20VC: Tom Tunguz on Why Now Is The Best Time To Be Investing and The Effect of Late Stage Valuations on Startups

Jules Maltz, is a General Partner @ Insight Venture Partners (IVP) where he has made investments in the likes of Slack, Zendesk, Twitter, Zenefits and many more incredible companies. Prior to IVP, Jules held roles at the likes of 3i, Admob and Bank of America. Jules has also been named to The Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors and been featured in the likes of Inc and Fast Company. I also want to say a huge thank you to Rebecca Lynn @ Canvas and Clark Landry for the intros to Jules today. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jules made his way into growth stage investing with IVP? 2.) What are the major trends that Jules has observed in the later stages over the last few years? Where is there funding gaps and room for opportunity? 3.) What does it take for companies to attain later stage cheques today? What are the benchmarks required? How have we seen these benchmarks change? 4.) What are the fundamental mistakes that CEO's make in these scaling stages? When is the right time to scale rapidly? How does Jules view product market fit? 5.) Jules has previously stated the importance of building the next S curve. What does he mean by this and how should founders adopt this mentality? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Jules' Fave Book: All The Light We Cannot See Jules' Fave Blog or Newsletter: Nir and Far Jules' Most Recent Investment: Checkr As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website, engage current users with targeted messages based on their behavior, and provide personal support at scale with an integrated help desk and knowledge base. This is perfect for Businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers. Marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time and Support teams that want to move beyond email to provide personalized, scalable support so simply head over to Intercom.com/20MVC Cooley are the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50+ years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the #1 most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Head over to cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com.

6 Feb 201730min

Tim Junio is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Qadium, the startup that creates and organizes knowledge about the world's devices. They are backed by some of the best in the business including the likes of Founders Fund (Peter Thiel), NEA (Scott Sandell) and our good friends at Susa Ventures. Prior to Qadium, Tim started his career at the Central Intelligence Agency, and also worked in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the RAND Corporation, and DARPA. Tim remains a research affiliate at Stanford, where he lectures and advises students on cybersecurity research topics. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Tim made his way from the world of the CIA to founding venture backed, Qadium? 2.) How does Tim view his role as CEO? Why does he view leadership and management as 2 different things? 3.) How does Tim view transparency as a leader? What are the conversations that must only be for the founding team? How are those decisions managed and discussed? 4.) Considering Peter Thiel's recent press coverage how does Tim feel about taking 'Thiel Money'? Why does he think Thiel is one of the most interesting and brilliant minds? What are the challenges for Silicon Valley in eschewing the world of politics for the next 4 years? 5.) What does Tim see as the worst of Silicon Valley? What are the benefits to many 'shallow apps' not getting funded? How does this affect startup economics and hiring programmes? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Tim's Fave Book: Snowcrash Tim's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Bruce Schneier As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website, engage current users with targeted messages based on their behavior, and provide personal support at scale with an integrated help desk and knowledge base. This is perfect for Businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers. Marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time and Support teams that want to move beyond email to provide personalized, scalable support so simply head over to Intercom.com/20MVC Cooley are the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50+ years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the #1 most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Head over to cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com.

3 Feb 201727min

Ryan McIntyre is a Co-Founder @ Foundry Group, one of the leading VC funds of the last decade with investments in the likes of Fitbit, SendGrid and Makerbot. Prior to Foundry, Ryan started his career in VC at Mobius Venture Capital in January 2000. While at Mobius Venture Capital, Ryan led the firm's investments in Postini (acq. GOOG) and Sling Media (acq. DISH). Prior to Mobius, Ryan co-founded Excite in 1993, which went public in 1996 and later became Excite@Home following the $6.7 billion merger of Excite and @Home in 1999. At the time this acquisition was the largest internet transaction to date and created a company that achieved peak revenues of $616 million in 2000. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ryan made his way into the wonderful world of VC and came to co-found Foundry? 2.) At what moment did Ryan realise that he wanted to be a VC rather than his previous life of an entrepreneur? What was the catalyst moment for Ryan? 3.) What does the investment decision making process look like @ Foundry Group? What are the benefits and challenges of implementing such a model? 4.) What are the fundamentals to creating a successful venture partnership? How important is differing skill sets and contrarian thinking? 5.) What makes the great board members to Ryan? How has Ryan seen his style of being a board member alter over the time he has been on boards? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Ryan's Fave Book: Dune by Frank Herbert Investment Ryan Is Most Excited By: Sendgrid As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ryan on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website, engage current users with targeted messages based on their behavior, and provide personal support at scale with an integrated help desk and knowledge base. This is perfect for Businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers. Marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time and Support teams that want to move beyond email to provide personalized, scalable support so simply head over to Intercom.com/20MVC Cooley are the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50+ years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the #1 most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Head over to cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com.

1 Feb 201730min

Jason Mendelson is Co-Founder @ Foundry Group, one of the leading VC funds of the past decade with investments in the likes of Fitbit, SendGrid and Makerbot just to name a few. Prior to Foundry Jason co-founded SRS Acquiom, the largest merger and acquisition closing platform that completed over $200Bn in merger transactions. Prior to co-founding SRS, Jason was a Managing Director and General Counsel for Mobius Venture Capital, where he also acted as its chief administrative partner overseeing all operations of the firm. If this was not enough Jason is also the Co-Author, alongside Brad Feld, of the best-selling book, Venture Deals: How To Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer, a must read for all. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jason made his way into the wonderful world of VC having been a lawyer? 2.) Why does Jason believe there is too much BS in VC? What does Jason think causes this opaqueness? How does he look to build a relationship of trust and clarity with his entrepreneurs? 3.) How has the rise of social media affected the transparency and BS element in VC and startups? How can entrepreneurs know when a VC is lying to them? What are the tells? 4.) Jason has previously said that some VC behaviour is 'rather narcissistic'. What does he mean by this? How would he like to see this change in the future? 5.) How does Jason look to optimise board meetings? What are the expectations of both founders and VCs prior to board meetings when it comes to preparation? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Jason's Fave Book: Atlas Shrugged Jason's Most Recent Investment: Borrowed and Blue As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jason on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Intercom is the first to bring messaging products for marketing and customer support together on one integrated platform. With Intercom, businesses can chat directly with prospective customers on their website, engage current users with targeted messages based on their behavior, and provide personal support at scale with an integrated help desk and knowledge base. This is perfect for Businesses that want to help people visiting their website become customers. Marketing and growth teams that want to onboard and retain users by sending the right messages at the right time and Support teams that want to move beyond email to provide personalized, scalable support so simply head over to Intercom.com/20MVC Cooley are the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50+ years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad issues that arise through a fund's lifetime. So to learn more about the #1 most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Head over to cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com.

30 Jan 201725min

Ted Blosser is the founder and CEO of WorkRamp, the startup that is transforming how the best companies like PayPal, Twilio, and Optimizely train and develop their employees. They are backed by top investors like Initialized Capital, Susa Ventures, Liquid2, and Slack, in addition to prominent angels like Elad Gil, Adrian Aoun, Semil Shah, and Charlie Songhurst. As for Ted, he is a Y Combinator Alumni and was an early employee at the enterprise powerhouse, Box. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ted made the move from early employee at Box to founding WorkRamp? 2.) What were the big takeaways for Ted from seeing the rocketship growth of Box? How has he applied them to starting WorkRamp? 3.) Ted has previously said, 'you should build your investor team like a sports team'. What does Ted mean by this? How did this affect what he looked for in his investors? What does Ted advise other founders when it comes to VC selection? 4.) How does Ted view the short term and the long term value add of investors? How does Ted look to leverage their abilities and connections and get the most out of having them on board? 5.) Taking a step back, many VCs want product market fit, how does Ted assess product market fit? What have been his learnings from YC that shape his attitude to PMF? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Ted's Fave Book: The Last Lecture As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, Ted on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner's sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook. It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don't have to. It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC

27 Jan 201726min

Sarah Guo is an investor @ Greylock Partners, which she joined in 2013. Prior to Greylock, Sarah was at Goldman Sachs, where she invested in Dropbox and helped take Workday public. She advised pre-IPO private technology companies (as well as public clients including Zynga, Netflix and Nvidia) on strategic and financial issues. Previously, Sarah worked with Casa Systems, a venture-funded startup that enables cable operators to meet growing demand for broadband services. She is an advocate for STEM education for women and the underserved, as well as education more generally. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her way into VC with Greylock Partners? 2.) Question from Josh Elman: What were Sarah's biggest learnings from taking key companies public with GS in 2011? Why is narrative so important? Who has done it well? 3.) How does Sarah view market size and market creation? What is a big enough market size to be attractive? How does this change with time and product? 4.) How does Sarah view the next fundamental platform shift? Where does conversational fit into this thesis? Will we see 'machine learning as a service'? 5.) What does the future of VC look like? What does the next generation of VC need to do to stay on top and ensure pattern matching algorithms do not outperform them? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Sarah's Fave Book: The Most Human Human Sarah's Most Recent Investment: Rhumbix As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sarah on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner's sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook. It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don't have to. It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC

25 Jan 201726min

John Lilly is a Partner at Greylock Partners, one of the world's leading venture funds of the past decade. At Greylock John has led investments in the likes of Instagram (acq by Facebook), Tumblr (acq by Yahoo) and Dropbox. John also sits on the board for Quip, Figma and ClearSlide just to name a few. Prior to Greylock, John was CEO of Mozilla, the organization behind Firefox, used by more than 450 million people. John also co-founded Reactivity, an enterprise security infrastructure company acquired by Cisco in 2007, where he served as founding CEO and later CTO. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How John made his way into the wonderful world of VC following his time as CEO @ Mozilla? 2.) John has invested in the likes of Quip, Figma and Dropbox, so why are we seeing such a rise in productivity tools beyond Office and Google Apps? Will it always be a market of consolidation like we have seen with the likes of Quip? 3.) Does John believe the first boom of mobile is over? What about sensors makes John excited for the future of the phone? Does John agree with Ben Evans in viewing the phone as the sun of the solar system? 4.) Question from Sarah Guo: How does Greylock to continue to invest in the next big markets, rather than in what has made them successful before? What does the brainstorming sessions and meta-thinking look like internally? 5.) Question from Josh Elman: How does John view growing one's tribe and then growing together through all of your careers? What are the challenges and what is required in order to be successful? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: John's Fave Book: Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, John on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner's sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook. It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don't have to. It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC

23 Jan 201722min

Harj Taggar is the Founder & CEO @ Triplebyte, the startup that is changing the world of engineering recruitment by building a new kind of interview that evaluates tech skills, not credentials. They have raised from some of our favourite seed investors and all past guests on the show including Felicis Ventures, SV Angel and Initialized Capital. As for Harj, prior to Triplebyte, he was the first partner brought in at Y Combinator since its founding, where he remained as a Partner for 4 years. Before that he was a YC founder, co-founding Auctomatic which was acquired by Livecurrent Media. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Harj made his way from the UK to YC's first Partner to now founding Triplebyte? 2.) Question from Garry Tan: What was the most surprising thing when Harj first became a Partner @ YC? What were Harj's biggest learnings from working with Paul Graham and Jessica Livingstone in the early days? 3.) Remaining in those very early stages, from Harj's experience seeing so many companies pass through YC, what do startups look like at those very early stages? How does Harj recommend finding co-founders? Test and iterate on ideas? Work towards product market fit? What does product market fit look like to Harj? 4.) How should we approach hiring as an early stage startup? What are the signs of great hires? What does the optimal interview process look like? How can we optimize the on boarding process? 5.) What should founders look for in VCs and vice versa? What were Harj's learnings on how to be a great seed stage investor from his time with Garry & Alexis @ Initialized?? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Harj's Fave Book: Surely You're Joking Mr Feynman As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, Harj on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner's sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook. It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don't have to. It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC

20 Jan 201728min