20Product: How Canva Builds Products: Lessons Learned, What Works? What Flopped? The Top 5 Product Lessons in Scaling to 185M Monthly Active Users with Canva Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer, Cameron Adams

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!

11 Mar 201639min

Christian Hernandez is the Co-Founder and Partner @ Whitestar Capital in London. Prior to co-founding White Star Capital, Christian worked at Facebook and led the international expansion of the company’s Business Development, Platform and Developer Network groups. He previously held leadership roles in the U.S. and Europe at Google and Microsoft and started his career in technology at MicroStrategy, a startup he joined prior to its 1999 IPO. Christian has worked closely with entrepreneurs and leading VCs and has been an active angel investor and advisor. He represents White Star on the Boards of KeyMe, Glow Media, Bloglovin’ and Hole 19. Christian also serves as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. 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! Click To Play In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Christian made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Having worked with the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, how has Christian seen the ecosystem develop; for both the good and the bad? 3.) Moving to White Star specifically now, what is the thesis, investment mandate? Average cheque size, preferred sectors? Geography? Talking of geography, WSC has a transatlantic model with offices in both London and NYC, why is that? What are the benefits of having this spread? 4.) According to Mattermark, White Star have 38% of your portfolio in mobile, so what are Christians views on the evolution of mobile? How does he respond to Fred Wilson’s post about the mobile downtown and the difficulty in attaining and maintaining traction for mobile apps? What are Christian's thoughts on discovery? 5.) Where does Christian stand on the relationship between growth and revenue? Are there any cases where it can be beneficial to focus solely on growth? In today’s environment, with VCs moderating their valuations more, is it possible to raise on pure momentum growth? 6.) Christian recently wrote an article: ‘Hiring For The Future Of Your Company’, so what does he really mean by this? Is it not a little ironic coming from the VC scene, an inherently risky asset class who have a fundamental unwillingness to move away from the old hiring style of investment bank or consultancy, in many cases? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Christian's Fave Book: Physics of the Future Christian's Fave Blog: Medium, Nuzzel Christian's Most Serendipitous Investment: Keyme As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Christian 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!

9 Mar 201628min

Tom Tunguz is a Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, where he has invested in Axial, Dremio, Expensify, Electric Imp, Looker, and ThredUP. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. Tom is also the author of the world famous blog and newsletter which can be found at http://tomtunguz.com 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 Tom made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What does the huge drop in late stage saas valuations mean for the early guys? Does Tom expect them to hunker down? Take more time? Spend less cash? 3.) In recent years with the likes of Zenefits, we have seen the rise of Free Saas Enabled Marketplaces, why have we seen this rise, what are the benefits of adopting this strategy? Does the lack of predictability and lower (30%) gross margin not generate concern towards the model? 4.) Where does Tom see room for real innovation in SaaS? Is Tom excited about mobile enterprise? 5.) Question from Javier Soltero @ Microsoft: How have you approached developing your 'personal' brand and how that has made an impact in your development as an investor? 6.) Question from Eric ver Ploeg (episode 70) and Tak Lo (Episode 37): Where does Tom generate the ideas for articles and what does the idea creation process look like?’ What does the scheduling look like to churn our such high quality content on a daily occurrence? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Tom's Fave Book: Narcissus and Goldmund Tom's Fave Blog: Saastr, David Skok Tom's Most Recent Investment: Dremio As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Tom 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!

7 Mar 201624min

Hiten Shah is one of the most prominent players in the data marketing industry having co-Founded both KissMetrics (raised $10m+ VC Funding) and Crazy Egg (bootstrapped), both wildly successful businesses serving some of the world's largest companies. Hiten is also an extremely successful angel investor with investments in the likes of Buffer, Mattermark and MessageMe (acquired by Yahoo.) In addition, Hiten is also a serial startup advisor having been an advisor with Linkedin, SlideShare and Wordpress' Automattic. 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 Hiten made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Why did Hiten decide to take VC funding for on startup and not the other? Did taking VC funding allow for much greater growth or make him less resourceful and creative? 3.) How have Hiten's entrepreneurial endeavours altered his attitude to investing? How does Hiten's large personal brand add to his investing style? 4.) Hiten has said before that he likes to ask founders 'what is their earliest most traumatic memory'? Why is that and what does Hiten learn from that? 5.) Question from Erik Torenberg @ ProductHunt: How does Hiten assess which startups he wants to spend time with as an advisor? 6.) Question from Ryan Hoover @ ProductHunt: What is the most counter-intuitive advice for this starting a company? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode: Hiten’s Fave Book: The War of Art Hiten’s Fave Blog: 731 Users Reveal Why Slack Is So Addictive As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Hiten 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!

4 Mar 201627min

Jim Scheinman is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Maven Ventures, a leading seed stage consumer VC with investments in the likes of AngelList, WealthFront and Altspace. Prior to founding Maven, Jim was a pioneer in the early days of the social media revolution as Head of Business Development and Sales at the first social networking site, Friendster. However, in 2005, Jim left Friendster to join co-founders Michael and Xochi Birch to launch Bebo as the first employee and Board member. Bebo later went on to become a unicorn for Jim, however, that was not his only unicorn as he was also an investor in Tango ($bn valuation) and NBCi (IPOd for 6bn.) 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! Click To Play In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jim made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What was it like being in the midst of the social media revolution as it was taking place? How does Jim view the social scene today? Why does Jim think there is skepticism to investing in social? 3.) On consumer mobile Fred Wilson stated: ‘doing anything in the consumer mobile space is super hard. i can’t think of many consumer mobile apps that have gained massive traction and sustained it. can you?' So why is the space so hard? Is it not a monopoly play with the dominant incumbents? 4.) How has Jim seen the consumer landscape develop over the last decade with the rise of mobile? How can you tackle the distribution challenges inherent within mobile? Does Jim agree that with mobile consumer product market fit is no longer enough to gain a large user base? 5.) What are the core elements of building a successful consumer business? What are the challenges? Is there a pareto’s principle on this, with 20% determining 80% of the returns? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jim's Fave Book: The Boys In The Boat Jim's Fave Blog: Mattermark, Strictly VC, TechCrunch Jim's Most Recent Investment: HomeMade As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jim 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!

2 Mar 201624min

Andy McLoughlin is a Partner with SoftTech VC, where he primarily invests in B2B, SaaS, developer tools and mobile applications. Prior to joining SoftTech, Andy was co-founder of London-based Huddle, under Andy’s leadership, Huddle became one of Europe’s most awarded and well-known technology startups, raising over $80M of venture funding to date. Since 2010 Andy has been a prolific angel investor building a portfolio covering 35 startups, mostly in the SaaS / B2B space. Just to name a few of the investments from his incredible portfolio Andy was an angel in the likes of Buffer, Intercom, Pipedrive, Postmates, Secret Escapes, just to name a few. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Andy made his startup as an entrepreneur and then VC? 2.) What was it that made Andy make the move from the world of entrepreneurship to VC? 3.) As a seed stage investor, what does Andy make of the Series A crunch? How prevalent has it been for him as an investor? What is the optimal amount of runway founders should raise for? 4.) What does Andy think of the size and cadence of the first funding rounds that we are seeing now? What does he make of the rise of the second seed or the bridge round? Is it an indication of trouble? 5.) SoftTech are near the closing of Fund V, so what is the thesis and the mission going forward? What themes and spaces is Andy most excited by and why? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Andy's Fave Book: The New York Trilogy, Hatching Twitter Andy's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Medium Newsletter, Mark Suster: Both Sides Of The Table Andy's Most Recent Investment: Captain401 As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Andy 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.

29 Feb 201624min

Gary Liu is the CEO @ Digg, the incredibly famous platform that allows users to find, read and share the most talked about stories on the internet. Prior to joining Digg, Gary was an early employee at Spotify holding numerous positions including, Head of Spotify Labs and Global Director of Ad Product Strategy. Gary joined Spotify from AOL, where he was the Director of Sales Strategy and Operations at Patch. Before joining AOL, Gary was a business and sales operations leader at Google and Clickable. 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! Click To Play In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Gary made his entry into the world of tech and later became CEO at Digg? 2.) What were Gary's biggest takeaways from his time at Google and being an early employee at Spotfiy? How has he adapted those learnings to his role now at Digg? 3.) What really happened at Digg? What went wrong? Why did Digg not live up to the early hype of being the darling of the internet age? How are Digg evolving to change this? 4.) In the vastly competitive space of content creation and distribution, how do Digg stand out and differentiate themselves from the plethora of options available to consumers? 5.) How do Digg try to engage and unite the community through the commenting process without alienating people through the potential for malicious posts and trolling? 6.) How does a platform like Digg plan to monetize content with the ever disappearing ad dollar? Does it concern Gary or does he see potential in other avenues? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Gary's Fave Book: J.D Salinger, The Catcher and The Rye Gary's Fave Blog: Jon Russell, Asia Tech News Review As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Gary 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!

26 Feb 201627min

Adam Draper is a fourth generation venture capitalist and the Founder & CEO @ Boost VC, a specialised seed stage accelerator that invests in blockchain and virtual reality startups. Before starting Boost, Adam angel invested in 20 companies including Coinbase, Plangrid and Practice Fusion. During his angel investment period, Adam was also the Founder of Xpert Financial in his aim to revolutionise the financial markets for private companies. 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 Adam made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Why is Adam so bullish on the topics of bitcoin and virtual reality? 3.) What are the fundamental use cases for bitcoin and why have we not seen mass adoption on a global scale so far? What are the barriers to adoption? 4.) What is the investment attitude to the bitcoin and VR space? Does the volatility of the price in bitcoin affect the level of investment going into the sector? 5.) What would Adam like to see more of in the space? What is he most excited for and where does he see the most potential? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Adam's Fave Book: The Name Of The Wind Adam's Fave Blog: Mugglenet Adam's Most Recent Investment: Joystream As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Adam 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!

24 Feb 201627min