EP 30: Conversation with Plaid & Column Founder William Hockey, Covering Adam Neumann with Author Maureen Farrell and Common Founder Brad Hargreaves
In the 30th episode, William Hockey joins for a conversation on founding Plaid, what it’s like running Column with his wife, and the state of startups and fintech. Plus author of “The Cult of We” Maureen Farrell and founder of Common Brad Hargreaves join to discuss Adam Neumann and his latest real estate venture in Flow.
(0:00) Intro
(1:55) Introducing William
(4:48) Kids today
(6:22) William’s first pitch to Zach
(10:44) Data prioritization
(12:21) Providing services others don’t want to do
(21:29) Strategic decisions
(25:48) Organizing a new UI
(31:38) Selling Plaid to Visa
(33:13) Fintech in current market conditions
(38:27) William bought a bank
(44:00) Running Column as a couple
(52:03) Crypto’s role in finance
(59:57) Funding
(1:05:45) A changing path for entrepreneurs
(1:11:21) Neumann and Flow
(1:13:46) Introducing Maureen and Brad
(1:15:30) WeWork recap
(1:22:06) Common vs WeLive
(1:27:23) Community Narrative
(1:33:21) Flow’s potential use cases
(1:36:36) Why Andreessen would back this
(1:42:58) Does it help when founders are crazy?
(1:47:38) What will Neumann need to do?
(1:52:03) Outro
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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20VC: Why Not Every Element of A Scalable Business Has To Scale, Why You Should Be Bearish on Retail & Why Fewer Businesses Are Getting Started Today Since The Great Depression with Brad Hargreaves, Founder & CEO @ Common
Brad Hargreaves is the Founder & CEO @ Common, the startup that provides shared housing for those that live in common. They have raised over $20m in VC funding from some of our very favorites including the likes of Maveron, Slow Ventures, Lowercase Capital, 8VC and Brendan Wallace @ Fifth Wall. Prior to Common, Brad was the Founder of General Assembly, the global school for tech, business, and design which has, to date, raised over $140m and has locations across 4 continents.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Brad made his way into the world of tech, came to found General Assembly and then made his move into the world of real estate with Common?
2.) Why have we seen the price of real estate in core urban areas hit an all time high today? How does Brad think this will affect the future of malls?
3.) Why does Brad think that in a scalable business not every element has to scale? What does he mean by this? What proportion of elements have to scale? What are the inflection points in scaling that suggest potential for venture returns?
4.) How does Brad think about the secondary affects of AVs? Which areas does Brad think have the most potential for innovation? How does Brad think about the negative externalities of AV's? What can be done to mitigate their effects?
5.) Why does Brad think that occupational licensing is one of the biggest barriers to economic growth in the US? What reform can be made to enhance this and allow for growth?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Brad's Fave Book: The Lever of Riches
Brad's Fave Blog: Kim Mai Cutler, Fifth Wall Newsletter, Steven Smith
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Brad on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
WePay helps online platforms increase revenue through integrated payments processing, helping platforms offer ROI-positive integrated payments to their users – within their UX and without taking on fraud & regulatory exposure. WePay also offers award-winning support and can even work with your team thru Slack or Zendesk. Get the payments revenue you want, without getting bogged down every time a user has a payments question. Simply visit wepay.com/harry
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Episode 67: Brad Hargreaves
Brad is the founder of General Assembly and now Common, which aims to do to co-living what WeWork has done for co-working. In this episode, we talk about his come-up story, lessons learned from General Assembly, what the real estate industry is like especially as it applies to tech, why he prefers being an operator to an investor, and much more.
