Rebecca Lynn - Finding Your Customers - [Invest Like the Best, EP.309]
My guest this week is Rebecca Lynn. Rebecca co-founded early-stage investor Canvas Ventures in 2013 and is regularly featured as one of the best VCs in the market. She has deep positioning and go-to-market experience, which she honed during her time at Procter & Gamble, and that's the focus of our discussion. We cover the details of great marketing, why you should say no to customers, and how she has built Canvas. Please enjoy my discussion with Rebecca Lynn.
For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.
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Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes.
Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more.
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Show Notes
[00:02:37] - [First question] - What she’d do a great job teaching if she could teach a singular 401 level course
[00:05:20] - Defining what the umbrella concept is
[00:06:10] - What about her career at P&G applies most to the kinds of companies she spends her time with now
[00:12:06] - What types of questions she asks to help someone building a product understand their marketing angle
[00:15:34] - The top three things people do wrong when running a survey in tactics or strategy
[00:19:33] - Categories of questions where surveys are always helpful and effective
[00:21:06] - What the Go-To-Market Council is and what it does
[00:28:21] - The ways that most funnels are commonly broken
[00:31:17] - Defining great positioning and what it accomplishes
[00:33:36] - How her knowledge and ideas most impacted the way she built Canvas
[00:35:04] - Lessons learned about the world of digital health and the quantified self
[00:39:15] - The base level attributes that most indicate investment potential when she’s investing in a company
[00:42:32] - The shifts in the world that most have her attention today
[00:46:10] - What has her worried systemically about venture investing
[00:49:37] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for her
E994: All Turtles CEO Phil Libin shares his state machine that answers all growth questions; Future of Early-Stage VC w/Pete Flint (NFX), Rebecca Lynn (Canvas Ventures), Dave Samuel (Freestyle Capital); plus LAUNCH Scale Partner Talk w/Lever CTO Nate Smith
1:03 Jason intros Phil Libin from LAUNCH Scale 2019
1:51 Phil Libin on "The State Machine that Answers All Growth Questions"
32:40 Jason joins Phil on stage for Q&A
39:56 Jason intros Phil (NFX), Rebecca (Canvas Ventures) & Dave (Freestyle Capital)
41:34 Transitioning from founder to VC
44:08 How to let a founder know when they are headed down the wrong path
47:42 At what stage does a founder have to change their mindset?
49:49 Dave Samuel on Airtable CEO Howie Liu not taking his advice and succeeding anyway
52:21 How Rebecca Lynn recruited current LendingClub CEO Scott Sanborn in the early days
55:39 Should startups still relocate to the Bay Area under any circumstances?
1:03:40 How are VCs dealing with the influx in the number of startups over the past 10 years?
1:13:23 LAUNCH Scale Partner Talk: Lever CTO Nate Smith
20VC: Why You Have To Raise $100m+ If You Want To Go Big Today, The 5 Fundamentals To Starting and Scaling A Successful Marketplace & Why Female Founders Under-Promise and Over-Deliver with Paul Hsiao, Founding Partner @ Canvas Ventures
Paul Hsiao is a Founding Partner @ Canvas Ventures, one of Silicon Valley's leading and newer entrants to the Series A scene. At Canvas, Paul has made investments in the likes of Everwise, Fluxx Labs, Roofstock, Thrive Global, Transfix, and Zola. Before founding Canvas, Paul was a partner at NEA, where he led an early-stage investment in Houzz, as well as, had the privilege of helping eight companies go public on the NYSE or NASDAQ and seventeen companies with successful M&A exits during his 10-year tenure with the firm. Prior to VC, Paul was an entrepreneur with the founding of Mazu Networks, a pioneer in network security that was acquired by Riverbed Technologies.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Paul made his way into the world of VC with NEA and got Scott Sandell as his first mentor in VC?
2.) Question from Oren Zeev: Having been a partner at both, how does Paul compare the culture and strategy of two such differing firms of Canvas vs NEA? How does Paul's thinking on exit expectations and requirements change with the change of fund? How does a smaller fund fundamentally change the way you think about investing?
3.) What does Paul believe are the 5 fundamentals of building and scaling a successful marketplace? Why does Paul believe that it is the supply side that tells you if your marketplace is or is not working? Why does Paul believe stubbornness is good in marketplace founders?
4.) Why does Paul believe that raising $100m is critical for new companies if they want to go big? What does this mean for capital efficiency? What does this mean for ownership with multiple dilutive rounds impacting investor returns? How should founders then think about winning the "capital arms race"? What are the exceptions to these rules?
5.) Female founders receive 2.19% of VC funding, however, Paul has many more female founders in portfolio than the industry. Why does Paul think this is? What would Paul like to see change in the distribution of VC funds? What is the required steps to make this happen?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Paul's Fave Book: The Innovator's Dilemma
Paul's Most Recent Investment: Thrive Global, Roofstock
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Paul on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Cooley is a global law firm built around supporting start-ups and the venture capital firms that fund them. Now we have spoken before about their forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, and forming more VC funds than any other law firm in the world but Cooley also represents more than 6,000 high-growth startups across the globe – through the full company life cycle. They are the #1 law firm for VC-backed exits (M&A and IPO) ranked by PitchBook, and since 2014 has represented more companies in their IPOs than any other law firm. Simply head over to Cooley.com or you can check them out at Cooleygo.com.
20VC: Learnings From Mary Meeker & Larry Summers, Missing Out On Uber & The Changing World of VC with Canvas Partner, Rebecca Lynn
Rebecca Lynn is a Partner @ Canvas, where she focusses on Fintech, Digital Health, SaaS and mobile. Rebecca led an early stage investment in Lending Club, which was the largest US technology IPO of 2014 and the 4th largest Internet IPO since 2001. She has also led investments in the likes of Check (acquired by Intuit), RelateIQ (acquired by Salesforce), Proximity, Practice Fusion and more incredible companies. Prior to being in VC, Rebecca held operational roles at NextCard where she rose to become VP of Marketing and Head of Customer Acquisition and saw the company going public with a $1.3bn market cap.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Rebecca made her way into the wonderful world of VC?
2.) How does Rebecca view the importance of brand and thematic focus in the world of VC today? How can a VC be focussed thematically without missing moonshots?
3.) What were Rebecca's biggest lessons from sitting on boards with the likes of Mary Meeker and Larry Summers? How did that change how Rebecca viewed being a board member?
4.) "Fintech is all about distribution and acquisition". What does Rebecca make of this statement? How have we seen evolution in both distribution and acquisition in the rising tide of new fintech startups?
5.) How does Rebecca analyse fund economics? What does she make of the mega $1Bn funds raised over the last year? What is the optimal size fund for Rebecca?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Rebecca's Fave Blog: The Daily Shot
Rebecca's Fave Book: Influence by Robert Cialdini
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Rebecca on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
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