Miki Kuusi is the CEO of Wolt and Head of DoorDash International. In 2014 Miki founded Wolt with a mission to turn the smartphone into a remote controller for life, starting with delivering your favorite restaurant food, to you at home. Today Wolt operates in 23 countries, across several different categories, has over 4,000 employees, and last year, Doordash made the move to join forces with Wolt in a deal worth a reported $8.1BN. Previously, Miki was the CEO of Slush, one of the leading tech and investor events in the world attended by more than 25,000 people annually.
1.) Founding Slush and Wolt: An Entry into Startups:
2.) The Makings of a Truly Great Leader:
3.) Hiring a Team to Compete on a Global Stage:
4.) Miki Kuusi: The Personal Journey
Miki's Favourite Book: The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Casey Winters is the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite. Prior to Eventbrite, Casey led the growth product team at Pinterest. Before Pinterest, Casey started the marketing team at Grubhub and scaled Grubhub’s demand-side acquisition and retention strategies.
Elena Verna is the Interim Head of Growth at Amplitude. Former exec @ Miro, Netlify, SurveyMonkey. Growth Advisor to companies including Krisp, MongoDB, Ledgy, Builder.io and SimilarWeb.
Kieran Flanagan is SVP Marketing at HubSpot, where he has helped the business grow internationally, move to a product-led business, quadrupled its marketing demand, and built out its media team, including the acquisition of ‘The Hustle.’
Andy Johns career started in growth at Facebook when the company scaled from 100M-500M active users. Since he has worked in some of the leading growth orgs at companies like Twitter, Quora and more recently at Wealthfront as Head of Growth and President.
Bangaly Kaba is the Director of Product Management @ Youtube. Prior to Youtube, Bangaly led the product growth and consumer product orgs at Instacart and before Instacart was Head of Growth @ Instagram, helping grow Instagram from 440M to > 1B monthly actives in 2.5yrs.
Ed Baker is a 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.
Adam Fishman was the Chief Product and Growth Offer @ Imperfect Foods. Before Imperfect, Adam was VP of Product and Growth @ Patreon, Before Patreon, Adam was the Head of Growth @ Lyft, Adam was the first growth and marketing employee hired and grew the team to 18 people.
1.) When is the right time to hear your first growth hire?
2.) Is this hire a senior growth leader or a more junior growth engineer?
3.) What can early-stage startups do to entice senior growth leaders to their early-stage company?
4.) What data infrastructure should be in place prior to hiring your first growth hire?
5.) What does the optimal onboarding process look like for all growth hires?
6.) What can founders and CEOs do to set their growth hires up for success?
Jeffrey Katzenberg is an entertainment industry executive and entrepreneur, who throughout his career has repeatedly reshaped the media landscape. Jeffrey co-founded DreamWorks SKG, serving as CEO of DreamWorks Animation, which he grew into the world’s largest animation studio, known for Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Madagascar and more. In 2016, DreamWorks Animation was sold to Comcast for $3.8 billion. Before founding DreamWorks, Jeffrey was Chairman of The Walt Disney Studios, where he took the studio from last place to first at the box office with hits like Three Men and a Baby, Pretty Woman, Father of the Bride and Sister Act. Most recently, Jeffrey co-founded WndrCo alongside Sujay Jaswa and has led WndrCo’s investments in Airtable, Frame.io, Quibi, Vise, Placer.ai, NexHealth, Deel, and ID.me.
Sujay Jaswa is one of Silicon Valley’s leading business innovators. At Dropbox, he created and led the company’s global business and finance organizations. Sujay and his teams raised over $1 billion, launched and scaled Dropbox’s products for businesses, created partnerships responsible for over 100 million users, executed some 20 acquisitions, and scaled the global business team from two to more than 500 employees in seven global offices. During this period, the company significantly scaled overall revenue from $12 million in 2010 to over $500 million run rate, Dropbox for Business revenue from $1 million to over $200mm run rate, and users from 15 million to 300 million. Most recently, Sujay Jaswa and Jeffrey Katzenberg co-founded WndrCo and Sujay has led WndrCo’s investments in Figma, 1Password, Databricks, Pango, Pilot, Rally, Zagat / The Infatuation, and other great companies.
1.) From Dreamworks and Dropbox to Venture with WndrCo:
2.) Operating Experience is Irrelevant and Can Be Dangerous:
3.) Building Teams and Hiring People:
4.) Silicon Valley: Dead and Entitled?
Semil Shah is the Founder of Haystack, one of the leading pre-seed and seed firms of the last decade. Among Semil's portfolio include the likes of DoorDash ($DASH), Instacart, Hashicorp ($HCP), Opendoor ($OPEN), Figma (acquired by Adobe), Carta and many more exceptional companies. Semil's first fund is marked between a 30 and 40x fund, astonishing.
1.) The Makings of Semil Shah:
2.) Fund Sizing: Growing vs Staying Disciplined:
3.) The Secret to Fundraising for a Fund:
4.) The Current Landscape:
For VCs:
For LPs:
For Founders:
Semil's Favourite Article: Master of Play
Semil's Most Recent Investment: Impart Security
Oana Olteanu is a Partner @ SignalFire where she focuses on enterprise software at Seed, Series A and Series B. Prior to joining SignalFire, Oana was at Scale Venture Partners where she invested in applied ML and developer tooling. Oana sourced Scale’s investments in Observe.ai, Flatfile, and Proscia. She was part of the deal teams for Honeycomb and AllyO (acquired by HireVue). She also supported existing portfolio companies such as Dialpad, Matillion, and BigID. Prior to Scale, Oana was an AI seed investor at SAP.io, SAP’s $35M seed fund, where she sourced the investments in Plum.io, Oto.ai, and Akorda.
1.) From Tank Driving in Romania to VC's Rising Star:
2.) How to Assess a VC: The Founders Guide:
3.) The VC <> Founder Relationship:
4.) VCs Behaving Badly: 101
Oana's Favourite Book: The Daily Stoic: 366 Meditations on Wisdom, Perseverance, and the Art of Living: Featuring new translations of Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius
Oliver Jay (OJ) is one of the most successful sales leaders of the last decade. Most recently, OJ spent 6 years as CRO @ Asana and grew the team from 20 to over 450, becoming a master in sales onboarding in the process. Before Asana, OJ spent 4 years at Dropbox, where OJ was Head of APAC & LATAM.
Jordan Van Horn is a Revenue Leader @ Monte Carlo. Prior to this role, Jordan spent 4 years at Segment as VP of Sales, leading a sales team of 50+ Account Executives. Before Segment, Jordan was at Dropbox for 4 years leading enterprise sales for Dropbox Business.
Dannie Herzberg is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital and before Sequoia, Dannie spent 4 years at Slack as their Head of Enterprise Sales, growing the business from $100M – $1B in revenue. Before Slack, Dannie spent over 5 years at Hubspot building sales teams.
Zhenya Loginov is the CRO @ Miro. At Miro, Zhenya runs the go-to-market team of 700+ people across. Prior to Miro, Zhenya was the COO @ Segment where he built and ran the global go-to-market team of 200+ people. Pre-Segment, Zhenya led a 100-person team at Dropbox across different functional areas.
Lauren Schwartz is VP of Enterprise Sales at Fivetran, where she has scaled the team to nearly 100, while more than tripling enterprise revenues. Previously, Lauren spent close to 4 years at Segment where she started as the first female AE and ultimately built and led sales teams in enterprise and growth.
Kyle Parrish is VP Sales @ Figma, where he built the sales engine from scratch to today, with over 100 in sales. Before Figma, Kyle spent over 5 years at Dropbox in numerous different roles including Head of Sales, and Global Partnerships lead, responsible for growing Dropbox’s partner ecosystem.
1.) How should the onboarding process for all new sales reps be structured?
2.) How should the onboarding process for a new sales leader be structured?
3.) What specific things can leaders do to set both reps and leaders best up for success?
4.) What are the single biggest red flags in the first 30 days that a rep is not going to work out?
5.) What tools and software can be used to improve this process of ramping new reps?
Cathie Wood is the CEO & CIO @ ARK Invest, focusing solely on disruptive innovation, primarily in the public equity markets. ARK has become renowned for opening up its research and becoming a ‘sharing economy’ company in the asset management space. Prior to ARK, Cathie spent twelve years at AllianceBernstein as CIO of Global Thematic Strategies where she managed over $5 billion. Cathie joined Alliance Capital from Tupelo Capital Management, a hedge fund she co-founded, which managed $800 million in global thematic strategies. Prior to Tupelo Capital, she worked for 18 years with Jennison Associates LLC as Chief Economist, Portfolio Manager and Director.
1.) Entry into Hedge Funds at 20:
2.) Why Benchmarks and Passive Investing are Bad:
3.) Time to Pick Companies:
4.) Why Venture: Why Now:
Cathie's Favourite Book: The Emperor of All Maladies: A Biography of Cancer
Martín Escobari is Co-President, Managing Director and Head of General Atlantic’s business in Latin America. Martín is Chairman of the firm’s Investment Committee and also serves on the Management and Portfolio Committees. Before joining General Atlantic in 2012, Martín was a Managing Director at Advent International. Prior to that, he was Co-Founder and CFO of Submarino.com, a leading Brazilian online retailer that went public and was sold to Lojas Americanas in 2006. Martin started his career as a management consultant at The Boston Consulting Group. Thanks to Seba Kanovich @ dlocal for the introduction today.
1.) From Bolivia to Harvard to Leading General Atlantic:
2.) Market Matters: Founders, Product or Market:
3.) The Venture Landscape:
4.) Martin Escobari: The Investor and Board Member:
Hugo Barra is the OG of consumer hardware of the last decade. In Hugo's current position, he is the CEO @ Detect, building tools that empower people to understand their health and make informed, timely decisions. Before Detect, Hugo spent an incredible 4 years as VP of VR @ Meta with Oculus. Prior to Oculus, Hugo was in China as VP of Global @ Xiaomi, the 3rd largest phone maker in the world. Finally before Xiaomi, Hugo was a product leader @ Google for over 5 years including as VP of Android Product Management.
1.) Entry into Product:
2.) The Secret to Success in Hardware:
3.) Feature King vs Budget King:
4.) Product Management 101:
5.) Brand Marketing vs Product Marketing:
6.) Masterclass in Hiring:
Brian Armstrong is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Coinbase, the easiest place to buy and sell cryptocurrency. Over the last 10 years, Brian has led Coinbase to today, a public company with over 3,500 employees and revenues of over $7.5BN in 2021. Brian also raised venture funding before going public from some of the best including Fred Wilson @ USV, Micky Malka @ Ribbit, Marc Andreesen @ a16z and Garry and Alexis at Initialized. Prior to founding Coinbase, Brian was a Product Manager @ Airbnb.
1.) Founding Coinbase:
2.) Brian Armstrong: The Leader:
3.) Crucible Moments in the Coinbase Journey:
4.) Crypto and The Ultimate Mission for Coinbase:
Michael Mauboussin is Head of Consilient Research at Counterpoint Global. Previously, he was Director of Research at BlueMountain Capital, Head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse, and Chief Investment Strategist at Legg Mason Capital Management. He is also the author of three incredible books, including More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places, named in The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by 800-CEO-Read. Michael has taught at Columbia Business School since 1993 and received the Dean's Award for Teaching Excellence in 2009 and 2016.
1.) Entry into Venture and Finance:
2.) Booms and Busts: How This Compares?
3.) The Investment Decision-Making Process:
4.) Everything is a DCF:
Michael's Favourite Book: Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge by E.O Wilson
Raf Illishayev is the Co-Founder and CEO @ GoPuff, one of the market leaders delivering daily essentials in minutes. GoPuff’s latest funding round priced the company at a reported $8.9Bn in March 2021 and to date, Rafael has raised over $2.4Bn for the company from the likes of Accel, Softbank, Fidelity, Baillie Gifford, D1 Capital and more. Rafael has scaled the company to over 1/3 of the US with over 12,000 employees nationwide.
1.) From Student to Global CEO:
2.) The Rise and Fall of Quick Commerce:
3.) Getting to Profitability: The Levers That Matter:
4.) Business Expansion Opportunities:
Raf's Mentor and Advisor: Emil Michael, Former Chief Business Officer @ Uber
Brian Singerman is a Partner @ Founders Fund, one of the best-performing funds of the last two decades. Among their portfolio, they have the likes of Airbnb, Facebook, Stripe, Anduril, and many more generational-defining companies. As for Brian, he has led investments in the likes of Affirm, Oscar Health, Wish, Asana, Oculus, and Postmates to name a few. Brian also sits on the board or is an observer to The Long Term Stock Exchange, Solugen, Cloud9, Modern Health, and of course, Anduril. Prior to Founders Fund, Brian spent a very successful 4 years as an engineer and executive at Google.
1.) From Google to Befriending Sean Parker to Founders Fund:
2.) The Landscape Today: Where Are We Now?
3.) Brian Singerman: The Investor:
4.) Founders Fund: The Firm:
Brian's Most Recent Investment: Anduril
Chris Sacca is the Founder and Chairman @ Lowercase Capital, one of the best performing funds in the history of venture capital with a portfolio including Uber, Stripe, Twitter, Instagram, Twilio, Docker and many more.
Chamath Palihapitiya is Founder & CEO @ Social Capital. Social’s portfolio includes the likes of Slack, Yammer, Front, Intercom and Carta to name a few.
Brad Gerstner is the Founder and CEO of Altimeter. Brad’s notable deals that he has helped lead include Snowflake, Mongo, Bytedance, Gusto, Unity, Okta, dbt, Modern Treasury, EPIC Games, Hotel Tonight and Zillow.
Cyan Banister is one of the most successful and renowned early-stage investors in the last decade. Her portfolio includes the likes of SpaceX, Uber, Affirm, Opendoor Postmates, Niantic and Thumbtack to name a few.
George Zachary is a General Partner @ CRV, one of the nation's oldest and most successful early-stage venture capital firms with a portfolio including the likes of Airtable, DoorDash, Dropbox, Niantic and many more.
Biz Stone is best known as the Co-Founder of Twitter and Medium. Biz is also an investor in the likes of Slack, Square, Intercom, Beyond Meat and Blue Bottle Coffee.
Vaibhav Sahgal is VP of Consumer Product @ Reddit where he has been for close to 5 years. Prior to his leading consumer product, Vaibhav spent 3 years as Head of Growth at Reddit. Before Reddit, Vaibhav spent an incredible 8 years at Zynga across different roles including Director of Product and GM for "Words with Friends".
1.) Entry into Product + Growth:
2.) WTF Really is "Growth":
3.) Hiring Your Growth Team:
4.) The Interview Process:
5.) The Onboarding and Integration:
Vaibhav's Favourite Book: Andrew Chen: The Cold Start Problem
Emil Michael is the Former Chief Business Officer at Uber and is commonly referred to as Travis Kalanick's right-hand man. At Uber, Emil was instrumental in raising nearly $15BN from some of the largest investors in the world, making Uber the most valuable private tech company ever. Emil was also core to Uber's China strategy and led deals with Didi and Baidu. Before Uber, Emil spent 9 years at TellMe Networks where he was central to Microsoft raising their acquisition price from $300M to $800M. Emil is also an advisor to some of the greats including Raf @ GoPuff, Zach @ Codeacademy, Jared @ Fundera and many more.
1.) From Politics to Travis's right-hand man at Uber:
2.) Negotiations 101: A Masterclass:
3.) Uber: The Journey to the Most Valuable Private Company:
4.) Uber: The Review:
5.) The Venture Landscape:
Emil's Favourite Book: Sun Tzu: The Art of War
Kyle Harrison is a General Partner @ Contrary and one of my favorite writers on the venture space with his blog, Investing 101 2.0. Before joining Contrary, Kyle worked in the ranks of some of the biggest and best names in venture, starting with a spell at TCV before moving to Coatue and making his final stop at Index. Across firms, Kyle has led or participated in investments including Ramp, Pave, Anduril, Gitlab, Databricks and Snowflake to name a few.
1.) From Film Lover to Technology Investor:
2.) The Death of So So Venture Firms:
3.) The Rise of "The Blackstone of Venture Firms":
4.) The Rise of Community in Venture:
Kyle's Favourite Book: Reinventing Knowledge: From Alexandria to the Internet
Lauren Schwartz is Vice President of Enterprise Sales at Fivetran, the leading platform for modern data movement. She has helped scale Fivetran's enterprise business from its infancy to a team of nearly 100, while more than tripling enterprise revenues. Previously, Lauren spent close to 4 years at Segment where she started as the first female AE and ultimately built and led sales teams in enterprise and growth. Lauren earned an MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business after 6 years at Google where her enterprise sales career began.
1.) How Being Rejected as an Eighth Grader Can Lead to World Class Sales Leader:
2.) The Sales Playbook: What, Who, When:
3.) The Hiring Process: Building the Best Sales Team:
4.) Scaling the Machine: The Onboarding Process:
Drew Houston is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Dropbox, for over 700 million users and +600,000 teams, Dropbox is the choice for storing and sharing their most important files. Prior to their IPO in 2018, Drew raised funding from some of the best including Sequoia, Index, Greylock, and IVP to name a few. Drew also currently sits on the board of Meta and is a seasoned angel with a portfolio including Gusto, Scale AI, Pilot and Superhuman to name a few. Prior to Dropbox, Drew founded Accolade, a bootstrapped online SAT prep company he started while in college.
1.) Entry into Startups and Y Combinator:
2.) Drew Houston: The Leader and CEO:
3.) Crucible Moments: Getting Sequoia, Acquisitions and Steve Jobs:
4.) Drew Houston: AMA:
Drew's Fave Book: High Output Management by And
Tristan Handy is the Founder and CEO @ dbt, a data transformation tool that enables data analysts and engineers to transform, test and document data in the cloud data warehouse. To date, Tristan has raised over $400M from the likes of Sequoia, Altimeter, Coatue, ICONIQ and GV with the latest funding round valuing the company at $4.2BN. Prior to founding dbt, Tristan was the VP Marketing @ RJ Metrics and got his break in the world of startups through former 20VC guest, Anthony Casalena with a Director of Operations role at Squarespace.
1.) Entry into Startups:
2.) Our Jobs Are Not That Hard:
3.) dbt: The Company
4.) Tristan: The Leader
5.) Trading Freedom for Scale:
Gustav Söderström is Spotify’s Chief Research & Development Officer. He has the CPO & CTO responsibility, overseeing the product, design, data, and engineering teams at Spotify and is responsible for Spotify’s product strategy. Gustav is also an entrepreneur and investor who has founded and sold startups that he co-founded to Meta’s Oculus in 2014 and then also his first startup which he co-founded and led as CEO, up until their acquisition by Yahoo! Gustav is also the host of the podcast mini-series -- Spotify: A product story -- which offers a glimpse into the decisions that have guided Spotify’s product evolution.
1.) From Selling Companies to Yahoo and Meta to Leading Spotify's Product:
2.) "Never Fight a Macro Wind":
3.) "Do Something Completely Different to the Competition":
4.) Mastering the Learning Process:
5.) Gustav: The Product Leader:
6.) Spotify: The Crucible Moments:
Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:
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Brad Gerstner is the Founder and CEO of Altimeter, a life-cycle technology investment firm that manages public and private portfolios. Brad has personally participated in more than 100 IPOs as a sponsor, anchor, and investor. Brad’s notable deals include Snowflake, Mongo, Bytedance, Gusto, Unity, Okta, dbt, Modern Treasury, EPIC Games, Hotel Tonight, and Zillow. Prior to founding Altimeter, Brad was a 3-time co-founder where he sold all three businesses (to IAC, Google, and Marchex), a founding principal at General Catalyst; a securities lawyer, a former Deputy Secretary of State of Indiana, and a pilot.
1.) From Humble Beginnings in Indiana to 100 IPOs:
2.) The Power Law and Supercycles:
3.) Building Anti-Fragile Portfolios:
4.) The Venture Landscape: Today, What is Happening?
Brad's Favourite Book: The Snowball: Warren Buffet and the Business of Life
Kevin Weil is President of Product and Business @ Planet and Operator in Residence @ Scribble Ventures. In the past, Kevin has been Head of Product at Twitter, Instagram, and Novi (the digital currency effort within Facebook). During his seven years at Twitter, he helped the company scale from 40 to 4000 people and from $0 to $2B in revenue. He then moved to Instagram in 2016 to lead the product and data teams and led through an inflection point as Instagram grew from 400M to over 1B users, including launching Instagram Stories. Kevin then co-founded Diem (formerly known as Libra) and Novi and built both for three years before moving to Planet in 2021. If that was not enough, Kevin is also on the board of Strava, the Nature Conservancy, and the Black Product Managers Network.
1.) Lessons From Leading Product for Instagram and Twitter:
2.) Launching Products, Customer Discovery and Product Sessions:
3.) Kevin Weil: Leadership 101
4.) Kevin Weil: The Athlete, Father and Husband:
Geoff Lewis is a Founder and Managing Partner of Bedrock, one of the breakout and new venture firms of the last decade, famously in search of narrative violations. He serves or has served on the Board of Directors for companies including Lyft (NASDAQ: LYFT), Nubank (NYSE: NU), Epirus, and Vercel. Additionally, he has led sizable early-stage venture capital investments in dozens of companies including Upstart (NASDAQ: UPST), Tilray (NASDAQ: TLRY), Leafly (NASDAQ: LFLY), Wish (NASDAQ: WISH), Workrise, and Rippling. Prior to founding Bedrock, Geoff served as a partner at Founders Fund for several years.
1.) Meeting Parker Conrad: A Generational Defining Entrepreneur:
2.) Searching for Narrative Violations in Rippling:
3.) Rippling: The Financing:
4.) Geoff Lewis: The Investor
Parker Conrad is the Founder & CEO @ Rippling, the company that lets you easily manage your employees’ payroll, benefits, expenses, devices, apps & more—in one place. To date, Parker has raised over $697M for Rippling from some of the best including Sequoia, Founders Fund, Greenoaks, Bedrock, Kleiner Perkins and Initialized to name a few. Prior to founding Rippling, Parker was the Co-Founder and CEO @ Zenefits and if that was not enough, Parker is also a prominent angel having invested in Census, Pulley and then also AgentSync and TrueNorth, alongside 20VC Fund.
1.) Entry in Startups and Zenefits:
2.) Parker Conrad: The Leader:
3.) Rippling: The Compound Startup
4.) Rippling: The Economics:
5.) Rippling: The Partner Ecosystem: