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.
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
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
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?
Bijan’s Most Recent Investment: Lily: Your Throw and Go Camera
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.
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
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?
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
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.
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
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
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!
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
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!
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
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!
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!
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.
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
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.
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?
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
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!
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?
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).
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
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
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
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:
