Emergence Capital

Jake Saper is a General Partner @ Emergence Capital, one of the leading venture firms of the last 20 years. Their many wins include being early investors in Salesforce, Zoom, Veeva and more. In total, the firm has invested $2BN and returned an astonishing $8BN in cash with much more to come. In Today's Episode We Discuss: 04:45 The Zoom Investment Story 10:21 Founder, Market, Traction: Rank Them 26:37 Why Market Pull is the Most Important Thing and How to Know 27:23 Are the Best Deals Always Expensive? 28:25 What is the One Framework Emergence Use for Every Investment 29:08 Lessons from the 16x DPI Zoom Fund 30:44 Why Does Every Partner Do Reference Calls on Every Deal? 35:16 We Have Lied to SaaS Founders: The Revenue Rules Changed 37:53 Where Will Value Accrue in a World of AI? 41:37 Three Reasons Why AI Will Not Replace Vertical SaaS 46:38 Who Wins in AI: Startups or Incumbents? 50:09 Why Should Every Company Aim to Be a "Board Discussion" 55:12 Why is Jake Worried About AI's FTX Moment? 56:00 What Losing Billions on Salesforce Taught Us About Selling 01:00:07 Why Most VC Partnerships are Broken 01:03:07 Grok vs Anthropic vs OpenAI: Buy and Sell? 01:14:25 Quickfire Round: Insights and Reflections Please read the offering circular and related risks at invest.modemobile.com. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile's Regulation A+ Offering. Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors because it is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. It should only be considered a long-term investment. You must be prepared to withstand a total loss of your investment. Private company securities are also highly illiquid, and there is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities. DealMaker Securities LLC, a registered broker-dealer, and member of FINRA | SIPC, located at 105 Maxess Road, Suite 124, Melville, NY 11747, is the Intermediary for this offering and is not an affiliate of or connected with the Issuer. Please check our background on FINRA's BrokerCheck.

Jake Saper

General Partner

Emergence Capital

How do you build defensible business value in an era when, as AngelList CEO Avlok Kohli said on our last ACQ2 episode, the “cost of intelligence is going to zero”? Longtime friend of the show Jake Saper and his partners at Emergence Capital have been refining their thesis for this brave new world of Generative AI in B2B, and we sit down with him to discuss. We cover topics including: When do exactly correct answers matter, and when do they not? When are human-in-the-loop systems necessary? When do startups have an advantage vs. incumbents, and vice-versa? Where can companies capture value on a durable basis? When do you need proprietary data in order to be defensible? Whether you’re building or investing in existing businesses from the “pre-AI” era or brand new startups that are native to GPT, this episode has plenty of takeaways you should consider. Tune in! Links: Jake’s recent blog post on Generative AI and B2B Follow Jake on Twitter Sponsors: Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra

Jake Saper

General Partner

Emergence Capital

In today's SaaStr podcast, we present the Cutting Edge. Where SaaStr's own VP of Sales, Bryan Elsesser sits down with the best revenue leaders in SaaS to share cutting-edge tactics and strategies. In this episode, Doug Landis, Growth Partner at Emergence Capital talks about the art of business conversations and how your customers should inform your go-to-market messaging. Blog post and video: https://www.saastr.com/business-conversations-doug-landis-emergence-capital/ Sponsors: https://shortcut.com/saastr https://www.litmus.com/saastr https://calendly.com/ https://flatfile.com/saastr/

Doug Landis

Growth Partner

Emergence Capital

Emergence Capital's Jake Saper returns to the LP Show to talk 2021 "state-of-SaaS" and Emergence's Deep Collaboration thesis. We cover how Figma changed the game for embedded collaboration within work tools, and why this theme represents a deep vein that Emergence is investing behind with companies like Ironclad and Jake's latest investment in Maze. Plus we cover the impact of the Zoom investment (undeniably one of the greatest venture investments of all time) on Emergence as a firm, and why investing in your partnership through coaching, peer groups and simply prioritizing dedicated time together is just as important after big successes as before.  Sponsors: Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra Peer group resources Jake recommends for entrepreneurs:  Enrich  Pace  10X CEO  Leaders in Tech

Jake Saper

General Partner

Emergence Capital

Sam (@thesamparr) and Shaan (@shaanvp) talk ideas, trends and businesses. We're joined by Zak Kukoff (@ZCK), a 25 year old VC of $500M Emergence Capital (emcap.com) who's home runs have been Zoom, Salesforce, Veeva, Yammer and more. Topics for today: Introducing our guest Zak Kukoff (1:22), Equity vs Cash comp debate (3:40), Zak leaving school at 16 to raise money (6:49), Does investing in young people work? Should they be building businesses or partying? (11:12), Deskless workforce (17:49), The passion economy (23:43), How and when to build a sales team to accelerate growth (33:07), Buying engineering-led businesses and raising the prices (36:22), AI teachers in sales & language (38:35) & Optimizng your copy (46:39).  See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Zak Kukoff

Investor

Emergence Capital

Santi Subotovsky is a General Partner @ Emergence Capital, one of the valley's leading venture firms of the last decade focusing on enterprise & SaaS applications. Within their incredible portfolio is the likes of Salesforce, Zoom, Box, Veeva Systems, SuccessFactors and many more. As for Santi, he has led deals in the likes of Zoom, Crunchbase, Clearbanc, Top Hat and Chorus.ai to name a few. Before Emergence, Santi founded AXG Tecnonexo, a SaaS e-learning company in Argentina which he expanded to 150+ employees across Latin America and the U.S. Santi is also a founding board member of Puente Labs, an organization that helps founders of Latin American high-potential growth companies scale their businesses globally. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Santi made his way from founding a Latin American EdTech business to being one of the valley's most successful investors of 2019 with Zoom's IPO? What was the biggest barrier he faced when getting into VC? How did he overcome it? 2.) What does Santi believe his superpower as an investor is? What did Santi see in Eric Yuan and the 30 person team at the time that made him believe they would be successful? What made how Eric thinks about presents product so special? What did the relationship building process look like between Eric and Santi in the early days? 3.) How does Santi like to work with his portfolio companies? How does Santi think about time allocation across the portfolio? Why does Santi believe it is crucial to not just spend time with the CEO but the exec team also? Where does Santi most like to provide value and leverage to the CEO? Why does Santi believe all VCs are just sales reps? 4.) Why does Santi believe that a vertically focused fund is the optimal strategy to pursue today? What are the benefits? What are the drawbacks? How does Santi think about the obvious overlap between consumer and enterprise today? With the thematic focus, how does Santi think about loss ratio and batting average? How does Emergence approach the element of both ownership and price? Where do they optimise? 5.) With larger and larger funds, how does Santi see the future of venture? Why does he believe that we will see vertically focused capital-as-a-service? What does this look like in reality? Is Santi concerned by the extended window of privatisation that is now present in today's capital markets? How concerned is Santi by the compression of fundraising timelines and what does that to investor <> founder relationships? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Santi's Fave Book: Candide by Voltaire Santi's Most Recent Investment: Openpath As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Santi on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Santi Subotovsky

General Partner

Emergence Capital

Zoom board member (and general partner at Emergence Capital) Santi Subotovsky joins us to tell the true underdog story behind the hottest IPO of 2019. Together we trace founder Eric Yuan’s incredible journey from immigrant software developer, who didn’t speak any English upon arriving in Silicon Valley in 1997, to Glassdoor’s #1 rated CEO in America in 2018. In an age where border walls have replaced open doors in Washington, and burn rates and privacy scandals have sidelined Silicon Valley’s pretense of making the world a better place, there is no better reminder than Zoom of everything that can be great about our country and our industry. Sponsors: Anthropic: https://bit.ly/acquiredclaude25 Sentry: https://bit.ly/acquiredsentry WorkOS: https://acquired.fm/unpluggedPlaying Cards: https://bit.ly/workOSshop (Code: ACQDECK) Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig26 More Acquired! Get email updates with hints on next episode and follow-ups from recent episodes Join the Slack Subscribe to ACQ2 Merch Store! © Copyright 2015-2026 ACQ, LLC LinksWalt Mossberg’s review of Zoom in 2012:  http://allthingsd.com/20120821/a-chance-to-call-15-friends-to-video-chat-in-high-def/ Carve Outs Ben: General Magic https://www.generalmagicthemovie.com David: Dissect Season 4 https://dissectpodcast.com/subscribe-to-the-podcast/

Santi Subotovsky

General Partner

Emergence Capital

“80% of the worlds workforce doesn’t sit at a desk, and 95% of the world’s software is built for people who sit at a desk. Once people build software for the other 80%, the size of the addressable market that could be created could dwarf what we currently have, which is pretty humbling to think about.” Jake Saper, Emergence Capital (@jakesaper)   We dive deep into the nitty gritty details of SaaS investing and company building with the best in the business, Jake Saper from Emergence Capital. Emergence has been around since the beginning of the SaaS industry and -uniquely for a venture firm- is entirely focused on early-stage investing within it. They were early investors in major successes like Salesforce, Veeva, SuccessFactors, Box and Yammer, and more recently, Gusto, Zoom, and many more.  This episode is a must-listen for anyone investing in, operating in, or thinking about modern SaaS companies! Sponsors: Sierra: https://bit.ly/acquiredsierra   Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast: Acquired.fm @AcquiredFM Links from the Show: Emergence Capital Emergence Capital – “Series-A SaaS Metrics” Emergence Email Newsletter

Jake Saper

General Partner

Emergence Capital

On today's show I am hugely excited to welcome Joe Floyd to the hotseat. Joe is Principal at Emergence Capital Partners. His expertise in building cloud startups has evolved over 10 years of advising and investing in startups. Prior to Emergence, Joe worked in American Capital's technology group where he focused on fast growing internet companies. At American Capital Joe was involved in their investments with the likes of PeopleMedia and HomeAway. Items Mentioned In Today's Show The Lean Startup by Eric Ries Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and HappinessNudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth and Happiness What you will learn in today's show: How Joe made his transition from the world of tech investment banking into the Venture Capital industry? What Joe would advise an individual looking to get into the industry? What Joe believes to be the most important aspect that a startup must have in order to attain VC funding? Whether Joe prefers a founder or a founding team? Joe describes what the main red flags are when startups pitch? When Joe thinks of success, who is the first person that comes to mind? What business books have been the most transformative to Joe? We then delve into a quick fire round where Joe gives his immediate thoughts on the future of Amazon and Tesla and whether we really are in a tech bubble or not? As always thank you so much for listening to today's show, for furthr details and resources, head on over to www.thetwentyminutevc.com. Likewise we would love to hear who you would like to have on the show, if you have any suggestions please do email harry@thetwentyminutevc.com with your suggestions.

Joe Floyd

Principal

Emergence Capital