Tiger Global are one of the most discussed venture firms on the planet. With a deal cadence and capital deployment speed that is unmatched, they have made their mark on the venture landscape like no other over the last 24 months. Today we are joined by leaders from Sequoia, Benchmark, Thrive Capital, General Atlantic, GGV and Aleph to discuss the rise of Tiger and how it impacts the venture ecosystem.
1.) Doug Leone: Sequoia Capital
2.) Bill Gurley: Benchmark Capital
3.) Michael Eisenberg: Aleph
4.) Anton Levy: General Atlantic
5.) Hans Tung: GGV
6.) Kareem Zaki: Thrive Capital
Max Rhodes is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Faire, the online marketplace where retailers discover their next bestsellers from independent brands across the globe. To date, Max has raised over $1.1BN with Faire from some of the best including Sequoia, Founders Fund, DST, Forerunner, Lightspeed and many more. Prior to starting Faire, Max spent close to 5 years at Square in numerous different roles including Director of Consumer Product at Caviar.
1.) The Founding Story:
2.) How To Hire Effectively:
3.) How To Reference People:
4.) How to Strategise:
Max’s Favourite Book: Good Strategy Bad Strategy, Who: The A Method for Hiring
Ed Baker is an angel investor and growth advisor to various startups including Lime, Zwift, Whoop, Crimson Education, GoPeer, and Playbook. Ed was the VP of Product and Growth at Uber from 2013-2017. Prior to Uber, Ed was the Head of International Growth at Facebook, a company he joined after they acquired a startup he co-founded called Friend.ly, which had grown to over 25 million users.
1.) Ed Baker: Entry into Growth:
2.) When is the Right Time:
3.) Who To Hire:
4.) Onboarding and Integration:
Geoff Lewis is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Bedrock, now with over $1BN in AUM, Bedrock invests in breakout technology companies that are incongruent with popular narratives. In the past, Geoff has backed some generational defining companies such as Wish, Lyft, Nubank, RigUp, Vercel, Anduril and many more. Prior to founding Bedrock, Geoff was a Partner @ Founders Fund.
1.) How Geoff made his way into the world of venture with his joining Founders Fund? How his time with Founders Fund led to his co-founding Bedrock with Eric?
2.) Geoff Lewis: The Investor:
3.) Bedrock: The Firm
4.) The Market:
Geoff’s Favourite Book: Friedrich Nietzsche
Geoff’s Most Recent Investment: Praxis
Aaron Levie is the Founder and CEO @ Box, the company incorporating the best of secure content collaboration with an intuitive user experience suited to the way people work today. Prior to their IPO in 2015, Aaron raised from some of the best in the business including the main man Mark Cuban, a16z, Emergence, DST, Coatue, DFJ and many more. Aaron founded the company from his dorm room at the University of Southern California and has led the company to 1,900 employees and over $770M in revenue, as of 2021 data.
1.) How Aaron founded Box from his dorm room at the University of Southern California? What was that founding a-ha moment? What did the first year look like? Does Aaron agree, "serial entrepreneurship is overrated"?
2.) Phases of Leadership and Company Growth:
3.) The Market:
4.) The Team and Culture:
Aaron’s Favourite Book: Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)
Scott Belsky is an entrepreneur, author, investor, and currently serves as Adobe’s Chief Product Officer and Executive Vice President, Creative Cloud. Scott oversees all of product and engineering for Creative Cloud, as well as design for Adobe. In 2006, Scott founded Behance, the leading online platform for the creative industry, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Behance now has over 25M members. Scott is also an early advisor and investor in Pinterest, Uber, Sweetgreen, Carta, Flexport, Airtable, and several others. Finally, if that was not enough, Scott is the author of two national bestselling books - Making Ideas Happen and The Messy Middle.
1.) Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality:
2.) The Importance of the First Mile:
3.) The Makings of a Great Product Leader:
4.) The Hirings of a Great Product Team:
David Frankel is a Co-Founder and Managing Partner @ Founder Collective, one of the great seed firms of the last decade with a portfolio including Uber, Coupang, Airtable, Whoop and many more incredible companies. Previously, David was Co-Founder and CEO of Internet Solutions (IS), the largest ISP in Africa, ultimately acquired by NTT. David is also a founding board member of Endeavor SA and in the past has been selected by the World Economic Forum for the Global Leader of Tomorrow (GLT) program.
1.) How David made his way into the world of angel investing? How his mindset changed when making the transition from angel to an institutional investor with the founding of Founder Collective?
2.) Building the Firm: Founder Collective
3.) David Frankel: Investor Mindset
4.) The Partnership:
David’s Favourite Book: The Code Breaker: Jennifer Doudna, Gene Editing, and the Future of the Human Race
David's Most Recent Investment: PairTree
Mark Cuban is a serial entrepreneur, investor, and owner of the Dallas Mavericks. Today we are focused on Mark's latest entrepreneurial endeavor, starting Mark Cuban's Cost Plus Drug Company, the online pharmacy taking out the middlemen, meaning no price games and huge drug savings. As mentioned, Mark is also the proud owner of Dallas Mavericks, since his taking over they have competed in the NBA Finals for the first time in franchise history in 2006 – and became NBA World Champions in 2011. Before Dallas Mavericks, Mark co-founded Broadcast.com – streaming audio over the internet. In just four short years, Broadcast.com (then Audionet) was sold to Yahoo for $5.6 billion dollars. If that was not enough, Mark is also one of ABC’s “Sharks” on the hit show Shark Tank.
1.) Cost Plus Drugs: Origin
2.) Building the Team: Hiring
3.) Brand + Capital + Business Strategy:
4.) AMA with Mark Cuban:
Dannie Herzberg is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital and one of the great sales leaders of the last decade. Prior to entering the world of venture, Dannie spent 4 years at Slack as their Head of Enterprise Sales, there Dannie built & scaled the self-serve / SMB, mid-market, and enterprise sales orgs across the Americas as Slack grew from $100M - $1B in revenue. Before Slack, Dannie spent over 5 years at Hubspot building sales, opening an SF office, and then joining product to launch CRM & platform.
1.) How Dannie got her first job in sales at Hubspot through being a waitress in a Boston Diner? What were her biggest lessons from her 5 years scaling sales at Hubspot? How did Dannie's 4 years at Slack impact her operating and sales mindset today?
2.) The Playbook:
3.) The Hiring Process:
4.) Sales Onboarding:
Inbound Marketing, Revised and Updated: Attract, Engage, and Delight Customers Online
Roger Ehrenberg is a Founding Partner @ IA Ventures, one of the most successful seed funds of the last decade with $475 million across their four funds. Previous investments include The Trade Desk, Datadog, Digital Ocean, Wise and Recorded Future. Most recently, Roger took a step away from the day-to-day running of the firm, since he started IA Sports Partners, investing in sports franchises and other sports-related assets. Last month, Roger, alongside his two sons, started Eberg Capital, an investment vehicle focused on web3, crypto, NFTs and next-gen infrastructure.
1.) How Roger made his way into the world of angel investing and venture having had a successful career on Wall St? How did seeing the booms and busts of the dot com and 2008 impact his investing mindset today? How does today compare to those times?
2.) The Investor Mindset:
3.) Investing Strategy:
4.) AMA:
Scott Sandell is the Managing General Partner of NEA, one of the leading firms of the last 3 decades with now close to $24Bn under management and a portfolio including Salesforce, Robinhood, Plaid, Databricks and more. As for Scott, since joining the firm in 1996 he has led investments in Salesforce.com, Tableau Software, WebEx and Workday and serves on the board of Robinhood, Cloudflare, Coursera and Divvy to name a few.
Rick Yang is a General Partner and Head of Consumer Investing @ NEA, since joining in 2007 he has led investments in the likes of Masterclass, Plaid, Robinhood and many more.
1.) How Rick came to meet Vlad, Robinhood Founder, for the first time? What impressed Rick most in that first meeting? How did the internal discussions proceed at NEA? Was it a unanimous decision to make the investment?
2.) The Market:
3.) The Traction:
4.) The Team:
Jonathan Neman is Co-Founder & CEO of Sweetgreen, the mission-driven restaurant brand that serves healthy food at scale. Alongside his co-founders, Jon has scaled Sweetgreen from one small restaurant to one of the US' leading food brands with over 5,000 employees, over 140 locations and $300M+ in revenue. If that was not enough, Jon is also an active board member of MeUndies.
1.) How Jon took the decision to leave his "dream job" as a consultant at Bain to start Sweetgreen? What did his Bain boss tell him that persuaded Jon it was the right decision to leave? How does Jon think about and advise people when it comes to choosing the safe vs the risky path?
2.) How Sweetgreen was not an Overnight Success:
3.) Brand + Capital + Business Strategy:
4.) Leading Through COVID:
Jon’s Favourite Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow: Daniel Kahneman
Anne Wojcicki is the Founder & CEO @ 23andme, offering DNA testing with the most comprehensive ancestry breakdown, personalized health insights, and more. To date, Anne has raised over $1BN for the company from the likes of Sequoia, GV, NEA and many more incredible names. Prior to founding 23andMe, Anne spent a decade on Wall Street investing in healthcare and felt frustrated by a system built around monetizing illness instead of incentivizing prevention. If that was not enough, Anne is also on the board of Cazoo and The Anne Wojcicki Foundation and is an active angel investor with investments in the likes of Embark and Maven Clinic.
1.) How Anne made her way from Wall St healthcare investing to founding one of the leading healthcare companies of the last decade in 23andme?
2.) Trust and Friendship:
3.) Leadership:
4.) AMA:
Ali Partovi is the CEO @ Neo, a mentorship community and communal VC fund that announced their new $150M fund last year on the back of early hits from Fund I including Vanta and Kalshi. As an angel, Ali has made personal investments in Dropbox, Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Convoy and many more. Prior to investing, Ali founded 2 companies, the first; LinkExchange which he sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1998 and the second, iLike which was acquired by Microsoft in 2009.
1.) How Ali made his way into the world of startups with the founding of his first company? How Ali made his way into angel investing and then starting and raising Neo, as a fund?
2.) How To Kill a $125M By Being Too Honest:
3.) The Meeting with Steve Jobs Did Not Go Well:
4.) U2, Airbnb and Google at Seed:
Ali’s Favourite Book: Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Rob Schutz is Chief Growth Officer and Co-founder at Ro, the healthcare technology company building a patient-centric healthcare system. To date, Ro has raised over $870M with a last reported valuation of $5BN and under Rob’s growth leadership, Ro has become one of the fastest-growing companies in the country. Prior to Ro, Rob was VP of Growth at Bark, the makers of BarkBox, and helped scale revenue from zero to $100 million. He also founded a Washington DC-based daily deals site that was acquired by kgbdeals in 2011.
1.) How Rob made his way into startups and growth through the world of daily deals? How that led to his leading growth for Bark and ultimately founding Ro? How did leading marketing for Bark impact his growth strategy today with Ro?
2.) What is "Growth" and When to Hire For It:
3.) How to Hire Growth Leader and Reps:
4.) How to Structure the Onboarding Process:
Frank Slootman currently serves as Chairman and CEO at Snowflake and has over 25 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive in the enterprise software industry. Prior to Snowflake, Frank served as CEO and President of ServiceNow taking the company from around $100M in revenue, through an IPO, to $1.4B. Before ServiceNow, Frank served as President of the Backup Recovery Systems Division at EMC following the acquisition of Data Domain Corporation/Data Domain, Inc., where he served as the CEO and President, leading the company through an IPO to its acquisition by EMC for $2.4B. You must check out Frank's book, Amp It Up. It can already be pre-ordered here.
1.) Narrow the Focus, Increase the Quality:
2.) When There is Doubt, There is No Doubt:
3.) Make The Good People Great:
4.) The Art of Leadership and Board Management:
Frank’s Favourite Book: Courage Is Calling: Fortune Favours the Brave, The Speed of Trust: The One Thing that Changes Everything
Devin Finzer is the Founder & CEO @ Opensea, the world's first and largest NFT marketplace allowing you to discover, collect, and sell extraordinary NFTs. To date, Devin has raised over $423M for the company with their last $300M round valuing Opensea at $13.3BN. Before changing the world of NFTs, Devin co-founded ClaimDog which was acquired by Credit Karma and before founding ClaimDog, Devin was an engineer at Pinterest. Do want to say, I always love Semil Shah's startup of the year, for 2021 it was Opensea, check out his piece here.
1.) How Devin made his way into the world of NFTs and came to found the first and largest NFT marketplace in the form of Opensea?
2.) The Scaling Story:
3.) The Next Decade of NFTs:
4.) The Future of NFT & Gaming:
Devin’s Favourite Book: Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow
Ralf Wenzel is the Founder & CEO @ JOKR, a global platform for instant retail delivery at a hyper-local scale serving both the US and LATAM. Ralf has raised over $260M for the company, most recently valuing it at $1.2BN. Prior to JOKR, Ralf spent 7 years as the Founder & CEO @ foodpanda, as well as, enjoying roles as Chief Strategy Officer @ Delivery Hero, Interim Chief Product and Experience Officer @ WeWork and even moving to the other side of the table as a Managing Partner with Softbank.
1.) What is the unit economic breakdown for quick commerce business models? What levers can be used to improve it over time?
2.) Comparing the US to LATAM:
3.) New Market Growth and Maturation:
4.) Business Model Expansions:
Mark Carney is Vice Chair of Brookfield Asset Management and Head of Transition Investing. Prior to Brookfield, Mark served as the Governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020, and prior to that as Governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 until 2013. Mark was also Chairman of the Financial Stability Board from 2011 to 2018. Mark is a long-time and well-known advocate for sustainability and is currently the United Nations Special Envoy for Climate Action and Finance. If that was not enough, Mark serves on numerous other boards including Stripe, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum to name a few.
1.) How Mark made his entrance into the world of finance and came to the role of Governor of the Bank of Canada? How did that role lead to his becoming Governor of the Bank of England? How did seeing multiple booms and busts impact Mark's investing mindset?
2.) Governments, Central Banks and Regulation:
3.) The Winners and Losers:
4.) The Future of NFTs:
Mark’s Favourite Book: Arcadia by Tom Stoppard
Will Ahmed is the Founder and CEO @ Whoop, the company on a mission to unlock human performance with their wearable device that is your digital fitness and health coach. To date, Will has raised over $400M for the company with the last round valuing Whoop at $3.6BN and with a cap table including the likes of Softbank, Accomplice, Founder Collective, Foundry Group, IVP and more.
1.) How Will went from being a professional athlete and college student to founding one of the hottest startups in fitness and healthcare? What are the similarities and differences of being an athlete and being a CEO?
2.) What does Will mean when he says, "there is value in the struggle early on"? How does Will advise founders on when to give up vs when to stay the course? If Will had not struggled with funding in the early days, would the Whoop journey be different? How does Will advise founders when it comes to taking funding when it is on the table? What are the nuances to this?
3.) In what way does Will believe "realism is overrated"? When does Will believe it is good to be realistic? In what ways can it be good to be idealistic? How did Will get some of the largest sports stars on the planet to use Whoop in the early days? Why did Will always refuse to pay sports stars to use Whoop? What were the benefits of doing this?
4.) How does Will define high performance? Why does Will believe it is crucial for leaders to disassociate their own personal feelings from the progress of their company? What advice does Will give to leaders in an attempt to do this? What has Will done to be a better CEO in the last year? What does Will believe are his biggest weaknesses as a CEO?
Will’s Favourite Book: Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE
Bangaly Kaba is the Head of Platform Growth @ Popshop Live, a live streaming mobile marketplace that combines commerce, entertainment, and social. Prior to Popshop, Bangaly led the product growth and consumer product orgs at Instacart and before Instacart was Head of Growth @ Instagram, where he built and led the product team that helped grow Instagram from 440M to > 1B monthly actives in 2.5yrs. If all of this was not enough, Bangaly has also spent time investing as a Sequoia Scout having made investments into Career Karma, Binti.com and Squad App to name a few.
1.) How Bangaly made his way into the world of growth and came to lead some of the largest growth orgs in tech at the likes of Instacart and Instagram?
2.) How does Bangaly define the rule of "Head of Growth"? When is the right time for founders to start hiring a growth leader? How do they know whether to hire a growth leader or junior growth reps? Where should founders place these first growth hires in the org? Product or marketing?
3.) How would Bangaly structure the hiring process for any growth hire? What are the must-ask questions? What case studies would Bangaly ask all candidates to complete? What are the signals of a 10x growth hire? What are some core red flags that show in the interview process?
4.) What does the ideal onboarding process look like for new growth hires? What are the signs that a new growth hire is hitting target and expectations? What are some early warning signs that a growth hire is not meeting expectations?
5.) What is the ideal relationship between the Head of Growth and the CEO? How often should they meet? How should they structure the discussion? How should the growth team work with product teams to be successful? How should growth teams work with marketing teams?
John Doerr is an engineer, venture capitalist, the chairman of Kleiner Perkins, and the author of the #1 New York Times best-seller Measure What Matters. For over 40 years, John has helped build some of the most generational defining companies of our generation. He was an original investor and board member at Google and Amazon, helping to create more than a million jobs. A pioneer of Silicon Valley’s cleantech movement, John has invested in zero emissions technologies since 2006. Check out his latest book, Speed & Scale: An Action Plan for Solving Our Climate Crisis Now.
1.) What was John's entry into climate change investing? Having backed the likes of Amazon and Google, why did John decide then was the right time to do a climate fund, a pandemic fund, an iPhone fund? How does John think about market timing risk today? How does John determine between risks he is vs is not willing to take?
2.) What was one of John's biggest lessons on risk and upside from working alongside Tom Perkins? How did the Google deal come together? Where did John first meet Larry and Serge? What convinced John to write them a $12M check for 12% of the company? Why was it a contested deal within the partnership? How did the discussion go internally?
3.) Why and how is climate innovating and investing different today than it was in 2008? What are the core OKR's laid out in the book, that we need to achieve as a society? Why does John believe that governments are the biggest problem to us achieving these objectives? What does John mean when he says, "I am hopeful but not optimistic"?
4.) What does truly great listening mean to John? How would John describe his style of board membership? What do the truly special board members do? What does John do that makes him often cited as one of the best at recruiting? What is John's biggest investing miss? How did it change his mindset and approach? What investment is John most proud of, that no one knows?
John’s Favourite Book: How to Avoid a Climate Disaster: The Solutions We Have and the Breakthroughs We Need
Kyle Parrish is VP Sales @ Figma, the company that connects everyone in the design process so teams can deliver better products, faster. At Figma, Kyle built the sales engine from scratch to today, with over 100 incredible people in sales. Before Figma, Kyle spent over 5 years at Dropbox in numerous different roles including Head of Sales, where he scaled the Austin, Texas office from 3 to over 80 people to Global Partnerships lead, where he was responsible for growing Dropbox’s partner ecosystem.
1.) How Kyle first made his way into the world of sales and came to be one of the 3 performing sales reps in a 300+ sales team? How that led to his joining the hypergrowth journey of Dropbox? What led Kyle to make the move from Dropbox to the rocketship that is Figma?
2.) When and Who: Does the founder need to be the person to create the sales playbook? How can a founder know whether it is right to hire sales reps or a Head of Sales first? In terms of ARR, is there a time when you have to have a Head of Sales? Does Kyle agree with Jason Lemkin in terms of bringing in reps, two at a time? Where do founders make the biggest mistakes when it comes to the timing of these hires?
3.) How To Know and Test: What non-obvious characteristics do 10x sales hires have? What questions or case studies does Kyle find to be most revealing in identifying these non-obvious traits? How should founders structure the process for new reps and a Head of Sales? Meeting by meeting, what should we look to achieve?
4.) Setting Up for Success: What does the ideal onboarding process look like for new sales reps? What tasks and processes would Kyle expect new reps to complete within the first month or two on the job? What are the clearest signs of a new rep hire not working out? How should founders approach 1-1 and 360 reviews with their new reps?
5.) Working Together: What is the ideal relationship between the founder and the new Head of Sales? How often should they meet? What should the founder expect from the new Head of Sales? How should the Head of Sales work with the Head of Marketing most efficiently?
Kyle's Favourite Sales Blog Post: The Sales Learning Curve
Bill Gurley is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, Modern Treasury, Snapchat, StitchFix, and many more. As for Bill, widely recognized as one of the greats in venture having worked with GrubHub, NextDoor, Uber, OpenTable, Stitch Fix, and Zillow. Prior to Benchmark, Bill was a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.
Michael Eisenberg spent 15 years as a General Partner @ Benchmark working alongside Bill and the Benchmark partnership. Following Benchmark, Michael co-founded Aleph, one of the leading Israeli venture funds of the last decade with a portfolio including Lemonade, Melio, and HoneyBook, just to name a couple of Aleph's unicorns.
1.) How does the current market activity in venture today compare to the dot com bubble? What elements are different? What elements are the same? What were the ramifications of the dot com bubble? Would Bill and Michael expect to see the same again? Is there anything good that comes from bubbles? How did the prior bubble impact Michael and Bill's investing mindset?
2.) Does Bill Gurley agree that Benchmark are the only firm to have retained price discipline in this crazy market? How do Bill and Michael think about their own relationship to price today? How does Bill try and answer the question, "what could go right?" when he meets entrepreneurs today? On reflection, what have been Michael and Bill's biggest miss? How did it change their approach?
3.) How does one compete in a world of Tiger and crossover funds? When it comes to capital deployment and pacing, do Michael and Bill agree with the suggestion of "playing the game on the field"? What are the nuances to this statement? What companies does Bill believe capital can be a moat for? What companies is capital not a moat and they should be conservative with raising and pre-emptive rounds?
4.) Do Bill and Michael believe that ownership still matters today with outcomes being larger than ever? How do Bill and Michael feel about the importance of temporal diversification today in a world of compressed deployment cycles? What investing lesson learned over 25 years in the business do Bill and Michael wish they had known when they started?
Bill’s Favourite Book: The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Adam Foroughi is the Co-Founder and CEO @ AppLovin, the company that allows developers to market, monetize, analyze and publish their apps. Under Adam's leadership, he has taken the company public, grown the team to over 1,000 people around the world, and scaled revenue in 2020 to $1.5Bn. Prior to AppLovin, Adam founded two companies—Lifestreet Media and Social Hour, and before that Adam started his career as a derivatives trader.
1.) How Adam made his way into the world of startups and came to found one of the world's largest gaming, advertising and marketing companies in the form of AppLovin?
2.) Adam founded 4 companies before AppLovin, does Adam believe in the benefits of serial entrepreneurship? What has he done differently with AppLovin having learned from past experience? What did he do the same, having seen it work before?
3.) Why does Adam advocate for as few meetings as possible within the company? Why does Adam believe meetings are unproductive? How do decisions get made internally without meetings? What is the structure and process? How does Adam create an environment where people make decisions without the fear of the repercussions? What are the breakpoints in company scaling?
4.) Why does Adam think that VCs did not want to invest in the early rounds? What were his biggest takeaways from those early fundraising days? How has Adam found the transition to being a public markets CEO? What does he like? What does he not like? How does Adam feel about pleasing the street but also having a long-term mindset?
5.) How does Adam structure his day? With 5 children, how does Adam approach work/life balance? What does his exercise and sleep routine look like? How does he do both weights and running without losing the productivity of the weights? What changes has he made in the last year that have made a significant difference?
Adam's Favourite Book: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It