Laela Sturdy

Laela Sturdy is Managing Partner of CapitalG, Alphabet's $7 billion independent growth fund, where she has invested in Stripe, Duolingo (DUOL), Gusto, UiPath (PATH), Webflow and Whatnot. Laela joined CapitalG shortly after its inception in 2013 and was promoted to Managing Partner in 2023, making her one of few women to be promoted into the sole leadership role within an established multibillion-dollar venture firm. Before joining CapitalG, Laela served as Managing Director of emerging businesses at Google and held leadership roles on the YouTube and Google Search teams. In Today's Episode with Laela Sturdy We Discuss: 1. Lessons from 10 Years Investing: What does Laela know now that she wishes she had known when she entered VC? What is the biggest miss for Laela? How did it change her mindset and approach? What are Laela's biggest takeaways from Stripe and UiPath? How did they change what she looks for in companies today? What is Laela's biggest advice to all new entrants to venture today? 2. How to Build a $100BN Company: Market Timing, Sizing and Staging: What does Laela mean when she says she will never take a risk on a company being able to complete a "second act"? How does Laela approach market sizing? How does Laela think about the notion that the best companies will always expand their markets? Is Laela willing to take market timing risk? What have been her biggest lessons on timing? Does Laela prefer founders who are new to a market and have optimistic naivety? Or prefer an expert in a market who knows every element of it? 3. The Deal: Pricing, Sizing and Upside: How does Laela think about price today? When is she willing to pay up vs not? What price did Laela pay that at the time seemed super high but turned out to be super cheap? What price did Laela pay that seemed super cheap but turned out to be super high? What upside is Laela underwriting towards? What does she need to see in base and best case? 4. VC Value Add: Is it all BS: Does Laela believe that the best founders really need help from their VC? Who is the best board member Laela works with? Why are they so good? What are the core areas where the VC and the founder are misaligned? What would Laela most like to change about the relationship that founders and VCs have?

Laela Sturdy

Managing Partner

CapitalG

Laela Sturdy is the managing partner at CapitalG, Alphabet's $4B independent growth fund. Laela has invested in a number of iconic companies across both consumer and enterprise, including Duolingo, Stripe, Gusto, UiPath, and more. In the episode, Laela gives a behind-the-scenes look at Alphabet’s startup bets and discusses how CapitalG makes their investment decisions. She shares how she stays ahead of the curve in different markets and what she looks for in great founders and great investors. (0:00) Intro (1:44) What is CapitalG? (5:31) Why does Alphabet invest in startups? (12:31) Laela's role as Managing Partner (14:16) Making investment decisions at CapitalG (17:50) Top lessons from investing (21:26) Getting lucky early in your career (24:55) Consumer vs enterprise investing (31:06) What the best investments have in common (36:48) Avoiding false precision in investing (45:36) Making concentrated bets (47:31) How to develop talent (51:09) Advice for young people in venture (1:04:24) Thoughts on the artificial intelligence industry (1:07:37) Immigrating from Jamaica   Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky Produced: 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   🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1   Follow on Socials 📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow 🐦 Twitter - 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, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes. 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. Tap follow and enable notifications to stay ahead of the game.

Laela Sturdy

Managing Partner

CapitalG

Laela Sturdy is a General Partner @ CapitalG, Alphabet's independent growth fund with investments in the likes of Stripe, UiPath, Looker, Robinhood and Lyft to name a few. As for Laela, she joined CapitalG shortly after inception in 2013 and has led investments in Stripe, Duolingo, Gusto, UiPath and Unqork, to name a few. Prior to CapitalG, Laela was at Google as Managing Director of Emerging Businesses and held leadership roles within YouTube and search. In Today's Episode with Laela Sturdy You Will Learn: 1.) How Laela made her way into the world of venture and came to be a General Partner at Alphabet's independent growth fund, CapitalG? 2.) The Market: With the rise of crossover funds, hedge funds, private equity, all entering growth stage venture, how does Laela analyse the current state of the market? How has the increase in capital supply impacted pricing at growth? How do CapitalG compete in a world where competitors pay 2x the valuation and have different outcome expectations? 3.) Portfolio Construction: Given CapitalG's single LP and evergreen structure, how do CapitalG think about portfolio construction? What is the right level of diversification? How doe CapitalG structure internal investment decision-making? How does this change for re-investments? How do CapitalG think about attribution internally? 4.) Upside and Downside: Given prices being so high, when outcome scenario planning, how does Laela think about good vs great when it comes to multiple expectations? How has this changed over time? On the flip side, how does Laela think about loss ratio at growth today? Has this changed with rounds becoming more and more pre-emptive? 5.) Scaling Unicorns: What are the commonalities in the biggest challenges founders face post-product-market fit but prescaling? What are the clear signs to Laela that a founder is uniquely skilled at hiring? Does Laela agree that the best founders do not need help on hiring? How does Laela feel about the future of venture being services platforms? Item's Mentioned In Today's Episode with Laela Sturdy Laela's Favourite Book: The Great Gatsby Laela's Most Recent Investment: Webflow

Laela Sturdy

Managing Partner

CapitalG

Laela Sturdy is a Partner @ CapitalG, Alphabet's growth investment fund that have invested in the likes of Stripe, Snap Inc, Airbnb and many more incredible companies. As for Laela, she has made investment in category leaders such as language learning platform, Duolingo, payroll and benefits provider, Gusto and jobs site, Glassdoor. Prior to investing with CapitalG, Laela was a Director of Sales & Business Operations at Google where she helped start, scale, and lead teams in several emerging product areas including video and display advertising, local and SMB services, and mobile commerce. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Laela made the transition from an operator at Google to one of the industry's rising star investors with CapitalG? 2.) Market size is fundamental to CapitalG decision-making process so; what is a large enough market? How does Laela look to evaluate market size; bottoms up or top down? 3.) How does Laela look to assess product differentiation? Is brand significant enough IP to be classed as product differentiation? 4.) Why does ownership not play such a pivotal role in investment decision-making process? How crucial is unit economics to Laela at this stage of investment? 5.) With Google's obvious operational value add, does Laela believe we will see the further rise of operational value add within VC? What does this mean for entrepreneurs? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Laela's Fave Book: Americanah Laela's Fave Blog: Dan Primack: Axios Laela's Most Recent Investment: Care.com As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eight is a sleep innovation company. With their latest product, the Eight Smart Mattress, being a bed that literally tells you how well you slept last night, paired with an intelligent sensor cover that measures the quality of your sleep and delivers a daily sleep report. In order to bring you the best product, Eight used anonymized sleep data and feedback from over 10,000 people, to understand which materials and types of mattresses give customers the best sleep resulting in their unique blend of four responsive and high-density foam layers plus one layer of proprietary technology that helps people track and improve their sleep. You can check it out on Eightsleep.com - and if you use the code 20VC you will get a whopping 20% discount! FullContact provides the ability to organize your contacts, gain rich insights into them and therefore build deep relationships. With features like automatically identifying and merging duplicate contacts to the ability to snap a photo of a business card and FullContact will transcribe them for you, so no more lost and loose business cards at events. It is with these features just being the tip of the iceberg, FullContact really is the best all in one solution for contact management and you can check them out on fullcontact.com.

Laela Sturdy

Managing Partner

CapitalG