one of the pre-eminent growth leaders of the last decade. As a growth OG, he has been VP Growth @ Airtable, where he led the growth, engineering, and product teams. Before Airtable, Darius was Head of Product Growth @ Facebook Messenger and finally, before Facebook, Darius spent 4 years as Head of Growth Engineering at Dropbox; here, Darius helped drive Dropbox to $100M in net new revenue through Dropbox Business. If that was not enough, Darius is also an active angel and fund investor with a portfolio including Calm, Airtable, Clubhouse, Census and LP checks in Maven Ventures and Long Journey Ventures.
1.) Darius Contractor: Entry into Growth:
2.) When is the Right Time:
3.) Who To Hire:
4.) Onboarding and Integration:
David Fialkow is the Co-Founder and Managing Director @ General Catalyst, one of the leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Stripe, Snap, Airbnb, Anduril, Canva and many more amazing names. Prior to founding General Catalyst with Joel Cutler, David was a serial entrepreneur building and selling 4 successful companies.
1.) Everything Great Starts Small:
2.) Creating a Firm: The Early Days
3.) The Partnership:
4.) Doing the Impossible: Generational Transition:
Mentioned in Today’s Episode with David Fialkow:
David’s Favourite Book: The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People
Tony Fadell, often referred to as the father of the iPod is one of the leading product thinkers of the last 30 years as one of the makers of some of the most game-changing products in society from the iPhone and iPod to more recently founding Nest, creating the Nest Thermostat, leading to their $3.2BN acquisition by Google. Tony recently released Build, this is a masterclass taking 30 years of product and company building lessons and packaging them for you, check it out here.
In Today's Episode with Tony Fadell:
1.) Everything Great Starts Small:
2.) Data and Brand:
3.) Lessons from Steve Jobs on Product Marketing:
4.) Hiring Product Teams:
5.) Apple Watch, iPod and Apple HiFi:
Mentioned in Today's Episode with Tony Fadell:
Tony's Favourite Book: Only the Paranoid Survive
Fabrice Grinda is the Founding Partner @ FJ Labs, with over 700 investments, Fabrice has had over 250 exits and built a portfolio including Alibaba, Coupang, Airbnb, Instacart, Flexport, and Delivery Hero, and many more. Prior to FJ Labs, Fabrice served as CEO for three multinational companies; including OLX, one of the largest websites in the world with over 300 million unique visitors per month. As a result of his incredible investing success, Fabrice was named the #1 Angel Investor in the world by Forbes.
In Today's Episode with Fabrice Grinda:
1.) Everything Great Starts Small:
2.) WTF is Going On: The Market Today
3.) The Optimistic Case:
4.) The Great Stagnation:
5.) The Catastrophe:
6.) What this Means for Venture:
Mentioned in Today's Episode with Fabrice Grinda:
Fabrice's Favourite Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Jason Lemkin is the Founder and Managing Partner @ SaaStr, a social community of 500,000+ SaaS founders and a $100M venture fund. In the past, Jason has made investments in the likes of Algolia, Talkdesk, Pipedrive, and RevenueCat to name a few. Prior to SaaStr, Jason was the Co-Founder and CEO @ Echosign, backed by Emergence Capital, Echosign was bought by Adobe and is Adobe Sign as we know it today.
1.) Origins into Venture:
2.) The Importance of Ownership & Multi-Stage Funds
3.) Building Your Sales Team
4.) Boards and VC Value Add:
Jason’s Most Recent Investment: Owner
Anne Wojcicki is the Founder & CEO @ 23andMe, offering DNA testing with the most comprehensive ancestry breakdown, personalized health insights, and more.
Harley Finkelstein is the President of Shopify. Over the last 12 years, Harley has partnered with Tobi to the tune of building Shopify’s revenue to over $4.6BN in 2021 and the team to over 10,000 employees.
Deena Shakir is a Partner at Lux Capital, one of the leading firms investing in emerging science and technology ventures at the outermost edges of what is possible.
Eric Liaw is a General Partner @ IVP, one of the leading later-stage venture capital and growth equity firms of the last decade with $8.7 billion of committed capital and a 40-year IRR of 43.1%.
Scott Dietzen is Vice Chairman of the Board of Pure Storage and served as the Company’s CEO from 2010 to 2017. Under his leadership, Pure grew to thousands of employees and
completed an IPO in 2015.
Harley Miller is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Left Lane Capital, one of the fastest-growing growth equity firms of the last five years. Just yesterday, Left Lane announced the closing of their new fund taking their AUM to over $2BN with an early portfolio including M1 Finance, Masterworks, Choco, GoStudent, to name a few. Prior to founding Left Lane, Harley spent over 9 years at Insight Partners investing in the likes of DeliveryHero, HelloFresh, N26, Calm, Udemy and many more breakout companies.
1.) Origins into Venture:
2.) Left Lane: Fundraising
3.) Left Lane: Firm Building
4.) Left Lane: Investing and Consumer
Harley’s Most Recent Investment: Masterworks