Podcasts about dropbox ipo

Guest: Oliver Jay - Head of Global Sales & Partnerships @Asana (Board Director @Grab; Formerly @Dropbox, @NEA, @HBS) Guest Background: Oliver Jay is the Head of Global Sales & Partnerships at Asana. Prior to Asana, he scaled the Dropbox sales team from 20 to 100 people across multiple geographies. Previously, Oliver worked at Morgan Stanley and New Enterprise Associates (NEA) where he invested and worked alongside entrepreneurs in consumer internet, cleantech and enterprise SaaS companies. Oliver earned his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania and his MBA from Harvard Business School.  Guest Links: Website | LinkedIn | Twitter Episode Summary: In this episode, we cover: - Top Talent: 4 Hiring Criteria & Step x Step Recruiting Process - The International Expansion Playbook - Upstream: Product-Market Fit to Freemium to Enterprise - Building Sales Engines - Self Serve, Online Sales, Enterprise, Partnerships & Channel - 3 Criteria for Picking Horses (the Right Hypergrowth Companies) - The Role of Unit Economics for Sales & Marketing Leaders Full Interview Transcript: Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to The Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest-growing companies. Enjoy! Naber:  Hey everybody. Today we have Oliver Jay on the show. OJ is they call him. OJ is the Head of Global Sales at Asana, a $1.5 billion valuation company, a Unicorn with $213 million capital raised. Prior to joining Asana, he scaled the Dropbox Sales team from 20 to 100 people across multiple geographies. Dropbox IPO in 2018 $9.6 billion valuation. Previously Oliver worked at Morgan Stanley and New Enterprise Associates, NEA. We invested and worked alongside entrepreneurs in consumer internet, clean tech and enterprise SaaS companies. OJ is also on the Board of Directors for Grab, who has a $14 billion valuation and $9.1 billion capital raised. OJ earned his BA from the University of Pennsylvania and his MBA from Harvard Business School. Here we go. Naber:  Oliver Jay, awesome to have you on the show. Thank you so much for joining us. Oliver Jay (OJ):  I'm so glad to be here, Brandon. Naber:  Excellent. Thank you. It's July 4th. I'm sure you don't have anything better to do, so I'm really glad that you're spending it with me this morning. and I really appreciate your time. So we've got a lot to talk about. We're lucky enough to know each other personally and professionally, so I get to talk about some of my favorite things and hear about your story personally, and we'll hop into professional as well, hop through some of your career journey and ultimately, spend the bulk of our time in your professional journey, talking about a lot of the strengths, experiences, and ultimately superpowers that you've built up over time, that you've been able to study about, but also execute on that at several different, really, really high growth businesses. So let's start with on the personal side, little bit about you growing up, a little bit about what you were like as a kid. I mean, Hong Kong, Concord, New Hampshire, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, San Francisco, Sydney, San Francisco 2.0, been all over the planet. And I'd love to walk through you as a kiddo and talk about some of your interests, some of the things you're interested in, and then your journey through school. And then we can get into some professional stuff. Maybe in five to seven minutes, et's talk through what was OJ as a kid? Oliver Jay (OJ):  Awesome. Yeah. Well, so I grew up in Hong Kong. My parents are still there. And, I think even as a child I was always, I was the Lego kid, I was the builder. I was a total nerd throughout. And I excelled in math and science. Not a surprise. And it got to a point where my parents were , okay, math is only going to get you so much here. So they then sent me to boarding school in New Hampshire. Naber:  And that was St Paul's? Oliver Jay (OJ):  And that would be St Paul's. So I went there. That was my entry to the US was a ninth grade. Naber:  Nice. Excellent. So, what were some of the interests you had or the hobbies you had when you were a kid? Oliver Jay (OJ):  My main thing was tennis. Tennis was my major hobby growing up. And I think a lot of who I am came from just that sport, because that sport, just like any sport, requires you to be excellent. You just have to be, continue to grind away. A lot of, how I think actually came from that sport and competing, learning how to lose graciously, learning how to stay calm when there's, when it's things are looking rough. When you're down a set, what do you do? I'm thinking about how do you change your tactics in real time? That all comes from tennis. Naber:  Absolutely. Especially in an individual sport. We have to be so iterative. Where you do things a thousand times in practice, and it just becomes a transaction when you're in the actual match. That makes a lot of sense. So when you moved to St Paul's, and you were in Concord, New Hampshire, out of your comfort zone, tell us about that transition. And then let's talk about some of the things that you were interested in when you were in New Hampshire and high school. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Boy, so the interesting thing was Saint Paul's is one of the top high schools in the US, and that's pretty much all my parents knew. And my parents said, you're very strong in math and science, but your English sucks, and it's just really bad. And they're like, you need to supercharge that. And so they looked at the list, I think it was a US News and World Report list. And they had a couple rankings and some names that people have heard of, Exeter, St Paul's, whatever. And then so I applied and got in. And I mean St Paul's is a real school, in that it's academics is intense. And it's in the middle of nowhere. I mean, you're literally in the woods. I grew up in Hong Kong, I grew up in the heart of the jungle, a concrete jungle, and then I'm literally moved into a jungle. The school had, I think 200 acres. And I mean, it was nuts. But I learned to adapt. I learned about the American way. Yeah, it was tough, but it was certainly, also the best four years of my academic career. Naber:  Nice. Very cool. And did you play tennis when you were there? Or what were some of the activities that you were doing? Oliver Jay (OJ):  Yeah, yeah. I was on the tennis team, I was captain of the tennis team there. We were decent, we were decent. I did that, and then I was just lots of part of lots of clubs. But honestly, high school was tough for me. I didn't have that much spare time. Obviously, it should be clear, I have tiger parents, right? Obvious. So I did play a violin as well, but I was terrible at it. But I did the orchestra thing, but I was, I was so bad, so bad. But I survived, and I was okay. But I mean, I just, I worked so hard because my English level was far, far, far, behind my peers at school. Naber:  That must have been so challenging. Learning all that curriculum at such a high level, while you're learning how to master the English language yourself. That is immensely complex. Oliver Jay (OJ):  It was crazy. It was crazy. But, it changed my life. Because when I went to college, I studied philosophy, politics and economics. I went to Penn, right? So I didn't go to Wharton and just do a bunch of math and talking about strategy. I mean it's funny, I'm in business now. It's so easy compared to a career, or studying old philosophy texts, and debating, and writing papers or why you disagree with Socrates. I mean that's...But if I didn't go to St Paul's, and then of gotten out of my comfort zone, I wouldn't have done that. Naber:  That's cool. That's actually a really good way of looking at it. The most challenging class I think I've ever had in Uni was my logic class, my philosophy class - deductive reasoning, and logic, and going through all those different frameworks, and squaring everyone from old philosophers, and folks that...it's just almost, it feels it's impossible with their life experiences to contend and debate with. But that's, that's really interesting. You moved to U Penn. Why did you decide to choose U Penn? Oliver Jay (OJ):  Actually it was specifically because I really liked this program. So PPE, philosophy, politics and economics, is the most popular major in Oxford, in the UK. And Penn was one of two schools that adopted this program. It sounds fancy. Sometimes when I tell people that, it sounds I tri-majored. It's not true. It's more than one, but, it's this integrated curriculum of three disciplines that I think are really, really tied together. So that's why I went to Penn, for that program specifically. Naber:  Got It. So I won't tell anyone you didn't tri-major, but it sounds really, really stimulating. So you were at U Penn, What were some of the things you're interested in at U Penn? Before we get into your first job. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Like I said, Saint Paul's really opened my eyes to the world of humanities, and that's why I really loved that. But my interest had always been in business. You grow up in Hong Kong, you're going to be in business or you're a doctor, right? Or maybe a lawyer. It's just what you do, and it's in my blood. And so even when I was in high school, I was reading Peter Lynch books on how to invest. And so I've always been interested in business, but I took a couple of business classes and I was like, especially the management ones, and I was like, this is ridiculous. I'm not gonna pay this tuition to learn how to work as a team. Not to dismiss it, but I'm like, I don't think I'm going to have a chance again to, to read about Immanuel Kant, and how he thinks about the world. So in college, what I did was I spent most of my time academically on humanities, and then extracurricular was where I got scratch my itch on business. And my biggest thing there is I started the Wharton China Business Society. And back then, it was 2000. China had just gotten into the World Trade Organization, this was before China is the China we know it as today. But you knew it was going to be big. And it's cool, that society is still running now. I'm still getting their emails. Well they keep asking me to for donations. Naber:  That's how you know you made it. All right, cool. So you're you go through UPenn, you tri-major, obviously we talked about that. And you're interested also in studying business. I know you've always been interested in studying companies. I don't know if that's at the cost of studying people, but I know you've always been interested in studying companies. Is that when that started? Or did you get more practical with investing at Morgan Stanley, at NEA, at Harvard, before you started studying companies a lot? Oliver Jay (OJ):  I think the turning point was Morgan Stanley. I mean it was probably that summer internship. I just find it really fascinating. So when I got to Morgan Stanley, and I picked Morgan Stanley because I always liked tech as well. So I've always been a geeky, nerdy guy. And so at Morgan Stanley, I joined the tech team. And I ended up joining team that covered hardware. So companies Cisco, Juniper, and all the companies that died, Nokia, Motorola, they don't exist anymore, Nortel. But I just found it so fascinating to think about how a lot of these companies basically sell commodity hardware. A Cisco router is not that much better than Juniper router, or vice versa back then, at that point. Naber:  That's like a nightmare for software, I mean you're selling on features and pricing. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Exactly, exactly. And, but you were able to see very, very different trajectories. A lot of these companies no longer exist. A lot of them are still strong today. And that's just because of a different strategy that companies took. And I had the opportunity to go really deep. So that's why I joined equity research as opposed to a lot of my colleagues that joined investment banking to work on IPO's and deals. Because, it's probably my humanities background in education that I had led me to want to dig in deep, as opposed to more of a transactional finance job. And that's why I ended up in equity research. And through that experience I've really got to learn how to dig into companies. Naber:  Yeah. Very cool. That's a great transition. So while you're at Morgan Stanley...What's the top thing you learned from Morgan Stanley? The top learning you had, before you moved into NEA. And then we'll hop into NEA after that. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Ooh, top thing from Morgan Stanley. I actually, I have two things in my mind. So can I give you two? Naber:  Give me 10 if you want to, I've got time. Naber:  Yeah. Yeah. So the first, is I think of all places, I was extremely fortunate. And I had two great Managers at Morgan Stanley. They were my first bosses. And they say your first Manager really impacts you and your career, more than any other, right? I was just so fortunate because normally you don't get that on Wall Street. Naber:  Yeah. Statistics aren't on your side. Oliver Jay (OJ):  And I got placed with Scott Coleman and John Marchetti, and they were up and comers. And they rose through the ranks, and so they know what it took to move up. And they just had a very empowering mentality from the beginning. So they just pushed me, and I always asked for more. But every time, they just really gave me great feedback, pushed me, I learned so much. And they empowered me so much that by the second year I was they put me on stage at the Morgan Stanley tech conference, interviewing tech CEOs. And I was like 2 years out of school. And I think that was a very formative experience because I got to benefit from that, and I know what that did for me, and my career, and my confidence. And we'll talk more later about building teams and managing teams, but I've taken a lot of that philosophy from them. I was so lucky. I mean, that would be the number one thing. I will give you that, that was my number one thing I got from Morgan Stanley. Naber:  Nice. That's great. I mean, you're going to talk us through NEA. I mean you've worked for incredible companies, and you're on team building. Let's talk about that. Hiring great teams. One of the things that I know is your superpower from hearing from other people, from talking to you personally, talking to you professionally. But the result speak for themselves. You've hired incredible individuals that I know, because I used to work with them, or I know people that used to work with them, are just the best at what they do. And you consistently do it time, over time, over time. What's I'd love to hear is one, what's that hiring philosophy that you took away from those guys, as well as any additional things you've applied today? And then we can talk a little bit about your actual process. Because clearly there's something you're doing in execution that is better than most, if not better than almost all. So what is your philosophy around hiring that you took away from those guys as well as how you think about it? And then we'll talk through the process like, candidate profiling strategy, how do you attract and recruit, how do you close? So we'll talk about those things as well. So, what's on your mind? Naber:  I love building teams. I mean, it starts there...let me start with why I care about it. And I think for me, that's literally why I think...That's where I find meaning in my life. Bringing in high potential talent and seeing it grow, and creating opportunities. And I've always thought of myself, on my deathbed if I'm seen as the Y-Combinator of talent, I'll be really, really happy. And so because of that, I think that it impacts what I look for, because I really look for people who I believe we can go on a journey together, and they can learn from me and I can learn from them, and we're going to achieve great things together. That's the high level mentality that I have. I really don't look at...no matter how senior or whether someone's a fresh-out-of-school graduate. I think I can learn something. If I can't learn something from you, then I don't think you're a good fit. But that's how I see it. And so it's interesting, at Asana, we recently distilled down what are our Sales attributes, the hiring profile, not profile, but what are the attributes or values, depending on how you define it, that we look for. And I was very, very involved you can imagine, because in many ways I think I codified the things that I really value. So there are four pieces that I really care about in every single person that I hired. No matter, again, fresh out of school or you're going to run EMEA. The first is someone who really "pursues excellence". What I mean by that is, I want to see evidence that someone knows what excellence means. Because in high growth companies, you're growing 100%, 200% early on, 300% in the super early days. Every knows...information is everywhere now. So you can imagine you've got great competition. And so, you gotta go for people who really, really...Well, if you're not excellent, you don't even have a chance. You don't even have a chance to survive. And so, if you're fresh out of school, and I'm digging into your profile, and I don't see one thing...And I don't care, it could be a violin. If you've gotten really good at violin, I'm like, oh yeah. And this is sometimes why I think some of my best hires have been teachers. Because, gosh, if you can teach, especially if people from Teach for America, if you can teach math to inner city kids who have no interest in math, okay, you've pursued excellence here. And I think in this world, you either get it or you don't. You've either seen excellence, and you know what that means, and what it takes to be great, or you just don't. And it's very binary, and you can tell very quickly. So someone who does that is something I value a lot. The second piece is, we're calling it, you "lead with empathy". And in Sales, of course, if you don't have empathy, you're not going to understand your customer's needs, and you're not going to relate to them. You're not going to build a good relationship with them. But I think a lot of this is also empathy just in terms of how you work together, right? Like in Sales...you never win because of Sales. This is a huge thing, where a lot of times I've talked to other founders and they're like, oh, okay, it's time to monetize, but I need to hire some Salespeople. Those Sales people are gonna fail, right? Because Sales is just a part of a bigger engine, because you've got to work together. And working together is fricking hard. It's really hard. So if you don't lead with empathy, you're not going to know how to work together cross-functionally. In Sales, what do Sales people say all the time, every single Sales person, every single Sales leader, I need more leads. Marketing's not developing more leads for me. I'm like, okay, great. Tell me more. How could they be developing more leads for you? And why? Most people can't answer that. If you can't answer that, just like with a customer, you're not going to be able to partner with Marketing to generate the leads that you actually want, right? It's not transactional. So anyways, so leading with empathy I think is something really important. And really behind that, what I'm looking for is self awareness, right? In a fast growing company, you don't have the time to coach every single person. You really don't. I've got some Managers right now who are managing 14 people because we're just growing that fast. And I couldn't hire Managers fast enough. That means that of the 14 people, honestly, they're not each individually getting the top quality mentorship that, say, I got from two guys at Morgan Stanley. But, if I hire people who are self-aware, they're going to teach themselves. They're going to look for ways to learn. And that combined with pursuing excellence, you're going to get good people. The third piece is what I call, someone on our team defined it as, "do the hard". And this is simple, this is like, you've got to grind. I mean, no one has achieved excellence without grinding away. And Sales is really tough. I mean, literally it is the definition of a grinder job. But also, do you take shortcuts? Sometimes the hard way now is actually the easy way long term. And that's what I look for. Are you willing to do, the hard work today so they easier for you later. And the last thing we call it "ascending together", which is your ability to work as on a team. It's like, thinking like an owner, right? That's something LinkedIn, I think it was one of Jeff's big things. It's one of my big things too. I remember when I was Morgan Stanley, that's what John Mack said when he was running the company. Now this is a big bank, Morgan Stanley. When he first said that, I was like, yeah, how am I going to change the trajectory of Morgan Stanley as a first year analyst. But, I did think that way, I really did, and I love that. So, those are some of the high level qualities that I look for in anybody. Naber:  Nice. That's awesome. One follow up on that, that was really well articulated, thanks. And the one follow-up on that...Do you have a particular process you go through? Let's talk about hiring directly on your team, your team, your directs. Do you have a particular process you go through around candidate profiling, attracting that candidate, and you reaching out to them either personally, or the message that you craft? Going through the recruitment, and interviewing process, and then closing. Do you have any tactics that you think completely set you apart from, maybe what other people do, just based on the results that you've gotten? You know that they work. Oliver Jay (OJ):  I don't know if it's differentiated, but I'll tell you how I approach it. I think the first step is you really have to understand the nuances of the role that you're trying to hire for. This is a mistake I see a lot in companies. Especially early stage companies, at some point they have like 10 Salespeople, they're hitting quota, kind of. And then the Board's like, you need a VP of Sales. And then they go and the hire some kind of recruiting firm, and they load them up with VP Sales candidates, and they just hire someone to do VP Sales. And that happens every day. And, I think there's so many nuances to the rule. What kind of Sales? How do you want to build it? And, what types of talent would you want this person to bring in? And, so I am a big believer that you don't know how to hire for that role unless you've done that job yourself, for at least a quarter or two. I think as you get better, you use pattern matching and shortcut. But in the beginning, you have to do it yourself...in the Sales world, so you know what type of companies are you really, really going after and such. And so that's my first step. Because even though I'm desperate for bandwidth, and I would just love to hire someone right now to just take the job, if I don't dig in myself, I don't think I'll hire her right, the best person for that job. So that's first, and I think that helps a lot downstream, and I'll come back to it. Second is, I leveraged my network. So I leverage my network, and I go talk to people. You and I have talked. I'm like, hey, I'm looking for this person. And now I know what I'm looking for, right? Who's the best two people you know? And I don't need to recruit them, but I want to talk to them. Naber:  You do this a lot. You do this a lot. To the point where sometimes I know you're in the market for someone because either I'm close with someone that might be one of the best in the market, and I'm hearing that you had a conversation because he or she and I will talk, and hear that, OJ had a conversation. You do this, it is perpetual, it is in your nature, perpetually to do this all the time. Oliver Jay (OJ):  And I think part of it is, I find it interesting, right? It's like, you get to learn. It's free education, why not? And so I constantly do that, that's true. And then I get referrals. I remember when I moved out to Australia to run, to start Dropbox APAC, and back then LinkedIn when you were there, LinkedIn was one of the top SaaS organization. Smaller than Salesforce, but the talent was super high quality, right? I canvas the top three layers. I talked to every single person across Sales, Marketing, Talent Solutions, everybody...and that's how I met great people Gareth. So, that's step two. Step three is then obviously building that list and talking to people. And I think this is one where, I don't know if it's different, but I do it myself. I do it myself. I reach out. I mean, I'm looking for a Head of BD right now. I'm the one who's InMail'ing people. I don't outsource it to a recruiter. And I think that makes a big difference. Because if you're a top talent, you want to hear from...you want your best shot at this person, right? So I do it myself. And when I get in touch with these people, and I think this is where having done the job yourself for at least a quarter to really, really make a difference, because then now you can talk about the role in a much more sophisticated way. You're not like, I'm just hiring someone to run east coast...Someone is interested it when you're able to map the distinct qualities needed for someone to be successful in a certain role, and why that candidate is a perfect fit. Naber:  There's something ultra sexy about that. There's something ultra sexy about that from a candidate perspective. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Because the candidate, people have choices. There's so many great companies out there. And what candidates want to know, ultimately no matter where and who, is that they're going to be set up for success. And so I think that comes across when you actually know what you're looking for, and then you can talk about why that person...Hey Brandon, I'm talking about you, and you specifically, because of XYZ, and that XYZ is exactly what I'm looking for. And that makes it a lot better. And then I also think a lot, again, you gotta develop that relationship, especially if you're hiring General Managers...If you treat it as just a process, that's where I've seen these things fail. I mean, I've seen bad hiring practices, even at Dropbox where I was, where you meet a lot of hiring mistakes. It was when you make these critical roles that you just rush through a process. I'm gonna go find an executive recruiter from, they're gonna bring me 20, and then I'm going to whittle it down to three, bring people back onsite, pick one. Those almost never work out because you don't have that trust developed, or you can't close. Because that trust has not been built up throughout the process. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Those are great. Those are great. All right. I feel people are going to be furiously writing down notes in audience, much slower than you can talk about this stuff. All right, let's move into NEA...So you're at Morgan Stanley, you make the jump to NEA. Why do you make that jump? What are you doing there? And then I've got a couple of questions for you. Naber:  Cool. NEA was the world's largest venture capital fund. And back then they were, they had never hired pre MBA analysts before, so I was a guinea pig of the first class. Essentially all of these partners just wanted people to do their work for them. And fast forward, now NEA I think has 20 analysts because it's like, wow, that's great to get people to do great work, do all that work for them. NEA - why did I join NEA? Well, first why did I join venture, go into venture capital. And when I was in equity research, I got into the business of studying companies, and giving buy, sell, neutral ratings on every stock, right? You go to CNBC, and there's someone talking about their stock, that was me. Well, that wasn't me, I didn't go on TV, but that's the work I did. Behind that analyst on TV, there's some baby, junior OJ who is crunching numbers. What I realized about my job that I liked was actually understanding the company, the strategy of companies, and the technology of companies. Back then, that was right when iPhone came out. And I made a bad call, by the way. I was like, Blackberry, RIM, remember Research in Motion? Blackberry is for consumers. Remember this company called Palm - PalmPilot remember? Palm is for prosumers. When the iPhone came out, I was like, this is for consumers. Don't worry. Buy more Blackberry. Buy, buy, buy. Obviously I was wrong. But anyways, I love that analyses. What I did not care about was the actual finance. I can do the job, but whether Cisco is going to trade to 35 or 33, I just didn't care. It was almost too easy. It was like, okay, I can look at a stock chart, after a month be like, okay, it's going to pop back up. Naber:  Humanities OJ comes out again. Oliver Jay (OJ):  I think so. It's just not for me. It wasn't fulfilling. if I made a really great call, and I helped a client make a ton of money, I just didn't find that rewarding. So, venture sounded interesting because it sounded it was like, okay, I'm still leveraging some of my analytical background, but I can dig deep into strategy and technology. So that's why I learned to venture. And there was a really a crazy adventure where I got to work with a great farm. Also, so fortunate work with some such great Managers, who empowered me and challenged me. And that's when I got closer to entrepreneurs, and founders. And my job there was due diligence for deals that came in. NEA got great deal flow because it was one of the best firms. So the pressure was more on diligence, and then working with companies, which is great. And then as I worked more with companies, and if we fast forward, that's why I ended up working as, becoming an operator. I was like, wow, that seems fun. It was funny because it gave me that kind of exposure. Naber:  Nice. I read a quote that you had mentioned, in a couple places, that you saw the fun the operators were having, and you wanted to hop on that side of the coin. And I think it's well said. So when you were there at NEA, I've got two particular things that over your career, you've been good at...But since we're on NEA, and you've had a ton of exposure to a lot of different types of companies and deals, it could have been one of the places where the seeds were planted for these two things. The first one is around picking horses, picking the right companies that are going to take off, and understanding the process you need to go through in your mind for one, picking that business, and two, evaluating as to whether or not you would want to hop on board. You've done an amazing job with evaluating them for the companies that you've joined, Dropbox and Asana as an operator, as well as a bunch of businesses you've helped, either been a Board Observer, or you've been a Board Director on a bunch of different types of companies. So when you're thinking about picking horses, what is the criteria you think about for joining a company? And like you said, people have options that are the best...that it being worthy of one, you looking at it, and two, you hopping on board? Oliver Jay (OJ):  Yeah, it's I absolutely learned that from venture. And as a result of that, I look at everything from a investor lens now. When it comes to picking horses, I think...two of the most legendary investors in the valley, Dick Kramlich was a founder of NEA, and Forest Baskett who is still a GP there and just incredibly smart. Basically, when Tableau was founded, he worked with the early founders in the NEA offices to start Tableau. And I asked them, hey, what's what's the secret? Because there are some venture investors that are just clearly better than others. What's the secret? Naber:  Yeah, top quartile year over year. Oliver Jay (OJ):  What's the secret? I mean, when I asked them, I was amazed...Dick was like, find companies that are going after really large markets. And you're like, okay, duh. Naber:  Let me just write that down. Oliver Jay (OJ):  But as I've matured, and I've looked into different companies, and how markets have matured, I can't tell you how many times I've told people on my teams who want to go to some company gave them some VP Sales job, and it sounds great, but the category is just not that big. And I think that's number one, you have to pick a company that has an exploding market, and most importantly is timing. Is the market about to explode now. Let's take a couple of examples. Let's look at Zoom and Slack, two examples recently. Zoom was one of the best IPO's of all time. I mean incredible IPO. Messaging, I mean, I remember the days in 95 when we were using ICQ. I don't know if you ever used ICQ. I still remember my ICQ number, right? We were messaging. Slack versus ICQ, or later MS Messenger, is honestly not that different. And then there was Skype in the middle. So, why is this so different? Do I really believe that the UI is so amazing that that's the reason. Like, okay, maybe, but I don't know if that's a $20 billion difference. It's just that somewhere, in the B2B world around 2014, the market tipped. There was a need in the market for more dynamic communications because the pain of email was just too high, for that use case. And CIO's started believing in it. And that's when it tipped. And that market, the enterprise messaging market, basically tipped in 2014 to 2016, I would say. In those two years the winner, it's a winner take all market...There's good research that shows that when a category tips, you get a flood of competitors, and then within two years, 18 to 24 months, the leader ends up taking I think 78%, something that, call it 80% market share of the market. But if the market is huge, you can go into a big market and you'll still be okay, right? Remember there's a company called Jive, right? And remember Yammer? Remember there was a Chatter? All the still did okay, but if you want the get the $20 billion market cap that Slack got, you have to be the winner during that window when the market is ready to tip. And I would say the same thing about video conferencing. Zoom...this is nothing new. I mean, that's how my wife and I developed a relationship, right, over video conferencing, over Instand Messenger - AOL, by the way, another messaging tool. And look, somewhere between 2015 to 2017, maybe even later, was when the need really, really tiped, and now you see Zoom taking off. And you and I now, we're doing this podcast via Zoom, and we use it all the time. Same thing with file storage. Dropbox, is generating $1.4 billion in recurring revenue for file sharing. Naber:  Fastest company to $1 billion for a SaaS business ever? Is that right?...ARR. Oliver Jay (OJ):  That's right. That's right. And they didn't invent file storage. I remember when I first used Yahoo in 1995, I got to upload a file into Yahoo, and then download it when I was in the library. It was life changing. Yeah, it was amazing. So it's not new. Cloud storage wasn't new. It's just that the market tipped at that point where people were starting to move away from servers. And in 2013 to 2014 was when mobile adoption in the enterprise had hit a certain rate, and that's when you needed cloud storage. Because on mobile, you can't access files anyway. So number one, you've got to pick a huge market, and most importantly, you've got to join that market right before the market tips. And so you have to make a call. I joined Asana when people were like, what is this project management thing? I don't know what it is. Forrester and Gartner haven't written reports on it yet. But I asked the most progressive CIOs, what's next? They're like, well, I just put in Slack, and now all my work is fragmented even in more places than before. I need something to pull it back together. So I'm going to look into this project management, work management space. And I'm like, oh, interesting. So I developed this hypothesis that the capstone of the new modern collaboration stack is going to be something like Asana that pulls things back together, at least for the things that I really did matter to that company. And I'm seeing that market...we are in the heart of the race right now, that 18 to 24 month window. So that's number one. Number two is obviously what people generally look for which is technology, right? If this market is going to tip, does this company have the right technology to win? And this is very much a venture thing, where you need to some make some calls on the architecture, how they built it. What are customers saying about the product, right? That's when you get some feedback. So the second thing is, does this company have the right product to win the market. Because I do think, especially in the B2B now, SaaS more and more, is dictated by the end user and what they use. So you gotta make sure you're the one that people are gonna pick. And then the last part is, do you have the right team? Does this company have the right team that you're going to back? And that's probably the number one thing, besides the size of market, that venture capitalists bet on, is the people. Because early stage you don't really have much of a business yet. Or even a product. And I think in terms of picking companies to join, same thing, right? Let's say you join a Series C company, what is the management team? What are the dynamics? When things go south, which always happens, how does that management team work together to solve them? Or is there finger pointing? 90% of the time it's fingerpointing. 90% of the time Sales says Marketing didn't generate enough leads. Well, no, let me start...Customer Success and Support says Sales as closing crappy deals. Sales says well, what do you expect? Marketing is driving these bad leaves? Marketing goes, well, what do you expect our Product is missing all this stuff. Product goes well, that's because design is a bottleneck, and it's not shipping. We're not shipping fast enough because design is not ready. Design is like, well, you know what, it's not my fault. I can't hire enough designers, it's recruiting, right? Recruiting..it just goes on. And when I say 9 our of 10, I think that it's 9.8 out of 10. And I made this mistake myself. Before Dropbox, I joined a company that I probably shouldn't have. So a lot of people look at the company profile, and the executives, and where they came from. Oh, this person was at Google for 20 years. Well, you know what, so have like 10,000 other people. And you've seen this at LinkedIn, not everyone's a star at LinkedIn buddy. A lot of stars. But, quite a few duds too. Naber:  Totally. I mean, nature of large numbers like that, for every one of those businesses. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Totally. Totally. Or they haven't seen the right stage that's relevant for your company. So, finding the right team that you think you can bank on just to get through the hard times is really, really important. Don't just look at the profile. Naber:  Nice. Awesome. Great answer. Okay. So, we've gotten through NEA right now. At this point, I believe you jump into Harvard, correct? HBS. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Yeah. Naber:  Cool. So take us through the reason you decided to go get your MBA. Why Harvard, which may be self-explanatory. And then take us all the way up through your decision to join Dropbox. So through that period, Scientific Conservation, Harvard, etc, up through the point where you're joining Dropbox. And then we'll talk about what you were responsible for there. And I've got some, a couple of questions for that. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Yeah, sure. So I decided when I was at NEA that I wanted to be on the operating side. So I was like, they have all the fun. I didn't understand how much pain they had either, honestly, but I was like, it sure seems fun. And, the short answer of why I decided to get my MBA...I was like, okay, well if I got into a great school, I might as well take a break because I'm going to make this career switch anyways. So I'll just do it. And that's literally the logic. And this was mainly...I remember one of my mentors at NEA, John S., who's a fantastic guy, fantastic...Remember remember there was this company called The Ladders? Naber:  Yeah, of course. Yeah. The $100K+ jobs is their thing, right? Oliver Jay (OJ):  Yeah, yeah, yeah. What happened with them? Naber:  They died. I have no idea. It was almost overnight. Because I remember, I mean, I did a lot of research on ladders for at some point in my career. Anyways, I don't know, they just died at some point. Oliver Jay (OJ):  So we we're going to meet with The Ladders in New York. I remember this clearly. This was right around the recession starting, and John's just like, you need to apply to business school. And this was October, and the deadline was coming up in December. So I was like, all right. He convinced me that would be good. I mean, I might as well, I'm going to try it. John's like, you're probably not going to get in, and that's cool, but why not try? Because getting into business school, certainly getting into HBS, is a total crapshoot. It's a total lottery. Yeah. I got some friends who were way more qualified than I am and didn't get in. And I now know it's for sure a crap shoot. So anyways, I applied. And I only had time to apply to one school, and that was not the plan, but I just didn't have time because I had to take the GMAT, write the essays, get the recommendation, all that. I only applied to Harvard assuming that I didn't get in. And then I got in. Naber:  Stop it. Hold on. This is unbelievable. Hold on, hold on. So you only applied to Harvard and you got end up... Oliver Jay (OJ):  Yeah, it wasn't because I had so much confidence or that it was the only school that I would go to. I was gonna apply to like five. But dang it, man, these essays, they take like...I haven't written these essays in a long time, and they go back to humanities OJ. It took forever. I just didn't have time. I think the the application was due January 1st or something, and I remember over Christmas I was writing these essays and I was just like, I don't have time for this. And I just applied one. I really didn't think I was going to go to business school, and then I got it in. And I'm like, oh, okay. I guess I'm going. Naber:  No one can see me losing a right now. Laughing silently while I'm listening to this, and not believing it. This is a great story about getting into Harvard Business School. Such a good story. All right, so you're at Harvard, what's the biggest thing you learned there? And then take us through up to you joining Dropbox. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Ah, man. Yeah. So Harvard was great. Naber:  You must have met some really cool, interesting people. Oliver Jay (OJ):  I met some amazing people. And people that I considered to be my best friends today. That's where I met the co-founders of Grab, I'm on their board now. I met a lot of great professors.Look, I think the thing about business school...A lot of people poo poo on business school. They're like, it's expensive, you don't learn anything, it's just networking. I mean, I call bullshit on that. Because I'm a nerd, I to learn. And so I studied. I'm like, wow, this is interesting. And I'll tell you at that point I was going through this big clean tech phase in my life. I was really interested in clean tech. I was doing clean tech investments at NEA. I was part of the environment group at HBS. I was super active. I thought I was going to build a career in clean tech. And now that I'm selling productivity software for the past seven years, it's given me a different kind of perspective looking back. But I was so into clean tech. And I met some great people through that, through other who have similar interests. But I'll tell you, so my first job was Scientific Conversation - they basically sell building automation software to help optimize the equipment in commercial buildings to optimize their energy spend. Think of it as HVAC optimization software. I would not have been able...and I took a Sales role coming out of school, which is interesting because very few people go to HBS to come out to be a Sales guy. It's pretty rare. And I sold to real estate developers. And if I did not take a real estate class at HBS, I wouldn't know how to speak that lingo. Cap rates, and TNI, and whatever. I mean it's just, there's different things. I learned that from school. And then what was really interesting was then Scientific Conversation went through a big period of restructuring. And I had to be a big part of that. I took this class called turn arounds, because it's a new topic, when you learn about - how to turn around companies? How do you learn about bankruptcy law? You learn about how to negotiate with your creditors so you can live to die another day, so to speak. And then I used those skills. I literally looked up my notes on bankruptcy. Because I would call our creditors, and it'd be like, hey man, we're about to go under here. I'm going to give you, I know I owe you $2 million, I'm gonna give you $2,000, or you can have a shot at bankruptcy court. Anyways, long story short, business school was awesome. I met great people, and I learned a ton, got great exposure, and I actually implement the things that I learned. Naber:  Wow. That's great. Great Story. Okay. So Boston, Beantown, you leave. Scientific Conversationis next, you join in a Sales and Partnerships capacity. Every Harvard Business Schoolers dream, joining Sales right after that. Oliver Jay (OJ):  That's why you go to HBS. Naber:  That's right. #HBS. So what is the biggest thing that you learn at that business, and why did you join Dropbox? Oliver Jay (OJ):  Well, a lot of my lessons learned around the people, in part, was what I learned at Scientific Conservation. It had on paper, all the things that most people look for, right? I said, oh, pre rocket ship, hot industry, a team that looked really, really strong on paper. That's what I went for. You know, hypergrowth. I remember Kleiner Perkins, NEA, Accel. Everybody was like, this is the next one, this is the next OPOWER. This is the commercial version of OPOWER. I thought it was the best thing. But you know what, just didn't have the right team to execute going through the tough times. and that's what I learned. That's honestly the biggest lesson I learned. I met a lot of great people. But that's where I really realized, wow, so much of execution is the people, and the chemistry of those people. And that's what I learned there. So why did I Dropbox? Honestly, I mean...we had to do a big turn around in Scientific Conservation. Within a year we went from 30 people, to 180 people, and then I had to play a big part in restructuring down back to 90 people, and then down to 50 people. I mean it was a year that felt 10 years. So Dropbox, I showed up, people on scooters, drinking from coconuts...you've been to the office. It was just a different world. I'm over here trying to make payroll, literally. There was a payroll period where I... Naber:  And letting people go daily. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Ugh, brutal. People always ask, what's the biggest done, whatever. I'll say the biggest deal I've done was in...I broke my lease, the Scientific Conservation lease with a real estate developer...Because we had signed this Embarcadero Bay Bridge View Office for a seven year lease, even though the company was making zero in revenue, so that tells you something. But thankfully, the one thing that went in our favor was the rental rates have actually gone up in SF. Far, far greater than our committed rate of increase in her seven year lease. So they way I made payroll was, I went to the developer and I said, I will break the lease if you give me x amount of money. Well, they didn't know it was how we were going to make payroll. It was hilarious. And then negotiation, at the end the thing that clinched the deal was office furniture. I was like, I'll throw in the office furniture. Naber:  Stop it. I always find it mind blowing when in residential, someone rents someplace for like, a few grand more a month just because the furniture's included. And that was your deal with the developer. That guy has done tons of deals, tons of deals, and this guy closes over the furniture. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Honestly, I probably would have gotten it done anyways. I was actually in my head thinking, I don't want to pay to get rid of the furniture. That was what was going to be my head. Naber:  Oh, that's a good win-win. All right, so you join Dropbox. There's coconuts, there's cupcakes, there's all of it. So walk us through in one or two minutes, what you were responsible for and the jumps that you made at Dropbox. And then I've got a few questions around some of your super powers, okay? Oliver Jay (OJ):  Yeah. So Dropbox I went in as one of the first business generalists. There wasn't a role, it really just do everything. So, looking to our payments gateway infrastructure, looked into capital financing for our data center to help raise capital. I looked into real estate because they're like, oh, now you're a real estate pro from my background. So I had to try to figure out finding office space. Andthis was all in the first three months. We were moving so fast. And and then there was this business called Dropbox for Teams that was starting to grow really, really quickly. And the Head of Business, our COO was like, can you just take a look at that. Basically, do the Sales Ops work to see what's going on. And that's how I got into it. And then one thing led to another. So took that role on, started adding some visibility into the business. And then moved into actually managing part of it. And ended up running a lot of it, growing the North America Online and Inside Sales teams to 70 or so people. And then got the opportunity to co lead our APEC expansion efforts. Naber:  With Tony, is that right? Oliver Jay (OJ):  With Tony, that's right. And they're like, all right, figure it out. I mean, that was it. Figure out APAC, period. So then we did that, that led to both of us moving out to APAC for a year and a half. Started the Australia office, Japan office, I was gonna think about Singapore, but didn't end up doing Singapore. Also looked at Latin America, when the new CEO joined. He's like, well, there's another continent. Someone's going to look at it. And they just put it on our plate. And then did that for a while. And then when I came back to the US, transitioned into the Corp Dev team, so think about M&A at Dropbox. And then through that experience I realized I really missed building teams. Which is why I went back to the Sales world at Asana. Naber:  Nice. After hearing your story, and I saw a lot of firsthand when I was working with teams at Dropbox and I'm working with teams at Asana, now I get that, why you made that jump. Or at least why that was the right time in your life, and in missing teams to want to make that jump. Wow. That's really interesting. Okay. So a couple things about Dropbox. There is a theme, and you've done this really interestingly coming at it from, let's call it the Sales Ops angle first, and then jumping into manage these teams. Which some of the best operators I know from a Sales and Marketing perspective, have come from the Ops side. I look at them as the Ying to my Yang. They speak a beautiful language and I want to hear all of it. So as you're doing that, you're building things from scratch. And you are building at one phase at Dropbox, and you go through a lot of different phases of growth in your international expansion playbook. You're also going through phases you've been in before at Asana, and planning for phases that are things you've seen before, and things you know a lot about. So let's talk about your international expansion playbook. As you're going through phase by phase, and one, making the decision as to whether or not you should do it in the first place - Expanding outside of, let's call it the US for now, into other markets? And then two, once you decide yes through that evaluation process, you want to go about doing it. What's your step by step process you're going through in order to expand internationally? You can use the Dropbox example or the Asana example, or both, If you just want to say, hey, this is what we did then and this is what we did then. But either way, what's your phase by phase and step by step approach as you're executing on this expansion playbook. Oliver Jay (OJ):  So I think the first is understanding that international operations is not...Adding international operations is, honestly from management overhead perspective, it's the minute you go international, for every new region and office you add is equivalent of adding two, and the next one you add is like adding three. There's a complexity, the overhead is so much more, and sophistication is so much greater. And that's not to say it's not worth it, right? Obviously I do it, but it's something that I think you need to be really, really honest with yourself, with your teams on whether or when are you ready for that? Because honestly, one of the things that I think about is, most companies go international too late, right? I think Slack is a good example. Slack to me, and I have a lot of good friends at Slack, so maybe you have to delete this. But, international is only 30% of their revenue, or 35% of their revenue at this scale. And I think Microsoft got a jump on them internationally. Well Microsoft has a jump on everybody, but especially internationally. And so, you want to go fast, but you got to make sure you commit. So step one, before you commit 100%, what you can do is just play the digital game. Localize your product, localize your ads, localize your website. And I would say probably even in that order. Again, it depends on what product you have, right? But if you have a user facing product...and in Enterprise it starts with the product. In many countries you may have one or two people who aren't very comfortable with English, but the rest of the team may not be. And you're not going to get good adoption that way. So I think that's important, localize your product, as long as you feel you have enough confidence that it's worth the engineering investment. Because it's a big investment. There's a certain threshold where you're going to start seeing...Whether it's tickets that come in asking for your language, or your community, you'll get that ask. Yeah, I mean, maybe French and Spanish, the website, that's as an obvious one. But what's interesting is you can some good lift from just localizing the ads, in Dutch or Japanese, and it points to an English website. You're still going to get some incremental dollars there. So play the digital game. And then at some point, and you have to come up with a framework, and it's different company to company, and you don't have to be that Scientific. But at what point do you feel you're ready to go open an additional office? And almost always, you'll see English speaking markets adopt first - UK, Australia, are the next two, and Canada. Large markets that, for many reasons, and we're not gonna have enough time talking about them, but they usually are the next to adopt technologies. And so your next move almost guaranteed is going to be somewhere in Europe, right? And you pick between Dublin, Amsterdam or London and we can talk about which one, why, but it's going to be one of those three almost guaranteed, right? So setup your Europe hub. And then depending on the type of company, you can think about growing from there. So then the most obvious, next markets would be France and Germany in Europe. And so then you got to make that decision on whether you want to service those markets in whichever hub you've picked, or you go even more local. And I think that depends on the type of company that you have. We talked about Australia, that makes a ton of sense already. The minute you're looking into the UK, if you have the bandwidth, you should look in Australia as well. I would think that the market demand would be equivalent in terms of the time. And then Japan. Japan, people forget, is the second largest IT market in the world. And they're early in their cloud adoption. But for SaaS companies, it's really starting to take off. And so Japan is a market where investing in early can pay off dividends three, four years down the road. Japan is Slack's number two market. It's Salesforce's number two market. But it takes years to build up that market. And so you can start thinking about that. So the order of sequencing, I guess I'm not even...I guess I've done it enough now to just know the sequence instead. I mean the first time I did this at Dropbox it was like, okay, how many users do we need to see before we go green light here? How much revenue? How many businesses? How many domains we want to see? And, I've traveled so much in the last couple of years. This is the order that I would go in, Naber:  Good one. Awesome. You know what's really interesting about that, is you mentioned you've looked at the data, and from the data side it says to do this, this, and this. What you're saying is don't necessarily do the work that everyone else has has done. This is an all likelihood, the chronology of the markets that you will go into next. And that's really interesting. Don't redo all the work. Do not reinvent the wheel. I have two follow-up questions to that. One is how do you know whether to hire local, even more local, versus doing it from a regional hub? How do I know whether or not I should sell from Dublin or London or Amsterdam into France, Germany, Spain, Italy, some of the Nordic countries, etc? Or hire local in that particular market? And by that I mean, when do I do it? And I'll ask the other question after that. Oliver Jay (OJ):  Yeah. To me it all depends on your target audience. Who are you trying to go after and how? So if you're going after SMBs, this is primarily going to be Inside Sales function. You're not showing up. It's not a relationship sale. Then there is so much value in centralizing to the last minute that you can because you're still trying to figure it out. So Asana is small deals, we start with small teams and then we expand them. And, we essentially have a big machine in Dublin. Why? Because the French rep who has learned some new insight selling to Mid-market & SMB companies in France can share with the Nordic Rep, and those best practices when you're early in a region, you got to learn quickly, and you're gonna to learn from the field. And that information transfer is so valuable. And then eventually you go the other way. You launch a new product, you've got to enable the team. There's a lot of operational overhead to enabling lots of people in the field, versus you just fly into in one office, and you basically enable a team all at once. So huge, huge advantage to centralizing. However, if your Sales cycle and process relies a lot on relationship building, whether it's for bigger deals, whether it's a complex deal that relies on partners, then you need to go in the field. And that's where showing up makes a ton of sense. And what changes is the unit economics of that office, where if you open an office in Paris, now showing up at a mid-market opportunity of a 10K Pounds deal, normally is not going to justify a flight in, hotels, make it work. But now it's just, down the street. I mean not down the street, but now you can justify making that visit, and absolutely everything that increases the conversion rate. So there is benefit there too. But balancing operational overhead, learning earlier, I am a big believer that you should hold off as long as you can. Because once you're decentralized, there's no way you can centralize again. Or you can, but it's very painful. You gotta shut down offices, and it's really painful. So you want to wait as long as possible. Naber:  Nice. Great answer. Thank you. And then, second question is...So you're going through this process of massive expansion, within Dropbox and Asana, and you're going through different stages of growth. One of the things that you need to constantly think about...which I don't necessarily believe that a large number of Heads of Sales and Heads of Marketing are very good at this. One of the things you need to constantly be aware of...and coming from VC, you've got interesting perspective on this, and not all the people who have gone from VC to operator and done it with the amount of, not only success, but the amount of speed that you've done it...So a Head of Sales and Marketing needs have the right mindset, with planning and execution, with unit economics in mind. So how do you make sure that you have the right mindset? What is your mindset when you're thinking about balancing, things LTV to CAC ratios, versus booking in revenue growth rate expectations, versus the growing pains of teams and the engagement of those teams. How do you think about incorporating unit economics into your approach? And how do you think about that as a Head of Sales and Marketing? Oliver Jay (OJ):  Okay. So I would say there's a couple of things. First in terms of mindset, if you're leading Sales and Marketing, let's say your company is growing at 100%, right? My mindset, and I tell this to all my Managers, is that my job is to plan and execute as if we were 12 months from now. My Manager's job is to execute and plan as if we were six months from now. Your IC's are the ones who were executing to quarter to quarter. And I think that's something that I always drill into my team, and my Manager because most people manage to the quarter. And by the time you manage to a quarter, you've already forgotten about the next one, and you're basically accumulating debt. And I think part of what's challenging and exciting about managing in high growth, is you've got to balance executing and the job at hand, but at the same time develop the vision of where you need to get to - So if you're a line Manager six months from now - and you've got to do both at the same time. So as my leads, they got the quarterly number, that's great. I just assume they're going to hit it. I mean just tell me if you're not going to hit it, but I'm assuming you're going to hit it. What are the programmatic things you're building in right now as if you're six months from now? Because that is going to take time to build it. And then once you build it, boom, now you're ready. My job is 12 months. So right now, I'm thinking about what my team needs to be doing this time next year. Because, well, my team is getting pretty big now. It's hard to steer a big ship. And so if I'm optimizing for something for the end of the year, not to say that's I don't do that, I do that. But I also push myself to think longer because for me, and from my angle, what's going to happen in the second half of this year has already been shipped. Our performance, our unit economics, our, whatever programmatic infrastructure we build is going to be, it's already too late to change that. So I'm thinking ahead. I think that's important because, you mentioned about unit economics, your unit economics need to change over time. And so you got to work with your management team, your finance team, to understand what unit economics you need to have this time next year. So that you can slowly migrate there. Otherwise you're just hiring heads, heads, heads, heads, heads, and eventually you're like, oh, one day you wake up and finance is like, okay, you're going to get three heads next year, but you have the grow revenue revenue by 50%. So that's the high level mindset that I think is really important, to understand end state first, and work with finance to understand what that looks like. And so I know next year what my unit economics need to be. Now, I can start back filling. And then this is what I do to backfill. So what I do is, I ask my teams to now start thinking about, not unit economics first though, strategy. First strategy, then tactics, then numbers. So for example, my team in Europe. Right now, it's July, and it's the end of our quarter this month. The leads are going to come over to the US and present their strategy for next year, so basically the next 18 month strategy. What do I mean by strategy? Who's our primary customer? Who are we trying to win over and outserve everybody else. Why? And where are we going to focus? Because you can't go after everything. And when I think about Europe as an example, a microcosm of the world, the UK is very different than Germany, which is very different than Spain, and very different than the Nordics. So, if someone calls me and tells me this is my EMEA blanket strategy, I'm like, that's not a strategy. I want you to define what winning looks in the Nordics, and define what winning looks in Spain. Portugal, not as important to me, lump it into that region. Iberia, right? Or something. But, I think it's important that to have a view where you define success. Okay, this is what I'm trying to accomplish in Germany. Align on that first. That's a strategy. Then the tactics. How are we going to do that? Okay. in Germany we're going to go after this segment

Guest: Jenn Knight - Co-Founder & CTO @AgentSync (Formerly @Stripe, @Dropbox, @LinkedIn, @Bluewolf) Guest Background: Jenn has worked with hypergrowth businesses like LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Stripe. At LinkedIn (IPO 2011, Acquired by Microsoft for $27B in  2016) Jenn was the Manager of Solutions Architecture. After 3 years at LinkedIn, Jenn joined Dropbox (IPO in March 2018, $10.5B Valuation). She was there for 3.5 years where she was the Head of Business Technology, managing technical teams spanning financial systems, sales systems, web services (CMS), integrations, and business intelligence infrastructure. Over an 18 month period, she scaled her teams from 15 to 35 people. Jenn has since joined Stripe ($20 Valuation, $785M Raised) for the last 2 years as the Head of Internal Systems. Guest Links: LinkedIn Episode Summary: In this episode, we cover: - The Playbook for Building Business Systems, Tools, and Technology Teams - Mindset, Structure, Chronology, Methods, and Best Practices - The Internal Business Technology Team Superpowers @Stripe, @Dropbox, and @LinkedIn - How to be an End-to-End Process Thinker - Stakeholder Management Tips & Advice Full Interview Transcript: Naber:  Hello friends around the world. My name is Brandon Naber. Welcome to The Naberhood, where we have switched on, fun discussions with some of the most brilliant, successful, experienced, talented and highly skilled Sales and Marketing minds on the planet, from the world's fastest growing companies. Enjoy! Naber:  Hey everybody. We have Jenn Knight on the show today. Jenn has worked hypergrowth businesses like LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Stripe. At LinkedIn (who IPO'd in 2011 and was acquired by Microsoft in 2016), Jenn was the Manager of Solutions Architecture. After three years at LinkedIn, Jenn joined Dropbox (who IPO'd in March, 2018 and they have a valuation of $10.5 billion). She was there for three and a half years where she was the Head of Business Technology managing Technical Teams spanning Financial Systems, Sales Systems, Web Services, Integrations and Business Intelligent Infrastructure. Over an 18 month period, she scaled her teams from 15 to 35 people. Since Jenn has joined Stripe (who has a $20 billion valuation on $785 million capital raised). For the last two and a half years, Jenn's been at Stripe as the Head of Internal Systems. Here we go. Naber:  Jenn Knight. Awesome to have you on the show. How are you? Jennifer Knight: I'm doing well. Thank you for having me. Naber:  Awesome. Thank you for coming. It's amazing to have you. I'm excited for so many reasons. we know each other well and we've worked together in the past. But your brain, and getting to share that with people in the audience is really exciting for me. it's hard for me to contain some of the excitement with my emotions. But, I'm excited to go through some personal stuff today. So go through and dive into who Jenn is as a person. Start from where you grew up, and some stuff from your childhood. So people can get to know you a little better, like I do. And then, we'll hop into some professional stuff. Why don't we just get started. So, you grew up in San Francisco, you're smarty pants. Anyone that has met you for more than a minute knows that, but it's written in you DNA as well as your GPA, as well as your accolades. Walk us through, a few different things about what Jenn was like as a kiddo, and what it was like growing up with as Jenn Knight. Jennifer Knight: Well, I grew up north of San Francisco, in Sonoma County, in Petaluma, which was a ton of fun. It has changed a lot now, but in the early nineties, it was very rural still. Get on your bike, ride into a field, find some mice, hang out. I was a pretty nerdy little kid. I grew up in a house that didn't have a TV. My Dad is an engineer, so we were always puttering on things. He had a garage full of tools, and we're always being taught new things. I was always encouraged to be outside or around. Got a computer pretty early, which was neat. My brother and I, very nerdy, would love to do things like see how many files we could delete to destroy the operating system, and then rebuild the thing. Built a few computers growing up, but really enjoyed that part of life. Yeah, I was a kid who had a little bit of a different experience growing up just because of the nature of my house. And spent lot of time outside, and a lot of time building and poking on computers, and just hanging out. Naber:  Cool. Were you a particularly social kid? Jennifer Knight: That's a funny question. I always had good friends, a few good friends. I think I'm still that way. I'm someone who finds people that resonate with me and I keep a few close. I really enjoy the company of others, but I've always been someone who has had two or three really close friends, than whole big group. And growing up I had to change schools in middle school. And so at 12 years old I had to move across to a school across town. And that taught me one that you can make new friends but was pretty scary I think at the time. So you get close to people in elementary school and then didn't get a chance to stay friends with those people. I had to make new friends at 12, which was great in the sense of it taught me that you can, and you can survive. But it definitely meant that I had a few folks that I kept close. Naber:  Cool. I like it. A small, very close circle. And you said you were always building things, or tinkering, and having some nerdy fun. Tell us about a little bit of the nerdy, fun hobbies that had. Jennifer Knight: I think, I actually laugh when I look back on this...A very good example of this is my fourth grade science project was about different forms of energy, and it was about potential versus kinetic energy and the conversion. So my Dad had me worked with me to solder a little, wind mill thing that was powered by candles. That might give you a good picture of what my house is like. And then we did things like gardening. That was always fun in the summer. Petaluma was a great place to grow a garden in the backyard, so my parents did that. Just those kinds of projects. Those are the ones I remember the most, I think partially because you get pictures of them, and they're the stories that get told. But there were always a million little things we were playing around with. Naber:  Yeah. Cool. Love it. That's great. And let's see, quick stop on high school. What was high school like for you? Jennifer Knight: High School was a lot of fun. I wanted to get out of Petaluma. I knew that that wasn't where I wanted to be, and I knew I wanted to go somewhere for college. In my family education was really important. So, all growing up it was, you're going to go to school, you're going to do well. You're gonna learn a lot. You're capable of learning a lot. You're very smart. Put your head down and learn. Go get opportunity. So that was just the ethos of my growing up. One thing I will say is my parents were not obsessed with grades, they didn't push me to be perfect. I weirdly pushed myself, and at some point they were like, you need to calm down a bit. But high school was a lot of fun. I had a really close, like once again, handful of very close friends. We all encouraged each other to go after where we wanted to go next. Really great study groups. It was also for me a hard time. My Mom was sick when I was growing up, and she got really sick again when I was about 16. So that was hard at home. My parents dealt with it really well, but I had the mix of trying to be the kid who was studying and then dealing with some things at home. So I think once again, close knit group of friends is really important for me because they were people that I could lean on and really knew what was happening in my life at. And the rest of it, was just getting through it. Naber:  Interesting. Some things a lot of kids that age don't necessarily have to deal with obviously. So you wanted to get out of Petaluma, but you were trying to be perfect so you could have all the opportunities in the world to do that and chase your dreams. Your dreams brought you to Beantown Boston. So tell us about going to BU. Tell us about why, and what were like at BU. Jennifer Knight: Yeah, so, my parents had saved a bit for us to go to school, but couldn't go anywhere. So one of the reasons that studying was really important for me, was ultimately getting scholarships, and getting the opportunity to go to school. And I actually went to Boston site unseen. I'd never been there. I didn't know anything about the school. Yeah, it was funny. So they reached out to me, and they offered me a really amazing scholarship, and it actually brought the price of the college down to closer to what a UC would be for me. And so I was making a decision whether to stay in California, or go somewhere else, and my parents were very open to encouraging me to try something new. My Dad said...he always jokes that I was running away from them. He said to me, "Leave California now. If you don't like it, wherever you go, you can always come back. But if you don't leave now, you may never actually leave the state, and and you may not see what the rest of the world's like." So, I accepted to BU, and I had a choice for my parents to come with me for orientation or to help me move in. So my Dad came with me for orientation, and that was the first time I saw saw the school and saw Boston. Naber:  That's a very Jenn Knight thing to do. You're so adventurous and fearless. I love the courage and the fearlessness. It's cool. It's a good example. Jennifer Knight: Looking back on it, it's funny, I think I was mildly terrified. But I really wanted to study international relations, and or something along that, and the UC schools that I was looking at only had international economics, and I'm more interested in people problems than technical problems actually. So BU had an amazing international relations school, and that was ultimately what encouraged me to go. Naber:  Awesome. And international relations. And you also studied French in for a year in France, correct? Jennifer Knight: I did, yeah. So I was a international relations major. Foreign Policy and Security in the Middle East was the focus of my studies, but I also did a minor in French. Naber:  What was your experience like in France? Jennifer Knight: It was an amazing experience. Once again, it's a different time now. At that time there were cell phones, but not really. There was internet, but not really. I didn't have a laptop with me that could connect to the internet very often. So it was an interesting experience at 19 to get on a plane and fly all the way across the world, and then get a calling card and get on a pay phone at seven o'clock at night to call your family, to handle the time zone difference. I was ready in that I had studied French in high school. I was also not ready in that I had not studied it for a semester before I went. But I had an a pretty incredible experience on my way over there. Being from the West Coast, the program that my school ran didn't actually coordinate my flights because they coordinated everything for kids on the east coast. So once again, I was put on a plane, and my parents said good luck. And when I landed in Paris, I had no idea that Charles de Gaulle was kind of a mess. I was running through the airport. and I saw the group that I was eventually gonna study with being guided through the airport by an adult. And I was running for a gate, to miss my flight. But I got to the gate, and right behind me showed up a woman who's about my age, and she had actually been studying English and in the US during the summer. And I had no idea what to do. And she just grabbed ahold of me, and she took me to the ticket table, and she handled everything. And we went to a different airport, got on a flight together to Leon. And then her parents drove me to Grenoble with her because they were going home. And it was totally surreal experience, but also one that I think back on a lot that the world is actually a very generous place, and it's a very kind place often, if you're open to it. And I know it has its rough edges, but at a young age being able to travel over there and see that people are people across the world, and people are willing to help, was really incredible start to the journey. And that things don't always go perfectly, but they will end well, was something that was fun. And then it was a crash course in trying to navigate another culture, which I've always looked back on and really appreciated what the program gave me. So it was a fun year. Naber:  Very cool. Good story too. Good story. I always feel better when I talk to you, Jenn. You keep such an optimistic, positive light. So you studied at BU. Walk us through your first couple of gigs, up until before LinkedIn, so up through Bluewolf, and let's do some hops. Explain it. Typically we go through a few different things within those gigs. What I want to do is get to LinkedIn, Dropbox, and Stripe and talk through a couple of examples, and some of your superpowers, and we'll get there. But anyways, why don't you hop us through just so we have a good understanding of where you came from professionally. Hop us through some of those gigs and what you're up to. Maybe in like maybe like five, seven minutes. Jennifer Knight: Yeah. Seeing as I studied a bunch in high school, I actually entered college as a sophomore, finishing in three and a half years because I took a bit of extra time to go to France. So I graduated actually December 2006. For family reasons with my Mom being sick, and not being very clear how long she was going to be doing well, I decided I wanted to come back to the west coast. I had the most useless degree on earth to come back to the west coast. There, there is very little to do with international relations with a focus on the Middle East in San Francisco Bay Area. So I came back had to figure out what I was going to do. And I ended up just on craigslist looking at jobs. That was the way back then, that and the newspaper. Which was 2007, and it sounds crazy, but that's the truth. LinkedIn was, I suppose, kind of a thing, but it was very, very small, not really a thing. It's just starting out. Right. Naber:  It had volume of users, but not a lot of density and a lot of engagement. So it's just less useful at that point. Jennifer Knight: Yeah. So I just applied, I mean, toeverything I could. And then I ended up getting a job as an Office Manager at a solar company in Berkeley. And I, with my college degree, went and answered the phones and opened to the mail. But it was the thing that afforded to me to get my first apartment, and my first foray out into the world. It was a great community of people. It was an opportunity for me to be in an environment where I could just see how I could help. And so I learned as much as I possibly could. I had a lot of fun working with the outsourced IT guys who would come in and help with the servers. And then, we hired a Director of IT, and he was a bit overwhelmed and he asked me if I wanted to help him Administer Salesforce, and so I started doing that. I was there for two and a half years. The company's split, part of it was sold off - the residential was sold off, stayed with industrial side, learned Salesforce development. I was quite lucky in that I became a Salesforce Administrator right before Salesforce opened up as a platform. And then my boss at the time taught me how to program on the platform. It's very similar to Java. Apex is Salesforce is language. So I got to iteratively roll into this platform as it was growing. And I was one of the first 500 administrators certified, which is very...I look back on it, and it's a nerdy moment in that...but just a good timing moment. So I was doing that, but I was pretty stuck. And after two and a half years, I was pretty burned out actually. When the company split, I was the only person doing my role. And I enjoyed a lot of my coworkers. I have, actually, one of my best friends from that job. But I just wasn't loving it anymore, and I was too tired actually to really look for what was next and know what I wanted to do next. So I decided to take six months off, and this was in 2008-2009. So everyone thought I was out of my mind. But I did, and it was really fun. I moved to San Francisco. I worked in nonprofit, so I actually did nonprofit work at, Salesforce nonprofit, at a women's community clinic and at an urban garden. So the women's community clinic in San Francisco and at the place that does urban gardening in Oakland. Helped them set up their Salesforce instances. The urban garden one was amazing. We use Salesforce to track plants, and pests, and tools, and acreage, and all sorts of crazy stuff that you wouldn't imagine. Yeah. So I did that, and when I moved to San Francisco, Craigslist again, my craigslist roommates - one worked at Salesforce as a Sales rep and one worked at Bluewolf as a Sales rep. And my roommate Chris, who worked at Bluewolf said, hey, we're looking for developers. I don't think you want a full time job right now, but do you want to come contract with us, and check it out? ...did some contract work, and then after probably four months I decided to join full time. And that was the first time...and one of the reasons I did it, that was the first time I got to figure out if I was any good. And when you do something alone, you have a sense like I knew I could make things work, I knew I could solve the problem, but I had never been around other Salesforce developers where people with technical backgrounds, to find out if I was actually good at it or not. And I had an amazing group of people and an amazing support system at Bluewolf to help me grow and some great mentors there. So I couldn't be more thankful for them. They were extremely patient as I was plotting through things, and then also threw me at some really, really tough challenges. So I was doing a lot of the development for west coast projects, by the time I left. Did that for about a year and a half...um, I am not a consultant. I love the design. I didn't love flying in, building something, and then leaving it. I also didn't love being on a plane all the time. So I hadn't really known that I was going to do with myself, but I put my profile up on LinkedIn, and then LinkedIn found me on LinkedIn. And that's how I ended up at LinkedIn. Naber:  Nice. Awesome. Okay. We've got to LinkedIn. That's a really good story. You got to work on some, excellent cool projects, while you were trying to figure out your actual depth of your prowess around this new set of skills you were learning. But it's probably also really stimulating for you because you're such a smart person. You're also trying new things all the time, and wanting to build. So I'm going to guess that was really stimulating to learn this whole new world of technical bricks that you could build with. Jennifer Knight: It was, it was a lot of fun. It also taught me that that skill set around Salesforce is something it can be really can be used anywhere. And it's something I talk about with my teams now. It's quite fun, and I think a lot of skills in a lot of different areas of the business are transferable, but if you want if you want to work at a small company, if you want to work at a big company, if you want to work in nonprofit, if you want to consult, there's kind of a home anywhere. And that is pretty liberating because you get to go pick your family, and pick where you want to be. Naber:  Cool. Love it. All right. So, give us a quick chronology of what your responsibilities were, and what you're up to at LinkedIn. And then I have a couple of questions for you to follow-up and dig into your brilliant mind a little bit. Jennifer Knight: So I joined LinkedIn as the first Salesforce developer, joined the team that was in existence. There were five at the time, and the were two of us who joined, myself and a woman who was also doing Salesforce administration at the same time. So we grew to a team of seven. I still work with today, one woman from that team. I could not be more thankful once again for what they taught me in terms of how to approach an environment and how to approach work, just work. I was the youngest by far, and I was coming down from San Francisco, and I'd come from...Bluewolf was a really young environment as well. So that ethos of chaos, and running around, and experimenting, and trying new things, and to go from that to a place where people were far more measured, I hadn't seen that before. It was, yeah, we can do this. Like we're gonna think about it, we're gonna make a plan, and we're gonna go after it. It was really intense. We were building a ton, but it was very focused and measured. and it wasn't all over the map, and that was both due to the team that I had around me, and also a lot of the partners that we had at LinkedIn. So I joined as a developer, and then I helped grow out the Salesforce Technical Architecture and Development team over the course of my three years there. And so I was responsible at the end for our project work. We restructured the team, our lead structure the team as a Plan, Build, Run. So PMO, a business analyst doing the business requirements gathering, build was my responsibility - so those were the big project work, and then run was kind of the day to day administration, and keeping the lights on, minor enhancements, things like that. My team would do both technical development, but also if there was a administrative component of configuration, we might partner with an Admin to do that. Naber:  Nice. Very cool. One of the questions I have for you, and this is actually a good segue into that...you had a lot of experiences, at a lot of different teams, also built a lot of differe teams with LinkedIn, Dropbox, Stripe. You can go across those if you need to to pull experiences. But, is that the typical anatomy of a Internal Business Systems and Tools team? Or, if it's not, what is the typical anatomy, and can you give us a little bit of a breakdown? Jennifer Knight: Yeah. So those functions are the three behaviors that you see across the board. Alex, who's my Manager at Dropbox, said way back in the day...it's people, process, technology. And that is true always. So do you have the partner, does the partner know how their processes articulated? Do you understand how to reinforce, and support, or automate, or speed up, or whatever you're trying to achieve, that process with technology? And then there's the iterative, like, continuing to keep that alive and continuing to improve it. I think about the world in that framing all of the time now, that's how we approach it. And so our team is staffed for each of those areas. The plan side is always about, let's sit down with the people we're partnering with, and let's understand their process. Now that team on my team is responsible for really understanding the business partners' process, and then starting to think about who do we need to engage with from the technology side to support that process? Then the build side is the actual team that's saying, okay, now I've got the process. How do we empower this with the tools we have? Or what tools do we need to go buy? And run, of course, being the day to day maintenance. Those functions always exist. They are not always carved out as specific teams because depending on size, you just don't have the resources. When I joined LinkedIn, each one of us was a little mini plan, build, run. There were only seven of us, and we were supporting a lot. And so we would go sit down, and get the requirements, and then we would go off, and going to build something, and then you're the one who kept it alive. And and then eventually when you got a little bit burned out on that area, you'd switch it to one of your other team members. So I ended up with Sales Development work because April was done thinking about that problem...and then we've cycled through. But those, those pillars exist. They just evolve. And how you structure the team varies quite a bit. There is not a perfect way to do that. I think it depends a lot about where the organization is, what they're valuing at the time, and then who do you have on staff. But the core behaviors that remain the same across LinkedIn, Dropbox and Stripe. Naber:  Okay. That's awesome. That's a really good answer. Thank you so much. And while we're on LinkedIn, can you explain,what LinkedIn does extremely well from a Systems, Tools, Building leverage resources? And when you do that, could you lean into some of the things you do really well within the respect of Sales and Marketing? Because I think the audience is going to want to want to understand each one of these businesses, both what they were good at, why that's important, and how do they do it? Jennifer Knight: Yeah. So it's been a few years since I was there, so I'm sure it's evolved. But one of one of the overarching things that I remember from that time is actually just Focus. I think LinkedIn did very well...and as a partner to it, I appreciated it a lot after I left. There's always thrash. Nothing's perfect, the business evolves. Part of my responsibility is to be flexible enough to accommodate the fact that business has changed. They chart a course, but it's not like...Product Development is exactly the same way. Factors change and they can change fairly rapidly. And so the needs of the business can change fairly rapidly. That said, knowing more now and seeing, having seen different environments, in the face of that, I'd say LinkedIn did very well on remaining focused and what the core objectives that they were trying to enforce were. And then systematizing those. And maybe doing some experiments on the edges of other like creative things that we could potentially do to drive the business, but making sure that we were focused on being excellent at a few things, doing those very well, and those being backbone things for the business. So it was the first time that I had to work on some of the end to end workflows around Demand Gen. And how do you think about that, and how are you optimizing that? And not about a lot of bells and whistles and not always about crazy experimentation. It was first let's get it right. We have a core business objective, and the objective is not changing. It's reduce the time to touch. Okay, let's go like nail that one to the wall. And then once we get that one done, we'll be find the next one, and we'll like nail that one down. And those are the focus areas that don't change, right? Even if your approach changes, or your markets change, they're just really core parts of how you want to operate a business. So that was something LinkedIn did very well. One of the reasons that I left LinkedIn though, on the system side, is that at the time that I was there we were very silo'd. So we had a lot of autonomy in the space that we operated in, in partnership with our Sales ops partners. But some processes are actually cross business units. And some Systems work best when they're integrated across. A good example of this is a CRM to Oracle. A CRM to an ERP. So Salesforce to Oracle, or Salesforce to Netsuite, or I mean, no one uses anything besides Salesforce. That's not entirely true, but, Dynamics to SAP, any of those. Those flows were something that were interesting to me, and I didn't have the opportunity to work on as much. We could influence it. We could encourage. We couldn't work on it as much. When I got to Dropbox, that was the first place that I was able to think about end-to-end flows. And that was an area...because I had the autonomy to go own those. So that was an area...I think LinkedIn did very well on the focus, focus in depth in a particular system space. But we struggled a bit on the cross Systems, from where I was sitting. This is not a universal picture, but but from where I was sitting. So when I moved to Dropbox, I got the opportunity to think more cross platform, and that helped smooth some of the edges across teams, which was a lot of fun. At Dropbox we were in a bit of a different mode, so we were doing a lot of crazy growth. Naber:  Awesome. This is good. This is a good transition. So ell us what you're doing with Dropbox. Jennifer Knight: So I joined there to do Sales Systems. It was still really early days. We were still hiring out our Sales operations team. And so, I at that point, learned the importance of the people process part. When you put technology first, it it proves to be a bit of a challenge. That one was...I learned a lot more about meeting my business partners where they were. I actually leaned more into some of the operations and business analyst part of my role. That was not what I was doing at LinkedIn, but at Dropbox by necessity, you're saying there's these three functions, I was doing plan and build and run. And as I hired my team out, I hired them to do run first, and then started building from there, so that I could figure out what the needs of the business were, and then try to make some educated decisions around what we were going to invest in on the technology side. We had a ton of fun and we were building from scratch. There are things at LinkedIn, even by the time I was there, that had become so complicated that you kinda didn't want to touch them. When I got to Dropbox, it was the first time I got to build an order to cash process. And had amazing partner, who was also new. He had never built it before, and he was coming from the finance side. And he was really passionate about making this a really amazing experience for people. And so we just partnered really closely together to make that happen and thought about how we did it end to end. We ended up over the course of probably two years, building a flow that I'm still very proud of, but it was very focused on these business objectives again. We wanted the experience of someone who was buying Dropbox through a contract, from a provisioning perspective, to mirror the experience of someone who was buying with a credit card. And that was our goal. So we set that as our goal, and then we also set a goal that along the way that we had as smooth as possible process with the Sales team, so that there was a lot of transparency about what was happening. Contracting, as some of you know, can be very complicated from the Sales side because there are legal people coming in, there's financial approvals, there is these multistep processes, and it can feel like it's taking forever and you have no idea what's going on. And then maybe the thing is signed, and now you don't know why your customer hasn't been given the Product because it's fallen into another manual process where someone has to go into some backend system. Or in the case of, and this was happening when I got there, you as a Sales rep now have to go into some backend system that you maybe don't fully understand and punch a bunch of buttons, and then hope that everything works out, and that your customer gets the Product they want. So we started once again with that focus, and we were really successful there. And those kinds of activities were the things that made my team successful. When we could find those focus areas, through our rapid growth, those are long pull items. They take a long time to get right, and if we kept focused on it, we were able to drive impact. So we were really...I brought that from LinkedIn, that focus in our space. Naber:  Hey Jenn, can we pause there for a minute?0 So let's use the order to cash process that you built. Can you walk us through the phases you go through to build the case for it, plan out the project, resource and manage the project, you've got to have Internal buy-in, then you've got to have pull through for people, actually making sure that they do what they need to do in the field and the business? Can you walk us through using that as an example for number one, what the steps are? And number two, from a Sales and Marketing or just really from a stakeholder perspective, what are some of the best practices in working with your team so that we can be better at doing that? As you go through it. Jennifer Knight: Yeah, so, let's break it down. How do we approach it? So now, one of the things that I think a lot about when I'm approaching these types of projects is how do we think about, an ask, and it's end to end? So one of the things about working with a Systems team is that we're ultimately accountable for the overall health of the Systems. And it's an interesting process for us to understand what a business is asking for. And then trying to put that in the context of either another set of business asks or the platform on the whole. And we also have situations where, there are multiple stakeholders. And order to cash is a good example of one. Demand Gen flows is another good example of that. Where as a business owner, or as maybe a Sales Manager, you're saying, in your inner mind thinking, it's taking too long for my teams to get contracts out the door. And then on the other side, the finance Systems team is thinking, like, I need to be able to ensure that this contract has the correct margins, or is feeling good about that. And the legal team is sitting there thinking like, what are these contracts terms? Let's make sure that those make sense for the business. So when we get these asks, part of what we think about on the more complicated asks, but even on the smaller ones, is who are all the players in this ask? What is it in the context of the larger process flow? And what is it in the context of the larger Systems? And that's something that I've had the opportunity to do a lot, and something I quite enjoy is how do we put this in, frame it out, and where it wants to be. The other thing that we need to do on our side, is thinking about how we get from point A to point B? And can we do it in one shot, or to your point, does it have to be a multistep process? And some of these things are quite complex, and so we're not going to win it all at once. So for us, starting with that problem statement and then working through with our business partners to get an alignment on the overall problem statement, what we ultimately want to achieve, and then agreeing on how do we iteratively get there. So what are interim wins along the way, or something that we benefit from, and we benefit from that partnership. In terms of resourcing and implementing a thread...I'd say it varies wildly depending on your circumstances. And Systems tends to be lagging behind the business. I have yet to be an environment where we weren't coming in two, or three, or four, six years late. It's just the nature of it. I think SaaS has this sheen on top of it, where you're just oh, I can just get a Salesforce account and probably have one person manage it, and it's going to be okay. Like it's easy, right? And actually, that's not wrong for a period of growth. But then when you start to get into these more complicated asks , or you start to get into Architecture questions, or you start to need to do development, then that tool becomes something quite serious to take charge of, and you need a team that is dedicated to it and experienced. I talked to folks about this a lot, where there's a whole period of time where you really just go experiment, like try to find your way. You don't need to hire a technical architect, and a full team, and everything right out the gate. But as your business starts to take off, and you start to have those needs, having an experienced person, who's seen it before, come in can really help you figure out what you want to navigate over the course of the next two years. So I think the resourcing thing, it's very varied. But if you want to tackle a more complex workflow, or you want to really empower a part of your business, that's the point where you start to think about these dedicated resources. And that's when I'm looking at it...for my team, when I come in, I look...survey the landscape. What are our biggest challenges? What do we want to think about? And what are our business partners talking about? What aren't they talking about that is probably going to doom us anyway. And then how do we line those up, and what kinds of resources do I need? Do I need a lot of business analysts? I might need a lot of business analysts right out the gate because I may need to spend time helping the business articulate their ask. That actually is a weird one. Often I work with business partners, and they're like, where's where's the admin? And where's the developer? And I'm saying, well those are execution folks and you want a partner right now is going to help you think through your process, and then make sure that we're reinforcing the right behaviors. So I'm going to actually get business analysts to define that. And then once we have those definitions, we have a bunch of different levers we can pull in terms of execution. I personally enjoy building teams that are really dedicated to the business. So we always have a mix of technical and BA full time on the team. Most of our projects, the big ones take 12, 18, 24 months. So you really want someone who is excited about the end to end and will build the continuity. But there are amazing, I worked for one, they're amazing partners who will come in and help you with resourcing. And we also pull that lever a lot on our team. But we do it in the context of making sure that we have the business requirements anchored, and we know what we're going after. S to kind of rewind back to your question to how we approach these things. What's important for us is understanding what we're solving, and being able to really work with the business to understand what their objective is. And if it's a project where we know it's going to take more than a quarter of more than a month to go after, making sure that that objective is something that is very solid. And that's what I was talking about earlier. Your objective being speed to lead, your objective being speed to contract...there's those kinds of objectives where even as time passes, we're going to keep after that. So we feel successful together over the course of the year or two it takes, and that we can measure our progress against it. The failure modes that I've seen is when we don't know what we're solving for and instead we get the kind of partnership where it's, I need this field, I need this thing. I've already solved it for you, justt go build it. We can do that. The probability that it will ultimately build into the kind of system or process that we both want together, is not super high end. On the margin, it's okay. We'll put in a field, we''ll kind of get going. We are here to empower and enable the business. And that's something that I talk about with my teams quite a bit. Like, our responsibility is to empower the business, and so we should understand where they're coming from and then try to get them there. Ideally we do it in partnership, and process, and Solution design. Sometimes we just have to crank. Naber:  Cool. So that was awesome. That was an awesome answer. I love it. It's almost like you read it out of a book, so, and maybe you wrote the book. So, one more question, and then we'll move on to Stripe because you already gave an example with the order to cash and that was great. Actually, two more questions. You mentioned a couple things that Dropbox was doing well, but what's the one thing you think they do extremely well from a Business Systems, Internal Business Systems, Business Systems and tools, leverage resources that they're building, etc. What's one thing they do world-class? Why is it important? And how did they do it? Jennifer Knight: An interesting question. Naber:  I mean, LinkedIn was focus, if you had to say it in a few words, Dropbox is obviously world-class at a few things. Jennifer Knight: So what I would say, and it was very different in its approach. When I got there, like I said, I started to do Sales Systems, and I got to grow in my role and pick up other teams. And so that's where I learned about Finance Systems, and ended up taking that over and building that. I'd say, maybe the flip side of what I was experiencing in terms of rigidity at LinkedIn, Dropbox had an environment where if you wanted to go tackle a problem ,and you could rally your resources around it, and you could get get the team together, we can go tackle the problem. And that was super, super fun. Obviously from a system side, I think that was a strength there, where we had once again the autonomy to go try to solve these problems and could get sponsorship to go solve these problems. If you could find your partner on the other side, and shake hands, and go after it we could move ourselves forward. And there wasn't resistance to that. There is a push to, however we get to a better place, let's get to that better place. Not about who you are, or what team you're sitting in, or my priorities versus your priorities, and how our roadmaps, and all that fun stuff. It was hey, we have this problem, and yeah, it's going to involve like three or four teams. Let's go figure out how to do that, and we'll get together, and we'll go agree on the problem, and we'll go solve the problem. And so we got that was one of the things that helped us build some of this really cool stuff and these experiences. And I'm really proud of the teams that did that because we thought about not ourselves. We thought about what we wanted to achieve both for our customers, but also our external customer experience, and we were able to drive to that. Even when it wasn't easy, even when we weren't aligned on exactly how we planned, that was something that we did really well there. And I think the culture of the company of empowering people within the company to go tackle those kinds of problems made that successful. Naber:  Do you have any idea how they did that within the culture? Maybe it was like one or two things that empowered people to be able to go solve those problems, and have that autonomy? Jennifer Knight: Yeah. And it was that way pretty much from day one. I mean, so there's flip side. Anyone can buy anything, right? Which, on on the system side, is its own like special crazy. But there wasn't like a specific tenant that we followed. There wasn't anything like that. The one thing that, Dropbox also did well, and LinkedIn had this, but they stressed it in a different way, was this concept that we called cupcake there, which is let's have fun together in this. And so I think that that empowering you to go out and like build community, build team, and have fun with it, was something that Drew and Arash really instilled. But there's not a like phrase or a specific behavior other than encouraging an environment of community, and communication, and through that you could go find your people, and find your path. Naber:  Yeah. Yeah. It makes a lot of sense, and it's extremely empowering. I felt that when I was at Dropbox as well. But cupcake, it's a really good thing to add. Like having fun while we're doing it, and working on cool shit together That's pretty cool. And that's a good place to start for all the stuff you want to work on versus just what's necessary or having a less creative mindset around it or vantage point? Awesome. All right, let's move on to Stripe. So yyou're leaving Dropbox, you're heading to Stripe. Why do you make the jump to Stripe, and what are you up to there right now? Jennifer Knight: So, it's been a progression of scope actually. Something that I laugh...I love my job because I get to be incredibly nosy and learn everything about the back end operating of a world. So at LinkedIn I got to learn so much about how Sales and Marketing think, what they prioritize, personalities, what's top of mind, what are the pressures, what are the challenges? I mean I knew it because I actually interviewed for some Sales jobs. I will never be a Salesperson. That is a such a hard job. And being on the technical side, I also appreciate the challenges of a technical world. But having the opportunity to be in with Sales teams and Marketing teams, and see how they think was something that I got to do at LinkedIn. I got to Dropbox, it was doing that and then I got the opportunity to learn how accountants think because I took over finance Systems. But it dropped off, and it's totally different world. I took an introduction to financial accounting after sitting in our first CFO's staff meeting because, I was like, I literally understand none of the terms. And I had an amazing partner in our revenue accountant. She was Sarah, she was patient person. I took over the finance Systems team, and we were working on a project. And she was describing debits and credits, and she's walking everything through with me, and she's willing to repeat herself as I'm stumbling through it. And I got to really understand that the pressures in their world are really fundamentally different than the pressures in Sales and Marketing. And they have external pressures with GAAP, and all of these other requirements that they're marching to. And so it got to learn about that. At Dropbox though, there was no mandate when I was there for the Business Technology team, we were slowly picking up pieces. And that was a fun way, but it was also hard. Sometimes, I was picking them up and they were healthy, and sometimes I was picking them up, and they were in an interesting place. So I'm going through that, and we were getting pretty big, pretty stable as a team. And then through a friend, ended up chatting with the CFO at Stripe, and they were looking for someone to lead Internal Systems. And that would be Finance, Sales, Marketing Support, People, the whole set. And that's what ultimately pulled me there. Also the fact Stripe earlier reminded me, in tone and approach, to LinkedIn in the early days. There was just something about it that, frankly, just felt familiar. And so that was why I decided to take that opportunity. Naber:  It's amazing how often someone's tone and what they say...when you've been at a few different tech businesses, you understand what good culture looks like. And you walk into a place, and you're having all these conversations when you're going through the recruitment process. It's amazing how often it comes up where, some version of, it felt like I was coming home, or it felt like I was going to something that I already knew, and I could see like where the movie was going. I've seen this movie before. I've directed it. I like the culture because it feels like coming home. A few of those different things happen a lot when you're making your third, fourth, fifth jump into a lot of these businesses, you start to get a really good sense of the bullseye for what you want as well. Maybe I'm just ahead of my skis on that, but it sounds like that's you felt as well. Jennifer Knight: Yeah, I think it's very true. At some point...So, I think everywhere you go, you learn, right? Every situation you're in, you learn. And you learn what works for you, and what doesn't work for you. And it's not even a judgment call. It's just part of who we all are, and what makes us happy. We find our people, and we're successful with our people, and hopefully we get an opportunity to meet many, many people of many different approaches. But I think at the point that you're talking about, for me, I think about the fact that...Of all the three places that I've been, that are roughly similar shape, they all have the same problems. So you're actually solving the same base problems very frequently. Naber:  Can you run through some of these as you're thinking about them? Jennifer Knight: Yeah, so, actually the reason I talk about order to cash is that's a problem for everyone, everywhere. It's a really complicated, really tough flow. It's hard to get right. It's really frustrating when it's not supported. And that's one that I've seen everywhere as a challenge. Data models, everyone gets their Salesforce data model wrong, everyone - like, it just, it happens. One of my first projects at LinkedIn was fixing the data model. One of my first projects at Dropbox was fixing data model. That can be really hard to fix. You can be like, oh, like that sounds simple. But you put the wrong data model in place, and then you lock it in place with a bunch of integration, and a bunch of automation, and a bunch of tooling. So by the time you get to the point where you need to roll it back, you have to roll back a lot to get back to that place. Naber:  You're duct taped, and scotch taped, and glued everything together. Jennifer Knight: Yep. So in order to do some data model work at Dropbox, it took me 12 months to rewrite a piece of code that was running on a python script under someone's desk, so that we could unlock it. There's that kind of work. The exercising the capability and the muscle around planning, planning your Systems change. You're often in an environment where everything is moving extremely rapidly, and on the process side you're iterating, and you're iterating and iterating. And then Systems don't always benefit from that rapid of iteration. There's a point where you have to be able to experiment outside the system. And when you get closer, you don't have to be perfect, but when you get closer to your ideal process, then you want to systematize it. So when a team like mine comes in, one of the big challenges we face is not actually a technical challenge. It's working with our partners to say, I know this feels like we're slowing down. We're not saying no, we're not saying stop, but we have to take a step back, and we have to once again put this in context, and figure out how we rationalize this within the system. And so that muscle, it's a challenge for everyone. It's a challenge everywhere. So that's one we face. These problems are very similar. And to your point when I'm making a decision now about where I want to go, you're living with this community and in this environment for a pretty significant portion of your day or your life, over the course of time that you're at that company. And everyone that has worked in tech knows it's not nine to five. If you've managed to pull 9-5, you're lucky. So you're probably spending most of your waking hours for several years, in that environment, and that being one that you feel supported in, feel excited to go to, that resonates with who you are. And where you are in that moment in your career and your life, I think is incredibly important. You can't always get it right, and you're going to find an environment that isn't the perfectly resonant one, but that's okay because then you learn aspects of that. And I think even there, you can take aspects of those environments, and take them with you going forward. But I agree. Especially the third or fourth time around. I think it's true. We always try to find a place where we feel might be a bit more like home. Naber:  Cool. Good one. All right, Stripe. Two things - why don't we start first with an example of a major project you're working on, and maybe you could talk through as much as you can give us without giving confidential information obviously, but what are some of the really cool major projects or one major project even to give us an idea of the type of stuff you're doing at these different companies. So you've given really good examples so far. Give us a profile of Stripe and some of the things you're working on. Jennifer Knight: Yeah, I'd say actually I'll do a little bit of a different answer than a systems answer because I always loved the technical stuff. The project that I'm working on at Stripe, and that's been the thing that's so top of mind for me over the last two years, is actually establishing the team. And establishing a team that is proactive and not reactive. Understanding what our actual needs are. So to give you a sense, my team when I joined, there were a few people in the organization who were part time working on Systems. And so the Systems were pretty underfunded, and that was one of the reasons they asked me to join. But putting language around what it actually looks like to manage these Systems well, putting language around the fact that we have huge gaps right now, and with that language also still keeping my team motivated, is that dance of being able to say we're here, we're growing, we're here to support you, and in the same breadth, I appreciate and understand that there is a laundry list of things that we were not able to do. And keeping that dialogue going, and figuring out how we grow up into Stripe as an organization, and how we try to close that, as rapidly as possible, close that gap. Which on the surface frequently looks like we aren't moving fast enough because some of these things, I mean they're around hiring, they're around team structures, they're around normalizing as a team. They're around that the thing that I just mentioned about learning how to partner with our partners, helping our partners understand planning processes. The big project that I've, there's a bunch of technical projects, there's a bunch of these kinds of negotiations, but actually the big project that I've been working on at Stripe is around that area. How do we understand how to best serve the organization? How are we getting out of this proactive mode? How do we become, I think we always are a value add, but how do we really drive that value forward? And how do we become a team that is not a handful of people who are just heads down executing, and trying to like scramble to the next thing, and are more laying the foundations and partnering to lay the foundations with our business partners? Knowing that we're a couple of, frankly, we're a couple of years behind, so we have a lot to lot to catch up on. That's really been, if I look at it across all of my teams, and what my function is doing right now. We are working on technical projects, we're delivering things every day, we're trying to move those forward. Kind of core things, core capabilities that I've discussed before are projects that we're working on. But really more than anything right now, we're focused on - how do we partner? How do we partner for success? How do we understand what we should be investing in with our partners? And how do we really surface their underlying needs versus the rapid fire day to day? Naber:  So that is really interesting. I've got a question for that. So can you explain what the end result looks like? What does euphoria look like when you get to this place where...maybe not euphoria, you get what I'm saying though... you get to this place where you're being proactive, you're working with the business on the things you should be working on, and it is working like a smooth machine that is operating on all cylinders. What does that look like, and what do you guys accomplishing when that happens? Jennifer Knight: Yeah. So maybe I'll start with what it doesn't look like. There's no world in which we're done, and there's no world in which there's no backlog, and there's actually no world in which we are doing everything the business wants you...all 10 items, every sprint. That just, that has never happened in the course of my career, regardless of the team size or anything like that. There will always be needs. There will always be needs that we can't serve immediately today. And part of that is actually the right investment model for the business overall. So we're always looking at prioritization. I think when it's smoothly, the factors that I look at are..We have transparent and clear communication with our partners. They know what they're getting, and we're delivering that in the way that we've committed to delivery. They are actively engaged and partnering, and feel good about the prioritization. They know why. They know the business impact, because they're defining it. But there's a lot of really clear communications there. And then on our side, like I said, we're delivering on time or delivering in a way that is thoughtful and accountable to the rest of the ecosystem. So we're not breaking each other, and we're not breaking the system. That actually gets quite difficult at scale. If you have five developers on a platform, and sometimes they have overlap, you have to make sure that they're all developing the Product that is your CRM or the Product that is your Marketing automation platform in a way that is conscientious. So, we are, when we're operating smoothly, we are not blowing up each other's work. That's a pretty obvious one in my mind. I think when we're operating smoothly, we are responding to the right things, with the right urgency, in the right SLA's. So this is one of the reasons we end up with a Run function. Not every ask has to be treated like a project, but not every ask can be treated like a quick win. So you want to have varying SLA's and varying approaches, and when we're running smoothly we have an intake process that allows us to triage those, and be very quickly responsive where it's appropriate, and be thoughtful and measured in our approach, where that's appropriate. But not trying to do a one size fits all. Those are the core tenants that I look to when I think about how my team is running smoothly. I think that maybe one that we don't talk about with the business as much, is we also spend some time thinking about the technical foundations, and how those potentially need to evolve because our SaaS partners are evolving different features, and giving us different capabilities. So maybe we set up an integration one way four years ago because that was what Zendesk allowed us to do. And that might be really difficult for us to maintain and manage. And on the business side, it may look like it just works. And on our side, it may be a ton of toil and work to keep it alive. And Zendesk releases a new feature that simplifies that. How do we also continuously bring technical, underlying improvements, infrastructure improvements, into our roadmap. And then when we're working really well, socializing those up with our partners so they really appreciate why us doing that work actually improves their world and makes us more efficient together. Those are the high level things that I look for when I think about my team operating well. And like I said though, the work will never stop. It will always be there. Which is the exciting and fun part. So really it's about transparency, and process, and prioritization. Naber:  Nice. Awesome answer. Thanks so much, Jenn. So last question, and then we'll wrap. Okay. I've got one rapid fire question for you as well. So, one of your many superpowers, that you've alluded to a little bit, throughout your answers, but is...As you're going through every single one of these projects and all of your decisions, thinking as an end to end process thinker, where you're keeping the big picture in mind while you're able to zoom in and out of the details and the different requirements, and how do all these things stick together over an entire project over a sustained period of time. How do you bring stakeholders along with you in that journey? Because you're saying no a lot, you're saying yes a lot, you're saying no a lot more than you're saying yes. And you're also telling them, hey, please wait. Being a Sales and Marketing operator myself, I know that we could be inpatient every once in a while. So how do you bring stakeholders along in those conversations, and what are some of the best practices that you use for communicating with stakeholders? Because you're so good at that naturally, but that is not necessarily a Sales of Marketing operators forte as they're thinking about, just what they want to do for that quarter or that half of that year. Jennifer Knight: Yeah. Yeah. So I've had a couple of different approaches. I think once again, this is an interesting one...That you say it's a strength that I can think that way. And sometimes one of my weaknesses of getting it out of my mind, and onto a piece of paper. And so what I've gotten better at over time is making sure...everyone who knows me knows I love a whiteboard. I actually don't think that most people in these complex scenarios, there's a few of them that can, if you describe it with words, actually can follow along. I'm someone that, if someone starts, if I focus extremely hard and someone is describing something, I can usually think that I've understood. But sometimes when they put it on the board, I realized actually I didn't. So one of the techniques that I use, and I actually encourage everyone on my team to do, and I encourage our partners to do, is write on the board. Write your process on the board. On our side we will write then the system on the board. And let's all look at it, and then talk about the areas that we don't understand, or talk about the areas where we want clarification. In our side, when I start to think, okay, here's our end to end process, now you have all these Systems. Helping people come along, part of it is by laying out, here's the areas that maybe we're gonna be able to accelerate quickly, and here's the areas where I either don't have complete control - I'm going to have to negotiate with a partner, or is technically complex. So let's look at the whole thing end to end. But starting that visual from the process. And it doesn't have to be elegant. It doesn't have to follow all the fancy flowchart, actual diagrams. I do love that stuff sometimes, but get a pen out, sit down together, and make sure that you both are actually speaking the same language. And then that your priorities align. So I might get really passionate about some part of the process that somewhere else I've seen be really interesting, and that might not really be what you're passionate about. Or I might be able to bring some insight because I've seen this at a larger company. I can say, hey, two years, we don't have to face it today, but two years from now we're gonna need these kinds of controls. I'm telling you that I want to build this foundation in today because I'm looking forward. Do we agree that that's an okay thing to do? But even to get it out of your mind, get it onto a board. That's a huge one. Then, like I said, on the transparency side for our team, we have milestones. We are sending out sometimes weekly or biweekly updates on how we're progressing against those phases of the project. We're checking back in what has changed. Have our priorities changed? Have some more micro points within the plan, do we need to adjust? Have we learned something new that's going to shift something out? Those are the muscles that we exercise. But I think the first and most important thing is - can we all get in a room, and can we look at this thing end to end, and do we actually, are we speaking the same language? And I'm not going to say it verbally to you. I'm going to show you. And then pull out a pen, and mark it up, and tell me where it's crazy, or tell me where it doesn't work, or tell me where your world is different. And that way we on my side of the house, have the context of where you're coming from. And you on the business side, can understand how we're thinking about the approach. And no one is surprised. That would be the tactic that I think about a lot. Naber:  Man...I wish I could wrap that thought up and hug it because I loved it so much. You and I have a similar brain in some respects, and I'm loving that answer. Okay, last question. We're done with going through all these different examples, all this information. As you wearing like a tweed jacket and a hat right now, because you just professored everyone with all of your knowledge. So, one rapid fire question. So, I ask this to people on their birthdays every single year. It's not your birthday, but I'm asking anyways. Our audience has heard me say that a hundred times, apologies, but I'm explaining for the guests because they don't know. Maybe they've listened to all of them, nope they haven't. Most important learning or lesson you've acquired professionally in the last 12 months? Jennifer Knight: I would say, I've always been a patient person. But in the last 12 months, I've actually gotten much better at learning how to be both patient and persistent. Which is kind of a weird abstract learning, I'll give it that. But in environments where a lot of changes driven by influence or cross team collaboration, and everybody is under a lot of strainm under resourced in their own way...Figuring out how to navigate that in a way that continuously feels constructive, is not something that I would say was my strength in the past. I am definitely someone who likes to get things done, and I'm a bit principled in my approach. But same thing happens to my team. People are coming to me and saying, Jenn, can you do this thing? Can you do this thing? And I'm saying, no, we have to put it in this roadmap. Learning how to be the customer on that side. And how do I navigate that? And how do I continue to emphasize the importance of something or being respectful and patient of the process that I'm in? And being okay with that patient. Part of it is with my partners, and part of it for me is actually with myself. It's knowing that when

This week Peter, Josh and Melissa discuss the Dropbox IPO, Pivotal's filing for IPO, Uber's move out of Southeast Asia, Zuckerberg's UK summons, Pure's blinged out AI Play, Intel's new glasses and Ecuador killing Assange's wifi. 00:00 - Dropboxing stock like it's hot 07:35 - Josh gets called on the carpet 09:40 - Pivotal's Filing by the Haters 15:30 - Uber Grab's a new approach in Asia 21:00 - Zuck's UK snub 31:00 - Pure and Nvidia go for gold 37:30 - Intel's sweet new dating technology 40:00 - Julian is grounded from the interwebs

Join the Acquired Limited Partner program! https://kimberlite.fm/acquired/ (works best on mobile) Acquired is live on the scene following Dropbox’s public market debut. From playing a central role in the early days of Y Combinator, to having Steve Jobs famously label the company a “feature not a product”, to pivoting from consumers to enterprise to developers and back again, the silicon valley history runs deep with this one. What twists and turns lie ahead for Dropbox as a public company? We speculate!   Links: Dropbox’s Y Combinator application Original Dropbox demo video   Carve Outs: Ben: Raytracing comes to DirectX David: Lazy Game Reviews   Sponsor: Thanks to Perkins Coie, Counsel to Great Companies, for sponsoring Acquired Season 2. You can get in touch with Lee Schindler, who you heard at the beginning of this podcast, here.

How does the Dropbox IPO affect the real estate market in San Francisco, California?

Low-cost iPads are coming, Dropbox IPOs, touchscreen issues with Galaxy S9s, Craigslist pulls all personal ads, and the weekend long-read suggestions. Long-reads links:How IKEA's future-living lab created an augmented reality hit (WiredUk)My Cow Game Extracted Your Facebook Data (The Atlantic)The Glory that Was Yahoo (Fast Company) Credits: Produced by @brianmcc and the @techmeme staff Music by @jpschwinghamer

Welcome to the Dropbox Equity Shot! Today Katie Roof sat down with Eric Kim, who wrote the Dropbox research report for Goodwater capital. Eric breaks down the Dropbox IPO and looks ahead to the IPOs coming down the pipeline, explaining along the way how open the IPO window is today.

First Segment: CloudCoin. Sean Worthington, Creator/Founder. CloudCoins provide a theoretically "perfect” global currency that cannot be counterfeited, double-spent, mined or lost. Your exchanges are 100% private, requiring no public ledgers, accounts, or even encryption. CloudCoins form a monetary system that is absolutely fair and ethical and requires no special software or downloads, and, like the Internet itself, cannot be brought down by governments, hackers or even nuclear weapons. https://www.youtube.com/embed/ZrYjwP_2skE Second Segment: Computer and Technology News. Today's Topics Include: Google Chrome To Finally Block Auto-play Videos The Current State of 'Delete Facebook' Spotify Freeloaders Dropbox IPO Raises Some Serious Money Sonos Taking Advertising Money To Charity And more! For full show notes, check out ComputerAmerica.com!

Welcome to the Dropbox Equity Shot! Today Katie Roof sat down with Eric Kim, who wrote the Dropbox research report for Goodwater capital. Eric breaks down the Dropbox IPO and looks ahead to the IPOs coming down the pipeline, explaining along the way how open the IPO window is today.

The Dropbox IPO is expected to be one of the biggest tech stock offerings since Snap in 2017. How will it fare? See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Apple acquires Texture, details on the Dropbox IPO, drone deliveries might be coming soon, Twitter attacks tweetdecking, more on the Broadcom/Qualcomm story, and an interesting story out of the bitcoin world. Here's what happened today in tech. Credits: Produced by @brianmcc and the @techmeme staff Music by @jpschwinghamer

We had the full crew on hand this week with Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself, along with Mar Hershenson from Pear Ventures who stepped into the guest chair. It was a damn busy week, with news raining down from the skies. We had to pick the best, so we went with the biggest rounds and exits. You are welcome. First up, Spotify’s massive not-really-an-IPO, which has a listed $1 billion maximum raise that won’t happen. Indeed, the company is racing ahead with its direct listing, which should see the firm just start trading. You need to get under the hood of its numbers to grok the music streaming business. But, to be clear, if anyone is making money off of streaming, it certainly isn’t Spotify. Next up we chatted about the Dropbox IPO in light of Box’s recent earnings (and what Box’s recent earnings did for its revenue multiple). Dropbox publicly filed when Box was valued at essentially all-time-highs. Now, after Box shed about a quarter of its value, one of Dropbox’s most critical market comps is worth a lot less. Also in the news this week was Amazon’s $1 billion purchase of Ring, a connected home company. The value of the deal was actually greater than $1 billion, though no one seems to know precisely how much more. Even more, it’s not the only deal in the space worth mentioning. All that and we found time to noodle about DoorDash’s massive SoftBank feast, which far more than doubled its capital raised to date. Spending $100 billion, as it turns out, is hard.

We had the full crew on hand this week with Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself, along with Mar Hershenson from Pear Ventures who stepped into the guest chair. It was a damn busy week, with news raining down from the skies. We had to pick the best, so we went with the biggest rounds and exits. You are welcome. First up, Spotify’s massive not-really-an-IPO, which has a listed $1 billion maximum raise that won’t happen. Indeed, the company is racing ahead with its direct listing, which should see the firm just start trading. You need to get under the hood of its numbers to grok the music streaming business. But, to be clear, if anyone is making money off of streaming, it certainly isn’t Spotify. Next up we chatted about the Dropbox IPO in light of Box’s recent earnings (and what Box’s recent earnings did for its revenue multiple). Dropbox publicly filed when Box was valued at essentially all-time-highs. Now, after Box shed about a quarter of its value, one of Dropbox’s most critical market comps is worth a lot less. Also in the news this week was Amazon’s $1 billion purchase of Ring, a connected home company. The value of the deal was actually greater than $1 billion, though no one seems to know precisely how much more. Even more, it’s not the only deal in the space worth mentioning. All that and we found time to noodle about DoorDash’s massive SoftBank feast, which far more than doubled its capital raised to date. Spending $100 billion, as it turns out, is hard.

Welcome to the first episode of Startup World brought to you by Qlearly.com. Here are today's headline. The Dropbox IPO is confirmed. Dropbox had 1.1 billion in revenue last year. They are expecting to raise $500 million plus. It is the first Y C Company to go public. Spinlaunch is raising a 30 million series A to catapult cargo into space. It was secretly founded in 2014 by Jonathan Yaney, who built solar-powered drone startup Titan Aerospace and sold it to Google. Apple plans to release an upgrade of the AirPods. The company is apparently working on water resistance and more Siri integrations. Apple CFO says wearable revenue rose almost 70% last year. Samsung brought an app back from the dead. Opera Max relaunched as Samsung Match. Airbnb takes on hotels with Airbnb plus and ticketing platforms with Airbnb concerts. Thank you for tuning in! Today's Product: Google ARCore Version 1

Dropbox IPO,Rick and Morty sauce, IHOP/Applebee's close, esports news,Angry birds lose money, companies drop NRA --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dollarsandcents/support

This week was a corker. Our co-host Matthew Lynley is back, Katie and myself were on hand, and our guest, Shruti Gandhi from Array Ventures, was brilliant. And the news gods were kind, as there was quite a lot to get through. First, we looked into the Dropbox IPO. Dropbox has reportedly filed confidentially to go public, meaning that the company's long dance towards the public markets is nearing its conclusion. But what will it be worth when it does go public? That is the new Silicon Valley parlor game. We looked over some maths regarding its prior valuation, its recent revenue, and a current public-market comp. The result: billions, but not quite ten. Moving along, Xiaomi is on the path to an IPO as well. But the rumor in its case is that the firm could hit a $100 billion valuation. Lynley talked us through its product position, and focus on smaller margins than it might. Where the IPO will land, geographically, is a good next question, and Hong Kong or New York are its possible answers. All that and we dug into the Telegram ICO, a billion-dollar-plus transaction that could see a popular app take part in the bubbling token industry. Why is Telegram pursuing an IPO? That's a great question, it turns out. All that and we tell some jokes. Hit play and we will chat you all in a week! Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.

This week was a corker. Our co-host Matthew Lynley is back, Katie and myself were on hand, and our guest, Shruti Gandhi from Array Ventures, was brilliant. And the news gods were kind, as there was quite a lot to get through. First, we looked into the Dropbox IPO. Dropbox has reportedly filed confidentially to go public, meaning that the company's long dance towards the public markets is nearing its conclusion. But what will it be worth when it does go public? That is the new Silicon Valley parlor game. We looked over some maths regarding its prior valuation, its recent revenue, and a current public-market comp. The result: billions, but not quite ten. Moving along, Xiaomi is on the path to an IPO as well. But the rumor in its case is that the firm could hit a $100 billion valuation. Lynley talked us through its product position, and focus on smaller margins than it might. Where the IPO will land, geographically, is a good next question, and Hong Kong or New York are its possible answers. All that and we dug into the Telegram ICO, a billion-dollar-plus transaction that could see a popular app take part in the bubbling token industry. Why is Telegram pursuing an IPO? That's a great question, it turns out. All that and we tell some jokes. Hit play and we will chat you all in a week! Equity drops every Friday at 6:00 am PT, so subscribe to us on iTunes, Overcast, Pocketcast, Downcast and all the casts.

Walmart raises hourly but closes Sam's Club stores, At&T gives one time bonuses after billions saved on tax cut, Dropbox secretly going Public,yum China gets bigger --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/dollarsandcents/support

After reminiscing about some of their favorite old games, Ryan and Carlos discuss in app purchases and DLC, the iPhone 6s (purchasing experience, setup process, and initial impressions), watchOS 2, the TiVo Bolt, Microsoft Office pricing for the iPad Pro, Apple Music, and Dropbox IPO rumors.