20VC: Why People Should Never Be Surprised If Fired, Subscription E-Commerce Is Hot & People Never Give True and Direct Feedback with Amir Elaguizy, Co-Founder @ Cratejoy

Moisey Uretsky is the Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer @ Digital Ocean, the second largest and fastest growing cloud computing platform, with more than 700,000 developers having deployed more than 20 million cloud servers. The company has raised $123 million in funding from Andreessen Horowitz, Access Industries, IA Ventures, CrunchFund, and Techstars. As for Moisey, before founding DigitalOcean, he studied Mathematics at NYU and launched CorreGroup, a big data startup that provided valuable analytics to billion-dollar hedge fund firms in New York City. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Moisey came to found the 2nd largest cloud computing platform with Digital Ocean? 2.) Moisey has previously said: 'we did everything wrong for a decade'. What were the biggest mistakes Moisey made and how did he look to rectify them and learn from them? 3.) Does Moisey believe that you can learn to be a great business leader? Is it inherent or if not, what are the steps required to increase your chances? 4.) Moisey has previously said: 'businesses that succeed are either needed or loved'. What does he mean by this? What category does Digital Ocean fall into? How does that affect his management style and thought process? 5.) Question From Ari @ Techstars: How do Moisey and Digital Ocean fundamentally scale love? What are the inherent challenges of building this type of culture? How does the theme of love play out in the hiring and the on boarding process? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Moisey's Fave Book: Innovator's Dilemma Moisey's Fave Blog: Tom Tunguz As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Moisey on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Angelloop is the leading post funding management platform for private market investors and their portfolio companies. They help investors manage and track their portfolio companies on the cloud while providing them with access to their investments performance data. Angelloop helps founders of startups track their performance, manage their cap table and keep their investors in the loop. Investors get free access while their portfolio companies pay only $49/Month. Use or share the promo-code 20MinVC to get your portfolio companies online with a two month trial. I'd like to thank Wealthfront for sponsoring today's podcast. Wealthfront are financial advisors that can help you invest your hard-earned dollars. Wealthfront's modern financial services helps tailor plans specifically for you, making it easy to reach your financial goals. Wealthfront has low fees and no trading commissions… It's financial advice at a fraction of the cost of a traditional advisor, all online. And if you sign up using my URL, you'll get your first $15,000 managed for free. Go to Wealthfront.com/20vc.

14 Okt 201631min

Lindel Eakman is a Managing Director @ Foundry Group and is a nationally recognized leader in the LP community having successfully managed the private investment program for the combined $35 billion pool of capital managed by the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO). There he was responsible for overseeing a portfolio of private equity fund managers which represented approximately 25 percent of endowment assets. Prior to UTIMCO, Lindel worked for KPMG in the mergers & acquisitions tax practice where he worked with many fund managers across due diligence processes and private investment partnership activities. Check out Lindel's Partner @ Foundry, Brad Feld, on the show here. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Lindel made his way into the weird and wonderful world of LPs and then Foundry? What is the origin story behind is first fund investment, Union Square Ventures? 2.) Question from Michael Kim @ Cendana: How is Lindel approaching portfolio construction for Foundry Next? What combination of GP portfolio & direct exposure diversifies the portfolio while retaining upside through individual deal performance? 3.) With the direct co-investment platform how does Lindel look to mitigate the negative signalling that can occur with opportunity funds? Does Lindel agree with Chris Douvos in stating this could lead to the 'hybridisation of GP and LP'? 4.) Where do most prospective fund managers fail when pitching to LPs? What does Lindel look for in a risk strategy for a potential fund investment? 5.) What are the biggest problems with the LP community today? What would Lindel like to see change? What do the financial compensation plans look like for LPs? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Lindel's Fave Book: The Creature from Jekyll Island, Daemon Lindel's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Reiley Brennan: Future of Transportation, Fred Wilson, Benedict Evans Lindel's Most Recent Investment: Resolute Ventures As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Lindel on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Angelloop is the leading post funding management platform for private market investors and their portfolio companies. They help investors manage and track their portfolio companies on the cloud while providing them with access to their investments performance data. Angelloop helps founders of startups track their performance, manage their cap table and keep their investors in the loop. Investors get free access while their portfolio companies pay only $49/Month. Use or share the promo-code 20MinVC to get your portfolio companies online with a two month trial. I'd like to thank Wealthfront for sponsoring today's podcast. Wealthfront are financial advisors that can help you invest your hard-earned dollars. Wealthfront's modern financial services helps tailor plans specifically for you, making it easy to reach your financial goals. Wealthfront has low fees and no trading commissions… It's financial advice at a fraction of the cost of a traditional advisor, all online. And if you sign up using my URL, you'll get your first $15,000 managed for free. Go to Wealthfront.com/20vc.

12 Okt 201623min

Mike Maples is a Founding Partner @ Floodgate, one of the leading early-stage venture funds in the valley. Mike has made investments in the likes of Twitter, Twitch.tv, Weebly, Chegg, Bazaarvoice, Okta, and Demandforce. As a result, Mike has been on the Forbes Midas List since 2010 and was also named one of "8 Rising Stars" by FORTUNE Magazine. Before becoming a full-time investor, Mike was involved as a founder and operating executive at back-to-back startup IPOs, including Tivoli Systems (acquired by IBM) and Motive (acquired by Alcatel-Lucent.) In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Mike made his way into VC and came to found Floodgate? 2.) How did the investment decision-making process change for Mike with the institutionalisation and fiduciary responsibility of an LP backed fund? 3.) How does Mike approach team building with Floodgate? What does he look for in his partners? What do most funds do wrong when hiring and expanding their team? 4.) Mike has a very different way of reading product and the associated market. What does Mike mean by saying the 'dance of product market fit'? Who leads what? How do they work together? What are the reasons startups do not achieve PMF? 5.) How does Mike assess the aspect of category creation? What are the fundamentals required to be a category king? What characteristics do category kings have? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Mike's Fave Book: The Top 5 Regrets of The Dying Mike's Most Recent Investment: Dispatcher As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Mike on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Angelloop is the leading post funding management platform for private market investors and their portfolio companies. They help investors manage and track their portfolio companies on the cloud while providing them with access to their investments performance data. Angelloop helps founders of startups track their performance, manage their cap table and keep their investors in the loop. Investors get free access while their portfolio companies pay only $49/Month. Use or share the promo-code 20MinVC to get your portfolio companies online with a two month trial. I'd like to thank Wealthfront for sponsoring today's podcast. Wealthfront are financial advisors that can help you invest your hard-earned dollars. Wealthfront's modern financial services helps tailor plans specifically for you, making it easy to reach your financial goals. Wealthfront has low fees and no trading commissions… It's financial advice at a fraction of the cost of a traditional advisor, all online. And if you sign up using my URL, you'll get your first $15,000 managed for free. Go to Wealthfront.com/20vc.

10 Okt 201630min

Karthik Sridharan is the Founder & CEO @ Kinnek, the platform which empowers small business owners to take control of their purchasing operations. Kinnek have been crushing it lately and have raised funding from some of today's leading investors including Matrix, Thrive, Version One, Naval Ravikant and many more incredible names. As for Karthik, prior to Kinnek he was the lead architect of research systems at the hedge fund, AQR and before that spent time at the likes of JP Morgan and Merril Lynch. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Karthik made the transition from hedge funds to founding Kinnek? 2.) How does Karthik view market networks as opposed to marketplaces? What are the differences and where would he position Kinnek? 3.) Is GMV the sole metric that marketplace founders should focus on? How does GMV affect Karthik's few on take rate, transaction size and frequency? What other metrics should marketplace founders be measuring themselves against? 4.) How does Karthik view the competitive landscape with the likes of Alibaba in the space? Is expansion into Asia part of upcoming plans for Kinnek? How will Karthik approach that? 5.) Kinnek has raised funding from the likes of Thrive, Matrix and Version One. How did Karthik find the fundraising process? What did he do well and what would he improve on for the C round? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Karthik's Fave Book: The Code Book by Simon Singh Karthik's Fave Blog: On Startups, Tom Tunguz As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Angelloop is the leading post funding management platform for private market investors and their portfolio companies. They help investors manage and track their portfolio companies on the cloud while providing them with access to their investments performance data. Angelloop helps founders of startups track their performance, manage their cap table and keep their investors in the loop. Investors get free access while their portfolio companies pay only $49/Month. Use or share the promo-code 20MinVC to get your portfolio companies online with a two month trial. 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.

7 Okt 201627min

Hardi Meybaum is a General Partner @ Matrix Partners and similar to Josh Hardi is a natural born entrepreneur. Prior to becoming a VC Hardi was a Founder of GrabCAD where he built the company into the world's leading cloud-based collaboration platform for engineering teams to manage, share, and view CAD files. He sold GrabCAD to Stratasys in 2014 for a reported 100m dollars, and continued to lead GrabCAD for the next year. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Hardi made the transition from founding GrabCAD to becoming a General Partner @ Matrix? 2.) When times were really hard for Hardi in making the move to the US, what were the big elements that drive him to continue? What stopped him from giving up? 3.) What does Hardi's time allocation split look like? How does he look to optimise this? 4.) How much of a role has David Skok played in Hardi's progression? What are the key takeaways from the mentorship? 5.) What are the right reasons to start a company? How does Hardi assess founder product fit? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Hardi's Fave Book: Deep Work: Rules For Focussed Success Hardi's Fave Blog: David Skok: For Entrepreneurs Hardi's Most Recent Investment: SketchDeck As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Hardi on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Angelloop is the leading post funding management platform for private market investors and their portfolio companies. They help investors manage and track their portfolio companies on the cloud while providing them with access to their investments performance data. Angelloop helps founders of startups track their performance, manage their cap table and keep their investors in the loop. Investors get free access while their portfolio companies pay only $49/Month. Use or share the promo-code 20MinVC to get your portfolio companies online with a two month trial. 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.

5 Okt 201628min

Josh Hannah is a General Partner @ Matrix Partners where he has led investments in the likes of Canva, Quora and Huddle just to name a few. However, Josh really is an innate entrepreneur himself having co-founded Betfair in 1999, the worlds first online sports marketplace which is now publicly traded on London Stock Exchange and processes more than $50bn in transactions per year. Following Betfair, Josh bought and turned around eHow where he increased traffic and revenue 30 x before selling the company to Demand Media. Josh has also made some stellar angel investments in the likes of Angellist, HotelTonight and Minted.com. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Josh made the transition from founding Betfair and turning around eHow to becoming a General Partner @ Matrix? 2.) Josh took large amounts of VC funding with Betfair and entirely bootstrapped his 2nd business, eHow. How did the two experiences differ and how can founders determine whether to raise VC funding or bootstrap it themselves? 3.) Why does Josh believe capital allocation has gotten worse from founders over time? How does this affect the role of VCs as board members? 4.) Why does Josh believe that people are wrong to say ideas are worthless and it is all about execution? How does Josh approach the process of idea generation? How can this be optimised? 5.) Why does Josh believe, contra to conventional wisdom, that one can build a strong business in a space that you are not passionate about? What are the potential pitfalls that can be avoided? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Josh's Fave Book: Shoe Dog: A Memoir By The Creator of Nike, The Rise Of The Robots Josh's Fave Blog: Benedict Evans Josh's Most Recent Investment: Kinnek (On The Show On Friday! As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Josh on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. 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.

3 Okt 201632min

Brit Morin is the Founder & CEO @ Brit + Co the online media and e-commerce platform that provides tools to teach, inspire, and enable creativity among women and girls. They have raised funding from some of the world's best investors including Index, General Catalyst, Intel Capital, Founders Fund and Lerer Hippeau just to name a few. As for Brit, prior to Brit + Co, Brit worked at Google in product management and before that with Apple on iTunes. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Brit came to found Brit + Co? 2.) How have we seen the traditional media landscape change over the last few years with the rise of digital? Does Brit agree with Marc Andreesen's assertion that print journalism is converging in quality and technique with blogs and Wikipedia? 3.) How does Brit view the competitive landscape for digital media? Is this an M&A by larger traditional media companies, will smaller startup media companies merge to form modern media powerhouses? 4.) How does Brit view the importance of niche communities? What does it take to foster and grow an organic niche community? 5.) Brit + Co is backed by some of the best funds in the world so what was Brit's approach to fundraising? How did Brit see it alter and evolve with the differing funding rounds? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Brit's Fave Blog: The Information Brit's Fave Book: The Giver As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brit on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eve make 1 perfect mattress – made with 3 layer technology and next generation memory foam. It comes packaged in a beautiful box and arrives the day after you order. You get 100 nights to try it with free return pick-up – it really is the perfect mattress for everyone. Just go online to evemattress.co.ukand enter the code 20VC for £50 off. Everybody deserves the perfect start with Eve. 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.comand also atcooleygo.com.

30 Sep 201632min

Dave Morin is Founder & Partner at Slow Ventures, the leading valley venture fund with investments in the likes of Slack, Pinterest, Evernote, NextDoor, Postmates just to name a few. Prior to Slow, Dave was the Co-Founder and CEO of Path, the social network that serves tens of millions of people every day. Path was acquired by Kakao in 2015. If that was not enough, he also spent several years at Facebook where he led Facebook Platform and Connect during periods of rapid innovation and growth. Today, he serves on the Board of Directors of Eventbrite, Dwell, and Hinge. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Dave made the transition from Facebook and Path to founding Slow Ventures? 2.) As a new entrant to VC, how does Dave look to develop pattern recognition with founders and ideas? What is the most challenging element? 3.) Why did Dave, Sam and Kevin decide to institutionalise Slow for the 'club' to the structured fund that it is today? How did that change their investment decision making process? 4.) What role does network play in the value and operations of Slow? How do they look to increase the network effect to further provide value to their companies? 5.) What role does valuation and ownership play for Dave when investing? How does that change with the larger cheques? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Dave's Fave Book: The Alchemist Dave's Fave Blog: The Information Dave's Most Recent Investment: Perlstein Lab As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Dave on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eve make 1 perfect mattress – made with 3 layer technology and next generation memory foam. It comes packaged in a beautiful box and arrives the day after you order. You get 100 nights to try it with free return pick-up – it really is the perfect mattress for everyone. Just go online to evemattress.co.ukand enter the code 20VC for £50 off. Everybody deserves the perfect start with Eve. 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 atcooleygo.com.

28 Sep 201627min