Sand Hill Road

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Gen Isayama, co-founder and CEO of World Innovation Lab, a Palo Alto and Tokyo based venture firm investing in growth-stage companies and serving as a bridge between startups and Japanese corporations. 00:00​​ Intro 01:30 World Innovation Lab 04:10 From Japanese lawyer to Silicon Valley VC 09:10 From DCM to WIL 13:55 WIL investment thesis 19:40 Japanese entrepreneurial culture 26:57 Open innovation Models at WIL 31:57 Raising Fund I 37:00 Full spectrum of WIL Activities 42:16 Investment strategy and portfolio construction 48:06 Outlook for WIL III 51:23 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Dan Ahrens, founding partner at Left Lane Capital, a New York based venture capital and early growth equity firm that invests in high-growth internet and consumer technology businesses. 00:00​​ Intro 02:43 Consumer vs. enterprise tech 05:09 Getting into venture 07:54 Raising Left Lane I 10:35 Investing while fundraising 13:09 The Left Lane Capital playbook 17:09 Due diligence in a hot market 18:52 Scaling Left Lane Capital 21:36 Deployment pace 23:28 Focus area 26:04 Hard conversations 28:10 Arc 32:53 Exo Freight 35:28 Supply Chain Tech 37:04 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Divyang Arora, founder and CEO of Byte Kitchen about cooking up the future of digital food halls with Byte Kitchen founder Divyang Arora. 0:00 Intro 1:24 2 minute elevator pitch 4:27 Going all in 8:07 Business Model 14:52 The Byte Kitchen playbook 18:52 Optimal Partner Restaurant Profile 25:39 End customer benefits 27:25 Raising the Seed Round 30:14 Early traction 31:54 Byte Kitchen's Use of Tech 34:50 Call to Action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Michael Crandell, CEO Bitwarden about scaling open-source password manager Bitwarden. 00:00​ Intro 00:50 What is Bitwarden 03:22 From side hustle to venture-backed 06:36 Joining a Bootstrapper at Series A 09:58 Open-source GTM 13:25 Open-source defensibility 15:35 Community vs. enterprise edition 17:37 Revenue traction 19:51 Competition 22:25 Fundraising journey 25:46 Use of funds 28:25 Go-to-market strategy 31:40 Building a remote-first company 35:11 Arbitrating talent 36:00 Next steps for Bitwarden 38:28 Not the first time at the rodeo

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Harrison, general partner at Country about everything from the economics of whale hunting, the venture product offering to his recent joining of Contrary. 00:00​ Intro 01:11 Way into venture 04:58 Time of reflection 07:24 The under-innovated venture model 10:46 Your fund size is your strategy 16:16 The nature of the general partnership 20:38 Rethinking the org chart 25:13 VC product vs. VC service 28:31 VC product industry practice 31:13 From monolithic brands to solo capitalist 37:18 The future of venture tribes 39:52 Joining Contrary

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Doug Ludlow, co-founder and CEO of MainStreet, which helps startups and small businesses uncover tax credits. 00:00​​ Intro 01:05 Hipster 05:09 Happy Home Company 07:10 Starting MainStreet 11:22 The nature of Tax credits 16:03 The Path Act 17:52 The MainStreet Product 19:14 Customer success stories 20:41 Customer profile 22:40 Audit protection / guarantee 24:13 Moats 25:37 Whitespace vs. Switching 26:30 MainStreet traction 27:47 Fundraising 28:17 Pre-empted Series A 30:22 MainStreet layoffs 32:42 Unit economics 33:42 Unit economics 34:50 Vision for MainStreet 37:42 Fast five 39:01 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kelsey Bishop founder and CEO of Candor, which is a nexgen, authentic social network. 00:00​​ Intro 01:02 What is Candor 03:25 Single player mode 03:56 Kelsey's background 06:19 Employee-culture fit 08:31 Getting started 10:31 Migrating from bubble 11:38 Raising the Seed 12:42 Getting pre-empted 13:50 Raising from angels 15:23 Solo founder journey 16:58 Product + traction 21:47 Business model 23:03 Talking to users 24:51 Remote first company 26:25 Becoming a CEO 27:03 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Abhishek Nayak the co-founder and CEO of Appsmith, which is an open-source, low code internal tool builder. 00:00​​ Intro 03:15 Entrepreneur in Residence at Accel 05:52 Third time at the Rodeo 09:55 Validating a startup idea at his wedding 11:38 Built for Internal facing apps 13:48 The Appsmith Customer Persona 15:06 From Dataset to app 15:42 What Appsmith is replacing 17:07 The Appsmith killer feature 18:29 Getting to the first 100 users 21:40 Customer love + product iteration 23:07 Competition 25:24 Open source vs. closed source 27:53 Open source applications vs. infrastructure 31:07 Open core model 34:12 Traction and metrics 36:43 Metrics tracked over time 37:43 Fundraising for 3rd time 39:27 Fundraising journey 43:50 Remote company discounts 45:27 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Chon Tang, the founding GP of the Skydeck Fund. Chon is an experienced Silicon Valley engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He was formerly founding partner and Managing Director of Junzi Capital Engineering, a leading quantitative hedge fund investing in the commodity space. He has been actively investing in Silicon Valley startups for 12 years, and has personal investments in over 25 deals with multiple IPOs and exits. 00:00​​ Intro 03:40​​ Starting a tech company in 2000 09:27​​ Founder-investor transition 17:51​​ The art of talent arbitrage 22:09​ Raising Fund II 27:00​​ Portfolio construction 30:40​​ Skydeck Fund entry point 32:50​​ Success stories 37:00​​ Skydeck Accelerator Program + Challenges 41:00​​ The accidental VC 45:00​ Next Skydeck batch

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Richard White, the serial entrepreneur behind Uservoice and Fathom.video. Richard is a design engineer and product visionary who has been in the first YC batch with Justin Khan and Emmett Shear for Kiko (YC S05) and most recently came back to the YC W21 to see how startup kids are doing the tricks today. 00:00​​ Intro 00:51​ Who is Richard White 03:40 The power of cold emails 05:09 Kiko (YC S05) 08:53 The UserVoice journey 12:09 Traction and funding 16:09 UserVoice today $18:16 Starting Fathom 22:28 The Fathom product 27:35 Fathom customer profile 30:27 Fathom in remote orgs 32:03 Richard's own use of Fathom 33:57 Fathom integrations 36:14 Zoom Marketplace + platform risk $ 39:20 Going through YC (again) 42:57 Fathom seed round 46:11 The fun of fundraising 47:28 Vision for Fathom

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Shmulik Fishman, founder and CEO of Argyle, about raising the Series A through an investment memo and the firm's mission of making user-permissioned employment data ubiquitous and reinvent credit decisioning for lenders and consumers.    00:00​​ Intro  00:56 What does Argyle do?  03:17 Experiencing the pain point  06:48 Raising the Series A with an investment memo  11:41 Automated form population  14:05 Real-time income/employment verification  17:52 Status quo: credit bureaus  22:18 Technical/data moats  26:59 Standing on the shoulders of giants  28:40 API integrations  30:28 Screen scraping vs. API scanning  32:41 Traction and metrics  35:26 Pricing Strategy  38:36 Argyle Team  41:36 Remote-first valuation discount/premium

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Drew Oetting, founding partner of 8VC, about building a multi-billion venture firm from the ground up with Joe Lonsdale. 00:00 Intro 01:05 Operation Mask 06:33 Resilience 12:54 Views on Venture 20:06 Building 8VC / Addepar 26:30 Raising the maiden fund 30:48 8VC Investment Thesis 40:01 Drew as a VC 50:53 Silicon Hills

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Seth Sternberg the co-founder and CEO of Honor, which is a managed marketplace for in-home care that has recently announced a USD 370m Series E led by Baillie Gifford. 00:00​​ Intro 01:19 Elevator pitch 02:19 Original inspiration 05:28 The Meebo experience 08:06 Serial founder problems 09:06 Getting the founder team together 10:52 The Honor MVP and marketplace model 14:52 Marketplace supply side 19:44 Marketplace demand side 21:57 Fundraising journey 25:07 Growth capital rounds 27:07 Expansion strategy 28:56 Homestead acquisition 31:45 Competitive landscape 31:45 Competitive landscape 34:08 GTM and growth strategies

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kimberly Shenk of Novi Connect, B2B marketplace to help brands build and manufacture transparent products, which recently announced a $10.3M Series A led by Greylock 00:00​​ Intro  02:04 Getting started with Naked Poppy  04:09 From Naked Poppy to Novi Connect  05:17 Sustainable Chemicals Market  07:30 Kimberly's data science background  09:19 The Novi Connect Business Model  11:11 The Novi Connect MVP  12:49 Getting the first Customers  13:42 Growth Metrics and Milestone  14:33 Fundraising journey  15:50 Series A led by Greylock  17:37 Mulit-sided B2B marketplace  21:26 Growth metrics and milestones  23:26 Acting as certification agent  24:24 Competition  26:49 AI-driven platform  28:26 Scaling Novi Connect  29:37 Newjoiner Bootcamp  30:53 Priorities and focus  31:53 Category expansion  33:14 Longterm vision

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners, a venture firm that invests in early-stage consumer technology startups operating in heavily regulated markets. 00:00​​ Intro 01:39 Investment thesis 2022 02:36 Lithic 05:02 Tusk Venture Partners 08:46 Meeting Bradley Tusk 12:52 Regulatory investment thesis 14:58 The role of regulations in startups 16:37 Fanduel / repeal of PAPSA 17:33 Tusk entry stage 19:01 Consumer vs. Enterprise 19:43 Roman - men's health 21:34 Alma - mental health care 23:31 Out of scope areas 25:14 Bird - scooter wars 29:36 First mover vs. fast follower 32:50 Sunday - DTC lawn care 37:11 Focus areas 2022 41:02 How to get in touch

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Casey Fenton, founder of Couchsurfing and Upstock, about the early days for Couchsurfing when Casey was pioneering what has since become known as the “sharing economy” and how is is now bringing the sharing economy to the cap table with Upstock. 00:00​​ Intro 01:13 The Couchsurfing proof-of-concept 02:46 The first Couchsurfing stay 03:49 501(c)3 non-profit status 06:34 The mechanics of the benchmark Series A 06:34 The mechanics of the benchmark Series A 08:27 The Couchsurfing MVP 10:38 The donation-based model 11:58 The demand side monetization model 15:34 The chicken-and-egg question 17:11 Casey's philosophy on ego hacking 21:11 Building for the internet without ego 23:57 Upstock 28:34 Ideal customer moment 30:20 Switching costs 31:09 Competitors and integrations 33:40 Milestone-based equity kickers 35:03 Following Casey's work

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Andrew Gazdecki, founder of MicroAcquire. The episode was recorded when MicroAcquire was still a fully bootstrapped one person company. A few weeks later MicroAcquire announced that it had raised a $6.3m Seed round led by Bessemer Ventures.   00:00 Intro  01:09 What is MicroAcquire?  02:55 Buying a micro-SaaS as a learning experience  05:15 Andrew's own founder path  10:40 Key bootstrapper metrics  14:53 Solving the chicken-and-egg problem  19:17 Supply side: company profiles  20:24 Marketplace discovery vs. transaction facilitation  22:45 Microacquire marketplace monetisation  26:51 Microacquire as a curated marketplace  30:12 Dealing with inflated seller asks  33:25 Disrupting the business broker industry  35:45 Competitor marketplaces  36:50 Scaling Microacquire  38:10 Raising venture capital vs. bootstrapping

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Queenly co-founders Trisha Bantigue and Kathy Zhou about building a consumer marketplace and tackling the formalwear industry.   00:00 Intro  00:56 The Queenly Elevator Pitch  01:52 Launching Queenly during lockdown  04:04 The pageant dress market   08:06 Formal wear resale market microstructure  10:16 The Queenly minimum viable product  12:37 Go to market strategy  14:56 Queenly marketplace metrics  16:36 The Queenly fundraising journey  20:40 Raising $6.3m From Andressen Horowitz   22:58 Solving the marketplace chicken and egg problem  24:58 Unlocking supply  27:02 Offering power seller tools to boost supply  28:15 Cracking the demand side  29:12 Facilitating Marketplace Transactions  31:36 Marketplace take rate  32:43 Competition And Playbook  35:16 Formal wear Price dynamics  38:22 The Queenly Vision

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Didomoi co-founder and CTO Jawad Stouli about building consent management platform Didomi for the perfect privacy wave. 00:00 Intro 00:46 Early days of Didomi 03:29 Fighting a US patent troll 08:14 Building the Didomi MVP 12:18 Developer-centric platform approach 14:46 Early costumers: self-service vs. SDRs 18:22 Didomi data architecture 24:02 Bootstrapping Didomi 27:43 Raising the Series A 30:37 Raising the Series B 33:35 Scaling up 35:55 Competition 41:29 Call to action

00:00 Intro 00:24 Welcome to Miami 01:08 Operators Podcast 03:21 Finding the right guests 06:54 Delian's founder/operator 08:22 Cohort analysis with Keith at Square 10:30 Nightingale 12:24 Operating experience at Teespring 14:24 Varda Space 17:45 Splitting time between Varda and FF 19:45 Varda Space incubation 23:50 Delian as an investor at Founders Fund 27:07 Faire 30:56 Tiger Global and the rise of crossover funds 35:31 Hyperscaling 36:45 Moving to Miami 39:45 Keeping up with Delian

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Remote.com founder Job van der Voort about building the future of remote work. 0:00 Intro 00:49 The first two years of Remote 02:19 Preparing for the perfect Storm at Gitlab 06:17 Leaving Gitlab 10:47 Business model 14:10 Legal war chest 15:20 Fintech-payment layer 16:20 SaaS layer 17:52 Pricing 19:47 Competitive landscape 24:12 Seed round 25:42 Series A 28:37 Remote best practices 31:52 Enabling random bump ins 34:07 The remote company handbook or “bible” 35:23 Remote company stack 36:20 Asynchronous vs. synchronous work 40:19 Remote for startups

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures about his journey as a founder, angel investor and co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures. 00:00 Intro 01:11 Guest appearance on a Justin Bieber/Ariana Grande music video 03:16 The “pronoia” mindest 03:16 The “pronoia” mindest 05:04 Sheel's background 07:56 The Pitch 12:12 Investing with founder authority 14:16 500 Startups fintech fund 18:25 Fintech thesis and sector evolution 22:09 Fintech backend 23:43 Better Tommorrow Ventures 29:24 Differentiation 32:52 Reserve capital 34:52 The good, the bad and the ugly investments 37:40 Sheel-defining investment 41:10 …the bad and the ugly

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Reeves Wiedeman, author of "Billion Dollar Loser: the epic rise and fall of WeWork". 00:00 Adam's intro 01:11 Intro 01:38 Adam Neumann 04:11 Adam's art of persuasion 05:41 Book title 08:10 Writing process 13:01 WeWork evolution and business model 16:21 Tech vs. real estate company 19:25 WeWork community 22:01 WeWork funding journey 25:11 JPMorgan round 26:50 Masa and the Softbank round 30:39 Acquisitions and side businesses 33:16 Valuation and comps 36:59 Public persona and IPOs 38:50 WeWork today 40:07 Staying in touch with Reeves

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Lui, partner at DCM, about the recent IPO roll that DCM has been on. The Menlo Park-based firm has generated a 61x return on investments that have gone public in the past two years. Kuaishou is the standout, with its market cap to entry valuation at 2,000x. 00:00 Intro 00:50 Who is Kyle Lui 01:33 Intro to DCM 03:30 DCM IX and the A-Fund 05:36 Differentiation through US-Asia angle 07:45 DCM's Japan strategy 08:48 DCM's recent roll 10:00 Biggest winner Kuaishou 11:07 All three sides of the table 14:01 Choicepass 15:36 First 5 years at DCM 18:52 Docsend investment 21:47 Lime investment 23:57 Him's and Hers investment

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Russ Heddleston, founder of Docsend. The episode was recorded one month before the announcement that DocSend would be acquired by Dropbox for $165m. 00:00​​ Intro 00:37 What is Docsend 01:51 Selling Pursuit to Facebook in a talent acquisition 04:12 Leaving Facebook and starting Docsend 07:03 Product idea 09:00 Fundraising for Pursuit 12:53 Fundraising for Docsend 14:17 Series A 17:34 Docsend product 20:39 Initial startup client segment 22:29 Docsend fundraising network 25:20 Expanding from initial client segment 29:51 Docsend Spaces 33:07 Pricing strategy 37:50 Next steps for Docsend 39:50 Competing with Intralinks 41:00 Scaling up Docsend 42:29 Remote work at Docsend 43:29 Call to action

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Ali Tamaseb, partner at DCVC, about his recently launched book "Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups".   00:00 Intro  01:00 Who is Ali?  03:02 Spark of motivation for the Super Founders book  05:49 Primary data collection  08:13 Data set: timeframe and selection criteria  10:28 The age of super founders  13:04 Optimal number of co-founders  16:12 Founder education  17:45 Did all of them go to Stanford?  19:38 Pre-founding work experience  21:08 Definition of the "super founder"  25:38 Painkiller vs. vitamin products  27:14 Startup competition  29:50 Defensibility factor  31:44 Venture funding vs. bootstrapping  34:41 Capital requirements  35:46 Startup fundraising  37:15 Time to hatch

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Vivek Saraswat, who has been a venture investor at Mayfield at the time of the recording and previously a product leader at Docker/VMware/AWS. Since recording this episode, Vivek has joined Immersa as a founding VP of product. 00:00​​ Intro 00:56 Who is Vivek? 03:12​ Joining Mayfield 05:07 Portfolio companies 07:08 Covid impact on commercial open-source 10:17 Go-to-market (GTM) 14:13 Managing product roadmaps in open-source 17:10 Dedicating to bottoms-up GTM 20:49 Hooks and upsells 24:54 Optimal lines between community and commercial 29:22 Firewalls between community and commercial 31:51 Inculcating community-commercial in the organization

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm about his journey as a mega maker, bootstrapping his podcast hosting and analytics platform to $1m+ in ARR in less than 3 years. 00:00​​​ Intro 01:55​​ Getting Real 04:30​ Business is like surfing 7:43​ Selling ice cream on a busy beach 11:33​ Why your business idea matters 14:17​ The nature of the megamaker 19:46​ Grow slow, grow real 24:53​ Success is gradual, then sudden 31:10​ VC attention to podcasting 38:00​ Podcast hosting and analytics space 44:20​ First version of Transitor.fm 50:45​ Dealing with depression as a solopreneur 54:48​ Finding out more about Justin

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Garry Tan, co-founder of Initialized Capital about his journey as a content creator, founder and managing partner at Initialized Capital.   00:00​​ Intro  02:02​ Garry's Twitter game  06:00 Keeping up the content cascade  08:12 Getting started on YouTube  10:50 Paying it forward at scale  14:45 Respecting the audience  18:00 Content creation is like building a startup  21:13 Garry as a founder  25:14 Founder "what ifs"   28:26 Garry as a VC

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Spencer Kimball, co-founder and CEO of Cockroach Labs about building a database unicorn backed by some of Silicon Valley's top venture firms, incl. Benchmark, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. After recording the episode, Cockroach Labs raised $160m on a $2bn valuation in January 2021, reflecting the explosive growth and product innovation of 2020. 00:00 Intro  00:56 Cockroach Labs elevator pitch  04:29 Getting the band together  09:24 Exit to Square and paddling back into the startup surf  11:44 First version of CockroachDB  14:17 Open core model  20:43 Relicensing Cockroach DB  25:39 Open source as top of the funnel tool   30:25 Series A from Benchmark and Sequoia Capital  35:15 Series A extension from Index  37:01 Late state startup life at Series D   39:44 CockroachDB technology  48:11 Synchronous replication and CockroachDB  53:50 CAP Theorem and CockroachDB   58:10 CockroachDB and Kubernetes   1:01:10 Spencer's workout regime

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sean Henry, co-founder and CEO of STORD about building a digital warehouse and distribution startup backed by some of Silicon Valley's top venture firms, incl. Susa Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Founders Fund from Atlanta, Georgia. 00:00 Intro 01:11 Announcing the Series B led by Founders Fund 02:57 What solution does STORD offer? 04:27 Sean Henry's entrepreneurial journey from childhood 13:00 STORD business model 19:50 Solving the two-sided marketplace problem 25:35 Competitive landscape 28:55 Software-enabled marketplace: Software as a wedge to get supply side 35:15 STORD pricing 38:50 STORD as a distributed logistics and storage systems 45:15 Acquisition of Cove Logistics in summer of 2020 48:31 Raising money from Silicon Valley as an Atlanta based startup 54:45 What's next for STORD

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Andy Johns (@ibringtraffic), Partner at Unusual Ventures about his growth journey at Facebook, Twitter, Quora and Wealthfront. 00:00​ Intro 00:37 Growth at Facebook 03:50​ Growth at Twitter 05:31​ Growth at Quora 09:25​ Growth at Wealthfront 12:11​ Unusual Ventures 16:25​ A balanced approach to growth 21:16 Shipping the org chart 24:29​ Running experiments 28:05​ Product development for innovation 31:40​ Wonderschool 35:22 Ride Report 38:22​ Finding out more about Andy

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner and Cameron Weibel are joined by Joey Parsons, founder of effx to talk about moving from the monolith to a microservices architecture. 00:00 Intro 03:05 From rockstar engineer to found 06:02 Building early social network PicRave $07:30 Taking the plunge with wife 5 months pregnant 09:00 Founder focus as a young father 10:06 Transitioning from Airbnb to Kleiner Perkins 12:03 Daily life as an entrepreneur in residence 13:46 Defining microservices 14:53 Explaining microservices to a kid 16:28 Microservices vs. structured programming 19:55 Functionality of microservices 22:20 User microservice example 24:15 Starting out: monolith vs. microservices architecture 25:42 Microservices teams: UI, middleware, DBA specialists 28:38 Data layer of microservices 30:56 Microservices vs. monolith debate 34:36 Moving to a microservices architecture at Airbnb 37:59 Managing microservices at Airbnb 42:12 effx and Kubernetes 43:44 Go to market strategy at effx 46:07 Raising the $3.9m Seed round

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by Caroline Winnett, Executive Director at UC Berkeley's accelerator and incubator SkyDeck. 00:00 Intro 01:51 What is SkyDeck? 02:57 Demo days during Covid-19 03:35 Caroline's founder journey at NeuroFocus 05:24 Joining SkyDeck and setting up the SkyDeck Fund 07:23 Berkeley SkyDeck carry split 08:35 Berkeley SkyDeck LP base 09:50 SkyDeck vs. YC, 500 Startups, Techstars 12:11 Cohort profile and eligibility requirements 14:37 Accelerator milestones 15:22 Breakout success stories 16:26 Berkeley within Silicon Valley ecosystem 18:33 Future of SkyDeck

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Richard Mabey, co-founder of London-based legaltech startup Juro, backed by Union Square Ventures. 00:00 Intro 02:01 Magic circle years at Freshfields 03:35 Catching the entrepreneurial bug 05:15 Transitioning to legaltech via LegalZoom 07:26 Meeting co-founder Pavel Kovalevich 08:43 The Juro Minimum Viable Product (MVP) 09:54 Getting the first customer 13:15 Finding customer pains and building the core product features 15:06 Core feature set: painkiller vs. vitamin 17:05 Early pricing 18:34 Selling Saas to corporate lawyers 19:59 Tech stack of Juro 21:11 Seedcamp accelerator 22:40 $750k Seed Round led by Point Nine Capital 24:24 $2m Seed extension round 25:15 $5m Series A led by Union Square Ventures 26:15 Getting a warm intro at USV 27:01 Deploying the Series A 28:12 Navigating through the Corona pandemic

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Mike Ghaffary, general partner at Canvas Ventures about his journey as app builder, co-founder of Stitcher, CEO at Eat24, to becoming a successful angel investor and now institutional venture investor at Canvas. 00:00 Intro 02:21 Swiss army knife of education 04:04 Business school after Dotcom bubble burst 05:06 Founding Stitcher 06:14 Focusing on news 08:03 Becoming CEO of Eat24 09:39 Growing Eat24 from 10FTEs to $700m top line 10:45 Food delivery wars 11:55 Grubhub Partnership that never launched 13:12 Jeremy Stoppelman and Steve Jobs on search on mobile 14:30 Becoming a successful angel investor 15:35 Paying off graduate debt by making the most expensive iPhone app ever 16:37 Angel investment in Strava 17:20 Angel investment in Superhuman 17:50 Joining Social Capital 19:58 Mike’s experience at Social Capital 20:28 CloudKitchens investment 21:30 HubHaus investment 22:37 Joining Canvas Ventures 24:04 Flyhomes investment 27:52 Marketplace Deep Dive 28:27 Lenny Rachitsky: focus on supply or demand side? 30:06 Thomas Eisenmann: Two-sided networks 30:57 Uber: demand side vs. supply side subsidies 32:09 Local vs. global network effects 33:24 Sarah Tavel (Benchmark): Unlocking new supply in delivery wars 34:21 Local delivery war zones 35:36 Uber Eats entering the market 37:04 Public vs. privately held delivery war contenders 38:54 Marketplace take rate 40:38 Out-of bound marketplace take rates 41:57 Zero percent take rate 43:02 Finding out more about Mike

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Moisey Uretzky, co-founder of Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean is a cloud infrastructure unicorn built for developers and headquartered in New York City. In this episode we journal the founder journey from getting into Techstars to scaling the company with venture debt to a recent unicorn valuation. 00:00 Setting the scene 03:55 The Uretzky family 05:22 Roots of intellectual curiosity 07:15 Mathematics and first principles thinking 09:18 Startups before Digital Ocean 14:16 Finding co-founders on Craigslist 19:16 Digital Ocean MVP 23:12 First major Product Iteration: 5$ SSD Plan 29:36 Getting into Techstars 32:35 Raising the Seed from IA Ventures 37:19 Raising the Series A from a16z 42:28 Using venture debt to scale up 47:19 Scaling up Digital Ocean 54:22 Competition with big tech cloud providers 59:00 Running Digital Ocean during the Corona pandemic

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Brendan Wales, general partner at e.ventures on investing in data infrastructure unicorn Segment at the Seed and passing on TikTok (then Musical.ly) at the Series A. Check out Brendan Wales on Medium: https://medium.com/@brendanwales 2:10 First job running a Golf shop while at college 3:20 First job out of college in 2009 and entrepreneurial ambitions 4:29 'I gotta get to the Valley' finding Zozi's on Crunchbase 6:06 Joining e.ventures in 2012 7:52 History and roots of e.ventures 9:53 e.ventures current fund and global footprint 11:10 Investing in Segment.io at the Seed along with Kleiner Perkins 15:08 Consumer-tech perspective on Segment 16:02 Passing on Musical.ly/TikTok 17:30 Warm introductions vs. metric-based discovery (digital exhaust) 20:30 Metrics requested from Musical.ly/TikTok founding team / key consumer social metrics 22:17 Machiavellian founder perspective on Musical.ly/TikTok consumer retention 24:35 Ex-post reflections why they passed on Musical.ly/TikTok 26:35 Comparison to the recent Clubhouse a16z-led Series A 28:50 Venture capital returns over the lifetime of a fund 31:10 Pattern matching for early markups 32:58 This Week's Seed Companies 35:24 EVA Growth Index / X-Factors 37:37 Nacelle: headless CMS for Shopify stores, backed by Index and Accomplice 39:05 Most recent investment: Airvet, $14m Series A led by Canvas Ventures

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Leo Polovets, co-founder and general partner at Susa Ventures. As a partner at Susa, Leo focuses on investments in enterprise software, developer tools, technical products and logistics and supply chain. In this session we discuss his journey from being the second engineer at LinkedIn to starting his own venture firm. We discuss some of his notable investments in breakout companies, such as Robinhood and Flexport, as well as his most recent investment in Scalyr. As Leo is an icon on the VC twitter, we also dig into some of his previous tweets and try to draw lessons that go beyond the 280 character limit.

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sarah Catanzaro from Amplify Partners. As a partner at Amplify, Sarah focuses on startups that apply technological advances in machine intelligence and enterprise infrastructure to solve real-world problems. In this session we discuss her journey from data scientist to venture capital, her take on recent data sciences trends and her most recent investments, including OctoML, InterVenn Biosciences, Maze and Bayes.

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Bryan Offutt from Index Ventures, which is an active investor in the open source vertical, having invested in the likes of Hortonworks, Confluent, Elastic, Kong, Cockroach Labs and most recently Starburst. In this session we talk about the next frontier of open source, such as the open sourcing of pre-trained ML/NLP models (such as BERT) and distributed design. We also cover Index Venture's most recent COSS investment in Starburst, an open core company built around Presto, a distributed, open source query engine that has originally been developed at Facebook. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner talks with Brian Leonard (@bleonard), the technical co-founder of TaskRabbit, which has pioneered the gig economy alongside Airbnb and Uber. In the session, they talk about the journey from the early days of TaskRabbit when it was just a few hundred Taskers to how they scaled it to one of the largest gig economy marketplaces that was eventually sold to IKEA. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner talks with John Lin, who is a Principal from Trinity Ventures about his key learnings from being an entrepreneur himself and his transition to VC at Trinity. We take a deep dive into his portfolio companies Branch, Grow, Squire and Side. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Venture capital used to be about 'financing what would not otherwise be financed'. This is exactly what Root Ventures is all about. In this session I talk to Lee Edwards about his journey from CTO at Teespring to venture and about financing deeply technical founders who are tackling interdisciplinary engineering problems. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Simmer is a recent Y Combinator company that is challenging Yelp's restaurant discovery through dish-level reviews. In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by the co-founders Richard Wu and Vaibhav Verma about their startup journey so far, which challenges they have had to overcome so far and how they are planning to change the way in which foodies discover the best cuisine. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Patrick Chase is an investor with Redpoint Ventures who specializes on investments in the open source vertical. In this episode, I talk with him about the different business models in open source, challenges around defensibility and open source software moving from the backend to the application layer. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

5 years ago, Joe Doliner and his co-founder Joey Zwicker decided to focus on the hard problems in data science, rather than building just another dashboard on top of the existing mess. It's been a long road, but it's really payed off. Last year, after an adventurous journey from their seed round, they closed a $10m Series A led by Benchmark. In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by Joe Doliner to explore what Pachyderm does and how it scaled from just an idea into a fast growing tech company. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Gitlab is a unique tech unicorn. Last valued at $2.75bn, the company is fully remote. The two co-founders worked fully separately on the company for more than a year, knowing only each others avatars. As such, Gitlab is defying not only how code is deployed, but also how companies are run. So far, Gitlab has raised $436m from the likes of Khosla Ventures, August Capital and Google Ventures. In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij to talk about their founder, product and financing journey. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Gremlin is a fast growing company in the chaos engineering space founded in 2016. The company has pioneered the space by offering failure-as-a-service. So far, Gremlin has raised almost $27m from the likes of Amplify Partners, Index Ventures and Redpoint. In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by co-founder and CTO Matthew Fornaciari to talk about their founder, product and financing journey. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Joseph Jacks, founder and general partner at OSS Capital, the first and only VC fund exclusively dedicated to supporting commercial open-source software founders. We discuss the definition of commercial open-source software (COSS) companies and how open-source software is eating software. Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io