#213 CEO & Co-Founder Loom Joe Thomas w/ Ilya Fushman: After the Exit
Guests: Joe Thomas, CEO and co-founder of Loom; and Ilya Fushman, partner at Kleiner Perkins
Loom CEO Joe Thomas had a lot of things to think about before he sold his company to Atlassian for $975 million: The impact an acquisition might have on the product, how to keep the Loom brand alive, the risk of remaining independent... but it wasn’t until after the deal was announced that he really understood what it meant for his team.
“I didn't know how emotional it'd be for me,” Joe says. “All of the Loom employees, current and former, that reached out when this was announced, they did their calculation and they're like, ‘Oh my God.’ That, to me, was the most emotionally transformative part of the process. I didn't fully recognize what that would be like, on the individual front.”
Chapters:
(01:34) - The Atlassian acquisition
(05:25) - The bittersweet moment
(08:15) - Transforming Loom
(13:30) - Ilya’s perspective
(18:04) - Life-changing
(22:55) - Doing it again
(25:00) - Loom’s early days
(28:26) - The Series A
(32:33) - Turning on monetization
(35:37) - The Series B
(37:05) - Loom AI
(43:13) - Revenue orientation
(48:18) - The acquisition landscape
(52:27) - Working inside Atlassian
(54:04) - Atlanta tech
(55:00) - Who Atlassian is hiring
(55:24) - What “grit” means to Joe
Mentioned in this episode: Wilson Sonsini, Vinay Hiremath, Andrew Reed and Sequoia Capital, Zoom, Mike Cannon-Brookes, Shahed Khan, COTU Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Scott Farquhar, the Lindy Effect, SVB, Google Chrome, Dropbox, Slack, Snapchat, HubSpot, the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter, Dylan Field and Figma, Atlassian Rovo, Palo Alto Networks, Salesforce, and Garrett Langley and Flock Safety.
Links:
Connect with Joe
LinkedIn
Twitter
Connect with Ilya
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
SaaStr 669: From 2 Weeks of Runway to a $1.5B Valuation: The Founder Playbook with Loom Co-Founder and CEO Joe Thomas
June 2016: Loom was on its last legs. With more than one failed launch + fundraising attempt behind them, the co-founders were maxing out credit cards and had about two weeks of runway left before calling it quits. One idea changed everything: they took a chance on a single piece of their product — the video recorder. They decoupled it from the broader platform they'd been developing, launched it as a standalone offering on Product Hunt, and saw more signups in one day than the past six months combined. Today, the company has raised over $203M and counts 20M users in over 230 countries.
Those first months of tumult aren't the only ups and downs CEO Joe Thomas and his co-founders have encountered in Loom's journey. And they're not alone; today's tech founders are navigating an increasingly difficult economic climate, shifting expectations from investors + employees, and the need to continue to innovate faster — all with fewer resources.
In this session, Thomas will share some of the lessons he's learned throughout the past year and beyond, including the need to make agility your superpower. He'll talk about the need to balance long-term planning with strategic short-term adjustments for when the curveballs come (because they will). Thomas will also share insight into how other founders — including customers/partners of Loom — are adopting new processes, emerging tools, and shifting workplace norms to adapt. With so much uncertainty still ahead in 2023, it's important for founders to learn how to take a half step back, reevaluate their game plan, and orient their short-term priorities around customers' needs.
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Slides for this session: https://www.slideshare.net/saastr/from-2-weeks-of-runway-to-a-15b-valuation-the-founder-playbook-with-looms-ceo-joe-thomas-cofounder-and-ceo-loom-492
Joe's 2021 Flywheel session on YouTube: https://youtube.com/live/rbOoikTMfyI
The podcast version: SaaStr 445: Loom CEO Joe Thomas On How Speed & Simplicity Can Fuel Your Flywheel https://sites.libsyn.com/77527/saastr-445-loom-ceo-joe-thomas-on-how-speed-simplicity-can-fuel-your-flywheel
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Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the 🌎largest community for B2B software.
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SaaStr 531: 4 Ways to Get to $10 Billion by Working Async (Without Burning Out) with Loom CEO Joe Thomas
Joe will share four case studies of companies that have achieved transformational growth using asynchronous communication. You'll hear how they've rebuilt sales processes, won talent wars, delivered best-in-class products, and fully reimagined the employee experience. He'll also highlight the work principles fueling these initiatives and the opportunities ahead for companies that employ them across their teams.
Full video: https://youtu.be/OAxJvk04JKU
Blog post: https://www.saastr.com/4-ways-to-get-to-10-billion-by-working-async-without-burning-out-with-loom-ceo-joe-thomas-pod-531-video/
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
Quora Group: https://www.quora.com/q/cloud
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SaaStr/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/saastr/
Our North American Event: https://bit.ly/2OXeAYh
Our European Event: https://bit.ly/2OZTad8
CEO Loom, Joe Thomas: Communication, the Mother of All Skills
When Rippling CEO Parker Conrad was raising a massive $250 million round last year, he didn’t start by presenting his deck to venture capitalists in person. Instead, he sent a 39-minute demo of his product, recorded on the video app Loom. And, Loom’s CEO Joe Thomas says, “That was the most pleasant surprise.”
In this episode, Joe and Joubin discuss how Loom “stands on the shoulders of giants” like Google, Instagram, and Snap; Joe’s preparations to become a father for the first time; Loom’s overnight success and why the first six months after its Series A were the hardest; what Joe has learned about recruiting and building teams that can trust each other; and how Loom markets and recruits — including how it uses its own product internally.
In this episode, we cover:
Joe’s grandfather Wally — a proud business owner, a “man of the people,” and his personal hero (03:17)
How Snap, the first company to validate Silicon Beach as a real hub for tech innovation, pushed the boundaries of design and subconsciously influenced Loom (05:29)
The consumerization of enterprise and why Loom has experienced such rapid growth (13:30)
Why starting a company is just like having a kid: “You’re never really ready for either” (18:45)
The stock market downturn, managing risk, and the most important thing founders can do in the face of uncertainty (25:57)
The first indications that Loom was going to be huge, and its humble origins as a Google Chrome extension (32:45)
Why the time AFTER Loom’s Series A fundraise was the “hardest window” of Joe’s CEO career, and a discussion about the people who helped him survive it (39:43)
How to recruit people to do jobs you can’t do yourself, and the core characteristics that make for good startup employees (48:10)
Why working remotely won’t kill company culture (53:00)
Paid user acquisition and how Joe thinks about go to market strategy (01:03:43)
How Loom uses its own product internally as a creative resource for recruitment (01:07:34)
The other CEOs Joe admires most, what Grit means to him, and the key roles he’s hiring for right now (01:10:32)
Links:
Connect with JoeTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: joe@loom.com
Connect with JoubinTwitter
LinkedIn
Email: grit@kleinerperkins.com
Learn more about Kleiner Perkins
This episode was edited by Eric Johnson from LightningPod.fm
SaaStr 445: Loom CEO Joe Thomas On How Speed & Simplicity Can Fuel Your Flywheel
In this episode of the SaaStr podcast, Joe Thomas, CEO of Loom, shares how a focus on user experience helped Loom build its flywheel and grow to 10 million users without paid marketing.
Video + blog post: https://www.saastr.com/loom-ceo-joe-thomas-on-how-speed-simplicity-can-fuel-your-flywheel/
E1113 The Next Unicorns E19: Loom CEO Joe Thomas is building video for work, shares insights on creating new behaviors, support as a competitive advantage & more
Check out Loom: https://www.loom.com
FOLLOW Joe: https://twitter.com/yoyo_thomas
FOLLOW Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
20VC: Loom Founder Joe Thomas on Whether To Take Multi-Stage Money at Seed, How Early Stage Founders Should Select Their VC, How Sequoia Won The Loom Deal & The 3 Rules To Operate Remote Teams Successfully
Joe Thomas is the Founder & CEO @ Loom, the startup that helps you get your message across by making it easy to record instantly shareable videos. To date, Joe has raised over $68M from some of the valley's leading firms including Sequoia, Kleiner and Coatue as well as individuals such as Mathilde @ Front, Kevin & Mike @ Instagram and Dylan Field @ Figma to name a few. Prior to founding Loom, Joe was in LA as Director of Product at MyLife.com and before that Director of Operations at MediaPass. Due to Loom's success, Joe has been named to Forbes 30 Under 30 for Enterprise Tech.
In Today's Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Joe made his way from the mid-West to the valley and came to found one of the hottest startups today in Loom?
2.) What does Joe believe are 3 rules to operate remote teams successfully? Why does Joe believe in remote + HQ as a model so much? How do the tools and culture need to change with this as a new format for work? How do leaders now need to learn to write more than ever before?
3.) How has fundraising fundamentally change in the world of COVID? What are the benefits? What can founders do and tools can they use to increase their chances of getting funded in a COVID world? What did Coatue do to build rapport and trust without meeting in person?
4.) What advice would Joe give to founders on how to pick their early VCs? How does Joe advise founders when it comes to accepting multi-stage money at seed? Why does Joe believe you need to be upfront with your VCs about their ability to build future ownership?
5.) Sequoia and Coatue led the Series B, how did the round go down many months before Joe and Loom planned to raise it? What did Sequoia do to win and close the deal? How did that as a founder make Joe feel? How does Joe advise VCs on what it takes to win the most competitive of deals?
Items Mentioned In Today's Show:
Joe's Fave Book: Enders Game, Think On These Things
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