This Week in Startups - Audio: Recent Episodes
ThisWeekInStartups.com
Check out Roofstock: https://www.roofstock.com
Follow Gary: https://twitter.com/garybeas2013
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Thanks to our partners...
LinkedIn Jobs - Get $50 off your first job post at https://linkedin.com/unicorn
Zendesk - 6 months free at https://www.zendesk.com/twist
Check out Thrasio: https://www.thras.io
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Thanks to our partners...
Fiverr - use code TWiST for 10% off your first order at https://www.fiverr.com
Coors Light - get Coors Light delivered to your door at https://get.coorslight.com
Masterclass - 15% off an annual subscription at https://www.masterclass.com/startups
Follow Keith: https://twitter.com/rabois
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Thanks to our partners...
Gusto - 3 months free at https://gusto.com/twist
Dell for Entrepreneurs - Save up to 48% at https://dell.com/twist
LinkedIn Jobs - Get $50 off your first job post at https://www.linkedin.com/twist
Check out Homebound: https://www.homebound.com
Follow Nikki: https://twitter.com/NikkiPechet
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Thanks to our partners:
Zendesk - 6 months free at https://www.zendesk.com/twist
LinkedIn Jobs - Get $50 off your first job post at https://linkedIn.com/unicorn
Check out Nude Barre: https://nudebarre.com
Check out Techmate: https://www.techmate.com
Check out Solo: https://solotrucking.com
Thanks to our partners:
Squarespace - save 10% by using code TWIST at checkout https://www.squarespace.com
Trends, by The Hustle - start your two-week trial for $1 at https://trends.co/twist
Modloft - 15% off and free shipping at https://www.modloft.com/twist
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Follow the crew:
https://twitter.com/chamath
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
https://twitter.com/DavidSacks
https://twitter.com/friedberg
Follow the pod:
https://twitter.com/theallinpod
https://bio.fm/theallinpod
Check out Nikola: https://nikolamotor.com
Follow Trevor: https://twitter.com/nikolatrevor
Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/jason
Follow This Week in Startups: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Follow This Week in Startups: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups
Follow Daphne: https://twitter.com/DaphneKoller
Check out insitro: https://insitro.com/
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Follow Mike: https://twitter.com/mmaser
Get Zero Fasting: https://www.zerofasting.com/
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Signup for Masterworks: bit.ly/32T19Si
Disclaimer: bit.ly/3hCG2aD
Follow Scott: https://twitter.com/scottlynn
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Josh's Medium post on founder mental health: https://medium.com/@joshmedia/for-the-love-of-founders-d50b405f42a3
Hoffman Institute: https://www.hoffmaninstitute.org/
Meru Health: https://www.meruhealth.com/
Check out Freestyle Capital: https://freestyle.vc/
Check out Funnel Leasing: https://funnelleasing.com/
Check out Codify: https://codify.ai/
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
David Sacks’ recent Medium post: https://medium.com/craft-ventures/the-cadence-how-to-operate-a-saas-startup-436aa8099e8
Follow David: https://twitter.com/DavidSacks
Follow Jason: https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Follow the crew:
https://twitter.com/chamath
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
https://twitter.com/DavidSacks
https://twitter.com/friedberg
Follow the pod:
https://twitter.com/theallinpod
https://bio.fm/theallinpod
Submit your application at https://remotedemoday.com/
Jason Calacanis & TheSyndicate.com will select seven startups to pitch thousands of angel investors on July 28th.
We held our first Remote Demo Day in June, where 5 of the 7 companies that pitched received over $200K in commitments from Jason's Syndicate.
Follow Alex: https://twitter.com/alex
Follow Morgan: https://twitter.com/morgandebaun
Check out Blavity: https://blavity.com/
Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/Jason https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Follow Nick: https://twitter.com/nickhuzar
Check out OfferUp: https://twitter.com/offerup
https://offerup.com/
Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/Jason
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Check out SevenRooms: https://twitter.com/sevenrooms
https://sevenrooms.com/
Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/Jason
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Register: https://www.angel.university/online
In this workshop, I share my lessons from deploying over 70 million dollars of capital in over 200 startups, including Uber, Robinhood, Calm, Wealthfront, and others.
You'll learn how to source and negotiate deals, evaluate startups, and manage your portfolio.
If you're an accredited investor, visit https://www.angel.university/online to learn more and register today.
Follow Arlan: https://twitter.com/ArlanWasHere
Join Backstage Crowd: http://backstagecrowd.com
Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/Jason
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Follow Daniel: https://twitter.com/danielgross
Check out Pioneer: https://pioneer.app/
Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/Jason
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Pomp Podcast x TWiST crossover
Follow Pomp: https://twitter.com/APompliano
Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/Jason
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
Follow @chamath: https://twitter.com/chamath
Follow @jason: https://twitter.com/Jason
https://linktr.ee/calacanis
0:01 Jason checks in on Chamath, Sacks & Friedberg, opening up their social circles, outdoor activities & more
9:31 Issues with politicizing matters of public health, deaths decreasing while new cases spike, masks, lockdowns & more
20:56 Viral videos, doxxing bad behavior & cancel culture
25:39 Reforming law enforcement, separating police from the military, changing police incentives
36:42 Are public unions too powerful? How a lack of leadership has led us here
41:49 Facebook vs. Twitter on free speech, Zuckerberg’s relationship with Peter Thiel, valuing comfort over freedom of expression
1:00 Jason intros "Alchemy" author Rory Sutherland
3:45 Architecture is the cheapest way to buy art
6:01 How Rory is dealing with quarantine, why he prefers working from home, and will businesses be more efficient post-COVID?
14:12 What is Rory's job, why you should strive to create your own job title, treating the free market as Galapagos Island, using the Darwinian approach to business & analyzing outliers
19:47 Why some business successes are due to psychological discoveries: Red Bull, Dyson & Nespresso
27:25 Jason's theory on why Dyson succeeded, Kano theory on product development, why eccentric CEOs have a psychological advantage with customers, how Uber's arrival map was the key feature of the product
33:48 Why the actual value of products are typically not the proposed value of products
39:40 How new products hold value as a conversation starter, how context, setting & framing is essential to innovation
43:21 Two ways to create economic value: find something people want and figure out how to make it OR figure out what you can make and make people want it & examples: Lionfish, Fish That Ate The Whale, Royal Potatoes
50:13 Why are Americans resistant to behavioral economics? Is there still a hangover from McCarthyism? How this relates to COVID and wearing masks
1:02:08 Daily news is 95% noise, why political news coverage doesn't reflect political reality
1:11:40 Why modern politics is dumb since far left and far right are much closer than they've ever been, issues with referrals & nepotism
1:21:06 How Rory got his first job in advertising "as a weirdo" and the wildcard since he was hired as part of a group, individual hiring vs. group hiring
1:23:20 TWiST Book Club Questions - Casey: Favorite behavioral study experiment or one that he found the results to be surprising? (ie. Milgram experiment or Stanford Prison Study)
1:32:12 Catherine: What’s Rory’s favorite alchemist moment of his own from work? Has he had to advocate for an illogical idea, and how did he persuade others?
1:41:01 What will we lose by being remote?
1:51:19 Reading their own audiobooks, how cheaper and easier consumption does NOT cannibalize original mediums
2:01:26 How Rory would reinvent the theatre experience, why modern corporations are slow to innovate & experiment
2:11:18 Greatness of re-readable books and rewatchable movies/television
0:52 Jason intros Ford X's Sunny Madra
4:39 How Sunny got his start in Accelerators working on Tinder with Hatch Labs at IAC
11:47 What is Ford X's thesis on mobility and how do they decide whether to buy or build a company?
16:18 How does Ford X evaluate new ideas & how do they source talent? Sunny speaks about his personal investment in Cabana
22:56 Going from idea to product at a large corporation like Ford
29:29 Assessing risk-taking in early-stage ventures at a major company
35:02 How COVID has impacted Ford's stance on mobility & micro-mobility
42:10 Thoughts on bikes, car subscriptions, Ford's resilient commercial business
50:36 Ford's movement in the EV & autonomous vehicle space
0:38 Jason talks about the now fully-virtual LAUNCH Accelerator and intros Cendana Capital's Michael Kim
2:47 What is a fund of funds & why do they exist? History of raising Cendana's first fund
6:06 Portfolio construction of fund of funds
10:19 Why ownership percentage is paramount, ideal ownership % for Seed funds, what makes a great Seed fund manager
17:04 How do fund of funds make money?
18:51 Hedging bets by selling secondary shares to generate liquid cash for LPs
24:33 Michael on Call of Duty, using secondary shares to win a deal
30:46 What was the greatest Seed fund ever raised?
32:42 What is the ideal number of managers in a Seed fund?
36:38 What has the last 90 days been like for Cendana? Influx of new fund managers into the market
41:50 How fast is Cendana in making decisions compared to institutional LPs?
44:47 Will there be a wave of white-collar layoffs, and how will COVID change large tech companies?
52:29 Writing small "pilot" checks over Zoom, venture/growth fund deployment, which companies in non-obvious markets will come out of COVID in great shape?
1:03:37 Robinhood as an acquisition target (Should Facebook buy it?), Dropbox/Slack merger
1:06:17 Why right now is the best time to invest in the early-stage
0:01 Jason intros Tom Uebel & Lolita Taub
5:17 George Floyd/Black Lives Matter protests impacting Venture Capital, Angela Benton's tweets about her bad experience with Cowboy Ventures, how can VC move forward and be better towards underestimated founders?
17:37 Lolita & Jason reflect on some imperfect investor moments towards founders
23:55 How investor bias towards underrepresented founders manifests itself
28:23 Tom on focusing on diversity in hiring at the earliest stage of a companies life, how people with raw talent miss out on opportunities due to pattern-matching
39:23 Zoom's shuts down a Chinese pro-democracy account, importance of Data privacy at Command E, Jason's thoughts on Zoom only giving end-to-end encryption to paid accounts
52:36 Wall Street Bets, Meme stocks and a new generation of Robinhood traders
56:59 Reddit appoints YC CEO Michael Seibel to its board after Alexis Ohanian steps down, former interim CEO Ellen Pao has words for current CEO Steve Huffman
1:03:07 Issues of free speech & why relying solely on government organizations may be the wrong decision
1:05:45 Juneteenth observation, potential reparation ideas
1:10:27 Assessing COVID-19 recent death numbers & risk of getting back to work
1:23:03 Lolita shares her founder-investor matching tool
1:25:30 Tom demos Command E
0:32 Jason speaks on current events and intros Science CEO Mike Jones, how they met after selling their companies to AOL
6:02 What is Science and how has it evolved since being started in 2011? Why did they pivot away from the startup studio model?
12:43 What are the economics of a venture-studio?
15:25 Defining the 3 scenarios of a "lifestyle-business"
18:41 Founders sharpening their skills through hardship, how Mike experienced that at MySpace
25:48 Investing in Dollar Shave Club, insights on what makes a great DTC founder
38:25 Short-term/Mid-term/Long-term impact of COVID
48:37 What is gained and lost in fully-remote work?
57:28 Thoughts on eventually going back to work?
0:01 Jason teases today's questions
2:09 Luai: Is Uber still a hyper-growth company?
5:25 Weston: Advice on getting in front of/selling to startups/enterprises outside of our immediate VC network?
8:13 Martin: Do you have any resources, insights, or methods about how to get to the right price for a consumer subscription service?
12:58 Topher: What is a good shipping cadence for new code? How often should I be pushing code to production and releasing new updated versions of my app?
15:42 Delane: When you started your first business, what were your strengths/weaknesses as a manager/leader? What was young Jason like as a CEO, and how has he evolved into your current self?
19:28 Mary: In your early days, what was your leadership style towards people who were older/more experienced than you? What advice would you give a young founder for hiring older/experienced people?
20:57 Emily: If the worst of COVID has passed, what markets are you most bullish on Post-COVID? Where do you think we will see the most innovation going forward?
26:43 Danielle: What are some insights gained since taking your team fully remote?
35:15 Matt: Could you ever see an Uber/Lyft merger? What would need to take place for that to happen?
36:29 Chris: Would you rather invest in a high-growth, high-burn startup OR a moderate-growth, minimal-burn startup?
38:57 James: What software stack does LAUNCH use? Which apps are integral to your team's success and why?
Angel.University Online is a 3-hour course for individuals interested in becoming professional angel investors. Hosted by Jason Calacanis & Mike Savino, the course focuses on five key topics: sourcing deals, evaluating startups, negotiating deals, portfolio and bankroll management, and post-deal efforts.
Register: https://www.angel.university/events
Jason on CNBC: https://youtu.be/V6oqvDnuAgI
0:01 Jason intros today's questions
1:51 Aaron: Thoughts on Black Lives Matter?
9:06 Joe: How can startups play a role in bringing manufacturing back to the US?
14:46 Alex: Any tips on pre-selling a SaaS product?
17:38 Arthur: How should I prepare to be a great Syndicate member in the future? In a perfect world, what does the Syndicate become?
21:13 Matthew: You often talk about founders needing to be in SV in order to be close to the action. Post-COVID, how does this change? Do places like Sydney, Vancouver, or Beijing become "big-game" cities?
28:37 Charlie: Love when you mention on your blog post a pressing need with “Someone should build this!” What’s your latest “someone should build this?” right now?
30:04 Sergey: In "Angel", you suggest to invest about $5000 per deal to minimize the risk in the beginning. Will founders care to spend an hour to pitch such a small investor?
31:26 Ruud: How common are founder/VC disputes? Is there a ranking of VCs by how founder-friendly they are? Curious if this has gotten better or worse over time?
34:48 Alex: Is it advisable to look up competitors' investors and avoid them to prevent someone at the firm from sharing critical info with your competitor? Has that happened before, or is that too paranoid?
36:35 Kirk: What is your succession plan with Launch/TWiST and why? Also, what other syndicates do you admire and why?
0:20 Jason intros Alchemist's Ravi Belani
3:41 Why is Alchemist named after Paulo Coelho book? What is the biggest benefit of Accelerators?
5:47 Ravi's background at DFJ, sourcing the Justin.tv investment
15:02 Why Ravi left DFJ to start Alchemist
21:52 How many companies have gone through Alchemist and what is their standard deal?
28:21 Why accelerators take more risk than VC firms
35:07 The best entrepreneurs love the process
38:35 How are Alchemist's programs structured? Did they have trouble transitioning to remote?
44:38 Have virtual meetings been resulting in checks from investors? Dealing with investing in competitive companies
49:59 What is Alchemist's diligence process like?
55:01 What does venture capital funding look like in the medium-term
1:02 Jason welcomes Alexis Ohanian to the show and asks about the Reddit sale & re-joining for the turnaround
3:39 Why was Reddit "the last website standing" from all of the Web 2.0 sales in the early 2000s?
6:05 History of Reddit Gold, future of micropayments & what will Reddit's Blockchain venture entail?
14:59 Future of creators being able to monetize using micropayments, policing speech on Reddit
19:45 Fatherhood, being a Girl Dad, balancing personal life & work life
29:12 What is Alexis' role at Initialized? How Initialized is turning Venture Capital into a team sport
36:10 Dealing with celebrity as a partner at a VC firm, building talent when starting Initialized
42:44 Why Initialized's small ownership percentage was an issue early on, and how they think about it now
47:59 Jason calls Reddit's crypto project: "The most credible thing I've ever seen in crypto.", parsing through legitimate and non-legitimate crypto businesses
54:33 What investor skills has Alexis improved and what still needs work?
1:00:52 Dealing with icon-level celebrity in his personal life
1:04:30 Jason reveals the winner from their 2013 bet during Alexis' last appearance on This Week in Startups
NEA's Ben Narasin takes questions from founders: most important content in a pitch deck, COVID's impact on dealmaking, traits he looks for in founders & more!
Join the TWiST Slack: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/kLq5Bi
Follow Ben: https://twitter.com/bnarasin
1:13 Paul: Has the current crisis changed your investment thesis? If so, how?
2:40 Ash/Christopher: How to overcome the money raised vs revenue generated in enterprise SaaS that requires heavy product work to reach product-market fit?
4:13 Emberlynn/Srinivas: What is the most important content in a pitch deck?
7:26 Guilherme: What will the VC funding landscape look like after the crisis passes?
8:37 Mary: What is the best way to present a newly launched startup that has been severely impacted by COVID-19 to investors?
10:48 Daniel: What advice would you offer college students passionate about venture capital so that they can also become investors?
12:22 Mark: What immediate skepticism do you have when you look at early-stage startups?
15:54 Len: What factor(s) would most set an early-stage (i.e. seed funding, launch-ready, pre-revenue) company apart from others seeking similar funding?
18:15 Aneesh: My startup sells multiple SaaS products for restaurant digitization. We don’t have the bandwidth to handle sales and marketing of all products at once. What should be our strategy to prioritize?
19:49 Linards: At what level of product traction will investors start to be interested? How does it differ across verticals?
22:40 Avidan: What role (if any) will equity crowdfunding play in the venture capital ecosystem at large?
23:43 Adam: What are you seeing related to startup valuations and VC terms post-COVID?
25:18 Emin: What kind of marketplaces would you like to see in the next 5 years?
26:34 Tammy: Do you think people will need a college degree for the jobs of the future?
28:48 Ellie: Post-WeWork, how should a tech startup with profit margins on the smaller side think about building a scalable and ultimately profitable business model?
30:15 Wei: What sectors are you investing in? What are you most excited about nowadays?
31:40 Ope: What skill sets do you need to move into VC from a non-Investment Banking background?
33:09 Suruchi/Mireille: In a medium article you wrote you wrote: "winter is here, severely ....don't obsess about the downside, think about the opportunities.” What opportunities have arisen so far? What changes are permanent and what changes are temporary?
35:20 Nghia: What are some books that you recommend today?
39:30 Ben: Are there areas that are non-investable at the moment whether it be overcrowded, overpriced, or the prospects aren’t great due to COVID?
40:24 Charles: Do you have any instances where a founder's positive or negative traits/signals have influenced a deal decision? On reflection, has instinct proved a better indicator than hard numbers?
43:42 Dave: What was your biggest exit/best investment? How did you source the deal? Alternatively, could you tell your worst anti-portfolio story (most successful company you passed on)?
44:46 Barry: What are some interesting healthcare startups or spaces that you have a favorable outlook for?
45:51 Raman: What’s your take on the future of learning?
1:03 Jason intros Garry Tan and checks in on how his quarantine has been going
4:39 How does Garry look at Initialized's portfolio companies? What are his 3 groups of companies dealing with COVID?
8:04 How will VCs react to the crisis? Why does Initialized specifically focus on Seed-stage companies?
11:13 How does Initialized contact downstream investors about their companies, and how has that changed during COVID?
14:12 Thoughts on Posterous, data-storage singularity & more
18:04 Losing thousands of photos after getting banned from Flickr and how that plays into software as the new government, becoming a super-router
22:32 How Spotify's access to public capital gives them an acquisition advantage, collab concepts
24:51 How does Initialized size their follow-on investments?
29:11 For how long is Initialized planning on operating fully remote? Thoughts on going back to work
35:56 What skills has Garry had to improve during his investing career?
43:33 How downstream investors try and take advantage of early-stage investors
47:51 Thoughts on Clubhouse investment, how/if they can scale their exclusivity
56:27 Thoughts on founders selling secondary shares, and how Chris Sacca helped Garry Tan at Posterous
1:02:09 Structural inequality leading to rich-bashing, how Fiat currency impacts welfare inequality
1:07:09 Thoughts on UBI, Instacart, potential profitability of food-delivery companies
1:11:31 Perception of Tech in the Bay Area, commercial real-estate in SF, Facebook's game-theory remote pay scale
1:18:27 Could today's tech giants (Google, Facebook, Uber) have grown to the heights they did as fully remote companies? Can IPO-level companies be consistently built while remote?
1:24:49 Do the best founders appear ageless? New Twitter features: good or bad?
0:43 Jason intros TechStars CEO David Brown
4:47 TechStars leading the virtual accelerator trend
10:21 Will TechStars go with a hybrid model going forward and what key points should remote accelerators focus on?
15:27 How did TechStars settle on the number of 10 companies per cohort?
17:28 What has TechStars seen across their portfolio since COVID started?
21:21 Sustained changes vs. temporary changes due to COVID, will COVID lead to more entrepreneurs?
31:58 How to explain edge-case funding scenarios to founders who have real businesses that are having troubling raising capital, taking a long-term view on accelerator engagement, why B2B is easier than B2C
36:22 Why angels invest in one company over the other? Do metrics matter as much as personal relationships? What are ideal founder characteristics that David looks for?
40:25 How TechStars selects mentors by surveying their mentees, comparison against Y Combinator
51:45 Opportunity for going global, David's relationship with Co-Founder David Cohen
1:00:30 Would TechStars ever go public?
Slice CEO Ilir Sela answers questions from founders: tips on selling into scattered markets (like Mom & Pop shops), COVID's impact on the restaurant industry, scaling Slice's $43M Series C & more!
Join the TWiST Slack: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/kLq5Bi
Check out Slice: https://slicelife.com/
Follow Ilir: https://twitter.com/IlirSela
1:05 Knyck: You mentioned Slice being a platform to provide the technology and buying power of scaled companies to small pizza businesses. Do you think that mom and pop stores in other industries like retail or services could use a similar platform, or is this type of structure specifically fitted for the economics of the pizza industry?
3:32 Michael: How do you see the restaurant industry changing in NYC post-COVID, and where do you see the growth opportunities to create a new type of offering?
5:17 Chris: I’m building a loyalty program startup for restaurants. We’re specifically targeting non-chain ethnic restaurants and customers who may have ethnic nostalgia for cultural foods. What do you think the opportunity looks like nationwide for this demographic? Are most restaurants using mainstream food ordering apps already, or is there a large segment of ethnic restaurants who are off-grid?
9:01 Graham: Mom & pops are such a scattered customer base. Can you shed some light on how you started to get momentum in the early days as a small business yourself? Did early customers have any trust issues with something as important as payment?
14:22 Laura: What is the biggest point of friction you have with adding new pizzerias to Slice? Do you experience many/any pizzerias that don't see the benefit of joining the Slice community? If so, how do you handle these?
18:50 Henry: Have you thought of doing the same for other ethnic food restaurants like Chinese, Indian, Thai etc. and what challenges do you foresee? What would be your approach to tackle?
22:04 Matt: With all the vacant retail that's about to become available, have you thought about helping pizza brands expand into ghost kitchens or helping existing pizzerias launch virtual brands (a la Chuck E Cheese)?
24:33 Ian/Andrew (similar questions): What is this funding round helping your business and platform do for the Pizza shops and their customers? How do you plan on scaling your $43M Series C? How have your plans changed since Slice has gone mostly remote?
31:10 Charles: Please expand on the apparent disparity in pricing across platforms/instore. How can food often be cheaper through a middleman? Our family often finds the most frictionless experience for our regular pizza place is to call in as it's often a single dish. How can this be simplified further? One push pizza?
37:58 Matt: Can you speak to "why pizza” and not Chinese food? At the end of the day, are you limiting yourself by picking one category?
40:32 Mahreen: Curious to know more about Slice's marketing. What marketing channels have been most effective for your platform (in acquiring both customers/new businesses)?
42:14 Ian: What response did you get from companies to sign up, was the take up easy? Or did you have to convince them in a specific sales pitch, how did you frame it?
43:51 Presh: You seem to have a curated following list on Twitter, curious to know your favorite accounts to follow that have impacted your business thinking.. top 5 accounts you recommend following?
45:31 Presh: Where does Slice need to be in order to see an IPO?
47:31 Ian: What are your plans to develop your branding and web/mobile app
0:51 Jason intros Zach Coelius & Sam Parr
2:28 Barstool Sports vs. Call Her Daddy
6:49 Penn National Gaming stock soaring, Dave Portnoy winning this controversy
13:17 SoftBank reports $17.7B annual loss, worst figures in 39-year history
17:19 Does SoftBank's involvement typically include a loss of focus for the founder?
21:43 TikTok’s parent co. Bytedance trades at a $140B valuation, poaches Disney’s former Head of Streaming as new CEO of TikTok
25:08 Was Kevin Mayer wrong to take this role? Are TikTok's recommendation algorithms the best in the world?
28:52 How do Chinese companies grow so rapidly?
32:06 Facebook launches Shops, is Zuck trying to kill e-commerce giants? Zach on his experience with Facebook slowly killing his business
40:06 How does Facebook's product organization work?
47:13 Jason on the future of social networks
49:56 Amazon potentially acquiring AMC Theatres, could this be an Amazon Prime upsell?
53:52 Everyone gives their best idea for Amazon's first move after buying AMC
59:59 Zach on his quarantine deal flow
Jason Calacanis and a rotating group of guest experts bring you this weekly take on the best, worst, most outrageous and interesting stories from the world of Web companies. Calacanis, a podcasting pioneer, gives you an insider's look at what's happening in the tech industry with his trademark blunt style and good humor. Looking to start your own company? Need strategies for improving your business or motivating your team? Just want to catch up on what's happening in Silicon Valley and beyond? Your journey begins here.
0:35 Jason intros Capital Factory CEO & Founder Josh Baer
1:47 What is Capital Factory in its current iteration? How are they transitioning to remote? Loss of serendipity of random in-person connections
5:38 Josh takes Jason through the SXSW cancellation
10:29 Issues conceptualizing COVID's impact
15:35 Transitioning to rolling cohorts & optimizing their Slack community
21:36 Capital Factory's standard deal terms, why founders join, how returns are divvied up
27:30 Starting Capital Factory during the last economic downturn, how millennials will react to this crisis
30:45 Josh describes his 5 buckets of how companies are weathering the COVID storm
35:09 Remote work's effect on startup collaboration
41:01 COVID's effect on children, getting back to work
47:37 What investing mistakes has Josh made, and how has he learned from them?
56:00 What founder traits does Josh look for?
59:14 Moving to Austin, SXSW history
0:31 Jason intros today's news roundtable guests Ben Gilbert & David Rosenthal
6:54 Clubhouse raises Series A from a16z at a $100M valuation pre-launch
11:12 How do $2M in secondary shares play into Clubhouse's situation?
14:08 How Clubhouse achieved "VC-Market Fit"
18:49 Was this investment worth it considering massive former outliers in the consumer social space (Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat)? Or did a16z pay too high of a price?
26:08 Bull/bear cases for founders selling secondary shares pre-launch
33:29 What impact did raising $100M for Mahalo pre-launch have on Jason?
37:18 Joe Rogan to Spotify, guess the acquisition price & macro-impact on the podcast industry
46:09 How massive is this for Spotify's position in the podcast industry? Did Apple drop the ball?
51:28 Jason to Dara: Uber should buy Dominos
52:16 How much podcast market share will Spotify have in the coming years? Will this be viewed as the landmark deal?
57:03 Uber layoffs, potential GrubHub acquisition, does the food delivery business model work?
1:04:57 Why the on-demand food delivery industry has a product-market-price fit issue, should life-long bureaucrats impact capitalist policy?
1:12:03 Who emerges victorious from the food delivery dog fight?
1:15:28 How being too reliant on one revenue stream could kill many ad-based media publications
1:24:38 Facebook's GIPHY acquisition
1:25:55 Twitter thread by GIPHY crowdfunding investor who never received their return, why Syndicate/Crowdfunding leads need to stand up for their investors to downstream firms
THREAD: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1262574661239312384.html
1:37:20 How GIPHY's weak relationship with their DAUs led to little negotiating leverage
1:39:05 Predictions for Clubhouse's eventual business model
Range CEO & Co-Founder Dan Pupius answers questions from founders: meeting & collaborating with Evan Williams, divvying up time while building a remote team, product development advice, benefits of co-founders & more
Join the TWiST Slack: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/kLq5Bi
Check out Range: https://www.range.co/
Questions:
0:50 Laura: Interested in learning more about what made you want to build a company that focused on remote work? Do you personally find it challenging not to be in the same physical space as your team/the companies you work for?
2:46 Knyck: What advice would you give around developing and sticking to a product development roadmap as a first-time founder? What’s a good way to establish and calibrate sprint lengths when looking at various aspects of the build?
5:48 Henry: What are best practices around building a tight mission-driven culture when working remotely given people are not interacting face to face physically on a daily basis and focus may be impaired?
8:10 Kevin: Have you received any downstream investor interest since the start of mass quarantine across the US? Do investors see this as an opportunity?
8:57 Ciara: Can you share a little about where you want to be in 18-24 months with Range? How are you planning on scaling and what does your product roadmap look like?
10:51 Nick/Presh: How did you meet Evan Williams, what’s the story of you leaving Google for Medium, and what are some amazing insights/lessons you learned from working with him? What makes him stand out as a founder?
13:41 James: Really like the use of daily check-ins and achievement tracking within Range to keep people on track. How can we encourage these actions in important areas outside of work, where people aren't directly incentivized/forced to do so (fitness, eating, learning)?
15:52 Charles: What do you look for in a co-founder and what advice would you give to founders looking for one? Do they even need to? Also, Marmite, love it or hate it?
18:23 Lizette: What should self-funded startups be thinking about right now and 24-36 months out?
20:45 Sean: Any tips on joining a (small) tech team as a new leader? Especially fully remote?
23:24 Amanda: How did Google change in the 7 years you were there in terms of culture and product roadmap? What was it like when you joined and when you left?
25:41 Ian: How has being an Industrial designer and software developer given you insights for Range and remote working? Are you a leader or a co-founder, can you be both.
28:58 Ian: What are people expecting from a question about "culture", what are they expecting others to give them. For me, If you don't know what culture you want, you simply don't know what you want or where you are going.
32:20 Sanford: How do you split up your day starting a remote company? Do you have days when you do certain work?
34:36 Jason: What do we lose by being remote and how do we get it back if we stay remote?
37:25 Nick: You said you met Evan Williams at The Grove, what’s your go-to meal? (My favorite breakfast burrito in SF)
0:42 Jason intros SOSV's Sean O'Sullivan
4:19 How is operating in China during COVID?
5:22 Origin of SOSV, thoughts on in-person accelerators over remote accelerators, why hardware/life-science accelerators need in-person cohorts
9:02 Sean describes SOSV's typical deal terms, unique follow-on strategy & cohort size
14:27 What stage company are SOSV accelerators looking for? Does it vary by industry?
17:58 Sean describes SOSV portfolio company Memphis Meats & how they utilize bioreactors to create cell-based meats
23:06 When will we see plant/cell-based meat being cheaper than the real thing?
29:25 Will the issue of food-availability will be solved in our lifetime?
33:16 Will modern food science revolutionize taste & what is the holy-grail food that will be produced?
42:15 What is being done in the ingredients space?
48:58 How is running an accelerator in China different than running one in the US?
53:39 Embracing hardware, thoughts on Hardware-as-a-Service
1:00:44 Micro-terraforming
0:36 Jason shares thoughts on his portfolio activity, getting back to work, leadership & more
4:20 Jason intros Slice Founder Ilir Sela
7:14 How has Slice been helping local pizzerias and front-line workers during the pandemic? https://sliceouthunger.org/pandemicpizza
9:12 What are the economics of an average privately-owned local pizzeria? How are the majority fairing during COVID-19?
13:24 What is Ilir building at Slice? What is their "reverse-franchise model" that helps local pizzerias compete with Dominos & other large chains?
15:32 What is the user-experience on Slice?
18:49 Who is Slice's average customer & how are their pizzerias handling the virus in 3 segments
29:10 Raising a $40M+ Series C during COVID pandemic & leaning on long-term relationships
32:49 Viral GrubHub invoice response - valid or overblown? Unit economics of delivery apps & how Slice's fees compare to GrubHub, DoorDash, UberEats & more
40:12 Huge delivery fees creating the need for two different menus (with higher prices on third-party platforms), how Dominos digitizing their order volume created maximum efficiency & allowed them to keep the same prices for over a decade
45:28 What is Ilir planning on doing with Slice's excess office space, how will the pandemic effect in-person work going forward?
50:10 Which groups of employees perform better under isolation? How is Slice helping employees deal with working remotely? How is New York responding to the crisis, and what will reopening look like (hybrid offices)?
1:06:53 Do business leaders have a responsibility to go through the testing process to understand how to help employees get tested efficiently?
0:56 Jason intros Keith Rabois and checks in on his quarantine, Zoom's heightened exhaustion factor & more
5:46 What will the lasting impact of COVID be on Silicon Valley & the startup funding landscape?
8:18 How the early 2000's dot-com bust paved way for a generation of new founders & why the PayPal mafia of outsiders thrived in chaos & became the establishment
14:23 What has happened to intellectual debate during COVID-19? What are first principle thinkers and why are they important to problem-solving?
20:53 Is domain expertise overrated?
22:39 Keith's on his pinned tweet about his perceived recipe for startup success
26:50 In which verticals did Keith find outliers using his low-NPS/fragmented/vertical solution strategy?
32:15 History on US relationship with China, has Trump been right on China threat, should US try and bring manufacturing back from China?
44:41 China's involvement with whistleblowers, benefits of litigation knowledge as a VC, world's reaction to China mishandling COVID info
50:40 Has Biden been soft on China? How will that play into the 2020 election?
1:00:51 Why is the stock market bouncing back so quickly with record-setting unemployment numbers? Will there be another correction?
1:03:59 What is Keith seeing across his portfolio? M&A opportunity for companies like Lyft?
1:09:34 Keith shares thoughts on the right time to go public
1:13:50 Impact of 20% unemployment on startups over the next year, mental impact of lockdown & social isolation
1:20:40 Keith's most positive outlook going forward
StartX & Nexus Events Founder Cameron Teitelman answers questions from founders: how universities with no entrepreneurial culture can mimic Stanford, building flexible & sustainable culture during COVID, scaling Nexus Events rapidly & more!
Join the TWiST Slack: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/kLq5Bi
Mentioned during the AMA:
Cameron's new startup: https://mixer.nexusevents.io/login_mixer
Cameron's most recent TWiST appearance: https://youtu.be/zsNqOLs-NVI
Questions:
0:37 Cameron intros his AMA and describes his new company: Nexus Events https://mixer.nexusevents.io/login_mixer
1:31 Kevin: Are seed investors investing right now? What have StartX companies been seeing lately from early-stage investors?
2:55 James: How can universities with no entrepreneurial culture mimic the success of Stanford in creating an environment that encourages building and innovation?
4:29 James: How does the accelerator structure change for current students? What are some of the common pitfalls you have seen people make starting their company whilst finishing their degree?
7:18 Presh: Could you share more about your new startup? What are you building and why?
10:15 Ashley: How are you looking at accepting companies to StartX through the COVID lense? Which companies (in your portfolio or not) do you think are particularly well-positioned for the post COVID environment?
12:43 Jean: Regarding mentorship, in what areas do solo founders need the most help with?
14:41 Annette: Will Stanford affiliated applicants get priority over referral applicants? Would consumer startup applicants that are non-COVID related be considered during this time?
17:35 Henry: What are your thoughts in terms of building a flexible but sustainable culture?
19:26 Matt: Do you take a different approach with health tech portfolio companies and educate/manage/support them separately from the rest of the portfolio?
21:21 Laura: Given that companies don't give up equity, and there is no structured program, how do you cultivate high-level engagement with your founders/companies & mentors?
25:27 Luke: Can you talk about how the collaboration between StartX and the Stanford Hospital and Clinics works? How are the grants assessed and awarded?
26:14 Jacqui: Do you see the StartX Med COVID-19 Task Force as a new model to accelerate advances in biotech or to generate solutions for other critical global issues?
27:07 Heidi: How can other med schools around the country partner with you to develop satellite programs?
29:17 Dan: Do you have any war stories about running Nexus Events during COVID and what you’ve learned from it?
0:50 Jason opens the show with some thoughts on livelihood, getting back to work as a lose-lose situation and approaching the situation with kindness and empathy
5:47 Jason intros Hustle Fund's Elizabeth Yin and they discuss the process of raising Hustle Fund I and targeting first-time LPs
10:25 Why high net worth individuals would look to become venture LPs
14:26 What's the deal with Elizabeth & hippos? Where can you find Jason as his alter-ego "CyberSurfer"
15:49 What is Hustle Fund's portfolio strategy?
18:55 When do you know if you have a 100x outlier? Why roll prior angel investments into the fund?
24:15 Thinking of venture funds from a gambling perspective
28:24 What is Hustle Fund's approach to pro-rata as a smaller fund?
34:49 Founders ability to "game" investors increasing in last 5 years
37:47 How does Elizabeth decide to make the follow-on second bet in a company?
42:01 How does Elizabeth advise her startups to raise from downstream Seed/Series A investors, importance of positive unit economics
47:41 Challenges of fundraising in today's climate
50:34 Reasons for optimism/pessimism, lockdown creating a necessity for innovation
56:55 What will COVID's permanent ramifications be on startups?
All Turtles CEO Phil Libin answers questions from founders: should early-stage founders prioritize data or instincts, building global products, ML risks, thoughts on remote work
Join the TWiST Slack: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/kLq5Bi
Mentioned during the AMA:
Phil's First appearance on TWiST: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pSYdwNHCmJA
Phil presents his state machine that answers all growth questions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjyhDOb_j1I
All Turtles Product Taxonomy podcast: https://www.all-turtles.com/podcast/episode-50-product-taxonomy-how-we-classify-product-pitches/
Questions:
1:03 Knyck: In your state machine model, how early should companies prioritize looking into resurrection, lines 5&9, of inactive users into low and high-value users?
2:36 David: Thoughts on Notion? I’ve been an Evernote user since ’08 but Notion seems to be winning over some Evernote fans.
3:11 Tom: 1) As CEO, what brings you the most joy as a CEO, any examples? 2) As a Software Engineer, what was one of the most difficult things you had to overcome?
3) What’s one thing early founders don’t think is as important as it really is? (Besides culture)
9:54 Graham: During the early days (pre-product market fit), do you think that more metrics are always better for founders, or would you recommend focusing on those north star metrics that can keep founders focused on the most important business levers?
12:32 Craig: How have any setbacks or failures in the past changed the way you approached problems or roadblocks. What changes will you make after COVID?
17:04 Andrii: How would you compare Notion vs Roam research vs Evernote? What are some strong and weak features of each platform?
18:26 Jeff: Have you completed your goal yet of 1 pull up?
19:36 Sina: As you said: “Many companies focus on just one market and build up from there” but you guys invest in a global presence early on in the process and tried to have users from the Asia Pacific regions from the early days. How did you guys manage to do that? Was it only marketing campaigns or did you guys have strategic partners in that region?
23:31 Tatiana: Do you consider in this matter taking some mentoring as a real addressed help? If so, I would like to take this opportunity to apply for your mentoring, if possible. What will be the best way to contact you and introduce myself?
24:39 Luke: Which products being developed at All Turtles are you most excited about?
27:59 Presh: What’s your framework for deciding which products/problems you’d like to focus on/solve at All Turtles?
30:47 Catharine: Aside from changing how you eat, what are the other two things you’ve done that have transformed your life?
32:53 Jason: Can you talk about your massive weight loss and how that did/didn’t impact you as a founder/leader? Do you think you were perceived differently based on your weight as a founder/leader?
38:02 Alex: We’re building a real-time platform called answerable and we’re wondering at what critical tipping point a platform has enough data to really derive good insights?
40:49 Alex: What would you suggest for a very regulated company (SEC) where user testimonials + referrals are either straight up not allowed or require super fine inspection to avoid being sued?
42:12 Juan Juan: I remember your story when you were planning to close down Evernote then an Angel came to your rescue writing a check that gave you the runway to success. How did that happen and what were you feeling at that time?
44:04 Vitaly: How do you estimate tech risks while investing/building a ML product?
47:08 Tammy: Will remote work actually be permanent?
48:51 Vince: After scaling Evernote and then working as a VC, I’d assume you’d advise many companies not to go the VC funding route,
Hosted by Jason Calacanis & Michael Savino, Angel.University is a workshop for individuals interested in becoming professional angel investors.
The curriculum is designed for angels who have done 0 to 100 angel investments and focuses on five key topics: sourcing deals, evaluating startups, negotiating deals, portfolio and bankroll management, and post-deal efforts.
Register: https://www.angel.university/events
0:42 Jason intros MassChallenge CEO Siobhan Dullea
3:09 What is MassChallenge & how is it different from a typical accelerator?
5:48 How many startups do they accept across their different programs?
11:33 How does their prize money situation work? How are the winners selected?
19:05 How is MassChallenge sustainable as a non-profit
22:55 How is MassChallenge funded & how do they track portfolio success, what government & corporate sponsors looking for out of MC?
29:22 MC's top accelerator companies
32:24 What makes for a great application?
39:00 Why are East Coast investors obsessed with intellectual property? Why are they more conservative?
44:10 Thoughts on virtual accelerators?
47:20 Red flags when accepting companies?
50:08 What will change post-COVID-19?
0:01 Jason intros today's questions!
2:18 Kate asks what founders & investors often overlook while pitching/being pitched, and what they should focus more closely on
6:58 Daniel asks about Jason's next book
8:59 Avery asks for advice on performing customer research
14:27 Dan asks what common traits Jason sees in the best founders and tangible steps to gain these traits
19:55 Shahpar asks what kind of cold emails catch Jason's eyes
22:10 Amy asks for the top 5 books Jason would recommend to an aspiring founder
27:18 Andrew asks Jason how his deal flow has been impacted by COVID-19
30:27 Dharma asks about the importance of a startups name/domain name and any hacks getting a better domain name
34:54 Pedro asks how to improve customer retention when acquisition goes down
39:57 Ivan asks how Jason is "sizing up" founders without meeting them in person
42:10 Gerry asks whether to offer a freemium version of a product OR to offer the full product free for a limited window before looking to convert
46:51 Naiem asks whether to push new products searching for product-market fit OR focus on improving existing products
Subscribe: https://linktr.ee/transportationpodcast
Featuring Sandy Munro (CEO of Munro & Associates), Jason Calacanis (Angel investor, LAUNCH, Inside.com) and Johan Moreno (Inside.com).
Subscribe to Inside Transportation newsletter: inside.com/transportation
Subscribe to Inside Electric Vehicles newsletter: inside.com/evs
Follow Inside Transportation: https://twitter.com/TranspoPod
0:56 Jason intros the show & talks about the impact the TWiST Slack has had on him
4:47 Jason intros Dan Pupius of Range
6:13 What is Range and why is it asynchronous & who types of companies is it made for?
10:48 What is the core feature of Range?
15:19 Dan's time at Google, working on Google+ & Google Buzz
21:16 Competing against Facebook's product velocity
24:28 Why did Google+ fail?
29:22 How adoption patterns & network effects played into Google+ not taking off like Facebook
36:57 How to use team communication tools & not come off as overbearing, dealing with unmotivated employees & creating environments that increase motivation
45:02 Burning Man, CyberPunk & more
47:47 Dan shares best practices on building culture as a remote team
52:15 Importance of maintaining "psychological safety" to optimize performance, holding colleagues accountable during high-pressure situations
58:37 Dan's experience developing Holacracy at Medium with Evan Williams
1:06:18 How experience & milestones affect leadership
1:09:21 Potential of "hybrid" remote/in-person offices after going back to work
freeCodeCamp Founder Quincy Larson answers questions from his exclusive AMA only on This Week in Startups' Slack!
If you’d like to participate in exclusive AMAs, jam sessions, and discuss all aspects of startup life with Jason and our community of 20,000+ founders, join us at: https://launchevents.typeform.com/to/kLq5Bi
Watch Quincy on E1049: https://youtu.be/OgxTDl2Z9II
Follow Quincy: https://twitter.com/ossia
Check out freeCodeCamp: https://www.freecodecamp.org/
Thanks to Klaviyo, Fiverr and Mint Mobile for keeping this AMA ad free!
Questions:
0:33 Emin asks: What is the best tactic to build an award-winning dev team? Hire junior developers and incubate them or hire more senior people?
4:29 Rob asks: What does FCC moving to a project-based curriculum look like for someone with a moderate programming background, and where should they start approaching the freeCodeCamp curriculum?
5:41 Ilya asks: What are your thoughts on remote work for developers post COVID. What are the biggest challenges companies are facing? And how can candidates stand out in a remote job interview?
7:55 Swyx asks: What are your thoughts on SEO/building a media empire out of FCC? What about keeping FCC.org nonprofit, but making FreeCodeCamp’s YouTube and Content presence for profit?
11:06 Farjad asks: What is your advice on contributing to open-source projects like FCC and when it is appropriate/how to begin? Do I have to become an expert first? How can a beginner contribute?
13:27 James asks: Many online courses and MOOCS have high drop off rates and struggle to retain users. Have you found this with freeCodeCamp and, if so, what measures have you found work best to keep people learning?
16:40 Brady asks: What are the plans for future courses? Will there be other languages or frameworks included?
20:40 Cpulido asks: I am new to coding. I have a vision of what I want to build but I am wondering if I am being too ambitious. How do I effectively learn and build at the same time?
23:24 Jean asks: In an age of low-code and no-code, what are your thoughts on total beginners exploring a new career path today?
28:01 Luke asks: Which other founders/leaders and companies in the free code/online learning space do you think are also doing great work for the community?
30:14 Charles asks: Is there a place for those that are passionate but don't think they could ever be a great coder? Are the skills learned at FCC transferable or useful for gaining employment in another part of the tech/startup industry?
31:55 Jacqui asks: I'm curious about your experience teaching in China. What ages and subjects did you teach, and what are some differences you've seen between the education systems in the US and China and how do those differences play out into careers?
36:47 Heidi asks: As a nonprofit (public charity), what do you find is the most difficult part of soliciting donations? Is it easier to get corporations to buy into what you’re building/doing or 1:1/community to give donations?
1:00 Jason intros Power of Accelerators Episode 2!
3:07 Jason intros StartX Founder Cameron Teitelman: What is StartX, how do they invest, when and how was it started?
6:54 How does StartX exist? Are they profitable?
8:43 Why would a growth stage founder join StartX?
13:28 What is the process for selecting founders/companies for StartX? What is unique about Stanford students?
16:28 Difference between arrogance and confidence, StartX's "No A**hole" rule, Cohort size
20:47 What does StartX look for in founders, what questions are asked in interviews & what preferences do they have regarding co-founders
27:04 How do VCs look at StartX? What are their demo days like?
31:54 Thoughts on YC's demo day & how to run a demo day process
41:16 Cameron on hacking his way into VC, new StartX funds, thesis on successful founders & peer-support groups
45:58 Stories about getting cut out of a deal
48:09 What StartX's portfolio signaling tells them about successful founders, importance of time management
51:59 Steve Blank's theory of customer development, top portfolio companies
0:42 Jason intros PlayVS CEO & Founder Delane Parnell
2:59 What is PlayVS, how do they make money & how fast are they growing?
5:37 Attracting investors, leveraging an exclusive contract to scale across US high schools & average hours spent on the platform by players
13:26 Delane shares his backstory, from flipping shoes to owning cell phone stores in high school to getting tickets to the LAUNCH Festival in SF
26:38 How Delane turned LAUNCH Festival networking to deal flow & a job in venture capital
32:52 Meeting Peter Pham at SXSW, moving to LA to start PlayVS
38:16 Delane on his relationship with Michael Ovitz
40:20 PlayVS' go-to-market strategy & relationship with game publishers
45:51 PlayVS being co-ed & giving female gamers a safe environment to play in
51:08 Race in tech & Delane's advice on breaking into the industry as an outsider
55:57 Not taking any checks from firms who hadn't previously backed black founders
59:05 Does Darnell's intentionality about diversity create a talent advantage for PlayVS?
1:06:06 Relief of hiring high-level operators
1:11:41 LA restaurant scene discussion
1:13:39 Bird vs. Lime vs. Uber, pricing model discussion, thought on Travis Kalanick
1:23:10 Top 5 Tech entrepreneurs of all-time
1:33:40 What's going on at Airbnb?
2:42 — Electric vehicle startups receive PPP loansAs thousands of small business owners struggle to pay rent and keep their employees on staff, two high-profile electric vehicle startups have applied and received Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans from the Small Business Administration (SBA).
0:50 Jason thanks the front-line workers & intros freeCodeCamp's Quincy Larson
7:45 Why & how did Quincy start freeCodeCamp? What is freeCodeCamp?
12:16 Jason & Quincy discuss starting & running large online communities, benefits of Discord & Slack
15:36 Can you jump right in on freeCodeCamp.org? What types of certifications do they offer?
17:38 COVID-19's impact on user growth & why Quincy is emulating Red Cross, YMCA & other non-profits
21:19 Do they track outcomes at freeCodeCamp, how do they compare to Lambda School?
26:05 Can anyone become a web developer? How many hours would it take for an average high school graduate to be able to build a 1.0 version of Twitter or Shopify?
35:09 Quincy shares some freeCodeCamp success stories
41:21 What's the quickest way to get a job through coding? What program should an aspirational developer start learning first?
45:57 Should new developers prioritize mobile development to maximize earning potential?
48:24 What % of freeCodeCamp users are non-US? Which country has shown the most potential?
50:44 What does the post-COVID world look like for developers?
53:21 freeCodeCamp's developer cards project
1:00 Jason thanks all frontline workers and intros Dreamit Ventures’ Steve Barsh
3:33 How did Dreamit start, what is the goal and how is their program structured?
9:43 How often does Dreamit follow-on with their portfolio companies, how do they think about pricing, valuation & leading rounds?
15:15 Steve goes over some of Dreamit’s top portfolio companies: SeatGeek, LevelUp & Houseparty and explains how SeatGeek pivoted while going through Dreamit’s program
18:20 How early will Dreamit Ventures go? Pre-revenue? What verticals do they focus on how do they improve their program?
27:24 What is the most important thing Dreamit does for founders: advice, anointing or money?
30:07 At what point during the process does Dreamit turn on the criticism? What questions do they ask during Accelerator interviews?
42:58 How much of Dreamit’s program focuses on the fundraising process?
48:59 Lightning round: How founders should judge accelerators, nailing interviews, multiple accelerators, follow-on philosophy, bridge rounds, top firms that Dreamit works with
0:01 Jason intros today's #AskJason and talks about the This Week in Startups Slack!
4:04 Ethan asks where and how Jason gets his news for general industry knowledge
6:43 Sean asks Jason how to acquire talent during a crisis
9:54 Vik asks Jason about building strong corporate culture while working remotely
15:44 David asks about SF mayor London Breed capping fees for delivery companies
19:32 Craig asks for Jason's perspective on investing in fully distributed startups
23:52 Mayur asks which audience do you sell to first when starting a marketplace
28:23 Stuart asks about how to price when launching - Free trials or charge right away?
33:05 Rob asks what investors think when they hear a CEO has 1 or 2 other side hustles
33:18 David asks about the importance of market timing - Will a great business always succeed, and how much of it is due to timing?
39:40 Onyx asks for Jason's take on the future of growing & scaling emerging natural food (or food tech) brands in this environment
41:21 Paulo asks how CEOs should act to motivate a remote team
48:08 Allen asks about syndicates that don’t contribute any money into a deal
0:37 Jason intro Alex Wilhelm & Sam Lessin & checks in on how their quarantines are going
5:59 Are they all working more during quarantine then they were beforehand?
9:58 Will we see a birthrate drop due to the crisis?
15:45 Having & raising children in the digital age/COVID crisis
18:24 How are Apple & Google helping with tracking COVID-19, and when do their efforts become a privacy risk?
27:29 For how long would big-tech need personal health data?
31:54 Differences between Facebook & Twitter, Twitter usage for Jason, Alex & Sam
37:41 What is Sam working on with Fin? How has he transitioned his team to remote?
39:47 Who will be impacted by the move away from luxurious big-tech campuses? Will it lead to a competitive disadvantage for companies that are hesitant?
56:19 Disconnect between optimistic public investors & pessimistic private investors
1:00:38 Why early-stage investors are most at-risk in the private market?
1:05:33 Misaligned metrics in VC, understanding massive unemployment numbers
1:11:26 Is government-backed healthcare good for capitalism & entrepreneurship?
0:51 Jason intro 15Five's David Hassell & checks in on how his company is doing
4:23 What does a great leader need to do in a crisis?
8:26 How to share information with your team about potential layoffs
10:27 What is 15Five? What have they set out to accomplish?
15:22 Tips on transitioning an in-person team to fully remote
22:24 Defining trust in terms of business & how 15Five keeps their employees engaged
32:16 How increasing trust has resulted in hardly any employee turnover at 15Five
35:13 How remote work is revealing
42:24 How are employees feeling about getting back into the office?
47:43 What will COVID-19 change?
57:09 What is David hopeful about?
0:01 Jason & Chamath catch us up on their quarantines
1:20 Chamath intros David Sacks
4:40 David explains what their poker group chat has been like since COVID-19 started, and how Jason, Chamath & himself fall on the optimistic/pessimistic spectrum
6:58 How have the past few months defined David's view on the world, and what is his reaction to the US government's response?
12:22 Did the US health apparatus do its job? How could it improve? Why aren't masks already mandated?
19:33 Culture clash between scientific experts & entrepreneurs, thoughts on Chloroquine as a treatment method
27:00 Are US bureaucrats taking the intelligence of US citizens for granted? How liable is Trump?
0:01 Jason previews today's Ask Jason & drops some hints about the Super Secret TWiST Slack room
2:29 Aaron asks how investors view no-code startups
6:33 Andrii asks if an economic crisis is a good time to start a company
9:52 Jesse asks if he should start trying to raise a round of funding now, or wait until this crisis passes
14:48 Juan asks how he can leverage his first committed angel investor to attract more
19:11 Marcel asks how he can use a "startup mentality" to effectively run his small private school
23:28 Matt asks how to bring on advisors and how he should compensate them
29:46 Mike asks what % of revenue a company should spend on brand & marketing
35:27 Peter asks how much diligence is appropriate for an Angel Investor writing small checks ($5K & under)
41:52 Talha asks what COVID's economic impact will be on Cloud Kitchens, UberEats, DoorDash, etc.
47:56 Ryan asks for Jason's thoughts on solving the unemployment issues due to COVID-19
0:01 Jason thanks the sponsors, guests, listeners & the team for Angel Season 4!
4:38 Jason intros Menlo Ventures' Shawn Carolan
7:26 Thoughts on the market's reaction to COVID-19, when will it get back to normal?
11:51 What advice is Shawn giving to his portfolio founders?
19:07 How has the job of a VC changed with the influx of hundreds of new funds, and what impact has the large amount of dry powder done to the industry? How has Shawn adjusted his approach in response to this?
26:07 Why paying a high price on valuation for dialed in startups (like Shawn did for Uber's Series B) is still a great bet
34:13 Shawn on passing in investing on Mahalo & Jason
36:20 What was it like having a "Force of Nature" portfolio founder like Travis Kalanick, who would destroy any obstacle in his path? What are some great founder attributes?
51:24 Shawn takes us through his Siri investment
57:55 Shawn takes us through his Roku investment
1:02:25 With the influx of Seed & Series A startups, how has Shawn adjusted how he meets founders?
1:05:00 Shawn takes us through his JUMP Bikes investment, are micro-mobility unit economics broken?
1:07:43 What will the outcomes of COVID-19 be in the startup community?
1:28:05 Shawn asks Jason how to best utilize his domain expertise to create high-quality content for Menlo Ventures
0:54 Jason intros Roy Bahat & Zach Coelius, and they discuss their current quarantine situations
6:04 What is the timeline looking like for going back to work? What needs to happen before we can get back to normal?
14:51 Has government & media failed the public? How is tech (both big tech & startups) helping during the crisis?
28:33 How should startups approach taking PPP, EIDL & other SMB loans? Should startups begin working more closely with the government?
37:14 When should companies plan on being able to raise capital again?
41:37 Why Jason believes the VC market will bounce back strong & how he is planning on deploying capital?
46:12 Are we going through a generational change & witnessing the creation of "Generation V"?
55:06 Jason's thoughts on what the crisis will actually change
1:04:36 What should permanently change after the crisis: government reliance, UBI, listening to experts
1:11:45 Notion's $50M raise & $2B valuation
1:15:29 Is Zoom trustworthy? Is any software trustworthy?
1:19:13 Luckin Coffee fabricates sales and loses $5B of value in 5 minutes
0:55 Jason intros Balaji Srinivasan and tees up his incident with Recode's piece: “No handshakes, please”: The tech industry is terrified of the coronavirus
4:28 Balaji shares his experience with the story and his issues with corporate journalism
15:16 Balaji explains why he reacted the way he did to Shirin Ghaffary's request for an interview
19:52 History of techlash: 1995-2020, when things turned from positivity to overwhelming negativity
26:26 Balaji brings up a sentiment analysis chart published by Recode
31:25 Did both sides of the political spectrum fail in their coverage of the virus? Is citizen journalism the answer?
39:40 Balaji envisions for a new kind of journalism
41:43 Are corporate journalists too like-minded in their approach because of not being representative of the demographics of the US?
48:16 What is modern journalism's biggest blind spot?
51:22 Tips on how to start decentralizing media
54:34 Are modern journalists uncomfortable with subjects playing an active role in the reporting of the story? Did Recode & other outlets fail their readers?
1:01:55 Will the US "let it rip" strategy of dealing with COVID prove catastrophic?
1:05:53 Endgame scenarios: Bull, Bear & Base
1:10:08 Should we be experimenting with "Challenge Trials"?
1:18:52 How culpable is China for the spread of COVID-19? Should wet markets be shut down for good?
1:23:39 Why is the US still behind on mass testing? More on endgame scenarios
1:31:03 Possibility of COVID-19 being a biological weapon?
1:36:27 What should we learn from this crisis? What societal changes will happen?
0:51 Jason gives some thoughts on quarantine & intros GGV's Jeff Richards
5:11 What will this crisis look like on the other side? Benefits of having a levelheaded approach
11:38 What has Jeff seen from his seasoned portfolio founders who went through the 2008 crisis?
16:21 What advice does Jeff give to first-time founders in his portfolio?
22:22 Investor panic & differences in opinion between independent & investor board members
25:50 What could inexperienced board advice be in a time like this?
30:45 What is GGV's typical check size, how many startups do they invest in per year, and how are their funds divvied up between early-stage & growth
33:26 Chances that current deals could be renegotiated? How can founders price themselves properly?
38:05 Jeff explains liquidation preferences
42:52 How should companies approach taking venture debt in a time like this? What is Jeff's criteria for taking venture debt?
51:11 If things are going poorly, what are some things founders can do to right the ship? Examples of great pivots that saved companies
57:58 What is Airbnb's roadmap from here on out?
1:02:12 Why Jeff doesn't get enamored with IPO valuations & why he is long tech
1:08:18 Thoughts on Zoom, anti-trust laws & more
0:52 Jason intros Eric Ries and they discuss how things have been since shelter-in-place started
8:33 What good will come out of this? Will UBI proponents like Andrew Yang be proven right?
10:12 Eric's advice to today's founders after living through the 2008 recession & the dot-com bust
15:53 Eric describes the obligations of leaders during a crisis of this magnitude, what the test-and-trace method is and how it's effective
25:02 Do authoritarian countries have an advantage in handling outbreaks better than democratic countries?
28:45 Jason & Eric reminisce about 2011 in startup-land
30:38 Tactical advice for Founders in an economic downturn
39:52 Eric explains what he is doing to help at: https://schoolclosures.org/
44:11 What is the Long-Term Stock Exchange?
48:57 Thoughts on private companies giving equity options to contractors
53:00 More tactical insights for founders: handling layoffs, figuring out new revenue opportunities, capitalizing on silver-linings, extending runway, etc.
1:01:01 Amazon & Lyft partnering to help each other, Bird's layoff approach, extending runway by trading cash for equity
1:12:21 Eric's thoughts on the future of capitalism
1:00 Jason intros Figma’s Dylan Field & Dylan explains why WebGL was crucial to Figma’s creation
7:09 Why ChromeOS is flourishing in schools
11:28 Who are Figma’s competitors & how do they compare
14:12 How does multiplayer mode work on Figma?
17:29 What does Figma charge, Dylan’s thoughts on charging for SaaS: bottom-up or top-down?
30:26 Is SaaS burnout real? Active-user pricing vs. Passive-user pricing & the importance of increasing pricing transparency
34:41 Becoming a Thiel Fellow, meeting Jason at Foo Camp, what happened between Mahalo & Google?
44:52 Jason goes deeper on what happened at Mahalo
46:33 Why Figma releases new features so quickly, the open-design theory & how it makes Figma anti-fragile
48:42 How is Figma handling COVID-19 on an internal & external basis
1:02:39 Figma’s funding history, why Index led the Seed, why Greylock initially passed & wound up investing
1:08:13 Why Kleiner Perkins invested & why Sequoia passed on the Series B & wound up investing, importance of getting to know your lead investors
1:11:05 How Dylan preps for & leads Figma’s board meetings
1:12:05 How working from home has given bosses better insights into who is actually making major impacts
0:52 Jason intros Greylock's Sarah Guo
3:37 How did Sarah wind up at Greylock?
5:45 Sarah explains Greylock's "Zero to One" thesis & typical term commitment of a VC
11:53 How does Sarah measure her personal performance and her portfolio's performance? What are her biggest strengths as an investor?
16:12 How does she sharpen her decision-making skills?
17:53 Ranking her investment criteria: People, Markets & Product
20:26 Balancing intensity & life outside of work, the commitment of early-stage startups
27:26 Work-life balance & how the venture landscape changed over time
35:36 Greylock's structured & what was Sarah's first investment & how did it play into her investment thesis?
43:38 Sarah's investments in work-enabling software
48:00 Sarah recommends Dylan Field of Figma join the show - episode dropping Friday!
49:22 Identifying subtle flashes of brilliance in early products
58:28 Female founders being held to a higher standard
1:02:35 Anti-portfolio: Zoom
1:10:06 Sarah turns off her virtual background and reveals her location
0:45 Jason intros Vincent Woo, who wrote "Lambda School's Misleading Promises" for New York Magazine
2:21 What drew Vincent to this story? What wrongdoings did he discover?
6:02 Vincent describes Lambda's ISAs and how they were sold
14:24 How Vincent approached Austen Allred as an investigative reporter & clip from Vincent's interview with Austen
16:19 What is Lambda's school actual placement rate? How does it compare with other coding bootcamps?
20:06 Getting Lambda's former Director of Student Placement on record to speak about the placement rates
23:43 Why ISA coding schools should exist
29:18 How Lambda's remote-only approach differentiates them & how opportunity cost plays into their issues
35:06 Where did Lambda School go wrong?
45:51 Does the business model work in broad strokes if opened up to everyone?
53:54 What does Lambda School need to do now?
58:21 Where is the blindspot in most entrepreneurs?
1:00:57 Vincent also writes about local political corruption in the Bay Area
1:04 Jason intros Alex Wilhelm & Sarah Cannon
5:00 COVID-19: Where are we now?
10:12 Have would Obama have handled this situation? What are the proper next steps?
15:29 Sarah lays out her economic stimulus plan
20:29 How much has the political landscape changed over the last few months?
22:08 How would a stimulus plan work in practice?
24:36 What will change about the gig economy and healthcare coverage?
28:35 Will the average American citizen's perspective on the world change?
33:23 Alex shares his thoughts on the media's handling of COVID-19, and what Twitter's role has been during the crisis
45:09 Jason's theory on what we should do differently next time around, and it is applicable in America?
50:08 What is the endgame of COVID-19? How long will it last and how bad will it get?
1:00:42 Chances of civil unrest/chaos? Are testing incentives the best way to bend the curve?
1:10:14 Thoughts on WeWork/SoftBank news & why Sarah didn't invest
1:13:22 How Sarah is advising her portfolio companies during COVID-19, benefits of overcapitalization
1:18:42 Durability of SaaS revenue during a recession
0:01 Jason & Chamath intro David and check in on each other's quarantines
2:26 Has the US overreacted or underreacted so far? David & Chamath give their opinions on new directives & statistics
13:15 Thoughts on potential treatment options & policy changes
22:25 Chamath explains the circumstances of recording a podcast while the Stock Market tanks in real-time
25:03 Should the US adopt Chinese & South Korean quarantine strategies?
29:53 What do the current market conditions mean for startups & VC?
41:24 Chamath explains what is currently happening in the capital markets
45:05 How close is the US on being able to do mass-testing?
54:13 Thoughts on bailouts for companies that manipulated their earnings-per-share ratio by stock buybacks? Impact on the global economy
1:03:14 Impact on luxury goods? Should there be a monthly stipend for low-income citizens?
1:12:10 COVID-19 exposing holes in the US healthcare system
1:17:44 Should we ban wet markets globally?
1:24:12 Over/Under: when Americans will be allowed to go out to restaurants again
1:28:18 When will the weekly poker game resume?
0:53 Jason intros Bessemer's David Cowan
1:54 David explains how he got his start in Venture capital in 1992
4:22 What does Bessemer look for in a potential investor today? How has VC hiring and demographics have changed over time?
8:10 David gives an anecdote about understanding "sunk cost"
14:12 David explains how and why Bessemer started owning their anti-portfolio
16:03 Stories on passing on Facebook, Tesla, Google, PayPal, Napster & Youtube
19:13 What made Youtube standout from Napster from a regulatory perspective
24:05 David describes hearing the Twitch pitch for the first time
26:00 Consumer vs. Enterprise investing
29:42 Sales-driven culture
33:31 When is the right time to sell a company?
41:15 Anti-tech backlash... is it justified?
47:38 Who is the best Founder & CEO David has ever worked with?
52:10 Meeting Wade Foster and investing in Zapier
55:29 Are growth & product people making the best VCs today?
58:53 Thoughts on Quantum Computing
1:02:19 How is David investing in Robotics?
1:09:58 Jason ends the show by showing the trailer to David's Silicon Valley mockumentary "Bubbleproof"
0:38 Jason explains the LAUNCH Accelerator
5:39 BasicBlock CEO Taylor Monks details his journey through the LAUNCH Accelerator
14:58 BasicBlock CEO Taylor Monks' biggest takeaways from the Accelerator
27:35 DaoCloud CEO Max Coleman describes his journey into the LAUNCH Accelerator
37:34 How did Max grow throughout the Accelerator?
48:36 Lately CEO Kate Bradley-Chernis describes her experience at the l LAUNCH Accelerator
55:08 What were Kate's biggest takeaways from the Accelerator?
0:01 Jason intros Chamath and Episode 0 of All-In and they discuss their current self-quarantine
0:55 Jason intros David Friedberg
1:35 Chamath gives the inaugural (& potentially final) All-In ad read
2:17 As a Warriors owner, Chamath gives his reaction to the NBA postponing & uncoordinated actions of government & private sectors
4:37 Why was the US so slow to react on both an individual & governmental level? What did the OpenTable data show?
9:03 David explains the actions he would take if he was president
12:37 Thoughts on Trump's private sector involvement
16:58 Has the press failed in its coverage, or are they just feeding people what they want?
23:52 What will the next few weeks in the US look like? Why has the virus spread severely in Italy, but not yet in India?
37:20 How the COVID-19 viral coefficient compares to the early days of Facebook's numbers
40:26 Chances of Trump testing positive for the virus? What effect would that have on markets?
48:53 What should we do differently next time?
53:13 Will there both more deaths due to second order effects of the virus than direct deaths?
1:01:06 Should there be a global stimulus package? Effect of low-volatility during recent bull run?
1:11:26 Chances of a quick resolution?
1:16:48 How are Jason & Chamath advising their portfolio companies? How are IPO's of companies like Airbnb & DoorDash being effected?
1:21:17 How to approach the next year in startups & VC?
0:01 Jason intros today's topics
2:15 George calls in and asks Jason about social media interference in the 2020 election
11:13 Joey calls in and asks Jason for some tips on starting and growing a podcast
21:05 Dan asks Jason about which health-tech startup idea to pursue
26:49 Alex calls in and asks Jason about the types companies that will thrive in an economic downturn
34:35 Karen asks Jason about legendary founder & investor traits
44:11 Blaze calls in and asks Jason about when to join a startup to maximize equity & job security
52:14 Patrick asks Jason how to get on his radar in terms of getting an internship/job at LAUNCH
55:33 James asks how a young early-stage firm can differentiate itself from the pack and attract talented founders
0:53 Jason intros Nicole Quinn
1:59 Nicole & Jason describe their separate Calm investments, will it be the first mental health IPO?
8:00 Calm's I.C.E. celebrity engagement method & how it got them LeBron James
8:54 Investing in Sophia Amoruso & Girlboss: what is it about "Force of Nature" product people that attracts Nicole to invest?
16:03 Investing in Gwyneth Paltrow & Goop: what is Goop's business? What are the most profitable parts of their business?
19:42 Investing in Rothy's, and the inverse correlation between the success of e-commerce companies and how much they've raised
24:34 The magic moment of having shares transfer from private to public when a company IPOs
26:53 Changing her risk-averse mindset going from Wall Street to Venture Capital
33:28 Nicole's current investment interests, why voice assistants are crucial for retention
38:16 Investing in Lady Gaga & HAUS Labs: driving business via new product "drops", understanding how engaged a celebrity is in their business, celebrities as an acquisition channel
45:03 Dealing with Goop product blowback, the Netflix series & understanding the science behind it
50:12 Investing in Cameo & CEO Steven Galanis: celebrity selfie videos as a platform
54:44 What types of Founders does Nicole invest in?
56:54 How is Nicole's portfolio split up by stage?
0:40 Jason intros Jeff Housenbold
2:16 What did Jeff do before joining the Vision Fund? How did he help scale eBay & Shutterfly?
4:15 How did he wind up at SoftBank? What was it like being recruited by Masayoshi Son? How did Masa pitch the Vision Fund to Jeff?
13:28 What was the timeframe for deploying the $100B Vision Fund?
18:10 How does SoftBank size their bets and how do they counsel founders to handle massive amounts of capital?
20:07 Coaching founders on using capital to create talent moats & build brand partnerships
22:17 Scaling their diligence alongside their capital deployment, understanding core customers & focusing on positive unit economics
28:30 How did the Uber & Didi deals go down? How close was SoftBank to investing in Lyft instead of Uber?
33:23 How SoftBank looks at investing in adjacent companies and mergers
38:42 Jeff's background & the importance of education in changing your lot in life
46:07 Changing focus from Growth to Profits, the effect of short-term thinking and its impact on Dara and Uber since their 2019 IPO
57:23 Thoughts on VTOL? Will we see VTOL vehicles or self-driving first?
1:02:16 Jeff's take on Coronavirus and its impact on the markets & how founders and CEOs can combat market volatility
1:09:38 Portfolio Review: Zume Pizza
1:11:32 Portfolio Review: Katerra
1:14:03 Jason guesses the toughest 4 industries to penetrate
1:15:03 Portfolio Review: Plenty
1:19:29 Portfolio Review: Memphis Meats
1:23:05 What happened with the WeWork investment? What % does SoftBank now own, and can they turn it around? What are some lessons learned from the entire saga?
1:27:13 Jeff shares some "Jeff-ism's of Business"
1:27:52 How is the Vision Fund II raise coming along?
1:28:36 How the scale of the Vision Fund impacts people's ability to understand their investments
1:32:05 For founders: When is the right time to engage with SoftBank?
0:54 Jason intros Max Lobovsky
3:21 What is Max's business with Formlabs? What are people printing? Is it hitting scale with consumers yet?
10:52 Where does the majority of their business come from?
15:40 Is coronavirus impacting the supply-side of Formlabs?
20:16 Understanding the most lucrative use cases for 3D printing
21:58 What skill do you need to be a 3D modeler?
31:04 How did Max raise his first round of capital at Formlabs?
36:02 What was his experience at MIT's Media Lab?
39:54 Why did Formlabs raise a $15M Series D at a $1bn valuation? Benefits of building Formlabs organically
50:00 How Formlabs helped a makeup artist win an Oscar & how many customers in Hollywood do they have? Other use cases for 3D printing?
58:08 What is the "Holy Grail" vertical for 3D printing?
1:00:15 Best examples of 3D printing in sci-fi media
0:51 Jason intros Bain Capital's Ajay Agarwal
3:17 Are we experiencing late-stage capitalism? Is capitalism broken?
8:22 Why is upward mobility stalling?
15:29 What is it about founders & startups that made him dedicate his life's work to?
18:46 What piece of knowledge got him in startups? Ajay describes gross margin & incremental costs
23:03 Two insights on why enterprise software is the best business
30:11 Mitt Romney at Bain Capital & issues with cultural appropriation
36:44 Ajay's early days at Trilogy Software, how software sales were different in the 1990s
42:23 Companies going from sales-driven culture to product-driven
46:52 Ajay describes one of his best investments: FourKites
49:13 Ajay describes the biggest miss of his anti-portfolio: Pinterest, and why some firms care about stage and some are stage-agnostic
54:57 Has Bain ever participated in every round of a companies life-cycle?
58:15 Effects of the SoftBank Vision Fund on venture capital as a whole
0:54 Want to see what it's like to be an Angel Investor in Jason's Syndicate? DM @thesyndicate415 to read Jason's last 3 deal memos
1:37 Jason intros Austen Allred & gets his side of the recent Lambda School controversy
6:22 Jason intros Katherine Boyle & gets her take on how she would have advised Austen on PR
7:58 Explaining Lambda School in simple terms
13:10 Setting up Lambda School as a counter to predatory loans
14:31 Jason explains late-stage journalism, Austen describes his board's response
16:20 Techlash, issues with journalism today, how Balaji-coronavirus story sparked response
24:52 Fixing journalism
28:00 New Twitter investors Elliot Management want Jack out as CEO, is Twitter broken?
30:00 Misconceptions of Lambda School rolling up ISAs, how privatizing education in SV causes techlash
40:33 Katherine explains her investments in the defense space
46:00 DoorDash files for IPO, did they miss their window?
47:30 Analyzing coronavirus, wet markets, the "Wuhan shake"
58:51 Robinhood outage as Dow jumps 1000 points
1:01:03 What does Katherine invest in?
1:04:41 Jason introduces his new soundboard
0:42 Jason intros Jack Kramer & Nick Martell of Robinhood Snacks
1:06 Starting Market Snacks as a side hustle after rooming together in college
13:24 What Series of Robinhood were they acquired at?
14:11 Jason's origin story meeting Vlad & investing in Robinhood
18:38 Coronavirus impact on the public market... worrisome or no big deal?
30:16 Iger steps down as Disney CEO, will this hurt them long-term?
35:40 Star Wars movie rankings
37:00 Is $DIS a buy or sell? What about the next CEO?
42:11 Bloomberg or Bernie?
46:56 Tech-lash: Link-baiting Tesla crash
53:02 Growth vs. Profitability in the Private & Public markets
54:34 How are Uber, Lyft, etc. combatting this?
1:01:55 How will Airbnb handle the shift?
1:04:10 VTOL vs. self-driving
1:07:58 What are "Cult Stocks"? How are they defined?
1:11:09 Millennials & Gen-Z are voting with their wallets
1:23:46 What are Jack & Nick's favorite stocks right now?
0:50 Jason intros Benchmark's Sarah Tavel
1:20 Aside from Slack, what other companies grew like consumer-facing but charge like enterprise?
3:19 How was Sarah recruited to Benchmark? How is Benchmark different from other major VC firms?
12:04 Limited upside of talking to the press in 2020
17:30 Growing up in NYC and going to Harvard
21:30 Jason on becoming a "Don't touch the thermostat" dad
23:58 How did the offer from Peter Fenton go down? What drew Sarah to Benchmark?
28:36 Sarah's thoughts on disrupting VC as a woman from the inside & from the outside
37:30 How going from operating to investing is trading stress for anxiety
40:51 Jason and Sarah discuss their most personal & significant investments: Calm & Pinterest
47:26 How Pinterest's business model was a mold of Facebook and Google
49:45 Jason tells regulators how to stop Google
58:14 Investing in Chainalysis & Crypto infrastructure
1:12:44 Are the best companies polarizing?
1:16:30 Investing in Hipcamp
1:29:43 Marc Andreessen asks Sarah a question
0:44 Jason shares some thoughts on hard work
1:52 Jason intros Anthemos Georgiades and they discuss how Zumper was launched at TechCrunch
4:02 How did Anthemos wind up as a founder after working in consulting
6:45 What is Zumper's origin story? How many iterations did they go through before coming up with an MVP?
15:34 How did Zumper monetize their marketplace?
18:30 Partnering with Facebook & diversifying revenue
27:12 Anthemos shares thoughts on growth vs. profitability, should Brandless exist?
31:03 Uber vs. Airbnb in terms of EBITDA, thoughts on current state of Airbnb with IPO pending
37:56 Differences between Airbnb and VRBO customers according to Jason
41:00 Airbnb's effect on the rental market
46:15 Thoughts on co-living spaces
48:35 Reactions to Zumper's monthly rent report
51:20 Co-living as a business from a VC perspective
53:02 Jason gives Anthemos some NYC hotel suggestions
54:01 Jason's Hertz car rental story
59:04 Increasing difficulty of building a major team in San Francisco
1:07:38 Jason calls Ben Horowitz & answers a question from a fan
0:36 Jason intros Monique & Wade
8:29 Tech Journalists vs. Founders/VCs
14:48 Is link-baiting press a systemic, societal issue?
19:21 Future of Founders/VCs controlling their own voice via podcasts, email newsletters, etc.
23:59 SpaceX sending passengers into space in late 2021, early 2022
28:02 Kickstarter employees vote to Unionize
41:28 Gray New World - how lucrative is the growing elderly demographic?
49:37 Twitter combatting fake/misleading news with potential new features
58:01 Blue Apron continues to plummet
1:04:13 Lambda School controversy
1:12:42 What is the path for Zapier? What is No-Code's impact on the startup industry?
0:50 Jason intros CRV's George Zachary
2:20 Passing on Google at MDV and coming to peace with the anti-portfolio
5:51 Differences between leadership & management, where Steve Jobs, Larry & Sergey fell on that scale
10:27 Why 1990's VC was sales & marketing-driven instead of product-driven as it is now
12:52 What shifted the philosophy to product-driven businesses?
18:00 Meeting Elon Musk in the 1990's and backing Zip2
21:59 What were Seed investors like in the '90s? Origins of Sand Hill Road
25:48 Elon pitching Zip2 to a conglomerate of venture firms & selling Zip2 for cash
28:07 How VCs can be conceptually right and wrong in the outcome, how X.com merged with Confinity and became PayPal
33:27 Why is it harder to 3x the massive venture funds? How is age a limiting factor in VC?
40:28 "It doesn't make a difference what you pass on. It only takes 1 company to make your career." Positive & negative feedback cycles in VC.
42:54 Battling through multiple portfolio companies dying at once
44:15 What was George's biggest investment hit, both economically & personal fulfillment?
52:37 George describes his recent health scares and how they shifted his investment focus
1:04:06 Reasons the life-expectancy in the US has gone sideways in recent years
1:07:39 Potential health-tech advancements in the near future
1:21:58 Thoughts on CRISPR & "designer babies"
1:30:27 Cell-based fish & meat
1:37:32 Potential coronavirus repercussions - what's real and what's not?
1:55:13 Jason calls for eliminating handshakes
0:56 Jason intros David Heinemeier Hansson (@DHH) and asks about the work-from-home paradigm shift
5:28 Measuring programming success via budgets instead of estimates, quantifying creativity
9:57 Are incentive systems inherently bad?
13:01 How terrible commutes turned the tides for remote work in Silicon Valley, why do executives subject themselves to horrible working conditions?
17:59 What is the optimal amount of work hours per week?
19:58 Benefits of higher minimum wage
23:28 How can America "get to Denmark"? Should we rein in capitalism?
27:19 How do educational stipends work in Denmark? Benefits of state-sponsored education & healthcare
32:27 Is American bureaucracy able to change quickly?
35:52 Are gig workers being exploited? Why or why not?
45:57 Flexibility vs. Security in the gig-economy
51:20 Has the American Dream become false in America?
1:00:26 Are ISA schools (like Lambda School) an innovation or a bandaid on the failing capitalist system?
1:06:30 What do successful numbers look like for ISAs?
1:12:28 Starting Basecamp & raising from Jeff Bezos in the early days
1:19:43 Roasting Jeff Bezos on Twitter, socialism, progressivism in America
1:28:13 Amazon disappointments & how can Bezos save face?
1:36:31 Wealth tax debate
1:43:23 Which major tech companies should be broken up?
1:52:04 Will GDPR-like policies work in America?
1:55:59 What is David doing with Hey.com? Should there be two-sided consent in email read-receipt tracking?
2:03:29 Could there ever be an open-source Twitter or messaging app? Was WhatsApp it before being bought by Facebook?
2:09:34 Thoughts on tech journalism vs. big-tech
2:12:22 Can big-tech regulation fix the competitive landscape?
0:41 Jason intros "Edge" Author Laura Huang
3:00 How do Harvard MBA students compare with Stanford MBA students?
7:17 Why did Laura write "Edge" at this time?
8:55 Overcoming disadvantages based on race, ethnicity & gender
14:56 Laura's experience reading her own audiobook
17:23 What does her research show about structural bias against Female entrepreneurs?
23:33 How can a founder turn adversity into an advantage when asked a question with a negative bias?
28:01 How being underestimated inhibits the opportunity to enrich & provide value? What is an example of delight in p2p interaction?
36:39 How should we look at intent when discussing bias & privilege?
44:35 How to deal with being bitter vs. getting better and controlling emotions while still allowing ourselves to feel?
1:00:17 Laura & Jason share personal stories about bitter vs. better & explain how she converted her energy
1:05:09 What is Laura's hope for the lasting impact "Edge" has on its readers?
0:50 Jason intros Coatue Management's Dan Rose
1:52 Dan takes Jason through getting his internship at Amazon in 1999 and meeting Jeff Bezos
6:55 What was Amazon's core business in 1999? What was it like incubating the Kindle in the mid-2000s?
10:04 How did Bezos grow as a leader and businessman during Dan's tenure at Amazon?
18:21 How does Bezos' ability to turn Amazon around in the eyes of public investors relate to Uber, Lyft and other large & unprofitable companies? How does Bezos inspire so much loyalty?
23:27 What was Amazon's company culture during Dan's tenure? How was AWS developed?
26:08 How did Dan wind up at Facebook as employee ~130? What did he see in a young Mark Zuckerberg?
32:13 Who created the original Facebook News Feed?
35:34 How did they get the ad-network to work at scale?
42:50 Where do Elon, Bezos & Zuckerberg rank in the Pantheon of Entrepreneurs?
44:06 How did the billion-dollar acquisition offer from Yahoo! fall apart?
46:42 Why launching open registration led to the billion-dollar investment by Microsoft
48:30 Insights on the Instagram deal
51:00 How Facebook bounced back from the stock dropping from $31 to $17 shortly after IPO & how Dan's experience at Amazon helped him rally the troops?
58:44 Zuckerberg's response to mistakes
1:03:01 How did Dan wind up at Coatue Management leading a $700M early-stage fund?
1:08:01 What is Coatue's strategy around data science?
1:11:20 Dan had over 100 Angel investments before joining Coatue
1:13:18 What is Coatue's new fund strategy?
1:16:09 How does Dan think of diligence in regards to early-stage companies?
1:20:25 What does Dan want to see in an ideal founder?
0:46 Jason intros Dr. Brian Moore
3:39 What does Orreco do and how do they help elite athletes?
4:46 Do they sample blood?
6:33 What teams do they work with?
7:50 What is a bio-marker?
9:05 Why has inflammation monitoring become so popular?
15:01 Brian demos the Orreco app
22:56 What are the top reasons for elite athletes to use Orreco?
28:06 How did Brian get into this business?
30:34 How does blood differ in elite athletes? Is it regional?
36:25 What does Orreco have the biggest impact on?
43:40 What kinds of performance optimization should or shouldn't be legal in pro sports
51:12 How have they monitored machine learning?
56:47 Importance of glucose monitoring
59:15 Correlation in NBA between minutes per game and years played?
1:01:29 Taking a personal loan out to fund Orreco in the early days
1:15:39 Marc Andreessen asks Jason a question
0:57 Jason intros Alex & Sachin
4:46 When and why did they start Cocoon?
6:40 Why did Facebook keep changing their developer tools platform?
9:22 What is the vision for Cocoon and who is it made for?
14:58 How did they get the cocoon.com domain name and why do strong domain names breed trust?
16:57 What are they doing with customer data and how will they monetize?
20:20 Cocoon demo and Alex takes us through some key features
29:45 How difficult was raising money going up against Facebook, iMessage, etc.?
33:04 Who is their ideal customer?
38:35 Building a company in San Francisco vs. outside of it
41:57 Jason tries to invest in Cocoon live on air
47:45 Growing Cocoon in the crowded app store
51:51 Why do Cocoon founders use Notion?
54:37 Jason calls Ben Horowitz
0:01 Jason intros Season 4 of Angel & Index Ventures' Sarah Cannon
3:22 How did working for the Obama administration lead Sarah into Venture Capital?
4:56 Picking a fight with Larry Summers as an intern
15:42 Choosing Harvard's MBA program over Stanford's
18:26 Getting into VC
20:27 Working at CapitalG
24:09 How was the foundation of Index built by Danny Rimer and what is Sarah's role?
31:42 What does Index focus on during a Series A and what is a partner meeting like at Index?
36:31 Thoughts on gig economy work and is there a better way to categorize freelancers and full-time workers in the gig economy?
44:54 Sarah's proposed solution for categorizing gig economy workers
46:36 Jason's thoughts on politicians evolving their views over time
50:15 Ideas to increase upward mobility in America
1:00:35 What was Sarah's first investment? How did it work out?
1:08:42 Founders getting distracted after raising large rounds of funding
1:11:05 Thoughts on emerging international startup markets like India & Australia
1:13:19 Is France an underrated startup market?
1:17:42 What is Sarah most passionate about investing in?
1:07 Megan pitches Moment AI (facial recognition software that helps drivers)
3:19 Juan pitches DreamOn (wearable and app that help you fall asleep and sleep better)
5:38 Elissa pitches Fumé (marijuana products)
7:46 Feedback & questions for Cohort 3
19:54 Rankings for Cohort 3
23:38 Stewart pitches EVOLUTIONS (marketplace for financial fitness)
25:34 Nadia pitches Keybee (marketplace for short-term rental support services)
29:21 Riana pitches Journey Foods (service that brings metrics and nutrition tools to improve product development)
31:45 Feedback & questions for Cohort 4
42:49 Rankings for Cohort 4
47:43 Jason & Dave rank the best companies from cohorts 1-4
1:31 Bryan pitches Project OWL (smart communications platform)
3:46 Erin pitches Nude Barre (DTC eco-friendly hosiery)
6:02 Mike pitches STACT (Athlete performance tracking)
8:05 Feedback & questions for Cohort 1
16:53 Rankings for Cohort 1
19:53 Jonathan pitches Move38 (smart tabletop gaming)
22:04 Brandon pitches ReplyBuy (text messaging support for sports, entertainment & higher education)
24:20 Stella pitches Stella Carakasi DTC (Size-inclusive & affordable luxury clothing for women)
28:22 Feedback & questions for Cohort 2
37:55 Rankings for Cohort 2
0:48 Jason intros Iain Thomson & Kristen Dumont
1:58 Iain on the grim state of his WeWork office
4:34 Bezos phone hack, Saudi interference
15:12 DJ Elon plays Jason out of the break
16:45 $TSLA vs. $TSLAQ, Elon haters & more
23:07 Airborne Tesla in LA
27:30 Coronavirus effects on business, are China's numbers legit?
35:27 How regulated are food markets in China?
47:46 Iain's thoughts on Brexit
50:19 Barstool Sports, unions, do modern unions disincentivize top performers?
1:06:37 Uber/DoorDash proposed merger, is SoftBank getting desperate?
1:17:15 Leaked Column deck, founder derangement
1:28:35 France/UK big-tech tax, should Amazon pay extra?
1:34:31 Who wins the 2020 Election?
1:41:36 Jason gets Ben Horowitz on the line to end the sho
0:47 Jason intros One Drop CEO Jeff Dachis
2:37 What was Jeff's original vision with One Drop? How has it evolved over time?
5:39 How did One Drop go from collecting data to making it actionable?
8:09 How important was getting the One Drop retail products into Apple stores?
9:46 Raising money as a hardware healthcare product
15:23 How did the Bayer partnership come about?
17:57 Have any major drug companies built software to manage what happens after taking medication?
21:19 What is the One Drop business today? How does coaching play into their product?
30:27 Who are One Drop's enterprise sales targets? Why don't more companies have health practitioners in-house?
36:37 Should employers be tied to healthcare?
40:04 What contributes most to the diabetes epidemic?
44:46 What are continuous glucose monitors? How do they help?
48:34 Why is insulin so expensive in the US compared to other countries?
51:47 Will we ever be able to know our blood sugar levels without intrusive hardware?
57:47 Will humans see average life-expansion into the 100's over the next few decades?
1:02:12 How gene-therapy becomes dangerous
0:53 Jason intros Bubble CEO Emmanuel Straschnov
4:25 Defining "no-code" and how Bubble differs from other no-code tools?
9:04 How much more efficient is Bubble than popular coding schools? How advanced do you have to be to learn Bubble?
14:16 Emmanuel shares Bubble's origin story and explains what Bubble unlocks for startups?
16:51 Emmanuel demos Bubble & explains notrealtwitter.com
21:17 What are some Bubble success stories?
26:12 Why did Emmanuel wait 7 years to raise their Seed Round?
29:23 Will no-code decrease the demand for developers over time?
33:26 What is Bubble making per user per year? What will that be in 5 years?
34:32 When did VCs take interest in Bubble?
39:43 How are Emmanuel's managerial skills developing as Bubble scales their team?
46:13 What is the core beachhead for Bubble?
48:11 Is there a no-code education platform in the works?
0:01 Calling all writers! Apply to be the first TWiST Archivist at twistarchivist.com
2:42 Jason intros CEO Coach & Author Matt Mochary
4:49 How and why did Matt decide to become a CEO coach?
8:32 What is the secret to being a great coach for investors & CEOs?
12:12 Drawing feedback out of employees
19:27 How to differentiate healthy fear from paralyzing fear?
32:06 How is Matt's method structured?
34:52 Understanding & dealing with imposter syndrome
40:27 Differences between coaching Gen-X & Millennials
42:33 Starting the Mochary foundation helping formerly incarcerated people get & keep legitimate jobs
48:19 Understanding negative motivation and transforming into purpose-filled motivation
52:39 What is Matt's "Shadow CEO" Method
54:04 What does Matt charge?
54:52 Matt coaches Jason live on air
0:58 Jason intros Melissa Hanna
1:40 What is Mahmee? What challenges are they solving for?
4:54 How does Mahmee acquire customers? Who pays for the service?
7:37 What is the current cost of having a child in the US? What are some glaring postpartum care issues in the US?
15:28 How did Melissa get Arlan Hamilton to invest?
18:42 How did Mark Cuban invest in Mahmee?
21:02 Why are black mothers 3-4x more likely to die from childbirth? Why is there such bias in healthcare?
28:31 How can Mahmee increase the birth experience across the US?
33:24 How does Melissa balance balancing the current confines in which they have to work with looking towards the future and what is possible?
38:42 What are the complexities of the healthcare space that make it hard for startups? What is the opportunity?
45:47 What are some Mahmee success stories?
51:54 Better ways to deal with postpartum depression?
57:01 How did Serena Williams come onboard via Serena Ventures?
1:39 Peter calls in and asks Jason the optimal check size if first engaging with a company in their Series A and general best practices while Angel investing
14:00 Sarah asks Jason why so many investors seek out a "lead"
17:30 Amrit calls in and asks Jason how to run a US-based startup as an international student
24:29 Jake asks Jason to identify some easily avoidable mistakes that first-time founders make
33:44 Spencer calls in and asks Jason about some of the recent layoffs in the tech space
0:46 Mehak from OnDelta (ISA School for Growth Hacking/Marketing) asks Jason best practices on scaling her business as a solo founder
10:18 Ketan from HireClub (Career coaching SaaS) asks Jason about transitioning his business to help with natural churn
20:59 Benjamin from Infection Control (Hardware infection control for sickest hospital patients) asks Jason how to raise for a medical device in a heavily regulated field
33:13 Tom from TribeXR (VR training for practical/creative skills) asks Jason how to pivot from a one-time payment to subscriptions
43:58 Corbin from LUU (Aromatherapy alternative to nicotine vapes) asks Jason how to separate his startup from JUUL and other vaping products
53:04 Thomas from Wash Day (On-demand laundry logistics app) asks Jason how to compete with large laundry incumbents as a bootstrapped startup
1:00 Jason intros Chris Best
3:24 What happened to Kik? (Chris' first startup) What did he learn from it?
5:03 What is it about email newsletters that attracted Chris?
9:41 Chris explains the AI alignment problem and how it relates to content consumption
13:58 What bad behaviors have Google & Facebook's ad algorithms created? How is Chris working to fix them?
18:09 Gamification's impact on startups
23:02 What types of writers are best suited for Substack?
29:25 How did Chris secure a $15M Series A from a16z with only 3 FTEs? Plus explaining the benefits of being "default-alive"
34:33 Are we approaching a flipping of the attention economy?
43:20 How does Substack make money?
49:46 Benefits of writer collaboration & cross-promotion
50:57 How the Deadspin situation relates to Substack
56:01 Most interesting newsletter content so far?
58:19 Dealing with offensive speech & explicit content
1:05:32 When will major publications start losing writers to Substack?
1:10:00 Plans to add audio or video?
1:11:34 What are the top-performing newsletters and what are the price ranges?
1:17:29 Ad-model vs. Paid-model at Inside & Substack
1:30:16 Chris explains the Substack fellowship
1:32:23 Thoughts on "hustle culture"
0:47 Jason intros Open Office Hours
2:15 Trevor from Moovin (on-demand software to rent professional furniture) asks Jason to share some hacks on how to gain interest from investors
18:31 Jelica from Saddle Shoppe (e-commerce luxury equestrian clothing/gear) asks Jason best practices on scaling while bootstrapping in a niche market
34:49 Antonio from Youcanevent (event services marketplace) asks Jason what and how to automate operations tasks
44:44 Ossie from PICKL (B2B product/consumer data platform) asks Jason about acquiring national customers outside of California
55:57 Jontae from NatureTrak (compliance platform connecting Cannabis companies and banks) asks Jason about staying focused on different customers in a two-sided marketplace
0:49 Jason intros Open Office Hours Live at Neyborly
1:09 Sebastian from Tailpath asks Jason how to generate consumer habits to drive demand
18:37 Sana from Ribitt asks Jason how to overcome past failures in a lucrative market
38:21 Elizabeth from Deep Isolation talks with Jason about solving nuclear waste and developing new nuclear energy
52:12 John from Sircles asks Jason how to take on major incumbents in a large market
LINKS to brackets: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1zqc-2vDRl7e86USf4okiX8DRcXPzX1HW
||
https://www.canva.com/design/DADuVKZjuc4/9Qt3B4m4DU-Z_HxbuDTb6w/view?utm_content=DADuVKZjuc4&utm_campaign=designshare&utm_medium=link&utm_source=sharebutton
0:29 Jason intros Garry & Zach
3:02 Jason goes over the bracket-style breakdown
3:15 Best of the decade: Ride-Sharing vs. AI/ML
8:32 Best: Amazon Prime vs. 4G LTE
10:07 Best: Tesla M3 vs. Disney buying Marvel + Star Wars IP
14:15 Best: Streaming vs. Mindfulness
17:01 Garry's Best: AI/ML vs. 4G LTE
20:20 Jason's Best: Model 3 vs. Mindfulness
24:05 Zach's Best: Ride-Sharing vs. Streaming
25:12 Jason & Guests pick their biggest win from the last decade
29:20 Jason tees up worst of the decade bracket
29:45 Worst of the decade: 2016 Election Fiasco vs. City San Francisco/Amazon Eating the World/Snowflake Culture
38:01 Worst: ICO Madness vs. Zuckerberg
40:34 Worst: WeWork vs. Vaping
44:13 Worst: Juicero vs. Theranos
44:48 Zach's Worst: 2016 Election vs. ICO Madness
45:09 Garry's Worst: Amazon Eating the World vs. ICO Madness
45:56 Jason's Worst: 2016 Election vs. Zuckerberg
49:52 Jason's Worst: WeWork vs. Theranos
51:56 Garry's Worst: Amazon Eating the World vs. Theranos
53:47 At what stage does Garry & Zach like to invest in companies?
55:52 Championship round
Jason: Mindfulness vs. Zuckerberg
Garry: Mindfulness vs. Theranos
Zach: Streaming vs. 2016 Election Fiasco
59:52 What topics will define the 2020's?
0:52 Kenny from Bacarai asks Jason how to start a flywheel with paid pilots as a pre-revenue company in the group airfare space
13:30 Elyse from Bloom Bras asks Jason some tactical questions around converting bounced website visitors
32:05 Pranav from Glyph asks Jason about goal-setting around raising a Seed round
50:31 Mark from Recapped asks Jason how to better understand & capitalize on investor feedback
0:48 Jason intros Gil and asks about his lengthy background in cybersecurity
3:02 What experiences inspired Check Point?
8:31 Gil explains how he raised money for Check Point in the early 1990's
14:04 How did Gil build and price his first product in a developing market?
16:46 Dealing with the first batch of cyber attacks at Check Point
19:10 What was the profile of a typical hacker in the early Internet? When did the criminality start and how does crypto tie in?
25:20 Potential of Chinese hardware hacking & hackers stealing wired money from venture firms
30:16 What are the risks associated with high-level governmental cyber security breaches
31:42 Should companies be required to build backdoors into their messaging apps?
34:24 Are Tor networks totally safe?
38:19 Gil is the "Godfather of Cybersecurity"
38:55 How protective are two-factor authentication & biometrics?
41:26 What are the most dangerous types of hacks?
44:08 Why are Microsoft products more susceptible to hacks than Apple?
46:03 Will deep-fakes lead to more threats?
50:05 Best cyber-protection advice?
55:28 Are the electrical grids a huge liability?
57:55 What is their recruiting playbook?
0:52 Jason intros TWiST Live guest and one of his first investments Marco Zappacosta & Marco describes how they met in 2010
2:28 What did Thumbtack look like back in 2010? How has it changed in 2019?
6:09 Dealing with regional price differences
7:58 How much has mobile demand increased since starting Thumbtack?
11:53 What was it like running a startup in 2010 vs. 2019?
14:38 Impact of starting Thumbtack 2 weeks before Lehman Brothers went out of business
15:43 How did Marco's first try at institutional fundraising go? What did he learn from a bad investor experience?
23:13 What should founders optimize for during fundraising?
27:50 What drove growth at Thumbtack? How did they reach $10M in revenue? How did they remain focused on digging after striking oil?
31:56 Focusing on output over input
35:07 Transforming the Thumbtack experience after hitting $100M in revenue
44:33 What has Marco learned about building a marketplace over the past decade?
52:22 How has the gig-economy impacted overall employment in the US?
56:59 What is private/public healthcare's impact on entrepreneurship in a society?
1:02:33 How is Thumbtack dealing with the scarcity of trade workers?
1:04:41 What advice would Marco give himself in 2010?
1:07:16 Thoughts on minimum wage?
0:58 Jason welcomes the Startmate companies to the TWiST Studio
1:36 Zac from JigSpace pitches an AR platform for educational presentations
11:56 Teresa from Brandcrush pitches an experiential marketing platform
24:57 Jimmy from Syncio pitches a 1-click Shopify inventory sync extension
37:53 Alice from Ovira pitches a wearable device that helps stop period pain
46:14 Brett from Flaktest pitches an educational gaming platform teaching school subjects thru e-sports
54:48 Gemma from WORK180 a women-oriented job site where only endorsed employers can post jobs
1:03:34 Jason sits down with Startmate's Head of Operations Michael Batko and reveals his top 3!
1:08 Jason intros Joel Flory
2:12 What is VSCO? How is it different than Instagram, Facebook & other photo-sharing apps?
4:33 How does VSCO grow at hyper speed without follower counts, likes, etc.?
8:28 What is VSCO's scale so far?
12:23 How does VSCO get people (mostly Gen-Z) to pay for a social network? How do they view pricing?
18:09 How VSCO uses themselves as a tool for other social networks
19:52 What is a VSCO Girl? How have they capitalized on the Gen-Z meme phenomenon?
21:31 Joel's thoughts on e-commerce
27:19 Joel is a long-time TWiST fan!
30:00 Mistakes Joel learned from in his 9-year journey at VSCO
32:26 Has iPhone photography ruined the photography industry?
36:53 How does VSCO deal with inappropriate content? How does their feed algorithm work?
43:59 Jason goes through VSCO's funding history and asks why Joel didn't sell VSCO for a massive profit
46:06 Is the greatest art created by those who don't care about what others think?
47:41 Collapse of the photography industry & sense of belonging at VSCO
51:44 Advantage of having HQ in Oakland
54:59 VSCO global expansion
57:17 Magic of subscriptions
1:05:01 The 3 truth's of VSCO
0:51 Jason intros Josh Browder & DoNotPay
2:48 Starting DoNotPay in college
6:12 How much $ has DoNotPay saved citizens since launching in 2016?
7:46 Josh explains his product roadmap to Jason
15:14 DoNotPay's mission and how Wells Fargo scammed its customers
17:37 Josh takes us through DoNotPay's suite of features starting with the robot lawyer/chatbot
19:57 Josh describes the "Skip Waiting on Hold" feature
23:37 DoNotPay's "Contract Reading AI"
28:31 Benefits of capitalist markets when consumers are treated poorly
30:51 Thoughts on Facebook?
34:05 "Hidden $ Discovery" on DoNotPay
34:47 What is DoNotPay doing for immigration
41:59 Jason asks Josh about his father, Bill Browder life and book, "Red Notice"
48:47 What is the CCPA? How does it relate to DoNotPay?
54:59 Long-term vision of DoNotPay?
56:24 Full audio of Ryan Block's call with Comcast
0:44 Jason intros Luke and describes how he found out about Farmer's Fridge
5:01 How did Luke overcome barriers of making a vending machine feel like a restaurant
9:18 Luke's life before Farmer's Fridge
11:52 How Luke discovered the issues of distribution that led to Farmer's Fridge
16:18 Building the first Farmer's Fridge vending machine
23:48 Ideal locations for Farmer's Fridge machines & where the first machine was placed
29:35 How did Farmer's Fridge begin to expand and hit critical mass
34:22 Using sales data to craft the most appealing menu
37:00 Getting VCs interested
41:57 Who was the first bold VC to put $ in? How did they prove themselves to institutional firms?
46:27 Machine cost over time & maximizing inventory
49:56 How hardships made Luke fearless
51:30 "Startup cannibalism"??? & low-burn culture
54:27 Farmer's Fridge NYC expansion
58:27 How does Farmer's Fridge compare to fast-casual salad restaurants
1:04 Jason intros Alexandr
2:19 Alexandr shares his personal startup history
5:17 How & why did Scale start?
8:26 What is the best example of Scale in practice? What problem are they solving?
10:44 Video demo of Scale's platform
15:34 Acquiring the scale.com domain name & insights on the unique spelling of Alexandr
17:31 How does Scale deal with data-sharing between customers?
21:34 LIDAR vs. non-LIDAR... or both?
32:29 When will we have capable self-driving vehicles from Palo Alto to San Francisco? Over/under 2030? How will gov't regulations affect self-driving?
36:03 China vs. US in the race of self-driving
41:22 Explainability in ML
47:26 Does it matter that we sometimes don't know the answer to ML systems?
51:39 Should explainability have to be proven in ML?
55:13 How should inherently biased data-sets (like US justice system) be handled via ML?
1:00:00 Importance of focusing on higher-value work
1:02:41 Are dangers of AI overblown?
1:08:50 Will "General AI" happen in our lifetime?
1:12:26 What's the next major AI trend after self-driving?
1:23:46 Does Alexandr remember a time before the Internet?
1:26:35 Jason plays "good tweet/bad tweet" with Alexandr
1:06 Jason intros the Pegasus concept & Yousician's Chris Thür
3:52 Chris explains Yousician
5:22 How did Yousician start and what did Guitar Hero have to do with it?
11:02 Capitalizing on Apple's inclusion of subscriptions
16:00 What were the early days of Yousician like, and was it hard to raise $?
20:32 Is being based in Finland an asset?
27:00 Chris gives his best advice for founders
29:34 Does Chris feel pressure to take $ off the table through secondary shares?
30:45 What does Chris look for in investors and what motivates Finnish employees?
34:55 Jason & Chris talk speeding tickets in Finland
42:19 Chris demos Yousician and Jason sings along
45:25 Jason tries to get on the Yousician Cap Table
47:21 Why Jason believes Yousician will get to 10 million subscribers in the next few years
1:05 Jason intros Alex Mather
2:08 Why did Alex launch a paid subscription publication in a seemingly dying industry?
4:32 How & where did The Athletic start? What was their thesis?
6:32 What was early feedback like from investors?
15:57 Changing approach from ad-based to subscription-based writing
21:34 Why the NHL & MLB are great for The Athletic
22:43 How do they manage young writers?
26:52 What % of their spend goes to editorial?
33:00 Managing 500+ writers
36:20 What are some ways they manage engagement?
39:08 Twitter's impact on journalism
43:39 Scouting new talent & capitalizing on layoffs
50:10 What has the inflated valuations of BuzzFeed & Vox done to the digital media industry?
55:20 How is The Athletic handling Apple's app-store subscription explosion?
58:20 Apple's impact on the boom of incredible products in our society and how The Athletic translates that to editorial
1:01:56 Alex asks Jason: "Mayor of San Francisco or owner of the Knicks?"
1:03:47 Alex shares his thoughts on the NBA/China situation
1:12:01 How does Alex go about re-activating users who have churned?
1:12:42 What does The Athletic think about the prevalence of sports gambling in America?
1:14:55 Who is the most interesting NBA player right now?
1:16:01 Jason & Alex pick who they would start an NBA franchise with today
1:17:50 Jason plays "good tweet/bad tweet" with Alex
1:08 Jason intros Andy Rachleff
2:20 Where is Wealthfront at currently?
4:44 How are traditional money managers allowed to get away with so much?
10:19 How has Andy dealt with becoming the elder statesmen at his company?
14:15 What are Wealthfront Cash Accounts?
18:27 Wealthfront's long term vision
23:49 What is high-revenue retention? How does Wealthfront maintain it?
27:44 How has Silicon Valley changed since Andy started at Benchmark?
32:10 Andy describes his greatest skill as an investor
35:30 What were the 1980's like in Venture Capital?
40:05 What do you call a VC who's never lost money?
55:01 Jason & Andy discuss how Silicon Valley is viewed in the present day
1:03 Jason's thoughts on the exploding DTC movement
4:10 How Jason discovered Eight Sleep
7:15 Jason intros Matteo Franceschetti
8:18 Matteo describes starting Eight Sleep and The Pod
15:48 What was Matteo's history before Eight Sleep
16:27 What did Matteo learn from his prior career in Solar Energy?
20:11 What has Matteo learned about users' sleep through data analysis
22:54 How does the thermo alarm work?
26:52 What is Eight Sleep doing with their sleep data?
29:36 What does the future look like for Eight Sleep?
36:50 What has Matteo learned about DTC marketing?
40:20 Dealing with returns
42:46 Which marketing channels does Matteo capitalize on?
46:30 What were Jason's instructions for reading Eight Sleep ads?
46:55 Are pop-up locations a possibility?
49:03 What is the endgame for smart-fitness products like Peloton & Tonal?
56:04 Eight Sleep's $40M raise
1:10 Jason intros episode 1000 + Brian Alvey & Lon Harris
3:58 "Money is the Root of All Evil" theme song
5:22 What were the first few episodes of TWiST like?
6:27 What is working with Jason like?
7:49 Tyler joins the show from Thailand and shares his history with TWiST
10:55 Brian gives his experience being the first guest on TWiST
11:59 Historic Clip: Gary Vaynerchuk on E24
18:12 History of podcasting as an industry
26:30 Historic Clip: Travis Kalanick on E180
29:54 What led to podcasting becoming a global phenomenon?
38:54 Historic Clip: Naval Ravikant on E244
42:31 How crazy was Jason in the early days of the show?
46:35 Historic Clip: Dave Goldberg on E251
47:55 Cultural shift in the general understanding of early-stage investing
53:44 Historic Clip: Chris Sacca on E291
58:36 Historic Clip: Chuck Johnson from a deleted episode
1:02:16 Historic Clip: Ed Catmull on E665/6
1:05:07 Jacqui explains how she booked Ed Catmull
1:11:24 Historic Clip: Aileen Lee on E988
1:14:52 Historic Clip: Jimmy Chamberlain on E491
1:21:43 What were "Insights from Tyler"?
1:22:47 Historic Clip: Greatest Insight from Tyler
1:25:51 Historic Clip: Peter Thiel on E525
1:27:27 Was the Peter Thiel/Gawker situation the greatest example of pettiness ever?
1:30:25 Historic Clip: Daniel Ek on E580
1:33:58 How has the perception of TWiST changed since the early days?
1:35:15 Historic Clip: Niklas Zennstrom & Sebastian Siemiatkowski on E583
1:39:57 Historic Clip: Peter Sunde on E765
1:43:23 What will the future of streaming & IP look like?
1:49:32 Historic Clip: Molly Wood on E969
1:51:05 What were the biggest changes from the last decade?
2:05:32 How has Jason changed as an interviewer?
2:09:50 Historic Clip: John Carreyrou on E828
2:11:55 Who should play Elizabeth Holmes in the upcoming movie?
2:13:02 Jason unveils the TWiST 1000 Cake and signs off and thanks everyone
0:53 Jason intros Brian Chen
1:15 Brian demos ROOM’s collaboration with Calm
2:42 How did ROOM get their room.com domain name?
3:49 Upside & downside of open floor plans
5:52 Why ROOM manufactures the product in Indiana (for US distribution) & Portugal (for European distribution) as opposed to China
13:47 How did Brian convince VCs to invest in his DTC furniture business
18:13 What Brian thinks about ROOM’s defensibility
21:20 ROOM’s case studies with Density
26:20 How does Brian keep ROOM so capital efficient?
31:28 How does ROOM ventilate their booths?
34:58 Will ROOM raise another round or continue building off profitability?
36:49 What will ROOM’s next products be?
40:05 What would a Jason themed booth look like?
44:01 Alternative solutions for manipulating open floor plans
0:53 Jason intros Sajith Wickramasekara
1:40 What does Benchling do?
2:24 How did Sajith get into life science?
6:55 Benchling's value proposition for scientists
9:04 How do they charge?
10:43 Is Chamath Palihapitiya the most famous Sri Lankan in the US?
13:25 Why immunotherapy is the most exciting development in life science
19:00 3D Printing & harvesting organs in other species
20:50 Ethics of editing a human embryo
28:19 How did the scientific community respond to the embryo controversy
29:52 Breakthroughs in gene therapy
34:09 Defining the line between quackery & brilliance
42:37 Upside & downside of genetically modified crops
47:54 What is the best approach for breakthroughs in life science?
0:52 Jason intros Brian Halligan
1:35 Brian describes how his job has changed as HubSpot has scaled
3:33 Jason asks Brian about buying Jerry Garcia's guitar "Wolf"
4:42 Jason & Brian reminisce over Grateful Dead shows at Giants Stadium
6:36 How the Grateful Dead pioneered "Inbound Marketing" & inspired HubSpot
15:24 How Brian met his Co-founder Dharmesh Shah
17:04 The original idea behind HubSpot
19:18 Ray Ozzie's impact on HubSpot & Brian
25:34 Benefits of introversion
30:06 Succession planning in tech
33:24 Avoiding pot-holes as CEO
35:18 Importance of customer experience in 2019
38:45 Examples of creating a great end-to-end customer experience
49:43 How Brian keeps himself sharp & motivated
52:45 Managing employees from different generations in the "Glassdoor Era"
0:58 Jason intros Alex MacCaw
2:26 What is Clearbit?
8:53 What are some Clearbit use cases?
12:48 Benefits of cashflow positivity in terms of fundraising
15:39 How Jason felt about Alex Tew’s Calm investor updates
18:59 GDPRs effect on Clearbit and the industry as a whole
27:37 How did Alex go from anti-coaching to benefitting from a CEO coach?
32:49 Alex’s experience finding a CEO coach from Naval Ravikant
34:22 What did Alex learn about company building from his coach?
38:39 Clearbit’s therapy policy
44:10 Alex’s history before Clearbit
47:16 Jason describes his first business, “Jason’s Hot Tapes”
49:37 What is Clearbit X?
53:26 Alex gives advice to his younger self
0:55 Jason intros Lidia Yan
5:03 Lidia describes getting into the trucking industry and why NEXT focuses on "drayage"
13:29 How NEXT has revolutionized drayage shipping
18:22 What is a typical shipping broker's take rate
20:54 How does pricing work in the trucking industry?
27:28 How do trucking companies measure their driver's hours?
29:41 Issues within the trucking industry?
35:14 Did trucking lose employees to ride-sharing?
39:20 How NEXT compares to Uber Freight
44:50 Amazon's impact on the trucking industry
46:22 Trade war bringing inconsistency to trucking
48:41 How Lidia dealt with the challenges of being a woman starting a trucking company
50:47 Importance of getting to profitability early on
1:03 Jason intros Phil Libin from LAUNCH Scale 2019
1:51 Phil Libin on "The State Machine that Answers All Growth Questions"
32:40 Jason joins Phil on stage for Q&A
39:56 Jason intros Phil (NFX), Rebecca (Canvas Ventures) & Dave (Freestyle Capital)
41:34 Transitioning from founder to VC
44:08 How to let a founder know when they are headed down the wrong path
47:42 At what stage does a founder have to change their mindset?
49:49 Dave Samuel on Airtable CEO Howie Liu not taking his advice and succeeding anyway
52:21 How Rebecca Lynn recruited current LendingClub CEO Scott Sanborn in the early days
55:39 Should startups still relocate to the Bay Area under any circumstances?
1:03:40 How are VCs dealing with the influx in the number of startups over the past 10 years?
1:13:23 LAUNCH Scale Partner Talk: Lever CTO Nate Smith
0:48 Jason intros Rahul Vohra
3:21 Rahul gives a talk on building a "Product-Market Fit Engine"
29:42 Rahul takes questions from the LAUNCH Scale audience
37:28 Jason intros the "Future of Angel Investing" panelists: Ben Ling (Bling Capital), Clara Brenner (Urban Innovation Fund) & Jeff Clavier (Uncork Capital)
38:54 Has Silicon Valley reached peak entitlement?
41:44 Is "too much $ chasing too few companies" the new normal in VC
45:47 How important is price & valuation in decision making?
49:10 Importance of early revenue & strong board governance
52:28 How many of their biggest hits had multiple revenue models?
58:00 What is "venture-scale" in terms of growth rate?
1:02:40 How to train new associates to understand the importance of revenue quality?
1:09:13 LAUNCH Scale Partner Talk featuring Help Scout's VP of Sales Tim Thyne
0:50 Jason intros Tim Junio
1:44 Tim explains what Expanse does and how "attack surface inventory" is the first step in their cybersecurity platform
5:20 Tim explains the Dyn cyber attack
13:20 How many Fortune 500 companies have been blackmailed via cyber attack?
19:32 "White-hat" hackers impact on the cybersecurity industry
23:12 Human-made passwords are the weakest link
29:09 History of Russian interference
33:16 Why Gmail is good for cybersecurity
35:11 Tim's experience at the CIA
38:29 What worries Tim about potential election manipulation
45:38 Chinese infiltration via apps/tech companies
49:16 Christian Bale's rogue move was dangerous
51:17 Should Chinese-made routers be allowed in America?
56:16 Chances Alexa, Siri or Google Assistant have been compromised?
1:02:20 Is there foreign infiltration in major tech companies?
1:08:29 Jason & Tim go over the Snowden situation
1:17:49 How are government intelligence employees trained to avoid being compromised by foreign agents?
1:23:45 Working with Peter Thiel
0:41 Jason intros the #StartupTuneup with Urban-X companies
2:33 David Rodriguez pitches Food for All: food marketplace to reduce waste & help restaurants sell unused food
12:43 Jim Selevan pitches Pi-Lit: innovating transportation thru a wireless lamp system
26:33 Caroline Hansen pitches Hubbster: providing easy access to outdoor games & gear
41:24 Patrick O'Connor pitches 3AM Innovations: safety software for firefighters
50:52 Michael Lee pitches Evolve Energy: SaaS product that helps consumers save on energy costs thru AI
1:02:51 Urban Us Co-Founder & Partner Stonly Baptiste joins Jason to discuss the companies
1:45 Zander’s take on the recent volatility in the public markets
3:38 What are the lessons learned from the WeWork disaster in terms of corporate governance?
6:09 Importance of diversity on BoD
10:18 Where does WeWork go from here, and how will the situation resolve?
12:35 Why Venture investing is so skewed towards growth, and why the best investors focus on gross profitability
14:41 What is SurveyMonkey’s current business, and why did they go into Enterprise SaaS?
19:20 How listening to customers & employees drives growth
23:33 How Dave Goldberg discovered SurveyMonkey and turned it into the company it is today
25:47 How Zander wound up as CEO after Dave’s passing
28:51 Zander’s thoughts on a Direct Listing as opposed to an IPO
30:42 Getting Serena Williams on the Board of Directors at SurveyMonkey
35:12 Motivating & hiring Gen Z & Millennial employees
37:45 Yosiat from Odoo on integration enabling scalability
0:52 Jason intros Culture Amp's Didier Elzinga
2:44 How Didier's prior career in Visual Effects led him to start Culture Amp
8:24 Issues with yearly performance evaluations
14:15 Did Silicon Valley take culture too far?
17:35 What defines good culture?
24:24 Generational differences in workplace culture
28:30 How should companies view the gig economy in terms of culture and compensation?
37:12 How should compensation work in this era?
43:20 Didier demos Culture Amp
58:45 Jason gives Sir Charles positive/negative feedback
1:07:20 "Buying" culture and anti-fragility
0:51 Jason intros Aileen Lee
1:36 Aileen on her time at MIT, early bias against women in math
5:56 What brought Aileen to San Francisco & working at GAP in the early days of the Internet
9:40 Aileen on working for Mary Meeker & what makes her special
10:25 “All companies that leverage technology are not the same.”
13:10 What made WeWork attractive to investors in the early days?
17:54 How the market is skewed to reward growth
22:35 Thoughts on SoftBank increasing valuations
28:24 How Aileen got involved with Dollar Shave Club
31:07 Jason’s experience with Dollar Shave Club
32:07 “Crushing it” culture in tech
35:12 Aileen’s history at Kleiner Perkins
36:27 Being a woman in VC in the 2000s
41:12 Starting Cowboy Ventures
43:46 Diversity in tech
48:38 What are they working on at All Raise?
0:51 Jason intros Upgrade CEO Renaud Laplanche
2:07 Renaud goes over the idea of his previous startup, LendingClub, and taking it public
9:57 What happened at LendingClub after the IPO?
11:18 What is Upgrade? How did it grow out of LendingClub?
12:40 Are credit scores an outdated metric?
14:11 What is the Upgrade Card?
15:30 Are modern credit card companies sinister in their approach?
24:54 Renaud's thoughts on Crypto
27:40 Where does Upgrade's lending capital come from?
31:22 Are we approaching a downturn after an unprecedented period of growth?
37:28 What goes into a great credit score
42:50 What has changed in startups since Renaud started his first company in 2000?
51:25 What keeps Renaud going after two successful exits as a founder?
1:00 Want to work at LAUNCH? gettheseat.com
2:28 Jason intros StockX's Josh Luber
3:14 When did the sneaker crazy start?
6:37 What is StockX?
9:19 What should Jason wear courtside? And why not Kawhi's?
14:13 Most $ Josh has spent on pair of sneakers? What were they?
18:15 What is StockX's take on a standard transaction?
18:44 Meeting Co-founder & Cavaliers owner Dan Gilbert
19:58 Attracting Mark Wahlberg, Eminem, etc. as investors
22:55 Attracting SV firms vs. attracting famous investors?
29:39 What was Josh's background before StockX?
34:22 Finding investors who understood his space
36:36 How do IPO's (Initial Product Offerings) come into play on StockX?
41:35 StockX's future priorities
42:03 Value of authentication
48:37 Selling on StockX
1:00 Jason intros #AskJason and today's questions
1:47 How to differentiate a great founder from an okay one? - Darius
7:40 Dealing with the lack of updates as a syndicate Angel Investor? - Said
15:54 Bomani calls in and asks Jason about raising through crowdfunding
22:20 What will the new ideal makeup of a founder be after recent events (WeWork, JUUL, etc.)? - Patty
28:29 Peter calls in and asks Jason how Angel Investing changed since "Angel" was released
44:43 Alexandra calls in and asks Jason how to stand out in a slow-to-adapt market
0:47 Jason intros Catharine Dockery
4:29 How Catharine came up with Vice Ventures
7:00 What was the response when Catharine began raising her first fund?
7:19 What does harm-reduction mean for Vice Ventures?
9:21 Getting Marc Andreessen to invest in her fund
13:32 Strangest emails Catharine has received since starting Vice Ventures
16:01 Investing in cannabis
20:15 Investing in psychedelics
26:33 Investing in gambling
31:16 Who are Catharine's typical LPs?
32:15 Investing in alcohol
39:33 Investing in sextech
44:06 Vice Ventures strong thesis against harming others
47:22 Is Vice Ventures hiring?
0:51 Jason intros Shan-Lyn Ma
3:17 Starting Zola and competing in a crowded space
5:14 Jason and Shan go through LAUNCH President Sam's Wedding Registry live on air
6:30 How Zola's registry and business model work
9:10 How does Zola look at Amazon's wedding lists
14:29 What has changed in wedding demographics, and how does Zola keep up?
21:26 Jason and Shan share thoughts on romantic proposal locations
25:37 How working for Kevin Ryan at Gilt impacted Shan
33:27 Shan's insights on keeping employees focused, balancing growth and profitability
39:28 What do the next few years look like for Zola?
42:20 Wedding SEO competition
46:33 Raising moral standards in tech
50:19 Shan's thoughts on being underestimated as a female founder
54:01 How the NYC tech scene has changed over the past 10 years
1:10 Jason intros Hong Quan from Karmic Bikes
2:55 What is the OSLO bike?
4:10 Why are there separate classifications for e-bike laws?
9:15 What does OSLO cost?
12:35 How Karmic bikes are different
14:55 Why e-bikes haven't taken off in the US?
16:52 Is Palo Alto the most bike-friendly city in America?
17:28 Hong shows the OSLO Kickstarter Video
21:45 Why not go the scooter route?
27:34 Hong raps for Jason (yes, really)
33:06 Open Office Hours with Jason
33:18 Jason intros Mark from ZenSports, a P2P sports betting startup
40:22 Mark asks Jason how to attract investors as a "Vice tech" company
1:00 Jason Demant intros Roy Bahat
3:14 Roy's thoughts on raising venture capital
4:14 Debunking the myth of pitching VCs
9:24 Two questions VCs ask themselves after hearing a pitch, and how founders can apply them
15:33 The startup paradox
18:04 Does Bloomberg Beta keep up with companies they passed on?
19:51 Selection bias in Silicon Valley
25:32 Why Angel $ from venture-backed founders is so valuable
28:30 Top reasons Roy rejects companies
31:38 Importance of trust founder-investor relationships
34:41 How Roy thinks about valuation & pricing
40:13 Understanding how investors make money
44:18 Roy's thoughts on pitch decks
47:45 How to tell if a VC is interested based on emails
49:40 Pre-qualifying VCs based on your business
51:04 Importance of Founders taking secondary
54:00 How does Roy process upside?
55:40 Roy's views on the future of work regarding creatives
1:01:10 Difficulty of raising different rounds
1:02:00 Investment thesis of Bloomberg Beta
1:05:50 Dealing with rejection from VCs
1:07:40 Raising children in the technological age
0:51 Jason intros Mattieu Gamache-Asselin
2:52 Changing from ScriptDash to Alto Pharmacy
4:19 Meeting and working with Twitch founder Justin Kan in the early days of Alto
6:51 Message to HBO’s Silicon Valley writing room
7:26 Working out of Justin Kan’s house
8:15 Why are pharmacies broken? How is Alto fixing them?
14:25 How did Alto’s team architect a 1.0 version of their pharmacy?
21:44 US Healthcare is broken due to bad incentive structures
28:23 Does Alto compare to Hims and Roman?
32:24 What are Alto’s profit margins?
35:00 This Week in Cinema: It’s a Wonderful Life
39:07 Maintaining balance between being scrappy/aggressive while also abiding by all medical regulations
39:54 How has Alto scaled so far?
45:55 Who is responsible for the opioid crisis?
51:24 What is Alto building to combat the crisis?
53:27 Trading short-term gain for long-term gain
56:56 How Alto was initially received among investors
1:01:03 This Week in Cinema: The Mission
1:04:30 What skill does Matt think many founders lack?
1:07:02 Operational excellence in former Amazon executives
1:13:49 #1 Lesson that Matt has learned since becoming a founder
1:14 Jason intros Open Office Hours
2:40 Jean-Loïck from Serendipia asks Jason about understanding the investors in his market
12:44 Sophie from Resprana joins Jason and demos her air filtration nose buds
23:35 Sophie asks Jason how to prove to investors that her business is venture scale
36:34 Eugene from ZYRL asks Jason how to balance growth & spend while raising
46:50 Omar from Steps joins Jason and asks how to change consumer behavior via advertising
1:09 Jason intros the Kotaro Chiba, the "Jason Calacanis of Tokyo"
7:09 Ted from Homma pitches a millennial-targeted modernized homes
17:28 Dustin from Junify pitches SaaS for "desk-free" workers
28:52 Satoshi from Wondershake pitches women’s lifestyle app development
41:31 Hikaru from hackjpn pitches an investor evaluation database
50:47 Naomi from Infostellar pitches connecting space satellites & antenna owners
1:01:04 Lu from Takemepay pitches a food services app for international visitors
0:52 Jordan's inspiration for Standard Cognition
1:18 How Standard Cognition works
4:45 Scaling by removing friction from shopping
5:33 What kind of cameras does Standard Cognition use?
7:46 The purpose of the Standard Store
9:02 Onboarding store items to the system
13:00 Can Standard Cognition's system recognize actions?
13:45 Expanding Standard's system to other use cases
17:15 How their cameras recognize theft
22:54 Reaction to the Standard Store?
24:50 How does a store with autonomous checkout protect itself from smash & grab burglary?
29:50 Desire to adopt this technology throughout the retail industry
34:40 What autonomous checkout can do for society?
40:10 Standard Cognition is currently in "Shadow Mode", when will they officially launch in stores?
41:33 Competing against Amazon Go
46:35 How delivery plays into Standard Cognition's plan
47:05 How do big-box retailers look at the autonomous checkout movement
50:09 Reflecting on Jordan's time at the SEC
0:47 Jason intros Valerie and Shoot My Travel
3:33 Valerie tells Shoot My Travel's founding story
6:00 How does Shoot My Travel help insta-husbands?
8:50 How to get on Shoot My Travel's photographer platform
12:39 How Valerie and Jason met
13:20 Valerie explains the interview process for the LAUNCH Accelerator
16:56 What Valerie learned throughout the Accelerator
19:20 Building a global business with minimal funding
23:50 Valerie rates Jason as an investor
24:47 How notable lead investors make companies more appealing
25:15 Jason explains how The Syndicate works (thesyndicate.com)
28:20 Shoot My Travel's company culture
30:38 What is Shoot My Travel's next move in terms of fundraising
31:48 Valerie gives advice to her younger self
39:55 How Valerie commuted back & forth to Miami during the Accelerator
42:06 Jason describes the LAUNCH Accelerator program
45:20 "Delighted customers solve everything."
47:00 Jason reads Shoot My Travel customer reviews
1:15 Jason intros Kristen
2:56 Differences between casual, mid-core and hardcore mobile games
10:40 Mobile gaming’s monetary scale
12:30 Demanding excellence at MZ
14:00 How Kristen handles work/life balance
18:00 Mobile games going international, licensing v. building organic brands
27:44 Getting Arnold Schwarzenegger & other celebs in MZ ads
41:55 Kristen’s path to MZ
43:10 Handling layoffs with direct honesty
45:25 Crypto resembling the early days of the Dot-com Era
53:30 Jason and Kristen go back and forth on WeWork problems
1:02:10 Being a female CEO in the gaming industry
2:30 Stuart explains Grove Collaborative's mission
6:50 Bringing natural products to under-served markets
12:35 Supply-chain diligence necessary for a Certified B Corp
16:20 What is a Certified B Corporation, and how did Grove stay investable early on?
22:50 Navigating being a B Corporation while maintaining profitability
28:30 Competing against Amazon
37:00 Are traditional CPG companies starting to become more eco-friendly?
47:05 How Stuart was as a first time founder
53:05 Jason & Stuart discuss factory worker treatment
57:40 Societal benefits of proper compensation
1:00 Jason intros Vlad Magdalin and the "No-Code Movement"
3:10 Jason explains the "Pegasus" movement
4:34 Vlad shares his founding story
14:21 Turning "No" into "Yes" from investors
18:50 How it felt when Webflow became profitable
25:45 Capitalism v. Socialism
39:55 How is Webflow planning to scale their new round?
48:30 Dad jokes
1:00 Jason intros the Toptal situation and Amir
3:00 Amir on breaking the Toptal story
3:20 Frequency of compensation issues in startup funding
13:45 Jason explains convertible notes
16:10 Did Taso Du Val know what he was doing?
22:00 How can Toptal investors cash out?
29:15 What do LPs think of SAFE agreements and convertible notes?
30:20 Toptal is a cautionary tale for employees & investors
35:59 Jason’s thoughts on convertible notes/SAFE agreements
57:40 Jason’s main takeaway from the Toptal situation
1:07:15 How Jason would fix equity issues at Toptal
1:08:58 Jason intros former Toptal employee Scott Ritter
1:11:03 Scott’s thoughts on missing out on equity as one of the first Toptal employees
1:12:28 Taso Du Val as a boss and co-worker
1:14:15 Were there stock option promises made to employees?
1:20:55 Taso Du Val’s thought process on equity
1:25:10 Jason explains why he is so upset about this issue
1:27:45 Scott describes what attributed to Toptal’s rapid growth
1:31:40 Jason introduces #boycottToptal
0:50 Jason introduces The Next Unicorns
3:30 Founding Checkr through the gig economy
4:28 Creating the first API for background checks
13:09 Solving the "False Positive" issue in background checks
15:10 Are gig economy companies doing enough in their vetting process?
19:07 Parsing felons through Checkr
28:20 Would Daniel hire someone with a violent criminal history?
32:13 Does Daniel feel pressure for Checkr to IPO?
37:25 How should gig economy workers be classified?
40:15 Growth vs. profitability
47:55 How Daniel is dealing with going from employee to boss
50:30 Changing roles of the modern tech CEO
2:45 What is Revel?
8:00 Losing friends as you age
18:05 Revel's pricing model
20:47 Who does Revel resonate with most?
23:10 Helping women over 50 with loneliness
33:25 How Revel uses virality to scale
36:58 Revel hosts using the platform as a second source of income
39:05 Will Revel get into physical spaces?
49:43 Leonardo from Send4 on Open Office Hours with Jason
54:37 Scaling growth in a B2B SaaS product
1:19 Jason Intros the panelists
3:08 WeWork IPO chaos
10:06 Comparing Ray Kroc and Adam Neumann
16:15 Founder lessons from WeWork mess
24:45 Worst part of the WeWork IPO
27:24 Peloton IPO
28:10 Is Peloton elitist?
31:30 Peloton’s high margin hardware business
34:35 Jason and guests play “Company A or Company B”
37:51 Will Disney+ unseat other streaming giants?
45:45 Joi Ito and Jeffrey Epstein
46:52 Jason tells his Jeffrey Epstein story
58:55 How high up does the scandal go?
1:08:34 TikTok’s influence over millennial/gen Z Americans
1:14:49 What is the Long Term Stock Exchange?
1:21:27 Is Juul bad?
1:33 Crystal from Healthiest
5:13 Growing users to appeal to investors
20:12 Adam from Yuma
26:39 Raising $ or innovating production
38:27 Claire from Online Profile Pros
43:45 Hype vs. traction in the Seed stage
58:32 Karen from Perceive
1:00:02 "Dead people don't buy ice cream."
2:14 Starting Twilio
16:54 How did Twilio 1000x revenue?
20:57 Passing $1B in revenue
31:37 Why Twilio went public when they did
41:20 What makes Jeff Bezos special?
2:39 What is charity: water?
12:43 Rachel’s birthday story
34:23 Working with local governments
46:19 Funding charity: water through “The Well”
1:01:39 Creating “The Pool” and how Scott uses startup tactics to run his non-profit
1:10:31 How Scott almost quit after not meeting yearly goals
1:08 How Jason met Kim while she ran Google AdSense
4:01 What Kim learned from working with Sheryl Sandberg
14:40 Does Google regret losing Sheryl Sandberg?
21:24 Why the lack of Psychological Safety in today's business landscape?
35:43 How much should experience matter when evaluating salaries?
42:15 Kim takes Jason through some Radical Candor best practices
1:37 What is PodShare?
5:16 PodShare's real estate triangle
15:40 Is PodShare a venture scale business?
32:08 What do potential investors think of PodShare?
44:43 What Elvina has learned since starting PodShare in 2012?
2:10 Steven tells Cameo's unique founding story
15:26 Who is the most booked person on Cameo?
29:50 Who can and can't be on Cameo?
37:11 Steven's Top 3 Talent Wishlist
44:10 Scaling Cameo
3:35 Sophia's journey from scrappy dumpster-diver to building Nasty Gal
13:03 Mistakes and lessons from Nasty Gal
18:40 Why she started Girlboss
30:27 Growth of female founders since Sophia started Nasty Gal
39:52 Building Girlboss from a business perspective
4:08 Kelley from Blue Studios
20:01 Manuel from Helpful Village
34:12 Steve from Glide Cruisers
54:59 Christine from Potli
The Future of Angel Investing with Paul Judge (TechSquare Labs), Elizabeth Yin, (Hustle Fund), Shaun Abrahamson (Urban Us); The Metrics that Matter with Allen Chen, Co-founder & CEO of Fitbod @ LAUNCH Festival Sydney
Hipcamp CEO & Founder Alyssa Ravasio announces new $25m raise from Andreessen Horowitz to scale her camping, glamping & outdoor recreation platform, shares insights on developing talent, staying on mission, the importance of brand, & evolving as an entrepreneur from being the solution to building it
Matt Horiuchi, Director of User Acquisition at Calm, breaks down "Growth, Paid Marketing & Attribution": best strategies for understanding LTV/CAC, where your customers are coming from, most effective channels, creating the right messaging, & optimizing competitive analysis @ Founder.University
4:36 What is Luminous Computing?
15:07 Pitching his big-name investors
19:55 Why photonics?
32:51 The growing dangers of AI
42:31 The potential upside of AI
Episode Ten: Scaling Your Startup, "Culture": Jason Calacanis & LAUNCH Managing Directors Jacqui Deegan Ashley Whitehurst go through creating your culture, hiring, diversity & inclusion, high performance, scaling culture, work environment & tools
3:15 Creating your culture
18:00 Hiring
26:18 Diversity, inclusion & non-harassment
40:27 High performance
50:04 Scaling culture
58:33 Work environment
1:04:45 Tools
2:50 Kim from Buddee Fitness
13:40 Pete from Ayvri
30:10 Sean from TimeChi
46:40 Frances from GoodGivs
4:20 Why Gentry built Mailbox
16:25 Optimizing email for mobile
24:36 Best aesthetic designs in tech today
45:15 Origins of Navigator
48:52 Gentry demos Navigator
1:03:54 Importance of seating arrangements in board meetings
4:03 What is Neyborly?
12:12 Ben's experience at Founder.University
15:00 Understanding numbers for founders seeking $
19:34 Building connections through the LAUNCH Accelerator
28:34 Creating market-networks
34:27 Raising through Jason's Syndicate
45:27 Neyborly's rollout plans
48:45 Meeting with David Sacks and securing his investment
57:57 Solving the problems with modern retail
4:32 Why Jason passed on investing in MasterClass & landing Dustin Hoffman as 1st instructor
8:53 Bridging the gap between professional entertainment and online education
13:18 Ideal target customer & company mission
26:00 Why Steph Curry was the perfect MasterClass instructor for basketball
33:31 How David negotiated masterclass.com domain name
46:32 David's shares how his grandmother, who fled Poland from the Nazis, gave him the gift of appreciating education
Facebook content moderation (2:36)
Is Facebook responsible for the sensitivity of its employees?
Jony Ive leaving Apple (16:12)
Is Chrome OS coming catching up to Apple?
Libra / @Libra_ (19:45)
Audacity is the currency, Zuckerberg still has guts, Jason is meta-trolling Zuck
Libra use cases (33:18)
Content micropayments
Incoming Cultural/Societal Changes (41:48)
End of physical labor, 100% immersive VR, sensory enhancement implants
Is China using TikTok to spy on US citizens? (1:07:20)
Jason gives a message to Trump
E31: "Angel" podcast: Samantha Wong, Partner at Blackbird Ventures (Canva, Culture Amp), shares insights on the growth of Australia's startup ecosystem, valuations outside of SV & benefits for investors, focusing on deep tech & "science nonfiction," backing founders with an unstoppable force, & how immigration laws impact entrepreneurship
Ethos Co-founder & CEO Peter Colis makes life insurance accessible to everyone, leverages data to eliminate friction & simplify the traditional complications, enables 99% of customers to obtain an affordable policy in 10 minutes with no medical exam or blood test
Pony.ai co-founder & CEO James Peng shares insights from scaling his global self-driving unicorn, developing Level 4 & 5 autonomous tech to make any car operate safely in all conditions without human intervention, visions for trucking & ride-hailing, creating collaboration between U.S. & China, how the cultures compare, & other lessons innovating in our driverless future
"Angel" podcast: Part 2. Dave Morin of Slow Ventures (250+ investments inc. Slack, Pinterest, Twitter), shares insights on favorite business models & products, backing founders with a tangible sense of inevitability, the rise of two internets, democratization of passion, & an optimistic future with the advancement of self-care tech
HackerOne CEO Mårten Mickos shares insights on how he grew his bug bounty army to 400,000 strong by providing a path to hack for good, most common security vulnerabilities, worst security breaches, hacking the Pentagon, protecting the open source that unites us & scaling a company culture that defaults to disclosure
"Angel" podcast: Dave Morin of Slow Ventures shares insights from 250+ investments (Slack, Pinterest, Twitter), architecting Facebook & building Path, promoting mental health with Sunrise, combatting the internet's true tax of depression & how founders can get help - Part 1
Mike Ghaffary, General Partner at Canvas Ventures, shares "Strategic Advantages" @ Founder.University & shows how startups can identify, evaluate & strengthen defensibility in their markets
E946: Part 2! Jerry Colonna, legendary investor & executive coach, shares new book, “Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up," insights on absolute complicity in creating our own conditions & strategies we need to overcome self-imposed limitations in business & in life
Scaling Your Startup, "Delighting Your Customers": Talking to customers, tracking NPS & product-market fit, maintaining focus, getting feedback, tactics & tools for customer success with Jason Calacanis & LAUNCH Managing Directors Jason Demant & Jacqui Deegan -- E9 of 10-ep miniseries
Jerry Colonna, legendary investor & executive coach, shares new book, “Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up," insights on absolute complicity in creating our own conditions & strategies we need to overcome self-imposed limitations in business & in life - Part 1
"Angel" podcast: Ryan Hoover, Founder of Weekend Fund & Product Hunt, shares lessons from building his early-stage fund, harnessing excitement for new markets, betting on founders with strong perspectives & unique qualities, & bringing his expertise & passion for creating communities to venture capital
Qualtrics CEO & Co-Founder Ryan Smith shares insights from building his data powerhouse, bootstrapping to profitability, refusing VC & foregoing IPO to sell for $8b, keeping focus, going all in, democratizing information & creating the new category of experience management
StartupTuneup @ Founder.University: 9 founders pitch to Jason & Dave Samuel of Freestyle Capital on AI transport platform, content creation, keto cookies, adventure subscription, restaurant delivery, on-demand consulting, video & event marketing
Mamoon Hamid, Partner at Kleiner Perkins & expert early investor (Slack, Box, Intercom) on evolving from growth to venture, lessons from founding & leaving Social Capital, exceptional founder qualities, wisdom of complementary teams, & the winning formula of hard work & timing
AskJason Call-in: Getting ready for investment, social media transparency & brand protection, finding angels that bring value, common pitching mistakes, intangible qualities investors look for in founders & more
Episode Eight: Scaling Your Startup, "Marketing": Jason Calacanis, LAUNCH Managing Director Jacqui Deegan & LAUNCH President Samantha August go through finding North Star, social channels & content to grow audience, retargeting, converting customers & understanding marketing tools
Canva CEO & Co-Founder Melanie Perkins shares insights from growing her Australian college startup into a global unicorn with over one billion designs & 15m monthly active users, breaking into Silicon Valley, landing the first investment from Mary Meeker's Bond, & realizing her vision to be one of the world's most valuable companies, doing the most good one can do
Ben Ling of Bling Capital (prev. Khosla Ventures), shares strategies from 100+ investments & 9 unicorns, qualities of great founders & teams, assessing market opportunities, the art of startup valuations, Google's early days, the future of AR/VR, & lessons from leading change in consumer behavior
TripActions Co-Founder & CEO Ariel Cohen shares insights from growing his business travel unicorn 600% YOY, harnessing AI & ML to upend antiquated infrastructures, the art of finding product-market fit & scaling rapidly with core values & culture built on service & efficiency
Episode Seven: Scaling Your Startup, "Fundraising: Diving into the Details": Jason Calacanis & LAUNCH Managing Directors Ashley Whitehurst & Jason Demant walk through ideal numbers, finding investors, refining your deck, what to do during & after your first meeting, term sheets & due diligence
StartupTuneup with Urban-X: Founders innovating in construction robotics, shuttle service, AI & real-time heavy equipment optimization & electric car subscription get candid feedback from Jason
"Angel" podcast: Chris Redlitz, General Partner of Transmedia Capital, shares success of The Last Mile program teaching tech to incarcerated populations, insights from investing/advising in 90+ startups, nurturing networks & deal flow, evolution of syndicates, urgency of smart money first, & backing founders with passion, presence & perseverance
Segment Co-Founder & CEO Peter Reinhardt shares insights from pioneering customer data infrastructure (CDI) to unseat CRM, lessons from first failed product launch & critical pivots, the importance of customer pain as your startup's North Star, & building the unicorn that actually protects customer privacy
Episode Six: Scaling Your Startup, "Staying Lean": Jason Calacanis, LAUNCH Managing Director Jason Demant & LAUNCH President Samantha August go through creating a low-burn culture, raising for runway, optimizing with hacks, firing fast & what to do when it hits the fan
Episode Five: Scaling Your Startup, "Sales": Jason Calacanis, LAUNCH Managing Director Jacqui Deegan & LAUNCH President Samantha August go through hiring salespeople, ideal compensation, prospecting, nurturing & closing leads, upselling & utilizing sales tools
Founders present their most pressing challenges: B2B pricing, focusing on customer retention v. traction, scaling on-boarding, upselling, productizing advice
Mitch Kapor, Partner at Kapor Capital, shares stellar return results of their portfolio's first-ever Impact Report, investing with purpose to close gaps & back entrepreneurs with distance traveled, insights on Uber's IPO, fixing the gig economy, promoting diversity in Silicon Valley & creating long-term value v. short-term gains
JFrog Co-Founder & CEO Shlomi Ben Haim shares lessons from growing his DevOps unicorn, helming massive growth, hitting essential milestones from Series A through D, integrating valuable acquisitions, & leading the future of security
Episode Four: Scaling Your Startup, "Team": Jason Calacanis, LAUNCH Managing Director Ashley Whitehurst & LAUNCH President Samantha August walk through first hires, outsourcing, HR, org structure, compensation, firing & other tough choices you face when you scale.
Jason Calacanis and a rotating group of guest experts bring you this weekly take on the best, worst, most outrageous and interesting stories from the world of Web companies. Calacanis, a podcasting pioneer, gives you an insider's look at what's happening in the tech industry with his trademark blunt style and good humor. Looking to start your own company? Need strategies for improving your business or motivating your team? Just want to catch up on what's happening in Silicon Valley and beyond? Your journey begins here.
Adam Foroughi, AppLovin Co-Founder & CEO, shares insights on the mobile gaming boom, early bootstrapping to profitability, massive opportunities in 5G, handling fraud, privacy, parenting, commitment to culture & other lessons from building his app-discovery unicorn
Jason Calacanis and a rotating group of guest experts bring you this weekly take on the best, worst, most outrageous and interesting stories from the world of Web companies. Calacanis, a podcasting pioneer, gives you an insider's look at what's happening in the tech industry with his trademark blunt style and good humor. Looking to start your own company? Need strategies for improving your business or motivating your team? Just want to catch up on what's happening in Silicon Valley and beyond? Your journey begins here.
Melody McCloskey, Founder & CEO of StyleSeat, shares the goals, product & measurement strategies in growing her beauty & wellness marketplace to 18m clients in 16,000 cities across the US @ Founder.University
Casey Neistat, Legendary Vlogger & Founder of 368, shares journey from leaving home at 15 to leading YouTube’s creative pioneers, the evolution of social media & continued quest for authenticity, challenges of success, cultivating gratitude, & starting a new community for artistic collaboration
Charles Hudson, Managing Partner of Precursor Ventures, shares strategies on the great rewards & risks of pre-seed, betting on founders with unique insight, analyzing market structure vs. size, importance of mobilization to increase SV diversity, & the art of making early deals without data
Founder.University #StartupTuneup: 6 startups innovating in online fitness, data-less tipping, rapid customized merch, rechargeable batteries, smart investments & cross-border ecommerce get candid feedback from Jason & Julie Lein, Urban Innovation Fund
Jason Calacanis and a rotating group of guest experts bring you this weekly take on the best, worst, most outrageous and interesting stories from the world of Web companies. Calacanis, a podcasting pioneer, gives you an insider's look at what's happening in the tech industry with his trademark blunt style and good humor. Looking to start your own company? Need strategies for improving your business or motivating your team? Just want to catch up on what's happening in Silicon Valley and beyond? Your journey begins here.
In Season 3 premiere of "Angel," 500 Startups Co-founder & Managing Partner Christine Tsai shares lessons from her fund's 10 unicorns & 2200+ startups across 74 countries, insights on what it takes to be a successful founder, achieving 26% of portfolio led by women, her greatest hits & misses, the vilification of tech, & strengthening mission & leadership through adversity
You already know LinkedIn as world’s largest professional network. It's ALSO a better way to find great talent. Go to LinkedIn.com/Angel and get a $50 credit toward your first job post. Terms and conditions apply.
The Embroker Startup Program helps startups secure the most important lines of insurance, at a lower cost, and with less hassle. For guaranteed 10% off on premiums (& up to 20% depending on quote) go to embroker.com/angel.
All Turtles Co-founder & CEO Phil Libin (prev. Evernote) launches Sift news therapy to promote understanding over anxiety, shares model for innovation at his AI multi-product startup, insights on failing efficiently, the future of health & work, & what it takes to make a world-class app
"Scaling Your Startup" is a special 10-episode TWiST series that will add jet fuel to your startup rocketship, as Jason shares what he’s learned as an early investor in 200+ startups and 7 unicorns (Uber, Thumbtack, Robinhood, Calm.com). Our second episode is "Communication," as Jason, LAUNCH President Samantha August & LAUNCH Managing Director Ashley Whitehurst share essential tools, tips, and tactics for founders to most effectively communicate with investors, their team, and each other.
Confluent Co-Founder & CEO Jay Kreps shares insights from building his data streaming cloud platform unicorn, new partnership with Google Cloud, learnings as lead engineer at LinkedIn, & the future of innovation in enterprise
Rally Rd. Co-Founder & CEO Chris Bruno turns collectible cars into stocks, shares vision of product expansion to make high value assets accessible to everyone & create a new generation of excited, diversified investors
"Scaling Your Startup" is a special 10-episode TWiST series that will add jet fuel to your startup rocketship, as Jason shares what he’s learned as an early investor in 200+ startups and 7 unicorns (Uber, Thumbtack, Robinhood, Calm.com). Our first episode is "Funding Your Company," as Jason and LAUNCH Managing Directors Jason Demant and Ashley Whitehurst tell you what you need to know to raise the round right. Thanks to our partners, Eight Sleep and Zendesk for making this mini-series possible!
Stack Overflow CEO & co-founder Joel Spolsky shares lessons growing his groundbreaking Q&A site to 100m+ monthly visitors, insights on leading, pivoting, selling Trello, engaging with VCs, becoming focused & what he's looking for in his replacement as CEO
E917: Five9 CEO Rowan Trollope on how his cloud-based contact center is leading the future of customer success by fixing a globally hated experience that eats $500b/year, shares insights on qualities of a great acquisition, the power of AI to revitalize jobs, & the critical importance of setting company culture to avoid tribalism
Office Hours with Jason, Part 2! Founders present their most pressing challenges: finding the best revenue model to hit escape velocity, building communities to share & realize goals, prioritizing fundraising versus growth
Office Hours with Jason! Founders present their most pressing challenges: immediate growth & revenue versus product development, expanding into new verticals, marketing a unique product on a tight budget, prioritizing results over the perfect pitch-PART 1
News Roundtable! Parker Thompson, AngelList & Ryan Block, Begin: Apple announcements (what's hot & not), inside IPO big wave & high valuations, Beto the hacker, favorite apps, the futures of crypto, political ads, social media & the venture industrial complex
Roland Ligtenberg, Co-founder & SVP Growth of Housecall Pro, shares growth hacking strategies on go-to-market, customer acquisition, marketing & sales channels from Seed through Series B @ Founder.University
AskJason Call-in: Stepping stones to VC, attracting top talent on a tight budget, pay-to-pitch & other startup scams, educating investors on the problem & your solution, landing leads for your round & more
Kabbage Co-founder & CEO Rob Frohwein disrupts business financing by using real-time data to grant capital in minutes, shares insights on founder stress, the future of financing & building a billon-dollar company that helps other startups scale
Founder.University #Startup Tuneup: 9 startups in talent & ride-share marketplaces, insurance fraud detection, anonymous global messaging, high-end home repair, curated digital shopping & more get candid feedback from Jason & Jenny Lefcourt, Freestyle Capital
Part 2! Roger McNamee, author of "Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe," investor & early Zuck mentor, distills the destructive power of persuasive tech, the cult of libertarianism in SV, election interference, Russian subversion of American democracy & Big Tech’s dystopian surveillance, data collection & what we can do about it
Roger McNamee, early Facebook investor & author of "Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe," shares early days mentoring Zuck, the destructive power of persuasive tech, the Russian plan to subvert American democracy, & Beyond Facebook: Big Tech’s dystopian surveillance, data collection & what we can do about it - PART 1
The Syndicate Showcase: Jason shares 4 portfolio startups & why he invested; founders present product, achievements & updates since syndication, w/ 15Five (employee performance management) , Growth Boulevard (growth & content marketing tools), STEEZY (online dance with top instructors), and WhereBy.Us (local newsletter & media network)
Caterina Fake, co-founder of Yes VC & Flickr, explores tech's unintended consequences in new podcast "Should This Exist?"; shares insights on community building, founder skills, the zebra movement, the future of capitalism & funding startups that embody creativity & expression
PT2 - Keith Rabois, operator (PayPal, Opendoor) & investor (Khosla, future Founders Fund) shares advice on getting into tech, insights on censorship, secondary shares, selling too early, self-driving, biggest misses, economic concerns & other lessons from his lifelong quest to monopolize talent & fund startups that will change the world
Legendary investor & operator Keith Rabois (Khosla Ventures, PayPal, Opendoor) shares advice for entrepreneurs in the current anti-VC/anti-hustle climate, insights on Thiel, Trump, Margaret Thatcher & Masayoshi Son, & lessons from his lifelong quest to monopolize talent & fund startups that will change the world - PART 1
DeepMap CEO & Co-founder James Wu built the world's greatest maps for Google, Apple & Baidu, now provides precision HD mapping technology & real-time data for autonomous vehicles // Office Hours with Jason! Balancing supply & demand
Looking Glass Factory Co-founder & CEO Shawn Frayne demos his 3D holographic display that creates shared experiences & unlimited potential for human-tech direct interaction // "Guess the Fake Startup!": which chat product is too outrageous to exist?
Twilio SendGrid CEO Sameer Dholakia shares how he led $30m co. to $2b acquisition with strategic focus on marketing, product & team, embedded values & scalable culture, aligning with the right partners, knowing what great looks like, & expanding platform that’s already delivered over 1 trillion emails to date
Justin Kan, co-founder of Justin.tv, Twitch.tv & Atrium, shares lessons pioneering live-stream video, early days at YC, learning from failure, selling as a superpower, strengthening core & building startups from the joy of exploration
News Roundtable! Zach Coelius (Coelius Capital) & Gadget Guy Dave Mathews (NewAer): Apple's self-driving Project Titan is dropped, FaceTime eavesdrops, predictions for flying cars, latest Facebook scandals, the largest privacy breach ever (again!), journalism lay-offs, & the return of Deadpool (fallen startup of the week)
Office Hours with Jason! Founders present their most pressing startup challenges: strengthening momentum after fundraise, igniting excitement for biometrics, educating angels on personal flight, increasing sales for AI video, targeting the right investors, & more
Obvious Ventures Co-founder & Managing Director James Joaquin brings operator expertise to VC to fund #worldpositive startups; shares early days pioneering online photo, teaming up with Ev Williams, insights on founder mental health, investor bad behavior, crypto potential, & staying focused on realizing a sustainable planet
NURX Co-founder & CEO Hans Gangeskar makes healthcare accessible with home delivery of birth control, HIV prevention & now an HPV testing kit, connects customers to an integrated network of doctors & pharmacies for direct control // Join Jason for "Guess the Fake Startup!": which D2C company is too outrageous to exist?
News Roundtable! Anthony Pompliano ("Off the Chain") & Mick Liubinskas ("She's Building a Robot") do a Crypto deep dive: state of bitcoin, ideal use cases, Ripple trouble, ICO flame-outs & scams, incremental improvements & exponential potential; plus, Black Swan events, aliens arriving, markets collapsing & accreditation laws strangling the American Dream
How do you know when to hire a CEO? Owl Labs Co-founder & outgoing CEO Max Makeev & new CEO Frank Weishaupt on applying robotics thinking to transform video conferencing, shaping the future of distributed teams, & hitting the gas on growth by handing over the reins
All #AskJason! Working in VC, prospects for non-revenue projects, cliche entrepreneur phrases, effective networking tips, recession-proof industries, what makes a great investment, negotiating co-founder title, misguided startup advice, SV v. NYC
News Roundtable! Peter Rojas & Monique Woodard: CES (5G, bread robots, double standards & more!), tech backlashes & what lies beneath, the dilemmas of regulation, have we reached peak Apple?, political deja vu, online harassment & the rise of fake internet
AllAskJason Call-In: right approach to metrics, customer acquisition & retention, landing qualified leads & true feedback from the front lines, to take or not to take investor money, relentless focus as a strategy
StartupTuneup: 16 founders pitch for Jason’s candid feedback on scaling: from social networks to smart contact lenses, flying on-demand to subscription freelancers, multi-purpose boxes to blockchain for litigants & many more @ LAUNCH SCALE
Union Square Ventures Partner Brad Burnham shares insights on market forces, innovation impinged by dominant players & consolidating network effects, the enduring benefits of open systems, potential for distributed trust, & continued conviction for crypto to create a platform that is not evil
Honor CEO & Co-founder Seth Sternberg (prev. Meebo, Google) turns his tech expertise toward human betterment, combining care professionals with machine learning for quality home care; shares lessons as serial entrepreneur, raising money, assembling teams, navigating execution & market risks
StartupTuneup @ TWiST Live!: Jason’s candid feedback to founders on teledentistry as a service, tax management for cannabis, stylish activewear bras, data science for software engineering, online 3D printing, integrated traveling platform
Samasource Founder & CEO Leila Janah is reducing poverty by training people in Africa in AI & future technologies to earn 400% more; shares her LXMI organic skincare products, the rewards & challenges of running two startups, raising VC, & the profitable art of doing more with less
Year-end special TWiST! Top 2018 trends, prominent players & 2019 predictions for products, AI, podcasting, platforms, entertainment, politics & much more - with Nick Abouzeid, Lon Harris, Rob May, Skye Pillsbury & Austin Smith
News Roundtable! Kim-Mai Cutler, Initialized Capital & Ryan Carson, Treehouse talk IPO heat: Uber & Lyft file, more on deck, effects to ricochet across transportation & housing; diversity in tech & the future of education; the latest in Facebook & Google moral bankruptcy
AllAskJason: low-cost marketing, protecting stealable ideas, decacorns & superunicorns, early-traction momentum, advice for non-tech founders, transparency best practices, unique ideas, advice for kid entrepreneurs, running out of money - with LAUNCH CMO Presh
TWiST Live! OpenAI Co-founder & CTO Greg Brockman on our rapid acceleration toward artificial general intelligence: shares achievements in deep learning, the death of Moore's Law (300,000x compute increase), & the risks of malice, competition & unintended consequences as OpenAI races to build AGI that benefits humanity
Helm CEO & Co-founder Giri Sreenivas built a personal server to safeguard your online data in this era of runaway surveillance; insights on hacking, Snowden, the unceasing exploitation of information by government, advertisers & big tech, & a $4m raise led by Initialized Capital to protect us at this privacy tipping point
Brandless CEO & Co-founder Tina Sharkey (prev., iVillage, AOL) shares how her ecommerce platform eliminates inefficiency, builds community & disrupts retail with products reflecting the values of consumers, not brands; shares insights from early internet, creating a culture of intention, raising $240m from SoftBank Vision Fund & more
News Roundtable! Antonio García Martínez ("Chaos Monkeys," WIRED) & Iain Thomson (The Register): Facebook's embattled leadership & unraveling internal culture, world's 1st gene-edited babies, bitcoin bound for zero?, deep-fakes, Amazon HQ2 fiasco, social-media genius of Ocasio-Cortez & more
Founder.University #StartupTuneup: 9 startups in drone recovery, automated architecture, daily newsletters, soccer software, SMB marketing, design management, shoe commerce, tech recruiting, boutique delivery & more get candid feedback from Jason & Kirby Harris, Base Ventures
E877: Fairygodboss CEO & Co-founder Georgene Huang built a career marketplace for women, shares insights on best companies, equal pay, forced arbitration for misconduct, work-life balance, & results from her Sexual Harassment Survey that shows, even post- #MeToo, how far we have to go
"Founder Lessons": 5 founders whose startups range from shut down to scaling share their best advice, mistakes they will never repeat & strategies they will double-down on for future success @ LAUNCH Scale
Founder & CEO Andrew Parker built Papa to solve loneliness across generations with "grandkids on demand" companionship & non-skilled assistance, shares progress since YC, expanding & pursuing partnership w/ Medicare, & securing $2.4m from Alexis Ohanian
AllAskJason Call-In: Jason’s candid feedback on getting investors’ attention pre- product-market fit, selling the big vision, conquering small markets before big, optimizing potential in apparel, breaking into tech from outside SV
The Syndicate Showcase: Jason presents 3 portfolio startups & reveals why he invested; founders demo & share accomplishments resulting from Jason's accelerator & syndicate, w/ Cafe X (robotic coffee), LeadIQ (sales prospecting), Kush Marketplace (wholesale cannabis)
David Cohen, Techstars founder & world's top angel with investments creating $80b+ value in 30 cities across 13 countries, shares insights on picking over-performers, prioritizing quality before quantity, data dilemmas & misplaced outrage, & the early-stage exhilaration of helping founders figure it out
Craig Newmark on founding & scaling profitable legend Craigslist with dogged dedication to customer service & no VC, now driven to fund the good work in the world, reverse misinformation & stay in touch with what’s real to get our country back on track
CEO Bentley Hall brings Good Eggs back from the brink to raise $50m Series C led by Bill Gurley, stays focused on foundation & happy customers before hyper-growth, shares inventory & plans to expand on a mission to make fresh food the default not the exception
Mar Hershenson, Pear VC: "Building Companies from 0 to 1" & what startups need to know to get from idea to Series A; & James Currier, NFX: "Network Effects Produces 70% of the Value in Tech" & how startups can create network effects for defensibility & scale @ LAUNCH SCALE
Calm Co-founder Alex Tew shares lessons on hyper-growth done well, finding the right investors, creating a new market & making a positive difference in the world with 1m+ subscribers, $80m revenue & a $250m valuation
Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra (prev., Rapportive) created instantaneous email to democratize productivity, demos why customers not only pay but evangelize (w/ 70k on waitlist), shares insights as 2nd-time founder on fundraising, churn, marketing & the workflow of the future
"Future of Early-Stage Investing" with Garry Tan (Initialized Capital), Hunter Walk (Homebrew), Andrea Zurek (XG Ventures): Insights on founder-market fit, the value of operators, outdated venture models, & helping startups break through Series A bottleneck
Nextdoor CEO & Co-founder Nirav Tolia on getting to 90% of US neighborhoods & 100m users globally with organic growth & hard choices, shares thoughts on parody, possible IPO, & becoming the unique social network that protects, as well as connects, its members
Social Capital's Chamath Palihapitiya on how he fell for the mythology & Ponzi scheme of Silicon Valley, is now getting back to solving problems that matter; urges founders to grow real, grow slow, & stay true to what they want to build in the world @ LAUNCH Scale
Optimism breaks barriers: Omaze CEO Matt Pohlson makes a difference through dream experiences with A-list stars, shares lessons in gratitude, family gambling, coming back from the dead (literally), Bono's magic, & the smart business of crowdfunded charity
Andela CEO Jeremy Johnson & his team are training Africa's top talent to become the world's software engineers, bridging the gap between a high-growth population & the global need for technical expertise
StartupTuneup Urban-X: Founders solving for cities pitch Jason on data-driven grades for apartments, urban outdoor spaces, connecting tolls to connected vehicles, bike-safety helmets riders will actually wear
Angel Investor Elad Gil (Airbnb, Coinbase, Square) & Operator (Color Genomics, Google) shares masterclass on fundraising timeline & process, landing & optimizing investors, notes & equity terms/trade-offs, common mistakes & more @ LAUNCH Incubator
Emergency Pod! Instagram founders flee Facebook, things Jason hates/loves, tips for founders, the startup Jason wish existed
AllAskJason Call-In: Candid advice on founder mental health & the extreme pursuit of startups, syndicate investing best practices, setting up outside SV, the future of robot-enabled retail, & the dream social media platform to unseat Facebook
Solving drowning: WAVE Co-founder & CEO Mark Caron demos his innovation detecting swimmers in distress, alerting lifeguards & parents; shares challenges & opportunities of changing human behavior, convincing VCs of the growing market for saving lives
StartupTuneup Equity Crowdfunding: Republic Co-founder Ken Nguyen opens opportunity floodgates for startups & investors with diversity-focused crowdfunding, joins Jason to hear pitches on enterprise collaboration, smartphone numbers on demand, & next-gen tailoring
Blavity CEO & Co-founder Morgan DeBaun on how she built her media empire for black millennials based on trust in the era of fake news & Facebook fatigue, scaled to 5 brands (+counting) with 4m+ social, & landed Series A led by GV, smashing every SV barrier along the way
Kairos CEO & Co-founder Brian Brackeen on innovating in facial recognition, processing over a billion faces, raising $30m via token sale, the dream & dystopia of AI, the persistence of racial profiling, & why he won't sell his technology to law enforcement
StartupTuneup "Solving Oceans": 5 founders share their visions for cleaning up oil spills, fishing sustainably, harnessing wave power, rapidly biodegradable products, & data to eliminate waste
News Roundtable! Clara Brenner, Urban Innovation Fund & Iain Thomson, The Register: Facebook & Twitter testify, Google misfires, free speech v. de-platforming, scooter war victors & victims, rise of IPOs & income inequality, security shenanigans
Ubiquity6 Co-founder & CEO Anjney Midha on creating multiplayer AR for the real world, raising $37.5m from top SV investors to play with parallel universes, become the browser of spaces & define the future of shared mixed reality
All #AskJason Call-In! Candid feedback on marketplaces, getting customers, breaking into VC, social media envy spiral, execution over ideas, abandoning your C corp, hiring & keeping great talent, networking outside of SV
Ernst-Jan Pfauth, CEO of The Correspondent, on breaking the journalism crowdfunding world record, launching in U.S., & innovating by ignoring the news & creating for readers instead of advertisers & owners
Introducing Tonal smart home fitness center that measures, monitors, instructs & adapts for a personalized full-body workout; CEO/founder Aly Orady demos his invention & vision for the future of health & fitness
Emergency Pod! "Low-Burn Mindset": Jason's sneak preview from his next book breaks down your burn rate, why it needs to stay low & how to keep it there to extend your runway
Adam Nelson of Social Capital shares his playbook on "What it Takes to Raise a Series A in 2018": what (& who) investors fund, optimizing team, scalability, market, narrative & the fundamentals of fundraising @ Founder.University
News Roundtable! Ryan Hoover, Product Hunt & Gadget Guy Dave Mathews, NewAer: Tesla going private—or getting purchased?, Twitter trolls, Discord takes on Steam, ISPs out of control & out of touch, intro PH Sip News, bike-share bike piles towering around the globe
TWiST on the Town! Bumblebee Spaces demos a new dimension, creating extra living space with AI & robotics; Purewater Craft drives Jason with its high-powered electric outboard motor
CEO Phaedra Ellis-Lamkins founded Promise to provide equitable alternatives to incarceration, reduce recidivism & save counties massive costs; shares journey from Prince manager to startup founder, landing JAY-Z as investor & taking on our badly broken jail system
Bonus TWiST Breaking News: Apple & Tesla crush it, Facebook & Twitter crash, & how startups can survive a market correction or collapse
Randy Komisar, entrepreneur & Kleiner Perkins VC, shares "Straight Talk for Startups" & insights on why startups fail, importance of cultivating luck as a skill & accountability over apology, how VC has changed, the future of the market & the enduring wisdom of investing in talent
All #AskJason! Live call-ins & chat room questions on finding investors, marketing your skills, Service as a Software, angel mentoring, best networking, hating on social media, future of AR & more
Mapistry CEO & Founder Allie Janoch shares her SaaS platform for environmental regulation that provides detailed & inexpensive data in real-time, flips incentives for managers toward compliance, overturns dire pollution problems & investor skepticism to scale
David Sacks on raising $350m for Craft Ventures, betting big on scooter unicorn Bird & transforming transportation, future of VR & crypto, lessons scaling Yammer from 0 to $1b, cleaning up Zenefits, keys to frictionless flywheel & great early-stage investing @ LAUNCH Angel Summit
StartupTuneup @ LAUNCH Festival Sydney: Founders pitch Jason on solutions in user-generated video, hiring salespeople fast, attention marketplace for biz, mentorship matching platform, finding nearest parking & more
News Roundtable! Peter Rojas, Betaworks & Teddy Schleifer, Recode: Gawker bought, Magic Leap: real or fraud?, Twitter bots booted, Benchmark moves, VC & vice, crypto plunges, Theranos worst, Mueller indicts
Panda.af founder Daniel Singer created a voice-controlled camera that brings to life the movie in your head, takes on Snapchat & Facebook, shares the secrets of Gen Z & being a serial entrepreneur at 18
HVMN Co-founder & CEO Geoffrey Woo on creating world's 1st drinkable ketone, disrupting the sugar market, bio-hacking for optimal performance & super-fueling the future of human health
Crushing Customer Acquisition: Andy Artz, Social Capital explains how to think about your funnel like an investor ("If Warren Buffet Were a Marketer") & Whitney Sales, Acceleprise walks through the optimal sales process @ LAUNCH Festival Sydney