20VC Roundtable: Why Early Stage Founders Should Not be Investing, Why Great Founders Have Low EQ, How the Structure of VC Firms Will Change, Will Founder-Led Funds Compete with Sequoia & Is Investing a Team Sport?
Jack Altman is the Founder and CEO @ Lattice, the #1 people management platform, last valued at $3BN. Jack is an investor through his founding of Jack Altman Capital where he has invested in WorkOS, NexHealth, Owner.com, Mercury and more.
Auren Hoffman is the Founder and CEO @ Safegraph, the most accurate database of global points of interest, last valued at $550M. Auren is an investor through his founding of Flex Capital where he has invested in Chime, Checkr, Coinbase, Flexport, Vercel and more.
Jason Lemkin is the Founder and CEO @ SaaStr, the world's largest SaaS community. Jason is an investor through his founding of The SaaStr Fund. In the past, Jason has invested in Pipedrive, Algolia, Salesloft, Front, GreenHouse, Owner.com, Gorgias and more.
In Today's Episode on Founder-Led Funds We Discuss:
Why have we seen the rise of "Founder-led Funds"?
Are founder-led funds more empathetic to the founders they invest in?
How do founder-led funds source and pick investments in a way that traditional VC does not?
Will we see founder-led Funds truly compete against the Sequoias of the world?
How does being an operator make you a better investor?
How does investing help you be a better founder and operator?
How do you communicate your investing practice and firm to your company and team?
What are the biggest excitements and concerns LPs have for Founder-led Funds?
Will we see the face of venture changing much more broadly and structurally?
How do founder-led funds manage both time and company conflicts?
Auren Hoffman - A Deep Dive on Data - [Invest Like the Best, EP.320]
My guest this week is Auren Hoffman. Auren is the CEO of Safegraph, which curates data on physical locations. He also founded LiveRamp, a public data connectivity business. Auren knows more about data businesses than almost anyone I know and that is the topic of today’s discussion. We look at the business of data from every angle and finish with a fun masterclass on how to host a dinner party. Please enjoy my conversation with Auren Hoffman.
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.
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Show Notes
[00:03:16] - [First question] - His 2x2 matrix for categorizing different types of data businesses
[00:04:59] - An example of what he calls a religion company in his matrix
[00:07:03] - His notion of data currency
[00:08:23] - His definition of a great business
[00:09:46] - An example of a so-called application religion company in his proverbial matrix
[00:11:24] - Co-op and non-profit business models within and outside of the data sphere
[00:13:35] - The truth application quadrant of his matrix
[00:16:18] - How data has exploded in prevalence for the business world as a whole
[00:18:57] - How to think about the end market for data and its demand
[00:21:09] - Characteristics of a good data set and how to identify it
[00:23:14] - Other factors that impact the usability of a data set
[00:24:30] - Optimizing data collection itself
[00:26:30] - The slow growth that’s typical of early-stage data companies
[00:27:27] - Market share considerations for data businesses
[00:30:03] - Common struggles for data entrepreneurs
[00:34:01] - The genesis of his business; SafeGraph
[00:37:08] - The power of self-maintained and user-maintained databases
[00:40:16] - Typical customers and use cases for SafeGraph’s data
[00:41:08] - How SafeGraph and other companies protect against data theft
[00:42:12] - Frequency of change as a proxy for the value of a given data set
[00:45:32] - Categorizing inbound data based on the most important criteria
[00:47:07] - The founder personalities he finds in the data industry
[00:49:53] - Why he feels the data truth quadrant of his matrix is underdeveloped
[00:50:30] - Bloomberg as an important data company to study
[00:51:42] - The importance of transparency in business and in data distribution
[00:53:07] - Failure modes that he sees most commonly in data-based startups
[00:53:53] - Data businesses becoming application businesses and vice-versa
[00:57:35] - The great dinner parties he’s known for
[00:59:50] - How he makes the dinner parties appeal to introverts
[01:03:11] - Dead people he would most like to have as dinner guests
[01:04:09] - Questions he would ask the most influential religious figures
[01:06:20] - The kindest thing anyone has ever done for him
SaaStr 413: How to Build a Unicorn in 8 Simple Steps with Auren Hoffman, CEO @ SafeGraph
Join four-time Founder and CEO Auren Hoffman as he breaks down how businesses can become the right model for explosive growth, emulate their strategy, and join the path to Unicorn potential in eight simple, hand-made steps.
This episode is an excerpt of Auren's session at SaaStr Scale. You can view the full video here: https://youtu.be/d6tnt2a12ZY
Transcript: https://www.saastr.com/saastr-podcast-413-with-safegraph-ceo-auren-hoffman-how-to-build-a-unicorn-in-8-simple-steps/
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SaaStr 135: Auren Hoffman on Why Raising Prices Is Not A Good Idea, How Fewer Employees Can Mean Fast Growth & Why The CEO Must Never Delegate HR
Auren Hoffman is the Founder & CEO @ Safegraph, the startup that is unlocking the world's most powerful data so that machines and humans can answer society's toughest questions. They have backing from likes of Naval Ravikant and prior guests of the show including SignalFire, IDG Ventures and David Rodnitzky just to name a few. Prior to Safegraph, Auren has an astonishing 5 successful exits under his belt with one being, LiveRamp (sold to Acxiom for $310m in 2014). If that was not enough, Auren is also a prolific angel investor with a portfolio including the likes of ThumbTack, Rainforest QA, Brightroll and Groupon.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
How Auren made his way into the world of SaaS and came to found his 6th SaaS startup in Safegraph?
Auren has said before there are two types of successful sales people, what are these two types and what are their character profiles? What type of company should have each different profile? How does each profile interact differently with the rest of the company?
Why does Auren take the contrarian view and saying that highering your price is not always the right answer? In what markets is it right to higher or lower your price? When is it the wrong time? What percentage of revenue should sales and marketing be at a healthy SaaS startup?
Why does Auren believe that you can actually grow faster by having fewer employees? In what situation and start does this work and when does it not? ?
Why does Auren believe that the CEO should never delegate HR? What does Auren mean when he says the best HR professionals are real capital allocators?
60 Second SaaStr
If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Auren Hoffman
SaaStr 086: Why You Have To Focus On A Tiny Market & How to Sell That Market To VCs with Auren Hoffman, Founder @ Safegraph & LiveRamp
Auren Hoffman is best known for being the former CEO and Founder @ LiveRamp, the leading data onboarder that was acquired by Acxiom for $310m. Today's talk focuses on the 5 core lessons Auren took from that incredible journey with LiveRamp. Auren was also an angel investor and board member at BrightRoll, prior to it's $610m acquisition by Yahoo. Today, he is the CEO at SafeGraph, the startup that is unlocking the world's most powerful data so that machines and humans can answer some of society's toughest questions.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
What is Auren's thesis towards hiring all round athletes as opposed to position players? When do it make sense to do either? What stage of the company is right for which persona?
What are the two different types of sales personas? At what type of company should you hire a relationship driven sales team and then what type of company for a product driven sales team?
Why does Auren believe you should target a very small niche of the market? What are the benefits of such focus? How can you sell such a small market to VCs?
How does Auren perceive the future of enterprise software? How has the rise of bottoms up sales affected the SaaS environment? How many more SaaS companies and buyers of SaaS are there today, compared to 10 years ago?
If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here:
Jason Lemkin
Harry Stebbings
SaaStr
Auren Hoffman
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Episode 70: Auren Hoffman
This week’s episode is with Auren Hoffman. Auren is a prolific entrepreneur and investor, having started and sold Live Ramp and invested in Thumbtack, Brightroll and many more. In this episode we get into a lot - the concept of who you know vs what you know, preserving optionality regarding career, competing with computers, the future of college, how to pick life partner, how to hire good people, how to give valuable feedback, navigating acquisitions, and much more. Auren is a fascinating thinker and has a lot to say. if you like what you hear tweet @auren to let him know, and do read his fantastic answers on Quora.
