Venture firms are turning to creators to build trust with the next generation of founders before a check is ever written. It's a trend that's been building with a16z's acquisition of Erik Torenberg’s Turpentine podcast and OpenAI's acquisition of TBPN. Lightspeed Venture Partners just made its own notable hire in that vein, bringing on Claire Zau, a seed investor with a major following on Instagram and TikTok, to source deals and co-host the firm's new show, Lightwork, alongside CMO Josh Machiz.
On this episode of TechCrunch's Equity podcast, Dominic-Madori Davis is joined by Zau and Machiz to dive deep into whether the “creator-investor” is becoming a real function in venture or just something firms are still trying to figure out.
Listen to the full episode to hear more about:
How an Instagram DM turned into a hire, and why Machiz says Zau’s investing instincts (not just her follower count) made her stand out from other creators.
Why Zau thinks tech Twitter is a “minuscule” slice of the tech-curious audience, and what she's learned about public sentiment on AI that doesn't show up on X.
How Lightspeed measures ROI on a media operation that's hard to tie directly to deal flow.
The founder and portfolio-company stories that came out of Zau's content, including how a single video helped land a health-tech founder a meeting with Shaq.
Subscribe to Equity on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. You also can follow Equity on X and Threads, at @EquityPod.
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Mike Mignano is a General Partner at Union Square Ventures, one of the most iconic venture firms in the world, whose investments include Coinbase, Stripe, Etsy, Twilio, Cloudflare. Before joining USV, Mike was a Partner at Lightspeed, where he backed breakout AI companies including Granola and Suno. Prior to investing, he co-founded Anchor, acquired by Spotify.
AGENDA:
00:00 Is Fear of Failure the Secret Weapon Behind Great Founders?
07:20 Why Leave Lightspeed for USV — and Is Thesis-Driven Venture Still Alive?
09:50 Is the Real AI Money Still in Infrastructure, or Are Apps Finally About to Explode?
13:00 Who Wins the AI Model War: OpenAI, Anthropic, Open Source, or the "Rebel Alliance"?
19:00 Are We About to Hand Our Entire Lives Over to AI Agents?
21:00 Can Anthropic Keep Growing Like This — or Will Token Spend Break the Model?
26:00 Can AI Routing Become a $50BN Company, or Is It Just a Commodity Pipe?
30:00 Will the AI Energy Crisis Create the Next Monster Venture Outcomes?
36:00 Can Startups Survive Microsoft, OpenAI, and the Brutal Power of Bundling?
45:00 Should VCs Ignore Price When Backing Generational Companies?
55:30 Is Traditional Media Dead — and Who Becomes the New Tech Kingmaker?
Bucky Moore is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, announced exclusively in the show today on 20VC. Prior to Lightspeed, Bucky spent an incredibly successful 7 years at Kleiner Perkins working with Mamoon Hamid to build one of the most successful early stage firms of the last decade. Bucky has made investments in the likes of Prisma, Netlify, Browserbase and more.
In Today's Episode We Discuss:
03:07 Big News: Joining Lightspeed Venture Partners
04:09 Why Mega Platforms Will Win the Next 10 Years of VC
09:33 Are Foundation Model Companies Good Venture Investments
16:04 What Applications Will Model Providers Buy/Build? What Will They Not?
22:03 How to Approach Price Sensitivity in a World of AI
28:25 Why is it BS to do Market Sizing When Making Investments in AI
34:03 Is the Future of VC Domain Specialization
38:38 How to Know What Company Wins in Super Competitive Markets
41:06 Why Every Firm Has to do Pre-Seed To Win in VC Today?
44:43 The Risks of Multi-Stage Investing: Is Signalling Risk Real?
48:53 Investing Lessons from Leading Rounds in Glean and Windsurf
56:54 Quick Fire Round: Lessons from Mamoon, Fave CEO, Next 10 Years
Nakul Mandan is the founder of Audacious Ventures. Prior to Audacious, he was a partner at Lightspeed, joining from Battery, which he joined in ‘09 in the middle of the financial crisis while living in India.
This conversation explores his journey immigrating to Silicon Valley and building an early stage venture firm from the ground up.
We get into why most VCs aren’t helpful with recruiting at the zero to one stage, his thesis on starting an early stage venture firm to help founders hire A+ teams, a crash course on early stage recruiting and building a sales team, and how COVID hit right after he left Lightspeed to raise Audacious Fund 1.
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(03:43) Evolution of VC platform teams
(09:53) How Audacious runs in-house recruiting processes
(15:16) The reason large firms can’t help with Seed stage recruiting
(17:06) Immigrating from India to the US mid-financial crisis
(21:59) Silicon Valley's secret weapon
(25:59) The opportunity to start a recruiting-focused Seed firm
(30:14) Raising Audacious $90m Fund 1 in April of 2020
(36:58) The new guard of Seed firms
(39:23) Why $50-75m is the minimum viable institutional fund size
(41:48) How to work with the best founders
(45:30) Navigating deal dynamics, term sheets, and valuations
(52:24) The two hardest parts about starting your own fund
(54:32) Lessons applied raising Audacious $125m Fund 2 in 2023
(58:46) Evolving from a PMF-first to Founder-first investor
(01:02:09) Five traits of force of nature founders
(01:07:05) How to build an A+ team
(01:11:46) The importance of backchanneling
(01:13:54) Why everyone thinks they’re a good people reader
(01:14:35) Two most common mistakes in recruiting
(01:20:59) Determining urgency of a customer’s problem
(01:22:55) Hiring and scaling your first sales team
(01:25:55) Why marketing is the hardest role to hire for
(01:31:59) What good sales people look like
(01:35:43) How to move up market + how to do pilots
(01:43:40) Why Nakul admires Rafael Nadal
Referenced:
Audacious: https://www.audacious.co/
Nakul’s immigration journey: https://www.nakulmandan.com/blog/2024/an-immigrant-living-the-american-dream
Force of nature founders: https://www.nakulmandan.com/blog/2024/traits-i-look-for-in-founders
Early GTM hiring: https://www.nakulmandan.com/blog/2023/initial-gtm-hiring-for-saas-startups
Follow Nakul:
Twitter: https://x.com/nakul
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nakulmandan
Follow Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Subscribe to my newsletter to get every episode + the transcript in your inbox every week: https://www.thespl.it
Guests: Vipul Ved Prakash, CEO and co-founder of Together AI; and Bucky Moore, partner at Kleiner Perkins
No one knows for sure whether the future of AI will be driven more by research labs and AI-native companies, or by enterprises applying the technology to their own data sets. But one thing is for sure, says Together AI CEO and co-founder Vipul Ved Prakash: It’s going to be a lot bigger. “If you look at the next 10 years or the next 20 years, we are doing maybe 0.1 percent of [the] AI that we’ll be doing 10 years from now.”
In this episode, Vipul, Bucky, and Joubin discuss startup table stakes, Tri Dao, tentpole features, open-source AI, non-financial investors, Meta Llama, deep learning researchers, WeWork, “Attention is All You Need,” create vs. capture, Databricks, Docker, scaling laws, Ilya Sutskever, IRC, and Jordan Ritter and Napster.
Chapters:
(00:53) - Executive hiring
(04:40) - How Vipul and Bucky met
(06:54) - Six years at Apple
(08:19) - Together and the AI landscape
(12:47) - Apple’s deal with OpenAI
(14:27) - Open vs. closed AI
(17:32) - Nvidia GPUs and capital expenditures
(22:48) - Fame and reputation
(24:17) - Planning for an uncertain future
(27:00) - Stress and attention
(30:18) - AI research
(34:58) - Challenges for AI businesses
(39:02) - Frequent disagreements
(43:05) - Vipul’s first startups, Cloudmark and Topsy
(47:55) - Taking time off
(50:09) - The crypto-AI connection
(53:20) - Who Together AI is hiring
(54:37) - What “grit” means to Vipul
Links:
Connect with Vipul
Twitter
LinkedIn
Connect with Bucky
Twitter
LinkedIn
Connect with Joubin
Twitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
Subscribe to my newsletter The Split for new episodes emailed every week: https://www.thespl.it/ Brought to you by Attio, the next generation of CRM: https://bit.ly/AttioThePeel
Mike is currently a partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Before Lightspeed, he spent five years building Anchor, which he sold to Spotify in 2020, and then led Spotify’s podcast, video, and live products for three years.
It's probably safe to assume every podcast you listen to uses Mike’s product, and we go way back to the very beginning and talk through how the team at Anchor pulled it all off.Mike also shares his frameworks of “Doing the Dumb Thing” and "Super Goals," which are high-stakes, focusing goals with a clear and urgent time frame, open-ended method of achievement, and a single measure of success.
Chapters:
(00:00) Intro
(4:22) Why AI makes consumer investing interesting again
(8:05) Podcasting in the early 2010’s
(14:03) The benefits and drawbacks of RSS
(21:50) Building v1 “Instagram for audio”
(25:53) Advice for building a close-knit community
(29:28) Raising their first small round
(31:38) Inside their splashy launch at SXSW
(39:17) Why the first product failed, but allowed them to raise money to build Anchor
(45:26) What makes a good product founder
(47:39) Re-launching v2 a year later
(53:51) What is a Super Goal
(56:32) Finding Product Market Fit with months of runway left
(59:02) Getting to a million podcast creators
(01:02:09) Launching the first podcast ad network
(01:04:10) Why anchor started sponsoring its own ad network
(01:08:13) Spotify’s acquisition of Anchor
(01:14:22) How Spotify won in podcast market share
(01:16:34) Why the future of podcasts is video
Referenced:
Mike’s Podcast “Generative Now”: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLXW6zY9x-gk1oPyjZ_qBCDEYKTbPpGa8S
Mike’s blog posts:
https://mignano.substack.com/p/the-standards-innovation-paradox
https://mignano.substack.com/p/the-power-of-supergoals
https://mignano.substack.com/p/startups-vs-incumbents-the-battle
https://mignano.substack.com/p/all-podcast-roads-lead-to-video
Where to find Mike:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/mignano
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mignano
Where to find Turner:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/turnernovak/
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it/
Thomas Plantenga is the CEO @ Vinted, one of the fastest-growing marketplaces in the world with a valuation of $4.5BN. Prior to becoming CEO, Thomas worked with a range of organisations including Bookaboat, OLX, Sellit/Wallapop and FJLabs.
Alex Taussig is a General Partner @ Lightspeed and co-leads the fund's Consumer investment team. Alex's portfolio includes the likes of All Day Kitchens, Archive Resale, Daily Harvest, Faire, Found, Frubana, Keychain, Kikoff, Vinted, YaySay, and Zola.
In Today's Episode with Thomas Plantenga and Alex Taussig We Discuss:
1. The CEO Who Did Not Want to be CEO:
How did Thomas come to be CEO @ Vinted? Why did he not want the job at first?
What does Thomas know now that he wishes he had known when he started?
2. The Mechanics of the Fastest Growing Marketplace:
What is the single most important metric for Vinted?
How does Vinted determine what market to open next? What do they look for?
How does Vinted think about depth vs breadth in each country?
What is the AOV today? How does it vary by country?
How long does it take for each country to be cash flow positive?
3. The Biggest BS in Startups: Rule of 40 and EBITDA:
Why does Thomas think VC's obsession with "Rule of 40" is BS?
Why does Thomas believe EBITDA optimization is BS and useless?
What are the hardest elements of scaling a marketplace that no one knows?
4. The Bull, Bear and Investor Approach to Vinted:
Alex, what was Lightspeed's pre and post-mortem when investing in Vinted?
How does Lightspeed analyze TAM and market sizing when investing?
What was Lightspeed's single biggest concern when investing in Vinted?
5. Europe: A Hub of Innovation or a Retirement Home:
Does Thomas believe that European young people have a worse work ethic than those in the US?
Is Thomas concerned by the state of regulation hampering innovation in Europe?
What can be done to improve work ethic and the state of regulation today?
Why is Alex and Lightspeed more bullish than ever on Europe today?
Rebecca Kaden is a Managing Partner @ Union Square Ventures, one of the leading early-stage firms of the last decade with investments in Twitter, Twilio, Coinbase and many more.
Nicole Quinn is a General Partner @ Lightspeed where she has led investments or sits on the board of Calm, Cameo and LunchClub to name a few.
Eurie Kim is a Managing Partner @ Forerunner Ventures, the leading early-stage consumer fund. Eurie has led investments and sits on the board of Oura, The Farmers Dog, Curology and more.
In Today's Roundtable We Discuss:
1. Seed Rounds:
Is it even possible for traditional seed funds to play in a world of multi-stage funds investing so aggressively at the seed stage?
Is seed immune to the macro environment? Will seed pricing remain as high as ever?
What advice does the team have for seed founders approaching a Series A? What do they need?
2. Series A:
How is the Series A market looking today? Is there a crunch at the Series A?
To what extent are valuations compressed at the Series A?
What 3 core elements do companies at the A stage, looking for a Series B next, need to focus on?
3. Series B and Beyond:
Is the real crunch at the Series B?
Why are down rounds so much better than structured rounds for companies raising?
Will we see a wave of M&A in the next 12 months?
4. Crypto, AI and Hot Takes:
Why is now the best time to be investing in crypto?
Why is investing in AI a lottery right now?
What is the most controversial thing that each believes today?
Semil Shah is the Founder of Haystack, an institutional venture capital firm that backs outlier founders at the earliest stages. Semil started Haystack in 2013, and has since invested in X unicorns like DoorDash, Instacart, Figma, HashiCorp, Ironclad, Carta, Applied Intuition, and Opendoor.
This episode takes us behind the scenes of Semil’s two decade journey building Haystack from scratch. We’ll dive into how he raised and deployed each of the first six Haystack funds, including all the mistakes made along the way, plus the details around Haystack’s new $75 million and $25 million funds announced the date this episode was published.
Read Haystack's announcement here: https://semilshah.com/2023/09/10/announcing-haystack-vii-same-model-fresh-funds-and-new-era/
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—
Topics discussed include:
Juggling multiple jobs while living paycheck to paycheck his first eight years in Silicon Valley
Failing to get his first job in venture three times
Investing in the Seed rounds of unicorns DoorDash, Instacart, Hashicorp, and Envoy within the first six months of starting Haystack
Why he initially thought Haystack would be a short-term thing
Turning down multiple lucrative job offers two years in
How the best LPs evaluate VC funds on the “Entry Ownership to Fund Size” ratio
Semil’s strategy of “crawl, walk, run” to increase Haystack’s check sizes over time
The pain he felt failing to hit his target fund size on the first four fundraises and how he handled it
Why everyone should “pre-market” a fundraise, and how to do it
The things most founders don’t appreciate about raising a venture fund
Fighting to invest in Ironclad’s Seed round before he had his next fund raised
How LPs reference VCs, and how a VC can become referenceable
Why Haystack Fund IV was the scariest fund to raise
How Semil builds relationships with LPs
The hardest questions he faced raising each fund and what other VCs should anticipate while raising their own fund
How LP investment committees make decisions
What’s going on behind the scenes at most large venture LPs today
Why the traditional advice of “finding an anchor LP” makes no sense
Spilling his secret on the best quarter to fundraise
Why VCs should fundraise with a hard cap on fund size
Why every VC should appreciate and remember how LPs supported them through the pandemic
All the details on Haystack’s new $75 million and $25 million funds
Semil’s plan for the next 10 years
Three pieces of advice for emerging fund managers
Where to find Semil:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/semil
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/semilshah/
Where to find Turner:
Newsletter: https://www.thespl.it
Twitter: https://twitter.com/TurnerNovak
Production and distribution by: https://www.supermix.io/
For sponsorship inquiries: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSebvhBlDDfHJyQdQWs8RwpFxWg-UbG0H-VFey05QSHvLxkZPQ/viewform
This week, Mary Ann spoke with Mercedes Bent, Partner on the early stage team at Lightspeed Ventures and co-lead of Lightspeed’s LatAm region and angel fund. The pair chewed through a number of topics, including:
How and why Mercedes started investing in Latin America, and why she thinks the region is more resilient than others
Why we're early in the hype cycle when it comes to the intersection of AI and fintech
Why generative AI and fintech aren't always the best combination and much more.
Equity is back on Friday with our weekly news roundup! Talk to you then!
For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity’s Simplecast website.
Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!
Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.
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Moritz Baier-Lentz is a partner and head of gaming at Lightspeed, and Sam Harrison is the managing partner of Faction.
In this episode, Baier-Lentz and Harrison unpack their thesis behind investing in the nascent Web3 gaming industry.
While Web3 gaming has yet to reach mainstream appeal, Baier-Lentz and Harrison believe that a combination of technological advancements and veteran game developers embracing blockchain rails will help facilitate breakout Web3 games in the near future.
Outline:
1:13 Web3 VC Update
4:41 Lightspeed + Faction
8:46 Market Cycles
14:04 Web3 vs. Web2 Gaming
20:40 Gaming Metrics for VC
23:38 Tokenomics & Gaming
33:50 AI & Gaming
38:41 Closing Thoughts
Michael Mignano is a partner at Lightspeed VC. Joe Marchese is a general and build partner at Human Ventures. The two investors join Big Technology Podcast to discuss this new wave of generative AI's potential. We interrogate how this technology might be overhyped, and then speak about the potential areas of opportunity. Three domains stand out: 1) Content creation and entertainment. 2) Search and discovery. 3) AI as an assistive agent. Tune in for the second half where we discuss platform strategy and the associated risks.
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What do some of the most successful PLG companies have in common? How do you build a best-in-class go-to-market model to get to 100mn ARR and beyond?
Iconic PLG companies share how they integrated GTM into their growth strategy to go from single digits to over a billion in ARR. Lightspeed Partner, Anoushka Vaswani, is joined by Raj Sarkar, CMO at 1Password, Kim Walsh, SVP, Sales, Partnerships and Customer Success at Apollo.io, and Chris De Vylder, CRO at Sentry, to pass along key lessons from their growth journey.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/live/4mzgUHp2Dtc?feature=share
Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
Subscribe for weekly updates: https://www.saastr.com/subscribeform
Twitter: https://twitter.com/saastr
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2724976
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Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/
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In the 43rd episode Semil Shah, Partner at Haystack, joins to discuss whether the company brand name or partner matters more in VC, how he almost invested in Coinbase when it was at only $20M, the flywheel of VC and how it’s evolving and what he looks for in a founder.
(0:05) Welcome Semil Shah
(7:08) Early VC content creation
(18:12) Brand name vs partners in VC
(26:06) The VC flywheel
(35:03) Your role in venture
(45:00) What you look for in founders
(54:12) Where do your deals come from
(58:20) Open AI
(1:02:45) Dry powder
(1:06:27) How would you manage your third fund?
(1:14:40) Semil’s take on crypto
(1:21:02) Podcasting evolution
(1:27:24) Outro
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
🎙 Listen to the show
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/three-cartoon-avatars/id1606770839
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1
Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg
Follow on Socials
📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/cartoonavatars
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars
🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars
About the Show
A Saturday morning podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett (Partner and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures) covering the tech news with his friends and other people with industry expertise.
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1
Follow on Socials
📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow
📱 X - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow
🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow
About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode of The Logan Bartlett Show, we sit down with the people behind today’s most important startups and extract the tactics, lessons, and frameworks they’ve learned the hard way. Conversations span hiring to GTM, product, growth, fundraising and everything in between - collectively forming the ultimate playbook to make you a better CEO, investor or board member.
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Semil Shah is the Founder of Haystack, one of the leading pre-seed and seed firms of the last decade. Among Semil's portfolio include the likes of DoorDash ($DASH), Instacart, Hashicorp ($HCP), Opendoor ($OPEN), Figma (acquired by Adobe), Carta and many more exceptional companies. Semil's first fund is marked between a 30 and 40x fund, astonishing.
In Today's Episode with Semil Shah We Discuss:
1.) The Makings of Semil Shah:
What is Semil running away from? What is he running towards?
What does Semil know now that he wishes he had known when entering venture?
What is Semil's biggest advice to managers raising their first funds now?
2.) Fund Sizing: Growing vs Staying Disciplined:
Question from Hunter Walk: How does Semil determine the right size fund to raise with each fund
Question from Satya Patel: Why have you resisted increasing AUM?
In the last episode Semil mentioned a three-year deployment cycle for the fund, did he stick to it? What are the benefits and drawbacks?
What investing mistakes did Semil make over the last 3 years that he wishes he had not made?
3.) The Secret to Fundraising for a Fund:
What is Semil's biggest advice to emerging managers on finding new LPs? What works?
What materials do managers need to have in place for a new fundraise? Deck? Dataroom?
What are the most common mistakes VCs make when pitching LPs their funds?
How does Semil follow-up with potential LPs post-call? What works? What does not?
How does Semil suggest creating a sense of urgency for LPs to commit to a fund?
How does Semil feel about giving preferential terms to convince LPs to commit to the first close?
4.) The Current Landscape:
For VCs:
How will the current landscape impact emerging managers' ability to raise?
What advice would Semil give to them? Raise smaller?
Kyle Harrison said on the show recently, "differentiation will kill 80% of venture firms, especially the so-so ones". Does Semil agree? Who is set to struggle? Who is set to thrive in this environment?
For LPs:
What does Semil think are the biggest mistakes LPs made over the last 2-3 years?
How will they respond in this market cycle?
If Semil were handed an endowment fund, how would he allocate today?
Does Semil agree, we will see a denigration of venture returns to those of PE like multiples? Why?
For Founders:
How does Semil advise founders on raising today when everyone says they are investing but very few really are?
How does Semil advise founders on how to think about valuation inflection points with respect to raising capital?
Items Mentioned in Today's Episode:
Semil's Favourite Article: Master of Play
Semil's Most Recent Investment: Impart Security
Talking this week's big week for AI, with Parker Thompson (@pt) plus@miguelisolano&@mignano
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In the 38th episode Founder of Anchor Mike Mignano joins to talk about how he and Logan met, the origins of Anchor, selling to Spotify, what he sees as the future of podcasting, and Web3’s role in the creator economy. Plus Logan talks about his most recent Twitter backlash over being reasonably skeptical.
(0:00) Intro
(1:02) Tennessee vs Alabama
(5:58) Ghostwriter backlash
(10:15) Introducing Mike Mignano
(11:57) How Mike and Logan met
(14:09) Mike’s programming background
(17:37) Advice for kids
(21:37) Left Accenture for a startup
(27:42) Beginning of Anchor
(39:44) Selling to Spotify
(46:03) RSS as an open protocol
(53:11) The future of podcasting
(59:42) Clubhouse
(1:04:15) Apps capturing a moment
(1:06:41) Recommendation media
(1:19:39) Web3 creator economy and monetization
(1:28:36) Wrap up
Show Notes:
Dead Cat Podcast - VC Ghostwriters (w/ Logan Bartlett)
Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson
🎙 Listen to the show
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/three-cartoon-avatars/id1606770839
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1
Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg
Follow on Socials
📸 Instagram - https://instagram.com/cartoonavatars
🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars
🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars
About the Show
A Saturday morning podcast hosted by Logan Bartlett (Partner and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures) covering the tech news with his friends and other people with industry expertise.
Executive Producer: Rashad Assir
Producer: Leah Clapper
Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky
Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA
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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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Mike Mignano is a Partner @ Lightspeed, one of the most successful venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snap, Affirm, Epic Games, Mulesoft and more. As for Mike, prior to venture, he was Head of Talk for Spotify where he led the podcast, live, and video businesses for the world's leading audio streaming platform. Michael came to Spotify through their acquisition of Anchor, a company he co-founded and is credited for democratizing podcasting globally. Mike has also been a prolific angel investor with a portfolio including Cameo, Pipe, Sandbox VR and Stir.
In Today's Episode with Mike Mignano We Discuss:
1.) Exclusive News:
What exclusive news does Mike have to share today?
What would Mike most like to change about the way founders experience the product of venture capital? How can VCs be better?
What is Mike most nervous about in the new role?
2.) The World of Social is Changing Forever:
Why does Mike believe there has never been a better time for the next social media giant to be born?
Why are the largest social giants leaving behind the social graph?
What is recommendation media? Why is it a better business model?
How does the shift from social graph to recommendation media change the way large social giants operate and interact today?
3.) Startups: Risers, Fallers and Is There Room For Another Giant?
What does Mike believe Clubhouse did well? What was their undoing?
Does Mike believe BeReal is defensible? What features make it both sticky and defensible?
Will TikTok be a $2 trillion dollar company? Will Meta catch TikTok or have they gone too far ahead?
Will OpenSea be able to sustain and make the market for NFTs, despite crypto crashing?
Should startups be concerned about large social giants "copying" their features?
What does true defensibility look like in consumer social today?
4.) Angel Investing: Hits, Misses and Lessons:
From writing over 50 angel checks, what are the single biggest lessons Mike has learned?
What has been his biggest hit? How did that change the way he thinks about investing?
What has been his biggest miss? In what way did that change how he invests?
What advice does Mike give to all angel investors looking to invest today?
Today's show is a CLASSIC TWiST founder interview. Anchor Co-Founder Mike Mignano joins to tell Anchor's founding story (1:40), break down what it's like getting acquired by Spotify (15:32), and talk about how RSS standards might be stunting innovation in the podcasting space. (33:17)
0:00 Jason intros today's guest: Anchor Co-Founder Mike Mignano
1:40 Mike explains why he started Anchor, the original inspiration and first versions, finding PMF, building the nuts and bolts of a great podcast publishing experience
14:23 Helpware - Go to https://helpware.com/TWIST to get $1000 off your first invoice
15:32 Why Anchor sold to Spotify, the Series B term sheet they were considering at the time of acquisition, getting courted by Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, Anchor's first check story
24:44 LinkedIn Jobs - Post your first job for free at https://linkedin.com/twist
25:58 Why Apple hasn't innovated in podcasting, paid podcasts vs. advertising
31:59 Babbel - Save up to 60% off your language learning subscription at https://babbel.com/twist
33:17 Why Mike wrote his recent article: “The Standards Innovation Paradox”, evolving standards to increase innovation, the Substack example
Read Mike's article:
https://mignano.medium.com/the-standards-innovation-paradox-e14cab521391
Time for some deep analysis of the podcast industry. Is Spotify gonna take over all of audio? Is the blockchain useful for podcasting? What is the great Michael Mignano doing next, after leaving Spotify and Anchor?
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Amy Wu, head of FTX ventures and gaming initiatives, discusses her role at FTX, what problems need to be addressed in the web3 gaming world, and her thoughts on APE and Yuga Labs as a board member of Apecoin DAO and investor in Yuga Labs. Show highlights:
what Amy does at FTX
how her background investing in gaming prepared her for her role at FTX
Amy’s vision for FTX’s gaming studio
how FTX is helping gaming studios get into web3 and NFTs
why Amy thinks blockchain games are the evolution of the ‘free to play’ gaming archetype
what best practices Amy believes web2 companies should implement when transitioning into web3 gaming
why there is so much backlash against traditional companies incorporating NFTs (hint: it’s not just about environmental concerns)
how FTX Ventures is looking to deploy capital and why it is so interested in Korea and India, specifically
why Amy thinks the L1 wars will end with just a few winning chains
why “consumer products” are going to be more important than high throughput blockchains in onboarding the next billion users
what Amy’s role as a board member of Apecoin DAO is like
what Amy thinks about APE and Yuga Labs
trends for the rest of 2022: social media, dating apps, and more…
Tickets to the Cryptopians Book Clubs Go on Sale Today at 1pm ET!
Today, Tuesday, April 26, at 1pm Eastern Time, we will sell the NFT tickets to five book clubs to discuss my book, The Cryptopians. All the book clubs, which are 90 minutes and limited to 22 participants each, will be hosted by me and will take place on my Discord from May 2nd to May 10th. The sale will will take place on Bitski: bitski.com/@laurashin/created
The dates and times for the book clubs are:
Monday, May 2, at 8 pm ET
Tuesday May 3, at 1pm ET with Lefteris Karapetsas, Griff Green, and Christoph Jentzsch of the DAO
Thursday, May 5, at 12pm
Monday, May 9, at 12pm ET with Andrey Ternovskiy of Chatroulette
Tuesday, May 10, at 3pm ET
Again, the link for the sale is at https://www.bitski.com/@laurashin/created.
Also, join me for a Twitter Spaces, hosted by Bitski (https://twitter.com/bitski), at 12pm ET today.
Unchained Is Hiring!
Find out information on the three openings at Unchained and how to apply here:
part-time remote social media marketing manager:
https://unchainedpodcast.com/seeking-part-time-remote-social-media-and-marketing-manager/
part-time remote editorial assistant:
https://unchainedpodcast.com/seeking-remote-editorial-assistant/
part-time remote video/audio producer:
https://unchainedpodcast.com/seeking-part-time-remote-video-audio-producer/a
Thank you to our sponsors!
Ether Cards: https://galaxis.xyz
Cross River Bank: https://crossriver.com/crypto
Beefy Finance: https://beefy.finance
Crypto.com: https://crypto.onelink.me/J9Lg/unconfirmedcardearnfeb2021
Episode Links
Amy Wu
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/amytongwu/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/amytongwu
Roles
FTX Gaming
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1495834891858100232
Apecoin DAO Board
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1504238389737967622
FTX Ventures
https://ventures.ftx.com/
FTX Stuff Going On
NFT lounge at Coachella
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1515407892693745665
FTX Ventures x SuperteamDAO (India)
https://twitter.com/ajm_ftx/status/1510339725059629058
Acquisition of Good Luck Games
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1506308327399063557
Backlash
`https://kotaku.com/nft-crypto-blcckchain-storybook-brawl-card-f2p-steam-re-1848708120
FTX Africa
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1504095099873280005
Com2uS, a publicly-traded company, launched a token on FTX
`https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1501675620832583684
FTX launch in Europe
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1500902895880974340
YGG India push for FTX
https://twitter.com/amytongwu/status/1499075404887465994
FTX Future Fund
https://ftxfuturefund.org/announcing-the-future-fund/
$400 million raise w/ plans for M&A’s
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-01-31/bankman-fried-s-ftx-valued-at-32-billion-after-latest-round
Miscellaneous
Blockchain gaming backlash
https://www.vice.com/en/article/xgd78d/the-crypto-revolution-is-an-existential-crisis-for-video-games
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On today's episode of Empire, Jason sits down with Amy Wu, General Partner at FTX, to take a deep dive in crypto gaming. Covering the differences between traditional gaming and crypto gaming, Amy Wu provides an in-depth and pertinent perspective on the future of gaming as exciting developments occur everyday. She also discusses FTX's personal strategy when concerning crypto gaming and what they see for the genre in the future.
--
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Follow me and Santiago on Twitter, @JasonYanowitz and @santiagoroel; let us know what you thought of the show!
Subscribe to the podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4UTePv1CR3APdKOiosR3Iq?si=41bc452345b649f9
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When you think of scaling up, many things may come to mind, like hiring, culture, marketing, and sales. But what are the essentials of scaling up, and how do you navigate obstacles along the way to function as a high-impact organization?
Cathy Gao, Partner at Sapphire Ventures, and Anoushka Vaswani, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners, moderated a panel with Carlos Delatorre, CRO at TripActions, and Latané Conant, CMO at 6sense to discuss how you can scale your startup from $20 million ARR to $200 million ARR through go-to-market execution, talent, and culture.
What is Crypto Gaming? Why is it important? What about Gaming NFTs? This is what we explore in this episode with Amy Wu, partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. This is Crypto Gaming 101.
The Web3 Gaming space is emerging from all sorts of angles, from normies to hardcore gamers to crypto natives—and each has a role to play as the ecosystem matures.
Here are the 5 questions to answer in this episode:
1. What is Crypto Gaming and why is it important? What about casual & mobile gaming? 2. How do you identify the next Axie Infinity? 3. Why are Guilds important? Are they a good investment? 4. How do you earn in Crypto Gaming? 5. Where does meaning, value, and identity come into play? What about fun?
With the Crypto Gaming Revolution well under way, Amy walks us through the fundamentals of the space and how to approach the future.
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------ Topics Covered:
0:00 Intro 3:15 The Conference Experience 6:44 TradArt and NFTs 10:11 Metaverso 13:14 Crypto IRL 16:20 The Panel 19:40 FreeRoss DAO 21:38 The Panelists 24:28 The Potential of NFTs 29:00 More than Fractionalizing 33:45 Liquidity 39:33 Pricing Assets 46:50 Community 54:34 Regulatory Issues 1:00:22 Use Cases
----- Resources:
Amy on Twitter https://twitter.com/amytongwu?s=20 Lightspeed Venture Partners https://twitter.com/lightspeedvp?s=20 The Crypto Gaming Revolution https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/the-crypto-gaming-revolution The Rise of Axie https://shows.banklesshq.com/p/the-rise-of-axie-infinity-jeff-jiho
----- Not financial or tax advice. This channel is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. This video is not tax advice. Talk to your accountant. Do your own research.
Disclosure. From time-to-time I may add links in this newsletter to products I use. I may receive commission if you make a purchase through one of these links. Additionally, the Bankless writers hold crypto assets. See our investment disclosures here: https://newsletter.banklesshq.com/p/bankless-disclosures
“The evolution is inevitable.”
On this episode of The Scoop, Partner at Lightspeed Ventures Amy Wu joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss Lighstpeed's investments in the intersection of crypto and gaming as well as the problems participants in that corner of the market face. Specifically, Wu says that game developers in crypto have to worry about not only building a good game but creating financial incentives to support a robust in-game economy. "Opening up a game economy and allowing a lot of really creative incentivization of both player and creator alike can actually deeply add to a game environment," she said.
The rise of in-game economies
As for blockchain-focused companies, specifically, Wu said that such projects will have to abstract away the complexities of blockchain to allow for a superior gaming experience. "The primary reason for some of these games with the longest longevity is not going to be around NFT speculation at all. It ultimately will actually just be about gameplay in my opinion...it cannot be the main driver of play." Turning in-game assets into NFTs solves a big problem for game developers and players, allowing holders of in-game assets to tap into their value. “Gamers have been buying digital assets in games for decades, so this is essentially just the next step towards that evolution… I think that having the ability to invest the time, actually put money into the game to buy these assets, and then sort of have some guarantee that there will be some value coming out of the assets as well is pretty attractive”.
... For more visit theblockcrypto.com/podcasts
Episode 81 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Amy Wu, Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners.
Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.
This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt, Kraken and Kava
Bakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more information
About Kraken
Whether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.
About Kava
For over four years, Kava Labs has contributed to building a portfolio of decentralized products and services that allow users to gain access to all of the benefits of DeFi. Kava connects the world's largest cryptocurrencies, ecosystems, and financial applications on one of DeFi’s most trusted, scalable, and secure earning platforms. Kava lets you mint stablecoins, lend, borrow, earn and swap safely and efficiently across the world’s biggest crypto assets with a simple and intuitive user experience and the full confidence of institutional-grade security and quality. With a proven track record of delivering successful projects safely, the Kava Platform is DeFi's most trusted, scalable, and secure institutional-grade cross-chain engine.
“We're not art investors. We're investing in things that have communities”
On this episode of The Scoop, Adam Goldberg co-founder of Standard Crypto joined host Frank Chaparro to discuss his work as a crypto VC and how his company is looking at the DeFi market in an unconventional way.
Standard Crypto is $1 billion in size, according to a source familiar with the fund.
Today, their investment team is primarily focused on projects in three areas: infrastructure, networks and apps. Thus far, Standard Crypto has made investments in major companies like OpenSea, Axie Infinity, Matrixport, Aave and Telegram, among others. The firm also has stakes in projects such as Audius, BitClout/Deso and Instadapp.
Goldberg framed Standard Crypto's focus on the types of investments that have an ability to execute on and build a community.
"When you have a network that's owned by its participants, the rules can't change without the community being on board. And that's what makes us feel like crypto networks are the hardest thing to disrupt that we've ever seen in humanity, in that they evolve with their communities as things change and shift over time," said Goldberg.
Gaming and the Metaverse in focus
Goldberg told Chaparro that Standard Crypto is actively looking at companies advancing social and gaming projects in crypto. He sees the metaverse convergence of games and in-game economies as a new kind of development that's different from gameplay itself.
"You know, Axie is not just a game, it's a new movement. It's sort of like a new generation of Pokemon or of of Angry Birds. And it's possible that we'll see, you know, movies or other types of experiences built around that IP." Said Goldberg.
NFTs
Standard Crypto is also looking closely at NFT’s, of which Goldberg said he sees a lot of opportunities to capture value as “new types of productive assets”. Standard Crypto are current investors in NFT marketplaces OpenSea and Foundation.
...
For most visit theblockcrypto.com/podcasts
Episode 73 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block’s Frank Chaparro and Adam Goldberg, Co-Founder at Standard Crypto.
Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com.
This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt, Kraken and Masterworks
Bakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more information
About Kraken
Whether you’re an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today.
About Masterworks
Masterworks is democratizing the exclusive multi-trillion-dollar art world. Instead of needing to write a $10 million dollar check to buy one Picasso painting, you can buy shares of masterpiece paintings. Masterworks has securitized over $250 million worth of art for their 235,000 members and was recently valued at over $1 billion, making them the first and only unicorn in the alternative investing space. Invest like a billionaire today with a few easy clicks at masterworks.io/scoop
Jeremy Liew is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the leading firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Affirm, Snapchat (Snap), Mulesoft, Epic Games, Carta and more amazing companies. As for Jeremy, in the past he has led deals and sat on the boards of Snap, Affirm, Blockchain.com and The Honest Company to name a few. Before Lightspeed, Jeremy was with AOL, first as SVP of corporate development and chief of staff to the CEO, and then as general manager of Netscape. Due to his incredible investing success, Jeremy has been featured on the Forbes Midas List multiple times.
In Today's Episode We Dissect The Snapchat Memo:
I. How Jeremey first learned of Snapchat
How Jeremy Liew first heard about Evan Spiegel and Snapchat?
"It's actually kind of a roundabout story. We first heard about Snapchat, because one of my partners Barry Eggers is a very involved dad. And he noticed that his daughter had started taking weird selfies"
What was the process to first get in touch with Evan?
"The challenge was, the website only had info at Snapchat email address was the only info The only contact info available. So I emailed them, and I never heard back.
Why was it such a challenge?
"I then looked up Snapchat on LinkedIn, and I couldn't find any contact information. And I was in a little bit of a loss, I wasn't getting any responses from the email, there was nothing listed on LinkedIn. So I ended up doing a who is look-up to try to find out who had registered the Snapchat URL, and I got an info@ snapgrouplimited email. So I emailed that. And then as again, I didn't get any response.
What was the breakthrough in the end?
"....Finally, what I decided to do was since Evan was a student at Stanford, and since I graduated from Stanford for business school, at that time, Facebook allowed you to message people who were in the same network, and Stanford constituted that. So I messaged him through Facebook, and I finally got a response. But this time, I got a response within five minutes."
II. The Analysis Of Snapchat's Early Market
What are the 4 things Jeremy looks for when making an investment in consumer?
Can this become part of pop culture?
Does this create new habits?
Is there a scalable way to grow?
Does the founder have a unique insight that explains the success?
Why does Jeremy believe that usage with young females is the biggest predictor of future consumer social success?
"Generalising, Women build their relationships through, you know, conversations, and they build those relationships through sharing information with each other. And obviously, that sort of conversation or relationship is a fantastic conduit for word of mouth for anything that people really appreciate."
In what ways does Jeremy like to see consumer social companies become part of pop culture?
"Today, if you think about whether it be social networking, apps, messaging, e commerce, streaming media, it's all part of pop culture. And so as much as movies or television or music or dance, and so if you ask yourself who are the early adopters of pop culture"
What are examples of this?
"Social networking, apps, messaging, e commerce, streaming media, it's all part of pop culture."
Did the market evolve the way that Jeremy thought it would?
"And one of the things that surprised us a little bit was that this was very strong in Southern California, Northern California, and Georgia, when we first invested and parts of the South"
What was a surprise to Jeremy Liew in terms of market evolution?
"In Norway, which had actually transcended, that sort of high school and college-age population, in fact, become the number three most downloaded app, most popular app, in Norway at that time. So ahead of Instagram, ahead of Facebook, and so forth. And so that's what I think gave us that early indication that the app was going to be able to break out beyond its high school, college student, initial starting point, not just in the US, but everywhere"
III. Reflections on Snapchat's Early Traction
What did the Snap user to install count look like at the time?
"In, you know, March, April of 2012, they had about 90,000, daily active users off of the base of 180,000 installs."
How does this compare with many others in the consumer social space?
"That's a very, very high ratio."
What were Snap's retention numbers at the time?
"50% retention after 90 days, which again, suggests high engagement, high retention, high growth that speaks to upside volatility"
How did Snap's frequency of usage on an individual basis look like at the time?
"So people were opening the app six times per day, they were opening at least once every second day."
Across, retention, usage and user to install, what are the benchmarks for great, good and average?
" I would say as a rule of thumb, in messaging and social networks, you would want to see at least a DAU to MAU ratio of north of 50%. And you would want to see at least a D 30 of say 30 to 40%, for your for something to really be working to be sort of at that outlier level."
IV. The Truth About The Snapchat Founding Team
What unique insight does Jeremy believe that Evan always held for the company and the product?
"One of the things that was so special about Evan, and that I think, has continued to contribute to the success of the company has been that he's always been able to do that to look at something with fresh eyes, and not iterate over what the current state of the art is that, you know, just from first principles basis"
How has Jeremy seen Evan change and evolve as a leader?
"I think his maturity as a business leader, as a leader of people, as a manager, you know, as a strategist, although he always had very good strategic instincts, but they've just continued to grow and evolve and blossom."
What were some of the big inflection points in his development?
"So you know, the feed has always been up until this point, in reverse chronological order, I think largely because that's what friendster do choose to do. And then Evan comes along. He says, How do you tell stories beginning, middle, end. Now go to social media? How do they tell stories in reverse chronological order means and middle beginning? Well, that doesn't make any sense. And so he said, we're going to create a whole new feed of stories, and they're going to be told in chronological order beginning middle end."
Who are some unsung heroes from the Snap journey that were transformational?
"Bobby doesn't get enough credit. From the very beginning from I think maybe a couple of months in was thinking about the breakthroughs that had been happening computer vision and the implications for what that could build....Imran Khan, he really helps take a lot of the load off of Evan allowed me to focus on product engineering, he took over sales and monetization Ops, he did a lot of the financing work in the time when Snapchat raised a lot of capital."
Barry Eggers is a Founding Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners and currently Chair of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA) Board of Directors. Lightspeed is one of the premier funds of the last decade with homeruns including Snapchat, Affirm, Mulesoft, Nutanix and Stitch Fix. Prior to LSVP, Barry spent close to 6 years as @ Cisco developing Cisco's initial M&A program and leading the company's first wave of acquisitions and integrations.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Barry made his way into the world of venture over 20 years ago and how he came to found one of today's leaders, Lightspeed?
2.) What are the implications of a Biden administration? How does this compare to a Trump administration? What can be done to mitigate the tax concerns around Biden's policies? How does Barry think about each candidate's stance on immigration? What are the challenges here?
3.) How will SPACs change the world of venture? What will it take for them to be viewed in the same class as IPOs? Why are they often better than direct listings? How does the rise of solo capitalists change the state of venture? What does Barry make of rolling funds being born?
4.) What does Barry believe we can do to swing the race pendulum in venture? What were Barry's biggest lessons in taking the Lightspeed partnership from 1 to 10 female partners? How can this be done with ethnic minorities also? What advice does Barry give to his counterpart GPs?
5.) How would Barry describe his own style of board membership? How has it changed over time? How does Barry keep his head in boards with many around him are losing theirs? What advice does Barry give to new board members adopting board seats for the first time?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Barry's Favourite Book: Channel Kindness: Stories of Kindness and Community
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Merci Victoria Grace is a Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners, one of the valley's leading venture firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Snapchat, Mulesoft, Affirm, AppDynamics and more. As for Merci, prior to entering the world of venture, Merci spent 3 years at Slack including as Head of Growth where she grew the growth team to over 50 people and drove DAU's from 500K to 5M in under 2 years. Merci is also the Founder of Women In Product a global community of incredible women in product management.
CLICK TO LISTEN ON ITUNES
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Merci made her way into the world of venture having led the growth team at Slack for close to 3 years?
2.) Merci has been working to productise venture, so what core elements of venture need productising? What systems and tools has Merci put in place to create a product around these processes and methods? What have been the biggest challenge in the attempt to productise VC?
3.) How does the decision-making process look like at Lightspeed? How does Merci use post mortems to help her improve post having lost a deal? How does she structure those post-mortems? What have been some of the core takeaways? What internal tech stack does LSVP run itself on?
4.) How does Merci see the future of the collaboration tools market? Are we entering a period of bundling or unbundling? How does Merci feel about the debate between synchronous and asynchronous? How does Merci determine between those who have grown sustainably vs unsustainably in the time of COVID?
5.) Why do the majority of collaboration tool startups fail? What do they get so wrong in their go-to-market? For those that succeed, what are the commonalities in those that succeed? Why is being good at Twitter a competitive advantage? How does Merci feel about the Superhuman, high touch onboarding style?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Merci's Fave Book: Never Split The Difference: Negotiate As If Your Life Depended on It
As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
0:53 Jason intros Nicole Quinn
1:59 Nicole & Jason describe their separate Calm investments, will it be the first mental health IPO?
8:00 Calm's I.C.E. celebrity engagement method & how it got them LeBron James
8:54 Investing in Sophia Amoruso & Girlboss: what is it about "Force of Nature" product people that attracts Nicole to invest?
16:03 Investing in Gwyneth Paltrow & Goop: what is Goop's business? What are the most profitable parts of their business?
19:42 Investing in Rothy's, and the inverse correlation between the success of e-commerce companies and how much they've raised
24:34 The magic moment of having shares transfer from private to public when a company IPOs
26:53 Changing her risk-averse mindset going from Wall Street to Venture Capital
33:28 Nicole's current investment interests, why voice assistants are crucial for retention
38:16 Investing in Lady Gaga & HAUS Labs: driving business via new product "drops", understanding how engaged a celebrity is in their business, celebrities as an acquisition channel
45:03 Dealing with Goop product blowback, the Netflix series & understanding the science behind it
50:12 Investing in Cameo & CEO Steven Galanis: celebrity selfie videos as a platform
54:44 What types of Founders does Nicole invest in?
56:54 How is Nicole's portfolio split up by stage?
