ACQ2 by Acquired

We sit down with Brian O’Malley of Forerunner Ventures to talk about where in the cycle we are right now for consumer investing. We touch on the macro environment (obviously!), but also how to navigate between and around the current generation of platform incumbents, and where the next breakthrough consumer technology companies might come from. And in true Acquired Playbook fashion we talk about the benefits of focusing on niches — and how on the internet they can expand ever bigger than you might initially imagine!

Links:

• Acquired Qualcomm Live Show at Breakpoint 2022!
• The 2022 Acquired Survey!
• The Acquired Merch Store
• The Acquired Slack

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

The CEO of Mutiny, Jaleh Rezaei, joins us to talk about the playbook to profitably grow a B2B company — something particularly useful for founders in 2022! Jaleh was Gusto’s first head of marketing (and before that worked at VMware and Sequoia), and has since gone on to build Mutiny, which helps B2B companies dynamically optimize their websites for conversion and has raised over $70m from Sequoia, Insight, Tiger and other great investors.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• Acquired Qualcomm Live Show at Breakpoint 2022!
• Follow Jaleh on Twitter
• The 2022 Acquired Survey!
• The Acquired Merch Store
• The Acquired Slack

Kindergarten Ventures LP (and fellow podcast host over at Unlimited Partners) Thomas McGannon interviews David about Kindergarten’s investment thesis for their recent large investment in Vanta. Along the way they discuss KV’s overall strategy, how it fits into Acquired, and why it’s “accidentally” become the best answer David has ever had to “why should a great founder take my capital?”

Links:

• The 2022 Acquired Survey
• Vanta!
• Kindergarten Ventures on AngelList

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with Kettle cofounder — and David’s Kindergarten Ventures partner — Nat Manning to discuss the fascinating world of reinsurance, risk and climate. We couldn’t think of a better and more appropriate conversation to have on the LP Show, and this was an absolute blast. Tune in and enjoy!

Links:

• Kettle
• Kindergarten Ventures on AngelList

Sponsors:

• Vanta

 Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

 We sit down with long (long!) time-acquired community member Austin Federa to discuss the current state of crypto and Web3. By day Austin is the head of marketing & communications at the Solana Foundation, where he was one of the earliest employees. But many of you also know Austin from his "night job" as the founder and lead of the #digital-assets channel in the Acquired Slack, where he does an incredible job curating some of the best and most accessible digital asset discussion on the internet. No matter whether you're already deep in Web3, curious but sitting on the sidelines, or a diehard crypto skeptic, this episode is well worth listening to and learning from.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

What does a $200 million+ acquisition look like up close? How much time, focus, and communication happens between the first conversation and closing the deal? And when do the CEOs of each company just need to use the "red phone" and have a direct conversation without the 86(!) lawyers in the room? 

We sit down with ProfitWell founder and CEO Patrick Campbell to answer it all, centering on ProfitWell's recent acquisition by Paddle. And incredibly, Patrick built and scaled the SaaS company without taking a single dollar of investment! If you're running a company that may one day need to navigate an acquisition (or just curious), tune in! 

Links: 

-  Our Previous Episode with Patrick, a Masterclass on Pricing - The Documentary: "We Sign Tomorrow?"

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

David is the first guest on a new podcast, Unlimited Partners! This is a wide-ranging interview where upon listening, even Ben learned some new things about David :)

Unlimited Partners is hosted by long-time friend of the Acquired community, Thomas McGannon. UP is his journey to learn - what makes great partnerships? They explore stories of people working together throughout business building, investing, community and family.

While much of this is brought to you through Thomas’ work as a limited partner investor, their hope is that this podcast project finds a way to share themes and lessons for anyone looking to learn from the best partnership has to offer.

Follow the Unlimited Partners Podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/unlimited-partners/id1625166477 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with TrovaTrip co-founders Nick Poggi and Lauren Schneider to talk about travel for the creator economy. This one is very close to home since Ben is on their board!

TrovaTrip is a marketplace that enables creators to easily plan trips to places around the world with their audiences. It's a whole new way for people to travel, with other like-minded people who share the same passions and communities. We talk with them about growing from a bootstrapped business to over 10,000 travelers booked, growing a travel business during the pandemic, and dive deep on the power of choosing a business model with favorable cashflow dynamics. Tune in!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We dropped by Vanta's all-hands in SF a few weeks ago for Christina to interview us for a change! We decided to turn the mics on and record it as an ACQ2 episode.

We discussed lessons learned from building Acquired, the shape of the show's growth trajectory, how we think about the business, and dive into our own origin story.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We sit down with Composer CEO Benjamin Rollert to talk about bringing serious financial firepower to the people, wallstreetbets-style. Composer opens up to anyone the same level (or better) of tools that top quantitative hedge funds hire armies of PhDs and computer scientists to build internally. We have a blast discussing how he came at this space as a total outsider, and why Gamestop may prove to be the "iPhone moment" for Composer and all high-powered consumer financial tools. And oh yeah, he also worked with Packy and Composer was the first Not Boring portfolio company. :) Tune in! 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

We sit down with Bain Capital Ventures' newest fintech Partner Christina Melas-Kyriazi to talk about everything happening right now in fintech, and the experience of helping build Affirm and the BNPL space from crazy idea to massive consumer finance category. Anyone interested in the history and future of fintech will love this one. Tune in! 

 ‍

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

In late 2021, Ben and David were guests on Ted Seides' podcast, "Capital Allocators". The episode kicked off Ted's "Venture is Eating the Investment World" mini-series. From Ted:

David Rosenthal and Ben Gilbert are venture capitalists and hosts of the Acquired podcast. Acquired is one of my favorite shows. In it, David and Ben tell stories of great companies in technology with thorough research and a fun, engaging style.

Our conversation kicks off the mini-series with their respective backgrounds in venture, the creation of Acquired, and their research process for show. We then dive into the origins of the cottage venture capital industry, inflection point after the tech bubble, rise of an abundance of capital, firms investing across stages, the competitive response of others, the mass introduction of angel investors, businesses staying private for longer, and the potential for crypto to change the game once more.

You can see more about the show here: https://capitalallocators.com/podcast/acquiring-an-industry/

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: Acquired hosts and guests may hold assets discussed in this episode. This podcast is not investment advice, and is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. You should do your own research and make your own independent decisions when considering any financial transactions.

Get a cup of coffee. We sit down with the voice of one of our favorite Twitter accounts, 10-K Diver, to talk about his journey building one of the most widely followed (and respected!) fintwit accounts out there. We had a blast and — of course — learned a ton from one of the greats!!

You can get this episode in your favorite podcast player here!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Back by popular “Acquired demand” (plus we really wanted to have this conversation for our own edification!!), friends of the pod NZS Capital return to talk about what’s going with the current market gyrations, and for a much-needed refresher on how to invest when — surprise — knowing the future is still an impossible task. As always we left this conversation with renewed appreciation for the NZS approach and the utility of their resiliency + optionality mental model. This is not one to miss! 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

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It has been dubbed "one of the best venture investments of all time" by Packy McCormick, generating over a 4000X return in 3-and-a-half years. Today, we are talking with Chris McCann and Edith Yeung, the earliest investors in Solana, and partners at Race Capital. They also unbelievably were the earliest investors in FTX and started Race Capital in the midst of crypto winter!

On this episode, we talk with Edith and Chris about the stories behind both of those investments and their views on what's next in crypto from their vantage point in the center of the ecosystem.

Links:

- The Generalist's FTX piece with Race Capital's Public Investment Memo

-  Picture: Chris and Edith with Jihan Wu, Founder of Bitmain

-  Picture: Edith with Anatoly (Solana founder) and Min Kim (ICON co-founder)

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We sit down with Jeremy Cai, the CEO of new retail pioneer Italic, for a fascinating discussion of how they're upending the traditional manufacturer-brand-retailer model by taking the opposite approach of earlier DTC startups. Rather than elevating brand and cutting out retail, Italic cuts out the brand and lets the actual manufacturers (who you've never heard of but who make most of the actual products that J. Crew, Everlane, etc sell) market and sell direct to customers. 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Originally broadcast live on New Years Eve: we raise a glass (of coffee haha) and recap 2021 with our besties Mario Gabriele from the Generalist and Packy McCormick from Not Boring. Thank you for making 2021 an incredible year for all of us at ACQ, NB + TG, and may 2022 be filled with great things and grand adventures for us all!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Last month, Ben sat down with Wesley Chan at Web Summit for a quick, 18-minute interview. The conversation was supposed to be about global investing in 2021 as an early-stage VC, but the conversation turned mostly into the origin story of Wesley's (unbelievably good) seed investment in Canva.

Wesley's firm Felicis Ventures invested pre-revenue, leading the seed round, and Canva is valued at $40 billion today. Wesley dives into the details (and why he invested in the first place!) in this interview.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Today we're excited to have a longtime friend of the Acquired family on ACQ2, Rob Meyerson. Rob was the President of Blue Origin for 15 years, and today is an investor and advisor to space industry startups. Ben recorded this interview live at the fantastic aerospace industry conference, ASCEND, where Rob is the Executive Producer. In this interview, we cover:

• How Blue Origin started, and what it was like in the early days (spoiler: they weren't yet building rockets!)
• Rob’s experience working directly for Jeff Bezos
• What’s changed about SpaceX since May of 2020, when we did our Acquired episode on the company
• Rob’s theses about what sectors of commercial space are poised for growth in the next few years

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Ben and David go on "This Week in Startups" with Jason Calacanis for a holiday special! 

Discussion includes:

- Talking TWIST and All-In this year with everything from politics to weight loss to private jets

- Acquired's year and some of Ben and David's biggest insights from episodes

- VC, valuations, and crypto investing mechanics

- Use cases for crypto, and trying to get Jason (a skeptic) excited

- Carveouts: our favorite books, podcasts, and TV shows from this year

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We are very excited to bring you a special ACQ2 interview with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. Aside from Joe's well-known work as a Golden Globe-nominated, Emmy-award-winning actor in films like 500 Days of Summer, Inception, and Looper, Joe is also the founder of  HITRECORD, a startup which brings creative collaborators together across film, music, books, and more.

Ben sat down with Joe to discuss:

• The creator economy’s focus on the finished product vs. the creative process, and how he thinks about this at HITRECORD
• The state of the film and TV industry today, amidst the shift to streaming platforms and tech companies as primary distribution channels
• What it has been like on set playing Travis Kalanick in Showtime’s upcoming “Super Pumped”

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Thanks to our good friends at Fika Ventures for setting this conversation up!

The title says it all. This feels weird to release by Acquired standards -- an hour of audio with zero research! -- but we wanted to check in with y'all and say hi from parental leave.

Topics covered:

- Update on Dad Life

- Ben's new MacBook Pro

- Discussion of Acquired's approach to doing video / YouTube

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We sit down with Adam Jackson, the cofounder and CEO of Freelance Labs, which builds the incredible Web3 project Braintrust. (Disclosure David is an investor via Kindergarten Ventures.) We talk all about what a marketplace looks like in Web3, and why it's a completely different animal than traditional Web2 marketplaces like Uber, eBay, DoorDash, etc. Prior to starting Braintrust, Adam was the CEO of Doctor on Demand, so has literally lived both sides of the table. Tune in for a FASCINATING discussion of everything that crypto/tokenization enables, and why it's such an exciting shift that unlocks massive, $000B+ opportunities like Braintrust.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We sit down with Roneil Rumberg, the co-founder and CEO of Audius — the decentralized music platform which currently is likely the widest-adopted Web3 project in existence with over 6m active users. This conversation was AWESOME and covers everything from Silicon Valley history, to how the music industry works, to the technical aspects and challenges of building a Web3 project today. Huge thank you to Roneil for joining us, and we're looking forward to hearing more from Audius on Acquired in the years to come!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Earlier this week David went on Levels' podcast, A Whole New Level, hosted by Acquired "Super LP" and Levels' head of growth, Ben Grynol. We had such a blast that we wanted to share here with the community as well! Full show notes from Levels below:

When most companies start, they are single-threaded companies. More specifically, companies start with one product or revenue stream and evolve. Amazon is a great example of a company that has built an ecosystem. The company started as an e-commerce site for selling books, and now has a number of inter-related businesses that make up the entire Amazon ecosystem.

Netflix is an example of a company that started as a single-threaded company – (a platform for viewing video content) – and has, for the most part, remained that way since its inception.

As we build Levels, we often think about the way that our company will evolve – will it be an ecosystem for health, or will we remain focused on monitoring glucose? In this episode, David Rosenthal, (VC and Host of Acquired Podcast), dives deep into what it takes to build an ecosystem around a company.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Confused about everything going on with The Fed, inflation and how it affects tech and startup valuations? Or why it seems like every Jerome Powell comment brings out an army of finance's equivalent of fortune tellers and tarot card readers? So were we, so we called up the best person we know to explain everything -- Matt McBrady. Matt may be the only person who's been an academic economist, worked at the US Treasury, run a massive hedge fund AND helped start and sit on the board of two very successful startups, aQuantive and Axon/TASER. Tune in for a crash course in everything you need to know!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

‍

Links

• J.P.'s Never Gonna Give you Up
• Follow Matt on LinkedIn to see his posts or connect with him for consulting, board opportunities, etc
• For more on Matt’s academic work, check out his UVA faculty webpage

We sit down with Initialized Capital's Kim-Mai Cutler to talk about her opposite journey from us at Acquired, going from journalist to VC. We riff on how the landscape has evolved from Kim-Mai's parents' "Hewlett Packard generation" in the Valley through the TechCrunch era that se was a big part of, to today and how the nature of reporting, investing and influence -- the intersection of the two -- has changed.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

How on earth do you professionally manage a crypto investment firm? That was the question we wanted to find out, so we dialed up one of the best in the business: Multicoin Capital co-founder and managing partner Kyle Samani. Appropriately fresh on the heels of our Solana special episode (Multicoin was one of Solana's earliest investors), we dive into how in a few short years Kyle, Tushar and the team have built one of the largest and most well-known dedicated crypto funds on the market. We cover Multicoin's three crypto "mega-theses", how they've structured the firm across both a venture and hedge fund, and the dynamics of managing capital and running a firm in the new and fast-moving world of crypto investing.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• Multicoin's crypto mega-theses: https://multicoin.capital/thesis/
• The Block: https://www.theblockcrypto.com
• Kyle on Twitter: https://twitter.com/KyleSamani

Ben interviewed Initialized Capital founder and friend of the show, Garry Tan at Collision Conf last month. Garry is of course also a YouTuber, Clubhouse'r, and master of content creation. The good people at Collision Conf gave us the thumbs up to share this interview on the value of owning your own media stream with all of you.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We're joined by Oliver Sharp of Highspot, Seattle's most recent unicorn company (at least at the time of recording!), to talk about how and why to architect everything a software company does around its customers — what today is often called "customer-led growth" — but really represents a company building philosophy that runs much deeper. Oliver has serious software cred: he first joined Microsoft in 1984, and then later became part of Bill Gates' famous "TA" staff after Microsoft acquired his first startup. The conversation was *fantastic* and we owe a huge thank you to Oliver for sharing his decades of learning by doing with us. Make sure you don't miss this one!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We got *awesome* feedback on the recent special episode we did with Levels founder Josh Clemente -- so we asked Josh if he'd join for a follow-up Q+A session on our next LP Call, and he graciously agreed! 

The conversation was so good we decided to release the audio recording in the ACQ2 feed. 

Thanks again to Josh and the Levels crew, and we hope you enjoy the conversation as much as we did live!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

When the internet’s top China tech analyst Lillian Li posted a great Twitter take (linked below) on our Meituan episode, we knew we had to try to get her on ACQ2 to tell us all more. What’s really going on with these platforms on the ground in China, what is the government’s role in all this, and why is Meituan’s outlook “rosy, but maybe not quite as rosy as we painted on the episode”? Thanks to the magic of the internet, a few Twitter DMs later and voila — not only do we have this awesome episode with her, but a new friend and collaborator on hopefully much more Western-China tech crossover content to come!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• Lillian’s Chinese Characteristics substack: https://lillianli.substack.com
• Lillian’s original Twitter thread after the Meituan episode: https://twitter.com/lillianmli/status/1370327344704016384?s=21
• Our original Meituan episode: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/meituan

The very cool (and also very hot! You can read about their recent funding rounds from Benchmark and Altimeter) fintech startup Modern Treasury recently asked if they could interview us for their internal "Coffee Break" series of fireside chats. We agreed, on one condition... that we also get to interview them! The result was a match made in Acquired Interview Heaven.  

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• Modern Treasury: https://www.moderntreasury.com 
• MT's Journal: https://www.moderntreasury.com/journal 

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:

• Vanta

Peer group resources Jake recommends for entrepreneurs:

•  Enrich
•  Pace
•  10X CEO
•  Leaders in Tech

We team up with Mario from the Generalist and Packy from Not Boring for something new: The Idea Dinner!

We've been longtime fans of each others' work and, given all the buzz on Clubhouse and Twitter Spaces, decided to team up and run a little experiment: The Idea Dinner. Last night on Twitter Spaces we all got together and brought one beverage of choice, one public market investment idea, and one private market investment idea.

Despite some technical audio issues... it was a blast! We're super excited to share the recording here with everyone who couldn't make it. We hope you enjoy it as much as we did. Stay tuned for more to come!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

It's a kids game, it's a social network, it's... potentially the hottest IPO of 2021? We team up with Mario Gabriele from The Generalist + S-1 Club to break down Roblox's business and its prospects as a public company.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links

• Mario & friends' definitive S-1 Club analysis of Roblox's prospectus: https://www.readthegeneralist.com/briefing/roblox-ipo 
• Mario on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mariodgabriele
• Acquired: https://www.acquired.fm

With 2020 and (hopefully soon) the global pandemic coming to a close, both existing and new companies everywhere will soon face a choice of how to operate going forward. Embrace the "future" that was pulled forward by the pandemic and remain remote? Or return fully/partially to a physical office environment? For those who choose the future (and investors who are considering betting on them), Doist and its CEO Amir Salihefendić provide a 10-year case study of both the challenges that arise and the opportunities unlocked by embracing the internet to its fullest extent in growing and running an organization. And oh yeah — along the way they built a profitable, double-digit $m ARR business with 100 employees, that's been completely bootstrapped on $0 capital invested. We dive into it all!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Topics Covered:

• Amir and Doist's journey from side programming project to bootstrapped, double-digit million ARR global business
• How they've operated as remote-only company for the past 10+ years, with 100 people across 35 countries and 10+ time zones
• Why just going remote but keeping the same tools and culture as in-person doesn't solve any problems and just creates more
• Why the temporal nature of work is just as (if not more) important than its physical location, and how the new modality of "asynchronous" work takes advantage of that
• How remote + asynchronous unlocks massive opportunities both for new companies and the tools to serve them

Links:

• Doist: https://doist.com
• Doist's "remote setup guide": https://twist.com/remote-work-guides/remote-company-setup
• "The CEO with an Empty Calendar":  https://superorganizers.substack.com/p/the-ceo-with-an-empty-calendar
• Packy's "We're Never Going Back" post: https://notboring.substack.com/p/were-never-going-back
• Amir on Twitter: https://twitter.com/amix3k

We continue our VC Fundamentals series with Portfolio Construction & Management — how do you build and manage a fund's portfolio as a whole, beyond each individual portfolio company and investment decision? We brought in two of the very best people in the world to help us dissect this topic: Jaclyn Hester & Lindel Eakman of Foundry Group. Jaclyn and Lindel have been early and longtime LPs in some of the best venture funds in the world: USV, True, Spark — and of course Foundry — and now also sit on the GP side of the table at Foundry. Tune in for a master class on how the best VC managers think about generating and optimizing fund performance. 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Topics Covered:

1. The bar for what "good" venture fund performance looks like in terms of returns:

• Where venture sits on the spectrum of capital allocation options available to limited partners
• The difference between "gross" and "net" fund returns and why IRR is still important
• The distribution of returns across venture firms & funds — how many hit the performance bar — and the importance of diversification vintage years

2. Portfolio construction: how do you allocate the fund's capital across companies?

• Why have a "portfolio" at all vs. loading up on a few high conviction investments — and what an LP's incentives are for diversification vs. a GP's
• How to determine overall $ size you should target for a fund
• Concentration vs diversification and the concepts of "shots on goal" and "groups" of high-potential companies within a portfolio
• Fund reserves planning — are you "making your money at the buy", or able to buy up over time in your winners?

3. Balancing playing offense and defense:

• The upside potential of "interstitial rounds"
• Whether it's possible to save a company with more capital, and if pivots are a good idea

4. Time allocation vs capital allocation within a fund:

• Understanding and managing your own cognitive biases
• Why time & effort allocation across a portfolio rarely matches capital allocation (and shouldn't)
• Why a firm's partnership dynamics are typically the most important driver of funds' outcomes

 Links:

• Foundry Group: https://www.foundrygroup.com
• Seth Levine's post on skewed VC returns:  https://www.sethlevine.com/archives/2020/10/vc-fund-returns-are-more-skewed-than-you-think.html
• Fred Wilson's posts on losing money and portfolio outcome distributions: https://avc.com/2016/04/losing-money/and https://avc.com/2012/07/the-power-of-diversification/

Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra joins us for an absolute masterclass on startup fundraising that shatters much outdated traditional wisdom in the space. We cover why it's possible to build momentum and raise even as a solo founder, how you should think about syndicates vs. "brand name" VCs, and why you always want to be preempted and how to make that happen. This episode is a 100% must-listen for anyone raising money now, or planning to in the future. 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Topics Covered:

1. How to run a successful fundraising process 
   • Why founders should think about raising money as "creating a market" for their company's equity
   • How to build fundraising momentum, and why you shouldn't be afraid of using outsourced design and development agencies
   • Preempted fundraises vs marketed fundraises: why you always want to be preempted, and how to orchestrate that happening
   • Non-obvious ways that founders should think about runway, amount to raise and raise-timing in order to always have leverage in fundraising conversations
2. Round construction 
   • The value of "brand name" investors vs. non-traditional capital, and why you actually want both at different times
   • Why founders might want to raise their first capital from other founders and operators (versus from funds)
   • Why founders should put some of their own capital into early rounds
   • How to use high-resolution financings (SAFEs and convertible debt) efficiently
   • The concept of "interstitial financings", where you raise convertible debt in-between rounds, and when & how to use them
3. Investing while also being a founder/operator 
   • Time/attention allocation and why it's now possible to do both effectively
   • Flexibility to build positions over time vs. traditional fund structures
   • Rahul's own angel fund with Todd Goldberg
4. Bonus! The origin story behind the Superhuman name 

Links:

• Todd & Rahul's Angel Fund: http://toddandrahulangelfund.com/

Hello ACQ2! Posting the audio recording of our Book Club Zoom session with Emily Chang in digestible podcast form. For those who weren't able to attend, we hope you get as much out of the recording as we did being there live!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Book notes public post: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/book-club-discussion-brotopia-with-emily-chang

GDoc version of book notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1939VQja1rIK9yP1Ahe4w2frPy4-nUYEH7pxwRk-WjBk/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=110434699798216361855

Thanks as always,

Ben & David

We're joined by Posterous co-founder, former YC partner and current Managing Partner of Initialized Capital Garry Tan to go deep on how YC changed the game for company creation and seed investing, how they thought about building the "cult" of startups, and what lies ahead as the early-stage world continues to globalize and evolve more quickly than ever.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Topics Covered (among others):

1. How the recruiting challenge for early-stage startups led to outside-the-box thinking 
   • Peter Thiel’s “crazy” (but not actually crazy) offer to Garry to join Palantir
   • Leveraging “cult” startup culture into a magnet for specific types of people
2. Y Combinator’s path from fringe to mainstream 
   • Insight that those same cult recruiting techniques could be applied at a meta-level to recruiting company founders themselves
   • Initial strong reactions to YC, and knowing they were on to something
   • The beginning of “influencer investing” with Paul Graham’s essays + Hacker News
3. The blooming of Seed as an asset class alongside and around YC 
   • The landmark deal with SV Angel and DST / Yuri Milner to “auto-fund” every YC company starting in 2011
   • YC scaling from ~10-12 companies per batch to 70-80 and now 200+ per batch
   • Starting Initialized Capital within YC, and then spinning it out into one of the largest independent seed funds
4. Influencer investing and startup evangelism going mainstream 
   • The impact of The Social Network movie
   • Exporting the ~”YC message” to the entire world: you can start a startup
   • The power of direct, bi-directional access to people via the internet

Links:

• Paul Graham’s Essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
• Hackers and Painters:  https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp/1449389554/
• Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com
• Garry's (great) YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIBgYfDjtWlbJhg--Z4sOgQ

We continue our VC Fundamentals series with Company Building — everything that happens after you write the check. We catalog the different categories, strategies and tactics for VCs to "add value" to their portfolio companies, from direct involvement to portfolio services to simply doing nothing (often better than many alternatives!). For both of us, this is the best and most fun part of being an investor, and we hope that shines through in this episode. Here's to building great companies!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Topics Covered:

• The goals of Company Building: 
  1. (Obviously) add value to your investments
  2. (Less obviously) increase your odds of finding/winning your next investments
• The four categories of company building: 
  1. "Direct" work by the GPs
  2. "Active" platform and portfolio services teams
  3. "Passive" brand halo effect
  4. Simply "doing nothing"
• Activities you actually do: 
  • Board work (both governance and strategic/operational planning)
  • Planning and orchestrating future financings and exits
  • Recruiting, closing deals and "selling"
  • Cofounder/executive disputes and departures
  • Pivots and company shutdowns
• And perhaps the most important company-building advice of all: Don't Freak Out.

Links:

• Our interview on the main show with Doug Leone:  https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/sequoia-capital-part-ii-with-doug-leone
• Fred Wilson's great post on pivots vs. shutdowns: https://avc.com/2018/11/pivot-or-fail/

Hello ACQ2! Posting the audio recording of our Book Club Zoom session with Will Thorndike from The Outsiders in digestible podcast form. Big thank you to Will and to all of you who made this a really special experience. For those of you who weren't able to attend, we hope you get as much out of the recording as we did live!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Book notes public post:  https://medium.com/@AcquiredFM/book-club-notes-the-outsiders-569175957ab4

GDoc version of book notes:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gipiBGB_xnuQkPFVJVZ-XxSVjy6DSxwEloEN3qnloyA/edit

Outsiders Book Notes

• This fantastic book consists of eight case studies of “Outsider” CEOs who, borrowing the words of Warren Buffett’s quote on the cover, “excelled at capital allocation” and created enormous shareholder returns during their tenures.
• Btw, how crazy is it that Warren Buffett gave the cover quote? That rivals Reed Hastings writing the forward for 7 Powers. 😀
• All of the CEOs profiled (with the exception of Buffett himself) operated in the pre-internet and, in most cases, pre-private equity eras. 

Thanks as always for being on this journey with us,

- Ben & David

We dive into everything you need to know about SPACs — what they are, why they're a compelling alternative to IPO/DPOs, and how they might play an even more important role in startup financing going forward — with two of the very best people to teach us: Kevin Hartz and Troy "SPAC Professor" Steckenrider of the newly-minted $200m SPAC, AONE.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

TLDR:

• SPACs are an alternative path for companies to go public, however until recently they were mostly obscure and little-known/used.
• Meanwhile, the traditional IPO process has become onerous and broken: it takes 9+ months of company time, yet investors get only 15 minutes of management access and must make a decision in

Links:

• A* and ONE: https://www.a-star.co
• John Luttig's great Medium piece on SPACs: https://luttig.substack.com/p/spac-attack-everything-a-founder
• Bill Gurley on SPACs as an attractive alternative to IPOs/DPOs (posted after recording):  https://abovethecrowd.com/2020/08/23/going-public-circa-2020-door-3-the-spac/

Hello ACQ2! We heard from several of you that Book Club recordings were hard to digest as Zoom recordings. So we stripped out the audio and are posting it here in podcast form.
 

Thanks to all of you who made this a really special experience with Hamilton, and for those of you who weren't able to attend we hope you're able to get as much out of the recording as we did live!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

-Ben & David

Despite many advances in industry transparency over the past ~10 years, much about the actual "jobs of a VC" remains locked inside firm/institutional knowledge and venture's apprenticeship model. With this series, we aim to change that. Our goal is to draw back the curtain on what the actual tasks are that VCs do day-to-day, how you can learn them, and ultimately what's required to succeed. We hope this series will be helpful both to anyone looking to break into the industry and to those who are already practicing and also for entrepreneurs and consumers of venture capital to understand more about the motivations and activities of those across the table!

We continue in this episode with (initial) investment decision-making: how it's done in practice across the industry, who within firms makes the decisions, and -- most importantly -- the incentives and behavioral finance elements that shape people's actions. Our goal on this one was to explain and hopefully bring to light a process that impacts nearly everyone in our industry, but few people are ever exposed to (and even then only rarely).

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We’re joined by Tock CEO Nick Kokonas to discuss how they’re “arming the restaurateur rebels” versus DoorDash / Uber Eats, in much the same way Shopify has done so for e-commerce merchants versus Amazon. This episode is full of lessons on how to execute a counter-positioning playbook to disrupt entrenched incumbents, including the influence of Nick’s friend / Tock investor and Nobel prize-winning economist Richard Thaler. Whether you’re an entrepreneur who’s also building a “picks & shovels” type business or an investor interested in the future of the food industry or disruption in general, this is not one to miss.

See Ben's original Tweet that spurred the episode here: https://twitter.com/gilbert/status/1277740701246083072

There are lots of great replies to help understand the restaurant tech ecosystem, and of course, Nick chimed in with a tweet that led to him coming on the show. (Thanks to Matt Shobe for connecting us!) You can read distilled observations from all the replies here.

“Even if you’re long on Tesla, don’t buy Tesla Options.” – Nick Kokonas (Instagram: @nkokonas, Twitter: @NickKokonas)

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Show Links:

Tuesday is Not Saturday

Tim Ferriss Interview w/ Nick: 

VCs Congratulating Themselves

Benchmark General Partner Sarah Tavel joins us for a master class on consumer investing. We start with why invest in consumer at all (given the inherent risks of its "hit-driven nature"), then deep dive on marketplace investing and wrap up with social, gaming and consumer transactional businesses. Big thank you to Sarah for sharing her immense knowledge on this topic, and to her partner (and fellow Acquired "master class lecturer" on enterprise investing) Chetan Puttagunta for introducing us and for making it happen!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links to Sarah's consumer investing blog posts:

• "Hierarchy of Marketplaces" posts:  https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-hierarchy-of-marketplaces-introduction-and-level-1-983995aa218e
• "Hierarchy of Engagement" post:  https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-hierarchy-of-engagement-expanded-648329d60804
• Rocks, Sand, and Water Framework for Consumer Attention:  https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-opportunity-and-risks-for-consumer-startups-in-a-social-distancing-world-a-framework-for-15f65e2fbdff

Despite many advances in industry transparency over the past ~10 years, much about the actual "jobs of a VC" remains locked inside firm/institutional knowledge and venture's apprenticeship model. With this new series, we aim to change that. Our goal is to draw back the curtain on what the actual tasks are that VCs do day-to-day, how you can learn them, and ultimately what's required to succeed. We hope this series will be helpful both to anyone looking to break into the industry and to those who are already practicing and also for entrepreneurs and consumers of venture capital to understand more about the motivations and activities of those across the table!

In this episode we start with sourcing: what it is, why it's important, who does it and when, and -- most importantly -- the brass tacks of where to look and how to do it.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Show Links:

SpaceX Launch

Emergence Capital Investment Themes

M-Hacks (Univ of Michigan Hackathon)

Startup Weekend

We're joined by Patrick Campbell, founder & CEO of the world's leading SaaS profit-optimization service ProfitWell, to dive deep on all things pricing and monetization. Patrick began bootstrapping ProfitWell 8 years ago, and has since grown the business into a massive success with customers like Notion, Lyft, Masterclass, Atlassian, Help Scout, HubSpot, Cisco, Autodesk and many more. Patrick gives us a masterclass in how to think with a profit-maximization lens about pricing, feature development, growth and retention. And, as a special bonus at the end of the episode, he talks about his own entrepreneurial journey, bootstrapping the company without any venture funding, along with challenges overcome along the way. This episode has something for everyone to learn about company building — and is not one to miss!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• Patrick's 2x2 matrix of product features: https://i.imgur.com/J3AAilr.png
• Max Diff analysis:  https://learn.profitwell.com/article/tFfVQbtRnT-quantified-buyer-personas
• Van Westendorp's Price Sensitivity Meter:  https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/bid/190607/unlock-price-sensitivity-s-profitable-surprise
• Transitioning Customers to your Current Pricing:  https://www.priceintelligently.com/blog/grandfathering-discounting-prices-terrible-subscription-business

We're joined by former Amazon, Microsoft and Bulletproof executive Anna Collins to discuss how high-performance organizations structure their hiring and interview processes. Whether you're a small startup or a big public company, as Anna puts it, there is no more important question than who you put "on your bus". Anna distills what she's learned across 20+ years and making thousands of hires into actionable, must-listen advice for anyone aiming to grow their organization in a high-performance manner (or on the other side, anyone looking to join a high-performance company!).

“I believe that structure is what is required for creativity and for humans to actually connect. If you have chaos, that is the opposite of having the ability to connect and having a good candidate experience. It’s all about being human and you need the structure to facilitate that and to be productive.” – Anna Collins

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Let People Know You’re An LP on Twitter!

Show Links:

14 Leadership Principles of Amazon

33 Competencies of MSFT
Anna's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-collins-5965/

Transcript link:  https://drive.google.com/open?id=1PX_6bUsHJRN3eZsCH5K8m-9OfHTOuFXH

In Part 2 of our conversation, Jason reveals his "secret master plan" behind the Calacanis empire, as well as how he and his team manage all their various activities and their own productivity. And of course, we couldn’t resist diving into some behind-the-scenes stories and hot takes, including a long bet on a future TWiSt - Acquired live show crossover collab. 

You can find Part 1 of our conversation in the main show feed at:  https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/acquired-special-episode-jason-calacanis

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We're joined for an Adapeting episode by the cofounders of Mystery, a Seattle seed-stage startup that we've mentioned before on Acquired and was started by early Convoy employees. In ordinary times, Mystery sends customers on magical date nights and group outings throughout the city with no planning or decision-making required -- an "easy button" for date night. Of course, we no longer live in ordinary times, and Mystery has undergone an incredible transformation. Within the span of a month, the company went from having "found" product market-fit and nearly completing a fundraise, to 100% of their business evaporating (and literally pitching Sequoia on the same day they released the Black Swan Memo), to then launching a completely new stay-at-home product and that not only recovered all of their revenue but meaningfully grew the business. We hope you all enjoy this conversation, and take some inspiration for navigating your own businesses through these stormy seas!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• https://www.trymystery.com
• https://sandwich.co 

ACQ2 announcement: We now have a Gdrive! You can find full transcripts of ACQ2 Episodes here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/1/folders/1PX_6bUsHJRN3eZsCH5K8m-9OfHTOuFXH

Charles Hudson of Precursor Ventures joins us to illuminate everything Pre-Seed -- not just what it is and how founders/companies should navigate it, but also and more deeply: 

• How he came into this corner of the venture world 
• How he started Precursor as a solo GP and raised his first/subsequent funds, and what that journey was like 
• How he manages the firm, its overall strategy, and especially portfolio construction within this relatively new asset class (spoiler: it's different!)

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Note: we recorded this episode in the days right before it became clear that the coronavirus was going to become a major global crisis. While the world has obviously changed since, nothing in this episode is fundamentally different and -- if anything -- Pre-Seed rounds are going to be more relevant for entrepreneurs and investors going forward as valuations and check-sizes contract. We hope you enjoy and find the discussion as useful and illuminating as we did!

We're joined by Wade Foster, co-founder & CEO of Zapier, a company that basically hasn’t raised capital, doesn’t have an office, doesn’t have salespeople, and whose product consists of connecting other people’s products. And yet today they are doing well over $50M in profitable ARR, have hundreds of employees and thousands of hyper-passionate customers, and are one of the most interesting private SaaS companies in the world. We’re super excited for Wade to join us and dive into the full story of how this came to be!

“We as founders have been prone to overthinking things. Just go for it, don’t be afraid of being a little weird about it. It’s hard to stand out. If your conviction is telling you to do something unconventional, unconventional stands out.” Wade, CEO of Zapier @wadefoster

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Show Links:

makerpad.co

Zapier Fibonacci Pricing

High Growth Handbook

Ford vs Ferarri

Poor Charlie’s Almanack

The Ultimate Guide To Remote Work

“There’s no real secret to making the stuff we make. It’s not something where you have to be crazy talented. The thing is, you just spend a little bit longer on it than is reasonable. Most people would give up, and then you just keep going on it for three more hours making it better, doing more research, whatever the thing is that makes it better. Wherever most people would say, yea, that’s good enough, you just keep going for a little while longer. Not an eternity longer, just a bit longer.” -Nathan, quoting Alex Blumberg, Gimlet Media

Ben and David agree to have the tables turned in a great interview by friend and longtime Acquired supporter Nathan Baschez, who was formerly the Head of Product at both Gimlet Media and Substack, and now writes the excellent Divinations newsletter on tech and business strategy. 

This episode originally came about because one of Nathan’s first articles at Divinations kindly focused on Ben and Acquired, which you can read in full here: https://divinations.substack.com/p/ben-gilbert-on-how-acquired-launched

The core Divinations newsletter is free for everyone, but if you’d like special access to any of their paywalled content, Nathan shared this discount link for all Acquired LPs: https://divinations.substack.com/acquired . Check it out! 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Show Links:

Nathan Baschez

The Morning Show (AppleTV)

Thinking Fast and Slow Summary

Willpower Summary

Marshmallow Experiment

How I Built This

Startup

Serial

Invest Like The Best

The No-Code Movement

Diggnation

Joe Rogan Show

Let's face it, Acquired borders on Star Wars fan podcast anyway. So we dipped our toe in the water of making it official, with our review of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

We are joined by fellow Star Wars nerd and repeat special guest, Chetan Puttagunta, General Partner at Benchmark. In this episode, we *nearly* avoid any business analysis or speculation on the technology, media, or enterprise ecosystems, with only a brief revisit to the question: "Was it worth it for Disney to buy Lucasfilm?"

Did we love it, hate it, or want to bury it like the prequels? Tune in! There are definitely spoilers, so be warned!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Steven Galanis, cofounder and CEO of the red-hot Chicago startup Cameo, joins us to discuss how they've turned selling personalized celebrity shoutouts online into both a massive business and the most interesting new social media phenomenon to hit the West since TikTok. We hope you have as much fun listening as we did recording this one!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Show Links:

Broke – ESPN Documentary

Mark McGrath’s Breakup Cameo

We're joined by Webflow's Co-Founder and CEO, Vlad Magdalin, talking about how he started the company (over a decade, trying three times), how to nail the timing of your startup, and the future of the "no-code movement."

Vlad took his company through YCombinator in 2013, and raised only $3m in the following six years, before closing a $72m Series A from Accel earlier this year. He gives his perspective on why now is the only time Webflow could have worked (not in 2009, the last time he tried to start it), what's changed in browser technology, and how he was inspired by one of the original designers of the iPhone software. Vlad also shares his wisdom for other founders and opportunities he thinks will be available for entrepreneurs in the next five years when robust "no-code" infrastructure is built out.

“The differentiator between No-Code and Low-Code is that Low-Code makes this implicit admission that in order to really finish a project, I’m going to need a developer. Or I am going to need to know how to take it across that last mile. In No-Code, the aspiration is that for the vast majority of cases, you will not that. Or, if you do, that one or a few developers that can create the No-Code version that abstracts away the Low-Code version and put it into the hands of millions.” -Vlad Magdalin, @callmevlad

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Show Links:

Bret Victor – The Future of Programming (YouTube)

Bret Victor – Inventing on Principle (vimeo)

Paul Graham – Default Alive or Default Dead Essay

We are joined by Chetan Puttagunta, General Partner on Benchmark, talking his investment philosophies, enterprise technology trends, and the uniqueness of Benchmark. How is this firm with only five partners and no associates so repeatably successful? Chetan shares the story of his very first investment, MongoDB, and lessons learned from his other investments and board positions in Elastic, Sketch, Duffel, Mulesoft, and many others.

Chetan also helps us understand how he balances staying open-minded enough to let founders shape his vision of the future (and not the other way around), while staying educated on areas where he thinks the future is bright.

“The product/market fit question, I don’t find to be a conclusive one…because one of the assumptions is that you’re assuming the market itself is constant, which we all know is not true. Today’s product/market fit might be tomorrow’s outdated solution.” – Chetan Puttagunta, @chetanp

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

"You can call it paranoia, or you can call it innovation. The language doesn’t matter if the feeling is the same. This is all an experiment I’m running eight years in: How do I update my mindset to want to approach things by activating the pleasure center more than the pain center?  I’m more likely to move away from pain and towards pleasure. So why don’t I make innovation a game and bring play to, literally playfulness, into it? I see too many founders burn out because they have lost playfulness in their culture." – Tracy Lawrence, @chewishgirl

Tracy Lawrence, founder and CEO of Chewse (@chewse) takes us on the journey of how and why she founded Chewse. Tracy, Ben, and David discuss most of the traditional topics (early days, product-market fit, mission alignment), but spend most of the time talking about non-traditional topics like mental health, vulnerability, and love for company and self. If you’re a founder, this episode will perk both your IQ and your EQ. For everyone else, your faith in the future of tech might get restored. Enjoy!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

We're joined by Stanford professor and senior advisor to Airbnb, Uber, Stitch Fix, and Wave Capital, Ramesh Johari, who is one of the world's leading experts in marketplaces. Ramesh has been advising David and his partners at Wave since day one, and we're super excited to bring his incredible experience and insights to all of our ACQ2 listeners. In this conversation we dive deep into nearly every aspect of starting, building and then operating a marketplace at scale. Whether you are a marketplace entrepreneur, employee, investor, or just curious about how some of the most powerful businesses of our time work, this is not one to miss!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Ben and David discuss the newest development in the venture ecosystem, startup studios, through the lens of Pioneer Square Labs (which Ben cofounded in 2015). David manages to trick Ben into sitting on the other side of the table and being interviewed about how PSL works, how he and his partners started it, and what lies ahead! For more information, check out http://psl.com.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Ben and David couldn’t agree on a topic for this LP episode with the clock winding down to our recording going live... so we decided to “do it live” and commentate on our Twitter feeds haha (and discuss your survey feedback). We hope you enjoy this fun slice of randomness, and we’ll be back with more actionable interviews and company-building topics very soon!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

We dive into one of the most critical components of company building, recruiting product leaders (and executives in general), with Andrew Abramson of Riviera Partners -- one of the most elite search firms in Silicon Valley. We cover first how companies and founders should think about recruiting senior leaders, from knowing when you're ready to work with search firms. Then we dive into the other side, how product managers should think about managing and progressing in their own careers toward senior leadership roles. Thanks to Andrew for joining us and we hope everyone can take away something applicable for their own companies and careers!

Great Founders think about the product; Exceptional Founders think about who should lead the company vs who should lead the product. They sound similar but they are very, very different.  – Andrew Abramson, @AndrewA91

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

“If you look at the firms that were traditionally the early-stage ventures firms, the Series-A firms, and you look at their fund sizes and their firm sizes and compositions, it’s changed significantly in the last ten years. Your typical early-stage venture fund was a $250M Series A fund. Now your typical early stage fund is anywhere from $500M to 1B.”

In this episode, Ben and David dive into the evolution of Seed Funds and how early-stage investing has changed in the last two decades both for investors and founders alike. Understanding the past changes in the ecosystem helps founders and investors establish themselves for the future. If you are an early-stage founder, this episode will contextualize the information you need to prepare your company for investment.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Links from the Show:

Wing’s analysis of the current state of the early-stage venture ecosystem: Seed is the new A, A is the new B

Secrets of Sand Hill Road

Gartner Hype Cycle

Value of VC Investment (1995-2018)

US VC Investment Surpasses Dot-Com Era

Could I see myself or my wife working for/with this CEO? Would I quit my job and go work for this person? That’s the crux of it. If you’re a CEO out raising money, that is the lens with which you should view every interaction with a VC. You should come across in such a personally compelling way that they’re drawn to you. That’s the bar they are holding you to.

The right amount of diligence is a great topic to think about, whether a company is ready for investment or not. This episode was made for founders getting ready for investment, or founders who want to start asking the right questions about their work. Ben and David discuss in depth what you can reasonably expect from VCs conducting diligence, and how to set yourself up for long-term value creation. Most importantly, Ben and David discuss the questions you should be prepared to answer and the questions you should be prepared to have asked about you.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

“There’s often a desire to keep adding features because ‘Oh wouldn’t it be cool if we could do this or that?’ The reality is if a customer is only spending five minutes with your product, they’re only going to interact with a very tiny subset of your feature set. And so, you’re better off usually improving something that 80% of [customers] interact with that is really core than things around the edges that are more functionality.” - Phil Kimmey

We are very excited to be joined by Phil Kimmey, one of the co-founders of Rover (and a frequent member of various 30 under 30 lists), who designed Rover in its infant stages at a Startup Weekend! In this episode, we dive into Rover’s initial design, how the business model was proved, and wrap up with a lengthy discussion on Value-Add Features vs Data-Driven Features. Phil also provides his opinion on what makes new tech and development teams successful and explains why PayPal still sends Rover’s monthly summary statements to his parent’s house.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Follow Acquired: @AcquiredFM, acquired.fm

Links from the Show:

Conjoined Triangles of Success

“Uber, pre-IPO, had raised more money than Lyft’s current market cap. And now, because they raised 9B in an IPO, they’re close to total money ever raised to being 2x of Lyft’s current market cap. It’s an outlier in every way.”

Ben & David reflect on what they’ve learned from the APLUSS IPOs so far, what’s ahead for Uber and Lyft, and tackle some longstanding listener questions.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Links from the Show:

Narrative Violations – Bedrock Capital

[on Uber’s Early Organizational Structure] “Uber always thought about it as a twin-turbine plane: maybe for a short period of time, you could operate on one engine. But if you want to operate at full efficiency, you need both engines working in tandem and working effectively together.” Brian Tolkin, (@briantolkin)

We’re super excited to be joined by Brian Tolkin, one of Uber’s first ~100 employees who built their “Product Ops” organization and then went on to lead Product Management for UberPOOL and all shared rides on the platform. We dive into the nitty gritty of how Uber built their “twin turbine” engine of decentralized real-world Ops and centralized Tech Product, and how the organization evolved as it scaled. We also cover Brian’s new role at OpenDoor and the tight ops + product coupling they’re building now in real estate.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Links from the Show:

Stanford Venture Capital Club

Ben Evans: The End of the Beginning (video)

Lyft IPO (Acquired)

Pre-Meeting Narrative Example

OpenDoor.com

Ben & David take their turn at the "power ballad" of VC blogging/podcasting, explaining how venture term sheets work. From valuation to pro rata rights to founder vesting, we leave no stone unturned in this episode. If you're a founder, work at a startup, or are considering doing one of those someday, this episode is for you!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Be sure to follow the Acquired Podcast:

Acquired.fm

@AcquiredFM

Links from the Show:

Acquired LP: Lyft Episode

Acquired LP: Demystifying Corp Dev (Sara Adler)

AR&D Letter of Intent to DEC         

Brad Feld: Venture Deals

CooleyGo.com
GAAP

Jeff Bezos, Vesting, and The Divorce                      

Perkins Coie Accelerator

SeriesSeed.com

Standard Series Seed Term Sheet [Link in Bio]

We’re joined by Upfront Ventures partner Kevin Zhang to discuss the evolution of both Upfront as a venture firm and the LA tech ecosystem more broadly. We cover the journey from Upfront’s founding as “Global Retail Partners” in 1996 to its place today as the premier and largest tech investor in Southern California. We talk about rebranding the firm and choosing Upfront as a name, launching the Upfront Summit, what LA is "good and not good at", and Kevin’s thesis around gaming as a great place for venture investing.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

“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:

• Vanta

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

We continue the conversation with Emily White, covering topics including her career path, what it was like working with Sheryl Sandberg for so many years, her time at Snap, her experience serving on public company boards, and how she operates as an investor now at Anthos Capital.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

As promised in our holiday special, we dive into the past, present and future of clean energy funding, with the absolutely perfect guest: the former Obama administration Assistant Director for Entrepreneurship at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Doug Rand. This episode was totally eye-opening for us, and we hope inspires many of you to think about energy and climate through an entrepreneurial lens. 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• ARPA-E: https://arpa-e.energy.gov
• Steve Blank’s Secret History of Silicon Valley: https://steveblank.com/secret-history/
• NSF Innovation Corps: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/i-corps/

Ben and David talk about some of their current investment theses at PSL and Wave, as well as how VCs think about themes and theses in general. 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• Greg McAdoo “Wave” talk at Startup School 2008 https://youtu.be/fZ5F2KhMLiE
• The Myth of the Job Hopping Millenial https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2018/7/11/17559484/gig-economy-jobs-rooted-rootless-moving-job-hopping-millennials

Ever wondered what's really going on during the Monday Meetings of your friendly neighborhood VC firm? Ben and David take you behind the scenes to discuss structure (especially how the management company works), staffing, LPs, and most importantly decision-making and motivations for VC firms and their partners. Whichever side of the table you're on, we hope you find this episode useful!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Ben and David continue the Acquired holiday tradition. Happy holidays to everyone!

Note: we apologize for David’s sound quality... we’re still working out the kinks on our mobile recording setup.

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Extended carve-out links:

• Books: 
  • David: Broken Earth trilogy https://www.amazon.com/gp/bookseries/B01947LZ8A
  • Ben: eBoys  https://www.amazon.com/dp/B000FC1HTG/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1
• Article: 
  • David: “My Dad's Friendship With Charles Barkley”  http://www.wbur.org/onlyagame/2018/12/14/lin-wang-charles-barkley
  • Ben: Birth of a New American Aristocracy  https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/06/the-birth-of-a-new-american-aristocracy/559130/
• Podcast: 
  • David: 996 Podcast https://996.ggvc.com/category/podcast/
  • Ben: Dissect Season 2 https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/dissect/id1143845868?mt=2
• Music: 
  • David: Tiny Desk concerts https://www.npr.org/series/tiny-desk-concerts/
  • Ben: Odesza’s A Moment Apart &  https://open.spotify.com/album/3VzsvmhnUb9OZ59bq2aoNZ?si=dHUDPR4tSW2u6yey0MWTFw
• TV / Movie: 
  • Both: Black Panther https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1825683/
• App: 
  • David: Steady Health https://steady.health
  • Ben:
    • Moment https://www.shopmoment.com
    • Weather Line: http://weatherlineapp.com
    • Auto Sleep http://autosleep.tantsissa.com

Ben and David discuss “the art of the pitch” through the lens of fundraising for seed-stage companies, but the takeaways are also (hopefully) applicable far beyond!

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Links:

• Sequoia pitch deck template:  https://www.sequoiacap.com/article/writing-a-business-plan/#
• Don Valentine talk at GSB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nKN-abRJMEw
• Jim Goetz talk at GSB: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnmYSze9M2g

Ben and David are back for episode #3, with special guest Dan Hill. Dan discusses:

- How his startup, Crashpadder, got acquired by Airbnb

- Why Airbnb succeeded, and why marketplace businesses in the US have an advantage in early growth

- How they decided on growth metrics at Airbnb

- How his new company, Alma, is making charitable giving simple

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Ben and David are back for episode #2, diving into the most elusive early-stage investing and company-building topics: product-market fit. 

Sponsors:

• Vanta

Kicking off ACQ2 (formerly known as the LP Show) and diving into some jargon-y VC vocab. 

Sponsors:

• Vanta