Skype and Kazaa: Niklas Zennström
In the early 2000s, one of the most popular pieces of software in the world was a free peer-to-peer file-sharing network called Kazaa. It was launched by two Scandinavian entrepreneurs, Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis, with the simple idea that internet users should be able to share anything with anyone in the world.
After being knee-capped by lawsuits from the music industry, Niklas and Janus applied peer-to-peer technology to a new business: Skype, a service that allowed anyone with an internet connection and a microphone to talk to anyone else in the world… for free. At its peak, Skype connected hundreds of millions of global users, and in 2011, it was purchased by Microsoft for $8.5 billion.
This episode was produced by Chris Maccini with music by Ramtin Arablouei. Edited by Neva Grant, with research from Kathryn Sypher. Our engineers were Jimmy Keeley and Patrick Murray.
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SaaStr 587: The 7 Tips to Setting Yourself Apart During the Venture and Growth Stages with Atomico Partner Irina Haivas and Principal Hillary Ball
As a founder, there are different ways you can set your start-up apart from other companies at the venture and growth stages. Investors look for specific metrics to see whether you stand out from the crowd, ranging from your market expansion potential to your product vision and product-market fit.
Atomico Partner, Irina Haivas, and Principal, Hillary Ball, explore what investors are looking for from the early stage through growth.
Full video: https://youtu.be/gP87MIf7Vbk
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20VC: Harry Stebbings on The Biggest Takeaways From Interviewing The World's Best Investors, What Makes A Truly Great Interview & Some Big News... with Mattias Ljungman, Co-Founder & General Partner @ Atomico
Mattias Ljungman is a Co-Founder and General Partner @ Atomico, one of Europe's leading VC funds which Mattias launched in 2006 alongside Niklas Zennstrom. Whilst at Atomico Mattias has been involved in significant exits and transcations including SUpercell (acquired by Softbank), Climate Corporation (acquired by Monsanto and 6Wunderkinder (acquired by Microsoft), just to name a few. As for Harry, Harry Stebbings is the founder of The Twenty Minute VC, the world's largest independent VC podcast with guests including Brad Feld, Andy Rachleff, Peter Fenton and many more. Harry also works very closely with Jason Lemkin @ SaaStr where they work to produce The Official SaaStr Podcast. More recently, Harry joined the fantastic team at Atomico as an EIR on the investment team.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Harry made his first foray into the world of entrepreneurship and then made the move into VC?
2.) From interviewing over 800 of the world's best investors, what have been the biggest takeaways for Harry, both in the realms of investing and interacting with entrepreneurs?
3.) What does Harry believes makes a truly great interview? Is it sheer intellectual rigour or does charisma and energy play a large role? Does Harry release all the episodes he records?
4.) What have been Harry's major takeaways since joining the team at Atomico? What have been the best moments both in terms of intellectual learning and then sentimental memories?
5.) How has Harry's perception and analysis of the VC market changed over the 800 interviews? What does Harry see as the fundamental emerging trends within the VC model itself?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Harry's Fave Book: Madame Bovary, What I Learned Losing A Million Dollars
Harry's Fave Blog: Mattermark Daily
As always you can follow Harry, Mattias and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com – and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount!
FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.
20 VC 067: Scaling Startups Into Unicorns with Atomico's Mattias Ljungman and Carolina Brochado
Mattias launched Atomico in 2006 alongside Niklas Zennström. In that time, Mattias has been involved with exits including Supercell (sold a majority stake to SoftBank), 6Wunderkinder (acquired by Microsoft in 2015), The Climate Corporation (acquired by Monsanto for $1.1B in 2013), Xobni (acquired by Yahoo! in 2013). Mattias works closely with a number of portfolio companies on their expansion, including Truecaller, Klarna, Hailo, and ChemistDirect.
Carolina is Vice President @ Atomico, working on sourcing, evaluation and due diligence of investments. Carolina is based in London, however she travels frequently to Latin America to evaluate opportunities for Atomico to help companies in the region to scale. Prior to Atomico, Carolina started her career at Merrill Lynch's investment banking division before moving to private equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners.
Did you like the double guest show today? If so click here!
If you prefer a single guest click here!
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Mattias and Carolina made their way into the VC industry with Atomico?
2.) How important is it for VCs to have entrepreneurial backgrounds?
3.) What advice would Mattias and Carolina give to anyone looking to enter the VC industry?
4.) What is Atomico's selection criteria? Average cheque size? Round preference? Sector preference?
5.) Why is now the best time to be a European entrepreneur? What has changed?
6.) What does it take for a tech ecosystem to thrive and grow?
7.) What is required for startups to scale from small markets to mass market adoption?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Mattias' Fave Book: The Girl Who Saved The King of Sweden by Jonas Jonasson
Carolina's Fave Book: Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil by John Berendt
Mattias' Fave Blog or Newsletter: Benedict Evans
Carolina's Fave Newsletter: The Skim, Dan Primack: TermSheet
Atomics's Most Used Productivity Tools: Wunderlist, Evernote, Pocket, SmartNews
Atomics's Most Recent Investments: TrueCaller, GymPass
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, Carolina and Mattias on Twitter here!
For a more colourful image of Harry and maybe some mojito sessions, follow Harry on Instagram here!