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In today's episode, Shawn O'Malley (@Shawn_OMalley_) tells the story of Coupang, the “Amazon of South Korea.” Coupang's Bom Kim is an impressive founder & CEO who has led the company to incredible growth, with almost half of South Korea's population becoming active customers of Coupang. And Coupang's overnight delivery actually puts Amazon to shame, while few companies create as much value for customers as Coupang does with its RocketWOW memberships, which are similar to Amazon's Prime subscriptions. But how well does this all translate into value for Coupang's shareholders? In today's episode, you'll learn the origin story behind Coupang, how its business model works, why its stock has flopped since IPOing in 2021, how Shawn thinks about its valuation, and whether he wants to add it to The Intrinsic Value Portfolio, plus so much more! Prefer to watch? Click here to watch this episode on YouTube. IN THIS EPISODE, YOU'LL LEARN 00:00 - Intro 02:51 - How Coupang captured the hearts — and wallets — of South Koreans 05:06 - Why Bom Kim founded Coupang 22:03 - What's behind Coupang's shift into luxury e-commerce 33:11 - Why Coupang is planning to expand more in Taiwan and what went wrong in Japan 38:40 - Which legendary investors have invested in Coupang 40:28 - How a negative cash conversion cycle supports Coupang's free cash flows 42:34 - In what ways Temu and Alibaba are threatening Coupang 45:53 - How to think about Coupang's intrinsic valuation 49:41 - Whether Shawn is adding Coupang to The Intrinsic Value Portfolio And much, much more! *Disclaimer: Slight timestamp discrepancies may occur due to podcast platform differences. BOOKS AND RESOURCES Join the exclusive TIP Mastermind Community to engage in meaningful stock investing discussions with Kyle and the other community members. Sign up for The Intrinsic Value Newsletter. Coupang's pitch on the Value Investors Club forum. Check out Miller Value Partners on Coupang. Quartr's breakdown of the Coupang story. Coupang's AI-powered fulfillment center. Check out the books mentioned in the podcast here. Enjoy ad-free episodes when you subscribe to our Premium Feed. NEW TO THE SHOW? Follow our official social media accounts: X (Twitter) | LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | TikTok. Browse through all our episodes (complete with transcripts) here. Try Shawn's favorite tool for picking stock winners and managing our portfolios: TIP Finance. Enjoy exclusive perks from our favorite Apps and Services. Learn how to better start, manage, and grow your business with the best business podcasts. SPONSORS Support our free podcast by supporting our sponsors: TurboTax Airbnb Public Bluehost Connect with Shawn: Twitter | LinkedIn | Email HELP US OUT! Help us reach new listeners by leaving us a rating and review on Spotify! It takes less than 30 seconds and really helps our show grow, which allows us to bring on even better guests for you all! Thank you – we really appreciate it! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://theinvestorspodcastnetwork.supportingcast.fm
Learn more about NetSuite's Business Grows Here event series: https://tinyurl.com/bdeabwr7 In this episode of the NetSuite Podcast, cohost Megan O'Brien sits down with JD Weinstein, Global Director of Oracle's Venture Capital Practice. He discusses the findings from a panel he moderated at NetSuite's Business Grows Here event stop in St. Louis [2:01]. They then play excerpts of the panel featuring Dan Conner, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect [8:50]. They discuss the advice they have for early-stage founders, including tripling the amount of investors they reach out to and tripling the amount of time spent fundraising [15:46]. Dan and Craig cover the status of dry powder since its 2021 highs [27:37]. They conclude by sharing their top takeaways for founders [36:25] Follow Us Here: Business Grows Here: https://tinyurl.com/bdeabwr7 JD Weinstein LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jdweinstein/ Dan Conner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danconner1/ Craig Herron LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-herron-3a2801/ Oracle NetSuite LinkedIn: https://social.ora.cl/6000wKFhC X (Twitter): https://social.ora.cl/6007wK2zD Instagram: https://social.ora.cl/6003wK2Hv Facebook: https://social.ora.cl/6005wK2Dv #NetSuite #VentureCapital #Fundraising --------------------------------------------------------- Episode Transcript: 00;00;04;04 - 00;00;40;00 Hello everyone. Thank you so much for tuning in to the NetSuite Podcast. I'm Megan O'Brien, a co-host of the podcast. We have quite a unique episode in store for you all today. Recently, NetSuite has been hosting events in various different cities across the US called Business Growth Here. This tour is geared towards helping local entrepreneurs and business leaders discover strategies and tools essential for business expansion, as well as valuable insights on effectively managing all aspects of a growing business from cash flow to overall operations. 00;00;40;02 - 00;01;10;11 The events are tailored to the unique challenges and opportunities of each city and feature local leaders and visionaries. In the Saint Louis tour stop, one of the sessions that really stood out to me was a panel on the current venture capital landscape. It was moderated by JD Weinstein, global director of Oracle's venture capital practice, and featured Dan Conner, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect. 00;01;10;13 - 00;01;35;22 There's a lot of great insight in there around the market build back, what venture capitalists are looking for right now in companies, and how founders can increase their chances of getting funding. After hearing that, I knew I wanted to share the valuable insights with all of you, our wonderful listeners. With that, let's jump in, because you're not going to want to miss out on this episode. 00;01;35;24 - 00;02;02;02 You're listening to the NetSuite Podcast, where we discuss what's happening within NetSuite, why we're doing it, and where we're heading in the future. We'll dive into the details about the software and the people at NetSuite who are behind all the moving parts. We'll also feature customer growth stories discussing the ups and downs of running a company and how one integrated system can help your business continue to scale. 00;02;02;05 - 00;02;22;01 To kick us off, we have JD Weinstein, the global director of Oracle's venture capital practice, who moderated the panel. He joined us for a quick interview just to give an overview of the session and some of his key takeaways. Could you begin by telling our listeners a little bit about yourself and what you do for Oracle? Sure thing. 00;02;22;03 - 00;02;56;26 My name is JD Weinstein. I joined Oracle just over six years ago and now lead our global venture practice. I've previously worked for various early stage accelerator programs and strategic or corporate venture funds to help entrepreneurs grow their businesses with special advantages. At Oracle, we work alongside VCs globally to help early stage portfolio companies scale with our cloud technology solutions, global customer network, and rich enterprise ecosystem. 00;02;56;28 - 00;03;22;25 So that starts with NetSuite and Oracle Cloud infrastructure, but extends to database to Java and our rich application suite. We also make strategic equity investments alongside our M&A function under our corporate development line of business. You were the moderator for a session at the St Louis Business Grows Here event called Raising Capital to Fuel Growth in an AI-Driven Era. 00;03;22;27 - 00;04;00;10 Could you give us an overview of the panel for all our listeners? Sure. We covered a good bit of ground here, starting with the state of the economy and what it means for venture and founders growing their businesses in this era. I had the pleasure to interview Craig Herron, the managing principal of iSelect, a venture fund focused on the agrifood supply chain and health care, and Dan Connor, a general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, who leads an early stage thematic VC specializing in data-centric companies. 00;04;00;12 - 00;04;30;13 We talked about the state of the economy and what it means, from rising interest rates, fewer public listings, valuation correction to other complex macro headwinds, and how it really translates to start up business building. And then how that has changed fundraising in this climate overall too. We spoke to what makes a great business venture backable. So what the general partners on stage look for in exceptional entrepreneurs. 00;04;30;16 - 00;04;57;20 And then we also talked to tactical advice on just a general approach to fundraising and how to run a successful process. Hint: exactly like you would a sophisticated enterprise sales strategy. And then, of course, we concluded with the surge of AI capabilities and how we're going to be more productive with less. How that's impacted our industry. Why do you think this session was so important to include in our St Louis Business 00;04;57;20 - 00;05;23;27 Grows Here event? I mean, what is it about today's landscape that made it especially timely? Yeah, I think it's so important that we highlight the investment in commercial activity that's booming in the Midwest and specifically in Saint Louis and broader Missouri for this Business Grows Here event. Oftentimes we get this false perception of only venture activity buzzing on the coasts. 00;05;24;00 - 00;05;50;24 And while the majority of megarounds do happen there, at the earliest stages, we're seeing more and more data show the spread of entrepreneurial ecosystems emerging across this entire mid-continent. Steve Case and The Rise of the Rest phenomena, right? And so, with connectivity everywhere in the world, everybody has access now to build a great company. What was the highlight of the venture capital panel in Saint Louis for you? 00;05;50;25 - 00;06;24;24 Any particularly interesting thoughts you heard? You know, I can recall, I loved a quote that Dan pointed out in the panel, which was really just a description for founders to go back to the fundamentals that I see so many startups miss. Your customers are the most important stakeholders, period. Full stop. Without them, there is no business. So he describes a funny metaphor for saying they look for mission-critical businesses to invest in. 00;06;24;28 - 00;06;49;03 And so, if a customer, you know, the example he gave was somebody's hair is on fire and you may be selling sandwiches, which could be the best in the world or best in town, but someone's hair is on fire, that they're probably not going to want to sandwich. A much better business would be, you know, leasing fire extinguishers or something else that drives mission criticality. 00;06;49;05 - 00;07;19;13 What are your thoughts on the venture capital landscape as a result of the panel? What did you leave with? I'm really bullish on the venture landscape as I've always been and believe that entrepreneurs have the chance to shape the world for the better while advancing humanity. In this particular time, especially when we look at, you know, other hard times in the economy, an astounding number of companies were created from the last ‘08 Recession. 00;07;19;15 - 00;07;48;29 WhatsApp, Venmo, Pinterest, Slack, Uber, Airbnb, list goes on. Same thing happened after '01. And just less than half of Fortune 500 companies can actually trace back to being created in a crisis. And so why is that? People look for security, behaviors shift immensely, fear plays in. So the world becomes a pretty giant opportunity for entrepreneurs to take advantage of in these times. 00;07;49;02 - 00;08;14;17 That's such a great description. Kind of uplifting, and I love it. So, to end it, are there any best practices that you have for any listeners here that might be seeking funding right now or in the near future? You know, there's one insight that's one insight that's always stuck with me profoundly, which is this: Investors invest in lines, not dots 00;08;14;17 - 00;08;40;25 metaphor. What that means is rarely investors will wire you funds after your very first meeting, which is a dot or a data point. More often than not, they're evaluating your execution, your communication, trust building over time. And so each meeting that you have with an investor is a dot or a potential data point. And what investors are really looking for is to connect those dots. They're investing 00;08;40;25 - 00;09;19;24 in that connection, that's fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us, JD. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Megan. Enjoyed it. NetSuite by Oracle. The number one cloud financial system is everything you need to grow all in one place. Financials, inventory and more. Make better decisions faster so you can do more and spend less. See how at NetSuite.com/pod. With that, let's jump into the panel recording with JD, Dan Connor, general partner at Ascend Venture Capital, and Craig Herron, managing principal at iSelect. 00;09;19;27 - 00;09;47;13 So, you know, today's climate in venture it's been an interesting couple of years to say the least. So investors are dealing with, you know, the uncertainty of rising interest rates, fewer public listings and exits, valuation corrections, and a bunch of other complex macro trends. And so hopefully Dan and Craig will just distill this information, maybe give us some insights as to how to raise money in this climate. 00;09;47;15 - 00;10;15;20 I still strongly believe that there is a ton of upside to growing a business in today's world. And so a brief introduction. Maybe we can start with Craig Herron, who is the managing principal of iSelect and then we'll move on to Dan, who is the general partner at Ascend Venture Capital. I'd love for all just to give us brief introductions of who you are and your fund's focus and maybe your core thesis. 00;10;15;22 - 00;10;42;13 So iSelect Fund, we've deployed about $200 million over the last several years. We've invested in 78 companies. 65 of those are still active. Others, the others have exited. We invest in three areas: the agrifood supply chain, health and wellness with a focus on cardio, metabolic disease, and then food is health. How do we use nutrition to change the health care system? 00;10;42;15 - 00;11;07;14 Right. First, I'd like to say this is a great event, awesome job to everybody, the production team and all the staff. This is awesome. So I'm Dan Connor. I'm the founder and general partner of Ascend Venture Capital. We're a thematic VC, which means we're focused on a specific theme. Currently, the theme that we're investing under is this data-centric transformation that's happening across every industry. 00;11;07;16 - 00;11;30;00 The expectation that every decision should be made based on data. For instance, 15 years ago, when you used to land on a plane, there's sometimes I would go on the air and say, ‘This plane was just landed on autopilot' and it used to freak people out. But now if you got on the plane and the pilot said, ‘I'm just gonna do this one by feel,' people would be terrified. 00;11;30;00 - 00;11;55;08 So that just signifies how much that shift has taken place. We're investing out of our third fund right now, and just making trouble in the venture capital industry. Awesome, we love trouble. So before we go on with a couple of questions, I love just a quick show of hands just to see who we've got in the room, who are entrepreneurs or growing small kind of or early stage startups. 00;11;55;09 - 00;12;22;12 Can I get a show of hands? Traditional SMBs if you identify maybe over there? Great. Investors in the crowd? Okay. And then large enterprises, corporates? Okay. How about Cardinals fans? Okay. You guys aren't sleeping yet. Good. Great. So as you know, as we all know, many businesses hit an inflection point and need capital to fuel their growth. 00;12;22;12 - 00;12;44;14 But raising venture funding isn't always the most strategic decision. And so I'd love to hear from each of you what actually makes a great business venture backable? And then maybe what are some qualities of exceptional entrepreneurs? Dan, if you'd like to kick us off. Yeah. So initially in our search, we're looking for three things. Number one, does it solve mission critical problem? 00;12;44;17 - 00;13;08;22 Is the problem solving a problem? That is, is it a product solving a problem that ranks among the top three strategic priorities for the customer base? The example that the algorithm I give is if your hair is on fire, I could try and make a case that our sandwiches are the best in town. You're probably going to need a sandwich is some point in the future, but it's much better to be in the business of leasing fire extinguisher services at that point. 00;13;08;24 - 00;13;35;23 So mission criticality. Second is the business transformative? If it works, does it change the whole face of an industry? We're not looking for a slightly better or slightly more socially conscious Uber, we're just we're looking for something that changes the way that things are done in an entire industry. And thirdly, is it a unique value proposition? Are they solving a problem that is completely different from how things are done today? 00;13;35;25 - 00;13;56;24 And are they the only one that's taken that approach? Those three things to me make a venture backable business. So I agree with everything Dan just said. I'd throw in two more in there. So first of all, size of market, right? If you're going after $100 million market, there's really just not enough room to scale there. 00;13;57;01 - 00;14;26;23 We're looking for markets that are, you know, potentially billions of dollars. So if you get a decent market share that there's a big opportunity for the company to scale and grow. And then second is team. You got to have a venture backable team at that point in time. So those are you know, typically we're looking for people that have come out of leading research institutions or, you know, have been entrepreneurs already once or. 00;14;26;25 - 00;14;57;10 You know, if they're in the AG business, they there's been a career of Monsanto in a specific area or have been at Danforth or, you know, some of the other kind of major centers in that given industry. And there's a really great metaphor that we like to share with a number of entrepreneurs that we work with, which is that as you go out to market and raise funding, investors, often they invest in lines, not dots. 00;14;57;12 - 00;15;31;03 And so what this means is that you may meet an investor on day one and you may walk out with a $10 million blank checks. That typically doesn't happen. 99 percent of the time. But what does happen is typically investors are looking to invest in each of these data points. Every time that you meet an investor and you show growth in your company or you communicate what's going on, you are overcoming challenges, it's the progression of how you go through business is often what, you know, we look for in early stage companies. 00;15;31;10 - 00;15;46;03 And so if you think of that strategy, then you can line up, you know, as you go to market, ‘I want to get as many of these lines in as possible.' And so start these relationships as early as you can and demonstrate growth over time. 00;15;46;05 - 00;16;06;19 So like to that theme I'd love to hear from each of you, maybe more a little bit about like real tactical advice that you have for early stage founders. So often, like we get caught up with, you know, there's a lot of glitz and glamor of venture capital and they raise these $100 million rounds and how did you do it? 00;16;06;19 - 00;16;39;04 And $100 million rounds. Yeah, exclamation point. But what if you're just going for like an early call it seed or series A stage raise and you're kind of early to this practice, what best practices can you recommend? I'll jump in. So there are a lot there tend to be a lot of incubators and accelerators out there that are specifically focused on a given industry or segment. 00;16;39;04 - 00;17;12;03 And, you know, often if you've not been a successful entrepreneur previously, they provide a lot of great education. They have networks to introduce you to early adopter customers. And, you know, and they can also introduce you to VCs and typically have VCs or angels that are interested in investing. I guess secondly, you know, it's great if you're coming with a customer in hand, right? 00;17;12;03 - 00;17;39;18 Because every VC wants to see some sort of traction that you've there's actually been proof point that this actually is going to work in the marketplace. And I guess I'd leave it at those two to start with. Absolutely. Yeah. So three things I would add to that. See, seed and series A have gotten extremely squirrely right now. It's very hard to engage investors. 00;17;39;20 - 00;18;07;05 They're the number of investors who actually have capital to invest, has gone down, since 2021, when actually a lot of folks raised funds and then were immediately unsuccessful at investing them. The best way to lose a small fortune is to start with a big one, and that's what's happened in venture capital recently. So a lot of people have gotten tighter with their funds to invest in new companies at all versus doubling down on existing portfolio companies. 00;18;07;08 - 00;18;31;15 So seed and series A have gotten very squirrely. So the first piece of advice I would say is you got a triple the number of investors on your list that you plan to reach out to. Triple it. And then triple the time that it's going to take you to dedicate to fundraising because it's a slog and it's the number of times that you have to follow up with one investor to get a response has gotten has gotten a lot longer. 00;18;31;17 - 00;18;55;17 So that's what I would say is build the database of three times the number of investors that you're going to reach out to and reach out to every single one, one by one. It takes hard work, but I know I'm not the only troublemaker out here, so I feel like there's something that everybody is dedicated to. Secondly, as you have those calls, as you engage with those investors, you have to also be listening to what they're telling you about. 00;18;55;23 - 00;19;24;12 We invest in seed stage companies or how they define seed stage companies, or we invest in series A companies. And, you know, you're too early for us. As they say that to you, you say two things: One, okay, tell me your criteria so that you can take good notes on that call and then keep that database. And then thirdly, say if they're saying you're too early for them, say, would you mind if I put you on my investor newsletter to keep you updated in a lightweight way? 00;19;24;14 - 00;19;55;01 You'd be surprised the number of folks who do ask permission to put you on their online newsletter, or actually follow up with newsletters. It set you aside. It keeps you front of mind. And then when it comes time to raise that next round or series A or series B, you have a list of folks who have told you their criteria and that they will invest later on if you hit these certain milestones so that it's not the first call when you're reaching out to folks and saying, you know, we're actively fund raising, we've got two weeks left to raise this round or else we're out of business. 00;19;55;03 - 00;20;16;17 So those three things. So first off, triple the number of investors you're going to reach out to and the time it takes to actually dedicate to fundraising. Number two, reach out to every single one and keep good notes on everybody. And three, maintain a monthly newsletter that you reach out to and drip campaign to everyone in that in that list you connected with. 00;20;16;19 - 00;20;39;25 To add something to what Dan just said, and agree with those, there are a lot of tools out there that are available to you for free. You know, Crunchbase, you know other things that you can go out and find to do research on the VCs. It's helpful to do the research upfront. Figure out who actually could be investing your space. 00;20;39;27 - 00;21;04;20 The other thing that, from a very tactical standpoint, is that different VCs have different ways in which they will source deal flows. So there are VCs out there where if you don't get into a partner, right, there's no way you're going to get funded. Right? And so sometimes going in you had a lower level through an associate or otherwise isn't going to get you where you need to be. 00;21;04;23 - 00;21;29;02 But there are other VCs like us where we make team decisions and so it's, you know, coming in through any member of our team is perfectly fine, but it's just you should try to figure out that going in so you make sure you're trying to get a connection into the right person that's actually going to be able to take your deal through and, you know, through to an investment committee or otherwise. 00;21;29;05 - 00;21;49;15 Yeah, I'll give you one more hack, which is a really strong, warm introduction. It's often hard to get if you're not already sort of well-versed and connected within the networks. But often people think, hey, this investor can introduce me to other investors. Like a lot of times, right? That that network runs strong and they all know one another. 00;21;49;15 - 00;22;25;25 We all know one another. Actually, I think the most quality warm interaction you can get is from a portfolio company. So from a different founder that they've already put money to work into because there's a reason they've already gotten that check. And I'd venture to guess that you all are going to probably take that call probably 100% of the time if a company that you've invested in is, you know, telling you, Hey, meet xyz company, and then, you know, to Dan's point, like, run this, like you're running an enterprise sales operation. Like it is a numbers game at the end of the day. 00;22;25;25 - 00;22;47;19 And so you do how it can be a slog and but with the right planning and persistence, you know you will break through to get there. Go ahead. One other thing. When you figure out, you know, figure out who your top list of like, ‘this is the perfect VC. 00;22;47;22 - 00;23;11;06 They do exactly what we do.' Then go pitch to ten other people first, right? Because you don't want to go into that VC the first time if you've never done a pitch before, right? You want your materials refined, you want your presentation refined. You don't want to be reading your presentation. The kiss of death is somebody who gets up there and just read slides. 00;23;11;08 - 00;23;44;07 You know, we, unlike some others, do like to actually be walked through a deck. But I don't want somebody who's just going to read it and, you know, like they are standing in a room giving a presentation. You have to get the reps in. I want to put an emphasis on Dan's point with a question that he kind of skirted by, which is when you are meeting investor, how many folks have met and raised funding or attempted to raise money and you've gotten a, ‘hey, no, this is a little bit too early for us.' 00;23;44;09 - 00;24;10;23 Has anyone ran into that? If you haven't, you most definitely will. I promise you. And so the way to answer that is just asking the question, you know, in a very polite way, ‘Hey, what would you want to see or need to see to make this an investable business?' You can curate a lot of that information from investors or other folks that you're meeting and that sets at least a rough guideline right to where you're going. 00;24;10;26 - 00;24;42;16 I'd like to ask a question. So of the folks who have talked to venture investors, how many of you have a story of an investor that's just acted in a thoughtless, like inappropriate or unprofessional manner, like ghosting, not showing up, any stories like that? Well, if you haven't, you will, because there's a lot of really, really subpar human behavior that's rampant in the venture industry, especially in the early stages. 00;24;42;18 - 00;25;10;19 So you need to have a hard shell and let's make all that, just to take it and then move on to the next. And then remember those stories for when you're when you're IPOing and you're having drinks with everybody in your team and telling those stories about those investors later on because it's a big problem. Yeah, so, on the other side of the equation, maybe you'll have like what major pitfalls should entrepreneurs avoid? 00;25;10;23 - 00;25;37;29 Is there some proactive insight you all can share to get ahead of some challenges before for the entrepreneurs run up against them? Yeah so first off, not dedicating time, a set period, where fundraising is your main focus. If you're if you're running an organizational sales campaign, you're not you're not just running an undefined period. 00;25;37;29 - 00;25;59;04 You're setting aside certain hours every day where you're tackling a certain number of investor reach outs, investor prospect reach outs, so that you can handle on a weekly basis going forward just week by week and reaching out to as many as you can, engaging as many as you can. That is, it's hard to do. 00;25;59;04 - 00;26;37;25 It's hard to carve out that amount of time in your schedule because you're doing 50 other things. I get it. I founded this firm in 2015. We've been scrambling ever since so setting aside that dedicated time and actually reaching out to literally hundreds of investors, literally hundreds, is something that it will set you apart. I don't know about Dan's firm but our firm biases against a CEO at an A or seed level, an entrepreneur hiring an investment banker or other representation, right? 00;26;37;25 - 00;27;06;09 We view it as the job of the CEO to go out and raise money, and that is, you know, we want to see that the CEOs putting in that kind of time, that kind of effort, etc., in order to do that, that role at that level, when you get to a C or D level, yeah, there might be more reason for a banker to get involved, but typically not at seed and A level. 00;27;06;12 - 00;27;26;12 Yeah. Otherwise, you need to make sure you're, you're prepared, right? You're going to, you're going to get a lot of questions. To Dan's point earlier, there are a lot of people out there who, you know, are can be not the nicest people in the middle of pitches. But these are not two of them. The only friendly faces on stage. 00;27;26;14 - 00;27;47;17 Yeah I actually I can honestly say that we've gotten into a lot of deals by not being jerks as opposed to kicked out of deals for the other reason but yeah. To that point, people do try all sorts of different mediums to raise funds because it is quite challenging right now. There's a lot less dry powder, it's called out there. 00;27;47;17 - 00;28;11;10 So since the venture investment dollars have gone down in both dollars and deal amounts since 2021 and ‘22 at the highs, you know, we're living in a new world. So just curious what you all have been seeing maybe in Missouri or more broadly with your funds. Is this impacted investment activity or deal flow for each of you? 00;28;11;13 - 00;28;41;25 We're actually still doing a decent amount of seed and A business. We'll do 6 to 10 seed and A rounds this year, which is pretty consistent with par in the past. In the past, we also were doing more B and C and later stage deals. All of that effort is now solely focused on our existing portfolio and, for that matter, a decent amount of the A businesses as well. 00;28;41;27 - 00;29;09;11 And in terms of like us prospecting or doing outreach or even inbound for seed deals where we've cut back on the amount of time we have available for that. Just because I've got issues I've got to deal with my existing portfolio that take precedence over putting new capital to work for new investments. 00;29;09;14 - 00;29;31;07 I mean, I'm sure Dan's going to echo the same thing because that is pretty consistent across the board. You're seeing a lot of firms that used to do early stage stuff retrench and do later stage, change the criteria. They're now growth investors looking for ten plus million in revenue. So, yeah, it's definitely gotten a lot more challenging. 00;29;31;09 - 00;29;54;14 You know? Yeah. So actually, we're a kid in a candy store right now. During the pandemic, there were 60% more companies started every month than any time before in history. So for every three companies started prior to the pandemic, there were five started every month just based on how the averages were working out. And that was sustained for three years. 00;29;54;16 - 00;30;19;04 So there are so many new companies right now that have been around for a couple of years and are now looking for seed series, series A funding, it's immense. The number of companies that we used to be able to review every month just to keep up was about 300. Now we're scrambling to do 500 a month and we're not keeping up with the number of companies that are entering our search criteria. 00;30;19;07 - 00;30;38;23 We need to be doing more because there are just so many companies, and that's the most exciting time to be investing, because in these times that in these times of turmoil in which people lose their jobs, they leave their company because they want to go live on the beach and are sick of it. They bring the knowledge and the funding that they have to start a new idea. 00;30;38;27 - 00;31;04;06 And the most the most consequential companies get started in these times. Google was founded in the dot com bust. Airbnb was founded in the global financial crisis. These iconic companies get started in times just like this. And we're scrambling to find those gems in that deal flow. So in Missouri, I guess I'll put it to you this way. 00;31;04;10 - 00;31;29;22 So what can you tell me what geography has the monopoly on brilliance on brilliant founders? Can anyone tell me what the what the limitation oof sending an email is geographically? Can anyone tell me how much more difficult it is to send money from one place in the country to another outside of Missouri? 00;31;29;24 - 00;31;54;09 There's no limit on where you have to be to be able to start an iconic company. The talent pool is everywhere. Brilliant entrepreneurs start up everywhere in the country. Sam Altman's from Saint Louis. Taylor Swift's mom lives in Saint Louis. So there's no there's no limit to where you can go with your company. 00;31;54;12 - 00;32;28;02 You can sell into the e-commerce market from anywhere. I think that's one thing that's changed as well, that folks have gotten a little more devious in terms of the revenue, in terms of the dollars they're bringing in. Every dollar of revenue is, by the math, an infinite valuation fundraising dollar. And so getting devious about new product lines, new revenue lines to actually front your growth in the future, SBA loans, bank loans, grants from their CEO. 00;32;28;02 - 00;32;51;12 I mean there is funding outside of venture capital if that has been to drive a well so. That's right that's a really good point. We'll be sure to have an angel panel with Mrs. Swift and Sam Altman next time around here. You know, one more question to you both, which is just given the surge of AI capabilities, it's clear that we're all going to be much more productive with less. 00;32;51;15 - 00;33;16;26 And so founders and investors alike are you know, it seems to be a trend. We're all moving back to the fundamentals of, you know, not grow at all costs, but maybe grow with efficiency or dare I say, profitability, maybe. So I'm curious, how does this how does this affect your thesis or, you know, have your expectations changed when you're meeting early stage companies? 00;33;16;28 - 00;33;35;17 Unknown So we're thesis driven, as I mentioned. So the thing that we've been focused on since fund one was is this data-centric paradigm shift that's been taking place. Every company needs to become a data company to stay competitive. I think that you can make the case in the future that every company is going to have to become an AI company to stay competitive. 00;33;35;19 - 00;33;56;08 But right now, we're in the middle of the hype cycle. So I don't I'm not ready to stake a claim, stake a fund in investing in that theme. But I think that in the future it may be. On the ground. I think that we're seeing a lot more, as you mentioned, efficiency, productivity coming from individuals in an organization. 00;33;56;10 - 00;34;19;02 And that is that has been a trend that's been happening for the last 60 years. Super producers are emerging and finding those other super producers to join your team is a way to grow a company fast. It costs less to start a business. There are fewer people required to start a transformational business. OpenAI 00;34;19;02 - 00;34;48;25 was four people when they were valued at $5 billion. There is a time coming where there will be a single person company who is worth $1B just by the just by the path of that trend. So maybe it's you. So even in our sectors, we are still investing a lot in AI-driven companies. 00;34;48;28 - 00;35;13;07 I'd say the first thing is you really need to make sure you're an AI-driven company and not, you know, just adding it to your name for the sake of it. It's the hype, as Dan said, the hype cycle because it's pretty quick to tell whether or not you're really an AI company or not, right? And the kiss of death is labeling yourself that one when you're really not. 00;35;13;10 - 00;35;38;18 It really hasn't changed our theses or the kind of way we looked at things. You know, to the other side of that, in terms of, you know, shifting back toward fundamentals, I'd say certainly in our later stage portfolio, we are much more driven by, you know, how quickly can we get to cash flow. Early stage portfolio. 00;35;38;18 - 00;36;12;10 There's still a little bit of leeway there, but you'd better, you know, you better have a clear line of sight to customer's revenue. Everything else, if not preferably already have customers revenue or minimal viable product, etc. You know, in general, bootstrapping or not raising venture funding leads to limited resources, which often leads to better decision making, which then leads to better outcomes. 00;36;12;12 - 00;36;39;21 Right. And so we see it all the time. Too many people get, you know, the $100 million round, you have more cash than you know what to do with. And so actually there is some truth to growing a real sustainable business in this way too. So we're about out of time, but I wanted to give each of you just an opportunity maybe to, you know, for a piece of parting advice you'd like to share with entrepreneurs in the crowd that are going out to raise or maybe in the thick of it right now. 00;36;39;24 - 00;37;11;00 So I'd go again with early adopter customers, right? The more if, you know, every business needs a customer, so the faster you can get them, the quicker you can get them, it shows somebody you're trying to fundraise with that you've got traction, that the product is actually something somebody wants to buy. And it goes just a long, long way towards proving out that whatever it is your invention or idea is actually going to work. 00;37;11;03 - 00;37;53;19 So focus first on customers, you know, and then think, how do you go from there? Yeah, my advice would be bold, go boldly. The thing that binds us is this human element that everybody that we're interacting with should be expecting to be interacting a positive way. And if you can just get in front of that person with the right, think about where they are in their in their day, what they do on a day-to-day basis and get in their shoes, whether it's a customer or an investor or a person who you're courting to join your team, make sure that you understand that person's 00;37;53;26 - 00;38;28;29 culture. Their driving theses and figure out how that how you can craft your story to get in front of that person. I talked about out of the playing the entrance road to the to the global economy is this wide open and it's unlimited but the thing that we remain rooted in is our culture, our way that we do things as tribes, the knowledge that we share as individuals in a group that is extremely important. 00;38;28;29 - 00;38;53;17 And remembering that as you go out and try to meet new customers and build relationships is crucial and the only way to do that is to remember that human element. So be bold. It's great. I have the last word on this. So Doug Leone from Sequoia has a great quote where he says, ‘Architect your top table like you would your product,' meaning 00;38;53;19 - 00;39;15;21 you know, really just stressing the importance of choosing, you know, your early investors and partners. They're going to be going on a very long journey with you if this works out as successful. If it's not successful, you also want to make sure that you chose the right partners alongside that. The one caveat with that is the best deal is, is the check that gets signed. 00;39;15;21 - 00;39;35;17 So at the end of the day, you've got to do what you've got to do to grow your business. And anyway, so with that, thank you so much for being here. I know we're just out of time and thank you for your insights. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks,Oracle. Well, that wraps up another great episode. 00;39;35;20 - 00;40;02;21 One of the pieces of advice that I found most interesting from the panel was being realistic around how much effort it would take to raise money in today's environment and founders needing to triple the amount of investors they reach out to and triple the amount of time fundraising. It might be harder to get an investor on board right now, but, like JD said, some of the biggest companies have been built in times where investors weren't as willing to invest. 00;40;02;23 - 00;40;22;16 Thank you so much to JD Weinstein for not only moderating the panel but also taking the time to join us on the podcast. A big thanks as well to our panelists, Dan and Craig. If you want to learn more about NetSuite's Business Grows Here events, be sure to check out the link in our show notes to see if we're coming to a city near you. 00;40;22;18 - 00;40;43;24 As always, a big thanks to our wonderful editing team over at Oracle and to all of you for tuning in. If you want more episodes just like this one, make sure you subscribe to our channel and give us a rating and review. Until next time! You just listened to the NetSuite Podcast. Be sure to tune in every week with more 00;40;43;24 - 00;40;51;04 NetSuite developments, stories, and insights into the benefits of one integrated system to help you run your business.
In this company episode on CoStar Group, Speedwell Research draws on their extensive research report to cover everything from Founder Andy Florance's entrance into the real estate data space from his Princeton dorm room to becoming the dominant real estate data and analytics provider. Florance not only beat out competition in the commerical data space, but succesfully entered several new markets including taking a fledging apartments listing platform and driving it to the #1 spot. Today CoStar is looking to do it again with Homes.com, while still aggresviely expanding their growing array of internet real estate businesses. Learn the inner workings of the real estate data and markeplace business, as well as how a company succesfully expanded far beyond their original core product and continues to find new markets to fight after. We hope you enjoy! Company Description: Real estate data & analytics provider and operator of real estate marketplace. Purchase the full CoStar Group Report here. More details on our CoStar Group Report here. Purchase a Speedwell Membership to gain access to all of our Reports here. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Show Notes Section 1: History and Background (2:45) — High Level CoStar Overview (6:15) — Founding History Starts (16:52) — IPOing (26:54) — 2008 Financial Crisis (35:40) — Lawsuits and LoopNet (49:44) — Apartments.com acquisition (59:46) — Xcelligent Lawsuit and the Last of the Direct Competitors (1:04:56) — Closing Out History and S&P 500 Addition * Section 2: The Business (1:07:35) — Business Section Overview (1:21:30) — Multifamily and Apartments.com Business (1:29:00) — Residential Overview (1:30:43) — Loopnet Overview (1:34:07) — Other Businesses/ Wrapping Up Business Section * Section 3: TAM and Industry (1:43:13) — TAM Overview (1:50:29) — How the Residential Industry Works (2:01:15) — Multifamily Industry * Section 4: Competition (2:08:53) — CoStar Competitors (2:15:35) — Why Does CoStar Win (2:23:48) — Why LoopNet Wins (2:25:30) — Zillow and Apartments.com Competition (2:34:03) — Homes.com vs Zillow * Section 5: Growth Opportunites, Capital Allocation, and Valuation (2:40:45) — International (2:46:38) — ROIC, Free Cash Flow, (2:54:06) — Dilution and Capital Allocation (3:00:33) — Valuation (3:05:45) — Risks (3:10:50) — Bull / Bear Summary (3:15:50) — Conclusion -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Purchase the full CoStar Group Report here. More details on our CoStar Group Report here. Purchase a Speedwell Membership to gain access to all Reports here. *~* Twitter: @Speedwell_LLC Threads: @speedwell_research Email us at info@speedwellresearch.com for any questions, comments, or feedback -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Disclaimer Nothing in this podcast is investment advice nor should be construed as such. At the time of publishing, one or more contributors to the podcast had a position in Costar Group. Furthermore, accounts one or more contributors advise on may also have a position in CoStar Group. This may change without notice. Please see our full disclaimers here: https://speedwellresearch.com/disclaimer/
Dr. James Doty, or as he wanted me to call him, Jim, is a Clinical Professor of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. He's also the Founder and Director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education, which is an affiliate of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute. So, you're going to learn pretty quickly in today's conversation that Dr. Doty has been on the neurosurgery side and on the neuroscience side of studying the brain. He is obsessed with research and science, and he also blends in this sort of artistic way of thinking about how we can show up in the world. He's the author of a self-help book called Into the Magic Shop, which is a neurosurgeon's quest to discover the mysteries of the brain and the secrets of the heart. I think that best describes how Jim shows up. He very much values the brain, but he also values the heart. His most recent book, which is a big part of our conversation today, is called Mind Magic, which is all about the neuroscience of manifestation and how it changes us and helps us evolve and impacts how we show up in the world. He has been very philanthropic with Stanford University's School of Medicine. He's one of the largest donators of any graduate or faculty member at the school. He endowed the Chair of the Dean of the School of Medicine at Tulane University as well following Hurricane Katrina and helped refurbish its library, in addition to setting up a scholarship for socioeconomically disadvantaged students to commit to a career of service. He cares deeply about giving back, helping people, and being part of something bigger than himself. The other word that is really important to remember when you listen to Dr. Jim Doty talk is disadvantaged. He came from a disadvantaged upbringing; he's going to reference that in today's conversation. And so, you're going to hear him talk a little bit about capitalism and some of the downsides that may come with that structure and that system, and how he struggled in his early days as well. He's also a CEO; he's the founder of Happi AI, which is a new mental health app which uses emotion detection with AI to really help people on their journey and be able to regulate their emotions. He's served as a CEO for many different bio companies through his career, including Accuray, which ended up IPOing for $1.3 billion in 2007. He served in the 90's as their CEO. So, he's got this leadership background, but he's also been in surgery centers and has been operating on people, and on the research side. So, he has these intersections that make him a really fascinating human being and I loved my conversation with him. It's about much more about simply his successes, it's also about the challenges and the failures Dr. Doty has had along the way. So, I think you're going to find him to be vulnerable, open, and he also knows who he is. He's very comfortable in his own skin and doesn't mince words and is convicted on a lot of his beliefs based on the curiosity that he's had previously. Dr. Doty had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include: “So many people are so afraid of being judged, or accepting themselves, or being authentic” (7:25). “[We have] programs that are training people to be more compassionate towards themselves” (7:55). “In the modern world, many people feel uncomfortable talking to another human” (9:20). “Nowadays we've created a narrative of a minimum wage, not a living wage” (15:40). “Massive economic inequalities is a fundamental aspect of [the growing need for mental health treatment]” (19:35). “That's what many of us need in this world: an empathic listener” (23:15). “When children grow up in an environment [where they face many adverse childhood experiences], it's like a warzone; it's traumatizing” (23:50). “Post-traumatic stress disorder doesn't have to be from war” (24:05). “I no longer had anger and hostility towards my parents, because they did not have the toolset to take care of themselves” (25:40). “When I changed how I interacted with the world, it changed how the world interacted with me” (26:05). “Manifestation is the ability to embed an intention into your subconscious so that, by doing so, it increases the likelihood of whatever it is you wish to happen to occur” (27:45). “I was seeking to get external affirmation to tell me I was worthy, to deal with my shame. And of course, it did none of those things” (31:50). “As a species, we are not wired to have complete self-focus” (32:30). “We have a genetic imperative to care” (32:45). “What people don't realize is that many of the thoughts they have don't actually have to do with them” (44:50). “All of us are manifesting all the time. It's just what are we manifesting?” (46:00). “We create the limiting beliefs that stop us from believing in the unlimited possibilities that each of us have” (48:35). “The greatest way for you to imbed an intention is through defining your goals or your intent” (51:35). “Our purpose in life is to care for others” (52:10). “Let go of outcomes” (53:05). “You need to choose a path that is respectful towards yourself” (54:50). “Your subconscious is always listening” (1:01:15). “Medical school beats your empathy and compassion out of you” (1:04:15). “Many people get so attuned to helping others that they don't do self-care, nor are they compassionate to themselves to create boundaries, that allow them to be their best selves and then they burn out” (1:08:10). “Every one of us, every day, has the ability to improve the life of at least one person” (1:15:30). Additionally, you can find Dr. Doty's website here, where you can learn more about him and also purchase both of his books. You can also find the website for Happi AI here. You can also reach out to Dr. Doty via email at jrdoty@stanford.edu. Thank you so much to Dr. Doty for coming on the podcast! I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers. Thanks for listening.
In this company episode on Coupang, Speedwell Research draws on their extensive research report to cover everything from Founder Bom Kim's early foray into commerce with a Groupon-like business to an epic restructuring of the company just weeks away from IPOing that left them on the path to become the leading South Korean ecommerce business. Learn about how the South Korean competitve enviroment developed differently, as well as how Coupang managed to dominant after a capital-intensive pivot. We hope you enjoy! Company Description: Dominant South Korean ecommerce provider with fully integrated logistics operation. Purchase the full Coupang Report here. More details on our Coupang Report here. Purchase a Speedwell Membership to gain access to all Reports here. -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Show Notes Section 1: History and Background (0:00) Intro (1:55) Coupang Business Overview (2:56) Start History (6:13) Groupon Business Model, Differing Value Props (17:10) Pulling the IPO and Pivoting (30:32) - Second Attempt at an IPO *~* Section 2: TAM and Competition (31:44) TAM and Korean Retail Market Overview (39:13) Market Share and GMV Estimates (42:52) Competition, Consumer Preferences Served (47:47) Flywheel (56:37) Coupang Fresh Grocery (59:30) Spend per Buyer (1:01:18) Competitive Enviroment, Naver *~* Section 3: International and Other Bets (1:27:17) Other Bets (1:28:31) Coupang Play (1:31:56) Coupang Eats (1:39:10) Coupang Pay (1:42:25) International, Japan, Taiwan (1:48:42) Farfetch *~* Section 4: Financials, Valuation, Risks (1:53:04) Financial Metrics (2:00:00) Coupang Steady State Margins (2:04:03) Reverse DCF (2:06:20) Bear Case, Bull Case, Risks (2:13:58) Conclusion -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Purchase the full Coupang Report here. More details on our Coupang Report here. Purchase a Speedwell Membership to gain access to all Reports here. Articles Mentioned Speedwell's Memo: Metaphor Malware: The Clumsy Thinking That Is Crippling Your Business Understanding *~* Twitter: @Speedwell_LLC Threads: @speedwell_research Email us at info@speedwellresearch.com for any questions, comments, or feedback -*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- Disclaimer Nothing in this podcast is investment advice nor should be construed as such. At the time of publishing, one or more contributors to the podcast had a position in Coupang. Furthermore, accounts one or more contributors advise on may also have a position in Coupang. This may change without notice. Please see our full disclaimers here: https://speedwellresearch.com/disclaimer/
Host Gary J. Ross talks with Curtis Mo, partner at DLA Piper and a leading Silicon Valley corporate and securities lawyer. Gary and Curtis discuss venture-backed startups and the issues that arise in IPOs vis-à-vis acquisitions. Curtis provides insights as to how companies interact with investment banks in the time leading up to an IPO, and why underwriters tend to price companies more favorably when those companies are venture-backed. Gary and Curtis also share thoughts on valuations and the “IPO ratchet”, due diligence, SPACs, reporting requirements, and the JOBS Act.
US stocks fell again on Wednesday. Plus, Cava turns a profit in its first report since IPOing, Lego creates an ASMR nature playlist, and this Vietnamese EV maker is worth more than Ford.
Jeannette talks to Tim Hentschel the Co-Founder and CEO of HotelPlanner - a leading travel technology company and hotel booking platform - about the company's origins, why and how technology is revolutionising every business sector, and the unique ways in which HotelPlanner has created a revolutionary type of business niche. KEY TAKEAWAYS Many are wary of the potential hazards that a rise in technology can bring, but those who embrace its use are seeing huge success by the implementation of all-new systems and processes. HotelPlanner use AI to augment local resources and workers in order to create a more expedient form of travel booking. The private sector are superb at spotting new trends and utilising the benefits. The life-changing results come when the public sector begin to also embrace them. When a company becomes profitable and is able to repay the investments that made them, they take back control of their purpose and mission. BEST MOMENTS 'We're 50/50 travel and tech' 'The industry was hungry for what tech could do to sell more hotel rooms' 'We've always looked fore niches that we can automate' 'We pushed to profitability very quickly' 'Tim and I also discuss his plans for IPOing the company in the next few years - watch this space!!!!' This is the perfect time to get focused on what YOU want to really achieve in your business, career, and life. It's never too late to be BRAVE and BOLD and unlock your inner BRILLIANCE. If you'd like to jump on a free mentoring session just DM Jeannette at info@jeannettelinfootassociates.com or sign up via Jeannette's linktree https://linktr.ee/JLinfoot VALUABLE RESOURCES Brave, Bold, Brilliant podcast series - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/brave-bold-brilliant-podcast/id1524278970 ABOUT THE GUEST Tim Hentschel is the Co-Founder and CEO of HotelPlanner. Founded in 2003, HotelPlanner is a leading travel technology company and hotel booking platform that combines proprietary artificial intelligence and a global gig economy-based reservations network. Tim oversees HotelPlanner's family of brands including its flagship site HotelPlanner.com and its business-focused site Meetings.com. Tim is a third-generation hotelier and a graduate of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration with a degree in hotel management and concentration in micro-computing. In 2018, his alma mater awarded him their prestigious Innovator of the Year Award. Tim created the annual American Group Travel Awards and European Group Travel Awards which donates proceeds to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and other charities. Tim resides in London and manages the company's European operations. https://www.linkedin.com/in/tim-hentschel-7a3b245/ ABOUT THE HOST Jeannette Linfoot is a highly regarded senior executive, property investor, board advisor, and business mentor with over 25 years of global professional business experience across the travel, leisure, hospitality, and property sectors. Having bought, ran, and sold businesses all over the world, Jeannette now has a portfolio of her own businesses and also advises and mentors other business leaders to drive forward their strategies as well as their own personal development. Jeannette is a down-to-earth leader, a passionate champion for diversity & inclusion, and a huge advocate of nurturing talent so every person can unleash their full potential and live their dreams. CONTACT THE HOST Jeannette's linktree - https://linktr.ee/JLinfoot https://www.jeannettelinfootassociates.com/ YOUTUBE - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtsU57ZGoPhm55_X0qF16_Q LinkedIn - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jeannettelinfoot Facebook - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/jeannettelinfoot Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/jeannette.linfoot/ Email - info@jeannettelinfootassociates.com Podcast Description Jeannette Linfoot talks to incredible people about their experiences of being Brave, Bold & Brilliant, which have allowed them to unleash their full potential in business, their careers, and life in general. From the boardroom tables of ‘big' international businesses to the dining room tables of entrepreneurial start-ups, how to overcome challenges, embrace opportunities and take risks, whilst staying ‘true' to yourself is the order of the day.Travel, Bold, Brilliant, business, growth, scale, marketing, investment, investing, entrepreneurship, coach, consultant, mindset, six figures, seven figures, travel, industry, ROI, B2B, inspirational: https://linktr.ee/JLinfootThis show was brought to you by Progressive Media
Pete Bigelow, Senior Reporter, Automotive News, joined Grayson Brulte on The Road to Autonomy podcast to discuss the changing landscape of mobility markets. The conversation begins with Pete discussing how the automotive industry is preparing for a potential economic recession and the impact that Tesla's price cuts are having on the market. The other major effect that Tesla is having on the market is the adoption of software-as-a-service in vehicles today.Tesla's FSD (Full Self-Driving) is highly profitable and it's success from an economic standpoint is changing global automakers in-vehicle software strategy.The business strategy behind it is very sound and enticing. – Pete BigelowNot all global automakers are feeling the Tesla pinch just yet. Ferrari with €1.38 billion in cash a 23% profit margin and no pension liabilities is currently over subscribed in terms of their order book. But looking to the future, Ferrari like all of the other global automakers will have to adapt to a world with autonomous vehicles. Personally owned autonomous vehicles are coming and Ferrari owners will want one. Will Ferrari listen to their customers and introduce an autonomous Ferrari at some point in the future? Grayson and Pete discuss the possibilities. Or could it be Mercedes-Benz that takes the plunge first introduces a personally owned autonomous vehicle?Over at VW under Oliver Blume, the company has been focused on IPOing their iconic brands starting with Porsche. Could a Lamborghini or Bentley IPO be next? Possibly. But what we do know is that under Mr. Blume's leadership, VW is unlocking value for shareholders.While Mr. Blume has taken a diligent approach to the VW brand IPOs, the autonomous vehicle industry over the last 24 months rushed into SPACs and IPOs with limited and sometimes no revenue. Now they are struggling as the reality of public markets begins to set in and Mr. Market does his job to paraphrase the famed investor Howard Marks.Everyone saw the EV SPAC succeeding and raising so much money that they did not want to be left out. It was fear of missing out, fear of missing out on that big burst of cash upfront and they thought they were going to make it through to the other side. Now that is very clearly flat not the case in a lot of places or it puts a lot of people in a very precarious position.– Pete BigelowThe autonomous vehicle companies that stayed private such as Cruise and Waymo are now in a position of greater strength as consolidation has begun to sweep the industry and certain competitors have ceased to exist. It's in this market that Cruise and Waymo along with Motional will be able to gain market share thanks in part to their strategic financial partners. Wrapping up the conversation, Pete shares his thoughts on how he sees mobility changing over the next decade. Follow The Road To Autonomy on Apple PodcastsFollow The Road To Autonomy on LinkedInFollow The Road To Autonomy on TwitterRecorded on Thursday, April 20, 2023See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
The majority of successful exits for companies are via trade sale (not that given the media hype you'd necessarily imagine it was anything but IPOs). Furthermore the percentage of companies that list on an exchange is falling meaning, that along with the economic circumstances, private companies and remaining in the unlisted space is becoming ever more important. In this episode we dive into the whole soup-to-nuts process of how to trade sell oneself, what the stages are, what the obstacles and challenges and what the benefits are. Trade selling a company is an eternally important route to not just realisation but to the growth of the company's vision being realised. Thus this is a reference episode for something that every founder should understand whether they get to this stage and go this route or another. It's one that can't be ignored – least of all perhaps in the current economic climate. Goji were on the LFP way back in the day in LFP047 in 2016 when the founder Jake Wombwell-Povey was discussing the Innovative Finance ISA and David was employee number one. He moved on to become first CTO then CEO and is now at the last stage – regulatory approval – for Goji's merger with the giant Euroclear – such a vital component of the whole global post-trade financial infrastructure. So along the way Goji must have done a thing or two right – IF ISAs hardly being a huge thing these days with so few P2Ps remaining of any stature. Further correlating this is that Euroclear approached them. Topics discussed include: running. A long way. having worked with a former guest on the LFP who also liked running quite some way how best to avoid injuries social company and running, running a hundred miles being a later developer re extreme fitness David's career journey transitioning from being a CTO to CEO Goji's mission to increase access to private markets the IF ISA motivations for realisations as critical for the eventual choice of route of which way one ‘realises' private equity as an exit route changes in the private equity markets and how the firms operate differing motivations between private equity acquisition and incumbent acquisition completing a gap in the coverage of an incumbent as a great trade sale case ability to scale exponentially differs hugely between “just IPOing” and – as in Goji's case becoming part of one of the worlds largest firms moving into their arena dating ,mating and marrying as it applies to looking for a Trade Sale parameter differing paths to finding a Trade Sale buyer grows naturally out of a commercial relationship – banks often use this route – grows more organic — cf after knowing a colleague for years getting into dating and mating – there is a lot of mutual knowledge in the first place marriage brokers – investment banks, consultancies, accountants increasingly incumbents have their own teams scouring for appropriate acquisitions (as in this case with Goji who were approached by Euroclear) planning versus reacting for a Board re exit strategies both happen
This week, we speak with Joe Reece and Stephen Kadenacy, from the SilverBox team. Joe and Stephen led the Boxwood Merger Corp. and SilverBox Engaged Merger Corp. I transactions, as well as recently priced the SilverBox Corp. III IPO. We dig into their perspective, having priced SPACs in three very different market environments. Joe and Steve explain why and how they maintained their value priorities while IPOing their third SPAC in the difficult market of early 2023. The pair also discuss the relative of advantages of having committed capital from forward purchase agreements at IPO versus the flexibility of diverse potential PIPE investors down the road. What will the landscape look like once the SPAC cycle fully resets, and what does it take for a sponsor to bank a successful deal while the current macro conditions exist? Give it a listen.
Teampay CEO and founder Andrew Hoag revolutionized corporate spending when he created Teampay in 2016, after seeing how broken legacy platforms were firsthand as an employee and operator. Hoag's vision guided the company to build a breakthrough patented platform and now, Hoag continues to innovate on his ongoing quest to bring human-centered finance to companies. Hoag's leadership has allowed the company to continue to see exponential growth – Teampay now supports hundreds of thousands (over 250,000) of users from high-growth, public or IPOing companies.Connect with Behind Company Lines and HireOtter Website Facebook Twitter LinkedIn:Behind Company LinesHireOtter Instagram Buzzsprout
On this episode of Christopher Lochhead: Follow Your Different, we go deep with one of my favorite people in Silicon Valley, Bruce Cleveland. Bruce Cleveland has had a career in Silicon Valley for over 40 years. And he's pretty much done it with building companies, technologies, categories, and brands, as well as working on and with some of Silicon Valley's best executive teams and entrepreneurs. He's been a successful investor. He's also a bestselling author. In fact, one of my favorite books is Traversing the Traction Gap, which he wrote. And I recommend it to all entrepreneurs. By the end of this dialogue, we hope you'll have gained radical new insights into how you can do legendary things in your life and career. Traversing the Traction Gap The conversation begins with a discussion of Bruce Cleveland's book, Traversing the Traction Gap. His best-selling book was praised by Silicon Valley insiders and many entrepreneurs for the information and insights it provided. Bruce shares that his reason for writing the books stems from people trying to make VC seem like a mystical thing, rather than explaining things in a clear way. “The reason I wrote it was because I began to grow pretty weary of really, really smart people not making it. Their companies not surviving for a variety of reasons. And they all tended to be pattern-matched against those reasons. I was also not happy with the venture community in its entirety, because I don't think it was honest with a lot of these entrepreneurs as to why they weren't getting investments, etc. And I kind of wanted to demystify those issues.” – Bruce Cleveland Bruce Cleveland on helping out entrepreneurs Another reason Bruce gives for writing out the book is that he wanted to help out fellow entrepreneurs who may be feeling lost, or guide those who are doing well into things that could make their ventures better. “The purpose and objective of this book was to share with entrepreneurs that, “hey, here's some things you could possibly do to significantly enhance the probability of success.” You know, we only get one shot at this life, I felt like I owed it back to the entrepreneurs of the world who take all the risk as to what I saw, from my vantage point, both as an operating exec and as an investor, to why I thought things weren't working for the vast majority of startups.” – Bruce Cleveland C3.ai and Enterprise AI The conversation then goes to Bruce's latest ventures into category creation. Together with Tom Siebel, they founded C3.ai, which delves into enterprise AI. Bruce then talks about how it came to be, and how working on C3.ai has been so far. “I think this is one of the benefits of having a CEO who understands and believes in category creation, is that it as your job as CMO becomes much easier to do.” – Bruce Cleveland When they started conceptualizing and creating the category of enterprise AI, the term wasn't even on the radar. While there were companies who were doing something similar to a lesser degree, it wasn't clearly defined, and no one was pursuing rapid advancement on it. Now, it's something that a lot of companies are looking at, and C3.ai is at the forefront of it. To hear more from Bruce Cleveland and how to have a legendary career in VC and tech, download and listen to this episode. Bio Bruce Cleveland's career in Tech spans more than 40 years as a venture investor and operating executive. He was a first investor and a board member of Marketo, which held an IPO in 2013 and was acquired in 2018 by Adobe for $4.75B. He was an early-stage investor in other notable companies such as C3.ai, Doximity, Vlocity, and Workday. Bruce also held senior executive roles in engineering, product management and product marketing at Apple, AT&T, C3.ai, Oracle and Siebel Systems. His book, Traversing the Traction Gap, is a prescriptive guide for startups and new product initiatives within larger companies helping teams to use ‘market engineering' techniques t...
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Seba Kanovich is the CEO @ dlocal, the #1 payments leader with a single solution focused on Latin America and other emerging markets. In June 2021, dlocal raised $617M in their NASDAQ IPO listing valuing the company at nearly $9BN. Before their IPO, dlocal raised from some of the best including General Atlantic, Bond Capital, and Oren Zeev to name a few. Prior to dlocal, Seba was CEO @ AstroPay, a leading payment solution provider in Emerging Markets. In Todays Episode with Seba Kanovich We Discuss: 1.) The Journey to CEO of an $8BN Company: How Seba made his way to the role of CEO of an $8BN company through dinner at his mother-in-law's house? What does Seba know now that he wishes he had known when he first became CEO? 2.) Leadership 101: What does "high performance" in business and leadership mean? How important are velocity and speed of execution in startups? When should one trade speed for quality? Where is the nuance? How does Seba approach prioritization? What framework does he use to determine what to focus on? How does Seba think through effective delegation? How can leaders determine what only they can do? 3.) Leadership: The Challenges and Lessons: What are Seba's biggest insecurities in leadership today? How does he manage them? How have they changed over time? What is the single most painful leadership lesson Seba has learned that he is also pleased to have learned? What gets easier with scale as a leader? What gets harder? In a scaling organization, what is the first thing to break? What can be done to mitigate this? 4.) The Funding and The IPO: Why did dlocal bootstrap for 4 years instead of raise funding? How did that process change their mindset toward capital efficiency? What was good about it? What was bad? What are the single biggest advantages great investors can bring to the table? Why did Seba decide 2021 was the right time to go public? What was the biggest surprise about going public? What is better and what is worse about being a public company? Items Mentioned in Today's Episode: Seba's Favourite Book: Steppenwolf by Herman Hesse
On #SFLive Ep 278, we are introducing Kiboko Gold Inc. The company is IPOing on the TSX Venture Exchange today (Jul 5, 2022). Learn all about the latest Canada Gold IPO in the conversation with the CEO. Guest: Jeremy Link, President & CEO Company: Kiboko Gold Inc. (TSX.v: KIB) #IPO #GOLD For more information, please visit: https://www.kibokogold.com/ Tags: Gold, Gold Price, Gold Stock, Gold Mining, Gold IPO, IPO, Listing, New Listing, Kiboko Gold, Kiboko, Jeremy Link, Quebec, Gold in Canada, Gold in Quebec, SF Live, Soar Financial, Kai Hoffmann, Gold Stocks, Junior Mining, Junior Mining Stock, Penny Stock, Penny Stock Investing, Gold investing, how to invest in stocks, how to invest in gold, finance news, stock market MAKE SURE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR CHANNEL & HIT THE ALERT BUTTON Also, follow us on www.twitter.com/soarfinancial - make sure to follow us & click on the bell icon! ►► Follow Us! ◄◄ Twitter: http://twitter.com/soarfinancial Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/soarfinancial/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/soarfinancial/ Website: http://www.soarfinancial.com SF Live is a new format by Soar Financial Partners. The goal is to give short company updates and more importantly get investors engaged directly with the companies. Intro Music: "Summer" by Bensound.com Disclaimer: We own shares in Kiboko Gold Inc. Unless specifically disclosed, all information available on Soar Financial and its affiliates or partners should be considered as non-commercial in nature. None of the content produced by Soar Financial should be considered an endorsement, offer or recommendation to buy or sell securities. Soar Financial is not registered with any financial or securities regulatory authority in Canada, the US, Europe, or the UK, and does not provide, nor claim to provide, investment advice or recommendations to any consumer of the content that Soar Financial produces and publicizes. Always do your own due diligence and/or consult a qualified legal, tax, or investment professional if personal advice is deemed necessary. Soar Financial and its related companies (including its directors, employees, and representatives) or a connected person may hold equity positions in securities detailed in communications. When this occurs a disclosure will be made. Disclosures on social media will be made using the hashtag #coi (short for conflict of interest). Soar Financial, its affiliates, and their respective directors, officers, employees, or agents expressly disclaim any liability for losses or damages, whether direct, indirect, special, or consequential, or other consequences, howsoever caused, arising out of any use or reproduction of this site or any decision made or action taken in reliance upon the produced content of Soar Financial, whether authorized or not. By accessing Soar Financial's content, each consumer of Soar Financial content releases Soar Financial, its affiliates, and their respective officers, directors, agents, and employees from all claims and proceedings for such losses, damages, or consequences. Soar Financial may provide content on third-party sites and we disclaim any responsibility for the content of any information posted on such other websites.
Welcome to the Busi-ness Podcast!This week, on the podcast, I'm really excited to bring you a very special episode, with a friend and an old client of mine, Julian Hearn, founder of Huel. Julian started Huel six years ago, following two previous businesses; one successful, the other, not so, but the latter led to the launch of Huel.He talked to me really openly about his business journey, the sacrifices he's had to make and the original plan for Huel. He danced around the subject of the business IPOing this year, but either way, they have announced that they've done over £100million in revenue. This is an extraordinary achievement for a business that's hardly raised any money and Julian still has a huge amount of the equity of the business. You'll see the brand everywhere, from social media to t-shirts and the culture of the business is so special. Julian is an incredibly impressive, thoughtful and kind man, with so many exciting new thoughts and ideas. I really hope you enjoy this special episode. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
23 Years and 15 million subscribers later, MTN Uganda is IPOing on the Uganda Securities Exchange. Join Eric Jackson and Wim Vanhelleputte as they break down the IPO, detailing the incentives, the opportunities, the risk factors and the onboarding process for investors. Listen to this podcast now to learn why the Telco operator chose to list now, how MTN is planning to rope retail investors through the m-IPO platform and why low internet penetration and mobile money are key of focus for MTN Uganda's radar. Highlights: MTN Uganda is offering 20% of its total 96% shareholding to the public. This is 4.47 billion ordinary shares at UGX 200 per offer share. The offer opened on 11 October 2021 and closes on 22 November 2021. Trading will start on 6 December 2021. MTN is offering prospective East Africa investors a 5% free share incentive, and an additional 5% for Ugandan investors who participate in the IPO via the m-IPO platform. The telco has made a commitment to maintaining the 60% dividend payout ratio post-listing. MTN Uganda is taking the low internet penetration opportunity through demand-driven 4G deployment, device financing and leveraging on-demand for localized digital content. The company sees the m-IPO process as key to addressing liquidity concerns on the USE through creating trading opportunities in the secondary market. Tune in to all our podcasts directly through the Hisa App on Android or iOS, or subscribe to the Kenyan Wallstreet podcast wherever you listen from. This episode features: Eric Jackson - Co-founder and CTO, Hisa Wim Vanhelleputte - CEO, MTN Uganda Produced by Mwakaneno Gakweli
23 Years and 15 million subscribers later, MTN Uganda is IPOing on the Uganda Securities Exchange. Join Eric Jackson and Wim Vanhelleputte as they break down the IPO, detailing the incentives, the opportunities, the risk factors and the onboarding process for investors. Listen to this podcast now to learn why the Telco operator chose to list now, how MTN is planning to rope retail investors through the m-IPO platform and why low internet penetration and mobile money are key of focus for MTN Uganda's radar. Highlights: MTN Uganda is offering 20% of its total 96% shareholding to the public. This is 4.47 billion ordinary shares at UGX 200 per offer share. The offer opened on 11 October 2021 and closes on 22 November 2021. Trading will start on 6 December 2021. MTN is offering prospective East Africa investors a 5% free share incentive, and an additional 5% for Ugandan investors who participate in the IPO via the m-IPO platform. The telco has made a commitment to maintaining the 60% dividend payout ratio post-listing. MTN Uganda is taking the low internet penetration opportunity through demand-driven 4G deployment, device financing and leveraging on-demand for localized digital content. The company sees the m-IPO process as key to addressing liquidity concerns on the USE through creating trading opportunities in the secondary market. Tune in to all our podcasts directly through the Hisa App on Android or iOS, or subscribe to the Kenyan Wallstreet podcast wherever you listen from. This episode features: Eric Jackson - Co-founder and CTO, Hisa Wim Vanhelleputte - CEO, MTN Uganda Produced by Mwakaneno Gakweli
Scott Absher is th Chief Executive Officer and cofounder of ShiftPixy, a platform to help business operators engage with a part-time workforce. ShiftPixy is developing technology that balances the needs for business operators who rely on part-time labor and workers who make up the part-time workforce. ShiftPixy is a powerful platform for leveraging the gig economy forces for both. Scott was previously President of Struxurety, a business insurance advisory company. In this episode, Scott and Aaron discuss the structure of ShiftPixy's capital raises, the need for restaurants & manufacturers to leverage part-time labor, and the advantages of IPOing early. Sign up for a Weekly Email that will Expand Your Mind. Scott Absher's Challenge; Don't ignore the service staff that you interact with every day. Connect with Scott Absher Linkedin Twitter ShiftPixy Website If you liked this interview, check out our interview with Keith Harmon where we discuss how restaurants can navigate seismic changes to the economy. Underwritten by Piper Creative Piper Creative makes creating podcasts, vlogs, and videos easy. How? Click here and Learn more. We work with Fortune 500s, medium-sized companies, and entrepreneurs. Follow Piper as we grow YouTube Instagram Subscribe on iTunes | Stitcher | Overcast | Spotify
Ein schöner Oldtimer, ein Bild von Banksy, ein Schuh von Michael Jordan…viele Leute würden gern in solche Sammlerstücke investieren, in den meisten Fällen fehlt dafür meist das Geld. Jan Karnath, CEO von „Timeless“ macht es aber doch möglich. Durch Fraktionierung und Tokenisierung hat nahezu jeder die Chance, in solche Raritäten zu investieren. Was Collectible-Investments sind und wie rentabel das für den Investor sein kann, verrät er im Gespräch mit Joel und Peter. Daneben gibt er einen Einblick in sein Geschäftsmodell und erzählt, welche Objekte sich eignen. Du erfährst… • …wie ein „Normalverdiener“ in teure Collectables investieren kann. • …wie Timeless Collectables findet und erwirbt. • …etwas über das Investmentmodell von Timeless. • …etwas über die Rentabilität für Käufer und Verkäufer. • …was genau NFT's sind. • …wie Timeless die Blockchain-Technologie nutzt.
digital kompakt | Business & Digitalisierung von Startup bis Corporate
Ein schöner Oldtimer, ein Bild von Banksy, ein Schuh von Michael Jordan…viele Leute würden gern in solche Sammlerstücke investieren, in den meisten Fällen fehlt dafür meist das Geld. Jan Karnath, CEO von „Timeless“ macht es aber doch möglich. Durch Fraktionierung und Tokenisierung hat nahezu jeder die Chance, in solche Raritäten zu investieren. Was Collectible-Investments sind und wie rentabel das für den Investor sein kann, verrät er im Gespräch mit Joel und Peter. Daneben gibt er einen Einblick in sein Geschäftsmodell und erzählt, welche Objekte sich eignen. Du erfährst… • …wie ein „Normalverdiener“ in teure Collectables investieren kann. • …wie Timeless Collectables findet und erwirbt. • …etwas über das Investmentmodell von Timeless. • …etwas über die Rentabilität für Käufer und Verkäufer. • …was genau NFT's sind. • …wie Timeless die Blockchain-Technologie nutzt.
On this episode of The Scoop, Bittrex Global CEO Stephen Stonberg joined host Frank Chaparro for a discussion on Bittrex's US and global businesses, his outlook on security tokens, and how the company is tackling regulatory tightening in an effort to safely enter markets across the world. In its global business, Stonberg said that Bittrex is testing out lending and staking products as well as dipping its toes into STOs or Security Token Offerings, such as in real estate, stocks, cars, etc. Bittrex test-launched a limited number of what Stonberg termed ‘unsolicited ETFs' like "Google tokenized and Tesla tokenized" which they are currently only selling to a small subset of clients via their Bermuda license. As the market matures and investors eventually look for yield in alternative products outside of utility tokens, Bittrex is positioning itself to capture that market share. “I would expect that as utility tokens become a more mature market, that you won't see those types of returns," said Stonberg. Stonberg views real estate on the blockchain as one of the use cases that will reshape the industry. In fact, Bittrex is exploring the potential of STO-based tokens, such as in real estate as well as possibly art and IPOs, as Stonberg suggested. “I really think that you're going to see everything being tokenized. Why should we not have real estate tokenized? Like, why should if you're IPOing a company, why does it have to be an IPO? Why can't it be in the venture stage?” As for where competitors are in the adoption cycle, Stonberg added: "Right now, we're in the fund build phase where the regulators haven't caught on yet." However, he did not comment on whether Bittrex has plans at this time to fundraise or enter public markets. Episode 56 of Season 3 of The Scoop was recorded remotely with The Block's Frank Chaparro and Stephen Stonberg, CEO at Bittrex Global. Listen below, and subscribe to The Scoop on Apple, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Stitcher or wherever you listen to podcasts. Email feedback and revision requests to podcast@theblockcrypto.com. This episode is brought to you by our sponsors Bakkt, Kraken, and Exodus Bakkt® unlocks the $1.2+ trillion of digital assets that is currently held in cryptocurrencies, rewards and loyalty points, gaming assets and merchant stored value. We began in 2018 with the vision to bring trust and transparency to digital assets. Through the Bakkt Warehouse and Bakkt Bitcoin Futures and Options contracts, we serve institutional clients in an end-to-end regulated market with true price transparency. For consumers, Bakkt aggregates digital assets to enable instant liquidity and to empower users to trade, transfer and pay however they want. Visit Bakkt.com for more information About Kraken Whether you're an experienced crypto trader or just starting out, Kraken has the tools to help you achieve financial freedom. With 50+ cryptocurrencies to choose from, industry-leading security and a wide variety of features to suit any investing strategy, Kraken puts the power in your hands to buy, sell and trade digital assets. Visit Kraken.com to get started today. About Exodus Exodus is leading the world out of traditional finance by building beautiful and user-friendly crypto products. Forget having to learn the nuances of different cryptocurrencies. Exodus is designed for everyone and hides the complex details behind a beautiful and intuitive interface. Buy and sell one cryptocurrency for another from the comfort of your wallet, in seconds. Funds remain under your full control. Secure, manage, stake, and exchange all of your favorite cryptocurrencies from one wallet. No account registration is required. Download Exodus at Exodus.com or directly from Google Play and the iOS App Store and you're ready to go.
The Interview: Christian Angermayer, founder of Apeiron Investments, Atai Life Sciences, and COMPASS Pathways, made headlines for attributing his decision to invest in Bitcoin to a trip on mushrooms, but his journey as an investor and advocate for psychedelics goes much deeper than the clickbait. In this interview with Mike Green, Angermayer discusses how he went from a successful investor living the straight edge life to founding and eventually IPOing two startups, which are at the cutting edge of research into how mushrooms and other psychedelics could revolutionize the way we think about treating mental health issues. Together, they discuss the parallels between the modern human experience and other times of great change, how this is manifesting itself in societal and individual angst, and why this might make today the perfect time for broader acceptance of these treatments. They also touch on Green's own personal experience with mushrooms and Angermayer's optimistic approach to investing in technologies driving human progress. Recorded on May 8, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
The Interview: Christian Angermayer, founder of Apeiron Investments, Atai Life Sciences, and COMPASS Pathways, made headlines for attributing his decision to invest in Bitcoin to a trip on mushrooms, but his journey as an investor and advocate for psychedelics goes much deeper than the clickbait. In this interview with Mike Green, Angermayer discusses how he went from a successful investor living the straight edge life to founding and eventually IPOing two startups, which are at the cutting edge of research into how mushrooms and other psychedelics could revolutionize the way we think about treating mental health issues. Together, they discuss the parallels between the modern human experience and other times of great change, how this is manifesting itself in societal and individual angst, and why this might make today the perfect time for broader acceptance of these treatments. They also touch on Green's own personal experience with mushrooms and Angermayer's optimistic approach to investing in technologies driving human progress. Recorded on May 8, 2021. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Founders dream of being early to market, garnering flattering press, watching their product fly off the shelves and IPOing in record time. For Kuba Wieczorek, Co-Founder and former Chief Marketing Officer of Eve Sleep, the dream became a reality. And then the wheels came off.Kuba founded DTC mattress company Eve Sleep in 2015 with his cousin Jas, and they quickly started experiencing explosive growth. Within just two years they’d raised £35 million and were valued at £140 million. To top it off, they IPOd in record breaking time. It was the stuff of fairytales. But the fairytale wasn’t to last. “About six months after Jas left I hit rock bottom as well. You know, really rock bottom, I realised that it was either my health and my family, or staying at Eve, so I made the right choice. I resigned.”In today’s episode, Kuba shares his journey with Eve, the effect it had on him and his mental health, and what he will do differently in the future. “I’ll be stronger with myself and not be seduced by crazy growth and money and promises of IPO and riches and all of that stuff. Authenticity, be authentic. If you know who you are, and you know the brand you're building, just stick to that.”We chat about:The meteoric rise of eve SleepThe fastest ever British retail floatThe toll of eve on his mental healthKnow what you’re buildingWant to receive our podcast on a weekly basis? Subscribe to our newsletter!
My guest for Ep147 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the General Partner of Tidal Ventures, Wendell Keuneman. Prior to Tidal, Wendell had over 20 years of deep operational experience including seeing 3 companies grow and scale from startups to successful exits. He was the Co-founder & CTO of Carbon Twelve (acquired by Broadsoft), CTO of Inference (acquired by Five9s) and as the Head of Product of Atlassian's Confluence product, with the company IPOing in 2015 and with a current market cap of $59B. He is now the General Partner at Tidal Ventures, a $30M seed stage investor into product-led companies and founders. In this interview we discussed: Lessons from taking 3 companies from startups to successful exitsHow to develop product principles for your startupModels for effective product managementHow to find value adding investors& much more! Timestamps 2.04 - Introduction to Wendell and his background 3.17 - Basketball principles that Wendell has used to inform in his startup journey5.29 - How Wendell started coding as a hobby and the journey he took to pursuing it further 7.21 - How Wendell navigated starting a business with family pressure and support10.28 - Wendells' journey starting Carbon12 12.34 - Starting a second company following first company success 15.51 - How Wendell started working for Atlassian after seeing a sign in their office window and interviewing on the spot 18.53 - Early days of Atlassian and their focus on product 20.11 - The similarities between successful products across all Wendells' past ventures 21.59 - Importance of establishing product principles 24.17 - How early stage founders should begin defining their product principles 27.53 - Revisiting product principles as a company grows and changes29.46 - Getting buy in from team members on new or changing product principles 32.28 - Frameworks founders can implement to support growth in their business35.50 - The three questions Wendell asked himself to make the move from Atlassian41.04 - Ensuring values are applied in an additive way rather than being weaponised 42.58 - What support should founders expect from their VC's 46.02 - The theme's Tidal prioritises when reviewing startup opportunities47.47 - How founders can determine the best VC to work with when presented with different options 52.13 - Wendell's superpower to be able to sort through content to find the most important information for his portfolio partners55.16 - Delivering information and advice in a way that is most appropriate to the founder 56.35 - Where you can find Wendell and get involved with Tidal Ventures Links Mentioned Wendells' Links: Wendells' Twitter Wendells' Linked In Wendells' Blog Tidal Ventures Website Tidal Ventures Linked In Tidal Ventures TwitterTidal Ventures Contact Email People Mentioned: Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian)Scott Farquhar (Atlassian)Craig Cowdrey (Sonder)Andrea Kowalski (Tidal Ventures)Matt Barnett (Bonjoro) Companies Mentioned: AtlassianInference SolutionsCiscoBroadsoft Carbon 12 (acquired)Jira (Atlassian Product)Confluence (Atlassian Product)Trello (Atlassian Product)Five9 Special Thanks: Special thanks to Matt Barnett and Craig Cowdrey for their help with research for this interview ? Feedback/connect/say hello: Rohit@startupplaybook.co@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)My Youtube Channel Credits: Music: Joakim Karud – Dreams Other channels: Don't have iTunes? The podcast is also available on Spotify, Soundcloud & Stitcher Audio Player. https://youtu.be/3nj777kHdhQ The post Ep147 – Wendell Keuneman (General Partner – Tidal Ventures) on building your product principles appeared first...
The Domino's Pizza turnaround is a legendary corporate tale of customer centricity. The company's share, after IPOing in 2004, went down to $3/share in 2008 and currently trades levels of $360/share. In this short episode, let's look at how Patrick Doyle turned the pizza company around.
Worked on the Wall Street in the 70s. Started his own company in the 80s. Went public on NASDAQ. Got acquired. The guest for our episode today is a prolific marketing genius and the co-founder of POP Radio, Robert Hussey (Bob). This is the first part of his story, filled with brave decisions and extraordinary achievements. We talk about it all: his early life, career, startup and IPOing!
Hey, big hello from Portland, Oregon. Welcome to another episode of B2B Marketing and More with Pam. I have a very special guest today, Paul Roetzer, founder of the Marketing AI Institute and the PR2020. And he recently launched a very nice product. I want to get into that and we'll talk more about our favorite topic, Artificial Intelligence. Pam Didner: Alright, Paul, so happy to have you on my show. So tell me what's going on. Yeah, it's always very, very happy to see you. Paul Roetzer: Good to see you. What's going on? We're all sitting in our houses, in our offices. We're trying to get human interaction through Zoom. That's pretty much what's going on. I mean, it's, I don't remember the last time we were together, but it's been too long in- person. Pam Didner: It’s been awhile, definitely. It has been. Paul Roetzer: We've been able to connect a couple, a couple of times on Zoom, luckily over the last few months, but yeah, it's just not the same is it (laughs). Pam Didner: Yes. Yes. I can't wait--I don't know when this will be over—that we have a chance to see each other at the conferences again, but I noticed that you have been quite busy and you actually launch a new product. It's called the AI Academy for Marketers. How is that different than say the AI Marketing Institute/PR 2020? Paul Roetzer: Yeah, so the Marketing AI Institute is the business. So I, I spun it off out of PR 2020. So PR 2020 is my marketing agency. Some people may recognize that brand because we were HubSpot's first partner back in 2007. So my marketing agency is actually 15 years old next week. Pam Didner: Oh wow, amazing. Yay! So 15 years, I think that's a massive and major milestone. Paul Roetzer: Yeah, we'll do some social distance drinking. And, um, out of that agency, in 2016, we created a blog called marketing AI Institute, and we just started writing about AI. And the idea was if other people are interested in it also, we'll turn it into a business. And so fast forward to 2018, we had about 5,000 subscribers to that blog. Based on that growth and based on some prompting from you. You, I believe we were at, uh, where the Content Tech. I think maybe in like March of that year? Pam Didner: Yeah, I think it's 2017. Paul Roetzer: Right. Okay. And I won't use the exact language was something like “Paul, you have an event business”--with a couple other words in there. (Pam laughs) Pam Didner: Yeah, I think I was cursing too (laughs)! Paul Roetzer: Yeah, so you were prompting me, “you should really think about turning this into event business so that we actually did. So in 2019, we took Marketing AI Institute made it a separate business. And then we launched the Marketing AI conference, which, you know, you're familiar with in July of 2019. And then 2020 would have been year two of that conference, which is the main piece of marketing AI Institute. The plan was to introduce online education on day two. So on my day two keynote, I was going to go up on stage and say “thanks for being here” to these 500 people. You can now learn year round through our online Academy.” Well, when we had to cancel the conference in March of 2020, we realized like, “okay, we should probably go ahead and introduce the online education play anyway.” And so that's what we did. So we, what we wanted to do is our whole mission at the Institute is to make AI approachable and actionable to marketers around the world. By going to online education, we also made it accessible. And so the idea was matter who you are, where you are around the world we wanted it to make it easy for you to learn about AI so you could apply it to your business. Pam Didner: When I was meeting with you in back in 2017, we have that great conversation. I'm pretty sure I was interviewing for my book at that time. Right, I was publishing my second book, Effective Sales Enablement, and it has one specific chapter about technology and artificial intelligence, so thank you so much for your insight. Paul Roetzer: Thank YOU. Your words always stuck with me. Pam Didner: So, can I take you back, way back? How did you get interested in AI to start with. There’s got to be like a tipping point or a point that you were like, “okay, this is something that is going to have a big impact in any field sales or marketing or, you know, even our daily lives.” When did you get started interested in that specific topic? Paul Roetzer: 2011. The progression was, I mentioned we were HubSpot's first partner. So we were very, um, front row seat to marketing automation and the whole growth of that industry. So we were big in marketing technology. So 2011, it was late January, IBM Watson wins on Jeopardy. So beats Ken Jennings. Pam Didner: I remember that, yeah. Paul Roetzer: So, the world is now like, you know, it's the topic of more interest. That April I started writing the manuscript for my first book, The Marketing Agency Blueprint. When I came out of writing the book. I started being curious about the AI thing. What was Watson? Could that eventually be applied to marketing? So I shortly thereafter read a book called Automate This by Christopher Steiner and he talked about intelligent algorithms and how they disrupted all these industries. And so once I started comprehending what AI actually was, I was like, “well, it's obviously going to change marketing and sales, like it seems inevitable to me” and yet no one was talking about it. Pam Didner: 2011? No. Now were still talking about marketing automation and CRM. We're still talking about it, but that was still, you know, a major topic at that time. Paul Roetzer: Human powered automation, Human based rules. So then fast forward to 2014, I'm writing my second book and it's about marketing talent, tech and strategy, and in the tech section, there's about 500 words about what if AI were to get applied to marketing and sales? And if you remember back in 2014, HubSpot was IPOing, zero AI in their platform. At the time Salesforce bought Exact Target for two and a half billion, zero AI. At the time Exact Target had bought part off or 170 million. So literally like billions of dollars for marketing software that's dumb. Meaning, the only way it got smarter was if humans did it. And so on, I'm looking, thinking, “this makes no sense, like it's, it has to come to the marketing industry.” And so once I wrote it in the book that basically became everything I did public speaking about. So starting in 2015, I did a talk called Origin of the Marketing Intelligence Engine at South by Southwest. And then that became all I researched and talked about thereafter. Pam Didner: So the rest of it is history. Paul Roetzer: Pretty much. Pam Didner: So with that being said, can you be very specific and share some examples with us, how AI can apply to marketing? Paul Roetzer: We guide people to look for look for narrow use cases. Because AI-- So again, like if we take even a further step back, what is it? What is artificial intelligence? It's just a collection of tools and technologies that make machines smart. Pam Didner: Or anticipate I'll needs or answer our questions. Paul Roetzer: Yes. It gives the machine human-like abilities to, to see, to, to speak, to learn, to understand; the machine can't do any of that stuff on its own. And to make predictions about what we ask it to predict on. So what we always tell people is look at the things you do every day that are data-driven, repetitive and require you to predict an outcome or a behavior. So if you're going to send an email, you're at really the core of that is you're likely trying to get someone to take an action, whether it's to buy a product or read an article or whatever it may be. So you're subconsciously predicting. What subject lines should I use that's going to get them to open this? Once they open this, you're trying to predict what links you should put it have in there and what the copy should be and what the CTA button should be and what the image should be. And you're like, all of these are a collection of predictions that you're subconsciously making to drive an outcome. So we start looking at whether it's paid media and you're doing digital ad spend and which creative will work best, to social media--what should I share and when? and what hashtags should I use? To email, to content marketing--what blog posts should I write? And what should I include in the blog post. All of these daily activities for many of us really, you're trying to predict outcomes that then guys, what you do. That's the stuff where machines excel. Intelligent machines excel at data-driven repetitive, predictive things. Pam Didner: You are saying that we should look at our, where, uh, our job and we also, we always have a templates and process, right. To do our job, right. If we want to send the email campaigns, we have to select the content. We have to, uh, write a copy. We have images and that we have to select and we have to put that email together. We send it out. Because it's somehow a templates. I'm a process being set up. There are certain tasks also in portion of the job that AI can take over to do it for us. They probably can write a copy. They probably can select the images. They probably can also automatically send it to the people. So that sounds great. Do you think that AI will take over the marketer's jobs? Do you think some of the marketing's jobs will be eliminated because of that technology advancement? Paul Roetzer: Yes. Um, I think in the short term. I actually created something called the Marketer-to-machine Scale, and the idea is to do what you do, what happens in the autonomous vehicle industry. So a Tesla today is Level 3. This is an industry standard rating scale. There's goes zero to five. It's Level 3. What happens at Level 3 is the machine can drive itself in some conditions, but the human is actually there to oversee and correct if needed. Pam Didner: Yes. So we are not the primary driver anymore. We are kind of like a facilitator. We are helping. Yeah. Paul Roetzer: In, in an ideal world, that's where we're trying to get to with AI tools in marketing and sales today. We want the AI to assist the marketer, the salesperson at doing their job, in those repetitive data-driven tasks. It doesn't mean that we flip a switch and AI replaces the need for this role, this role in this role. It means those roles become more enjoyable because you don't have to do all of the repetitive things anymore. There is no full autonomy in marketing as there is no true full autonomy in cars today. I don't foresee a near term future where any AI, any marketing job can be truly automated to a full degree where the human isn't even overseeing the AI. I don't see that happening. Pam Didner: Yeah. Um, there is no marketing robot that I'm aware of. Are you aware of some start-up doing it? (laughs) Paul Roetzer: No, and if a vendor tells you they have it, go find a different vendor, because you should not see the words “full autonomy” on any vendor's site right now, because it's a lie. Pam Didner: 100% agree with that. Yeah. The way I see it, we have to co-exist with artificial intelligence. For the-- in the near future. And with that being said, as a marketer, what is the best way to learn about official intelligence? Why can't we learn about maybe not necessarily, we want to be a coders, but how does it operate? You know, what is the supervised learning? What is unsupervised learning? What's the machine learning? What's, you know, what is the opaque AI? You know, all that term is kind of important to understand and understand how artificial intelligence works, but not to the point that we become incredibly technical. So how do you suggest that the marketers learn more about AI and how AI functions? Paul Roetzer: I would argue the vast majority of marketers will never know nor care what unsupervised and supervised learning is. Nor will they care the eight common machine learning models of clustering and linear regression. And like the marketers don't need to know that generally speaking. What they need to know is what is AI capable of doing so that they can identify and prioritize use cases internally. And then they need to know who the go-to experts are, who do know what machine learning is and how it works. And the data scientists who can help them prepare the data properly and make sure that there's no bias built in. And like there are technical things. And so I kind of liken this to any other marketing technology you would buy. You don't have to become a true technologist. There will be those of us who are marketers by day and like, technologists because we're geeks and we like that stuff. And you figure out those other things that you were listing, but for a lot of marketers, like a content marketing manager, or maybe even like a VP of Marketing, you may never actually know the machine learning models. What, you know, though is you're right team spends a hundred hours a month doing this thing, that you now understand the machine could do 80% of that work. And you're able to go find the right tool, onboard that tool, upskill your team by getting them a base level understanding of what it is and how it works, and then redistribute those hours to some uniquely task human. Pam Didner: More productive and more strategic value add. Paul Roetzer: Yeah. So look, I think to answer your question real quick, what they need to do is remove the abstract nature of AI. They need to not be afraid of the topic because it isn't Sci-Fi, it is actually a pretty easy thing to understand what it is and what it does. And once you accept that, then you go read your book or you take an online course. You're like, now you embrace the idea that there's a smarter way to do marketing. Pam Didner: Yeah. I still feel as a marketer, um, that you need to have a certain understanding of the marketing technology. You know, you need to understand the terminology a little bit. You probably don't have to do it. You are totally right. You don't need to understand how the machine learning works, but you need to understand the term of machine learning. For example, and you don't need to understand how AI actually assists HubSpot or even Salesforce, but you need to understand what kind of methodology approaches they use to make that happen. So, um, I think we talking the same thing, but I always feel that the marketers needs to be able to be comfortable and also embrace the technology. And a lot of time that the best way to embrace that technology is trying to understand it. Does that make sense? So that's where I'm coming from. But I understand, like for example, I'm a marketer, you all might get a, we don't have to go down to the deep weeds to understand how that's done, but we need to understand what that is and then maybe the approaches that was taken. Paul Roetzer: And I'll give you an example. So I took Andrew Ng's Intro to Machine Learning class on Coursera a couple of years ago. After like the third week, it started going deep into statistical models. And like, I was like, “okay, I'm good.” Like, I actually now know everything I set out to know, which is what is machine learning and what does it do? And I get the different models and I understand the scenarios with which you would use them in marketing. And I'm done. Like I'm out now. I'm going to go call Chris Penn. Like if, if something comes up, like I'll just go find my friend who actually figured out the rest of it and let him help me. (laughs) Pam Didner: I love that! That's, that's actually a great point. Uh, you and I are probably on the same page about that, as well. So I took a couple of very technical courses on Coursera about AI, but after like two or three weeks, I say, “I'm done. I got the jist and also the understanding I need in terms of how things work.” Paul Roetzer: I think that's a good learning lesson for young professionals is like. You don't have to start-- like if you get into a book and it's dense and it's like, “okay, I'm not learning” don't force yourself to go 500 pages into it. Like get what you need out of it and move on to the next resource. Like just know what your outcome is. I didn't want to become a machine learning engineer, so I didn't need to go through Lessons 7-15. (laughs) I was good after. Pam Didner: Right. But that also come from the perspective that you need to know yourself. Yes. You need to know your skillset. You need to know who you are, and then you can make that decision and say, “okay, you know, this is my job. This is what I do. This amount of knowledge for the time being is good enough. And the rest of it, I have to let it go.” Paul Roetzer: You need a confidence level based on what it is you're trying to achieve in your career, I think is a good way to look at it. Pam Didner: Awesome. Excellent. Well said. So do you have any suggestions how marketers should implement or even incorporate artificial intelligence into their work? What are the couple of steps, Like from your perspective? You know, it can be a thinking process, it can be approach. Paul Roetzer: Yeah, so in AI Academy for Marketers, I actually teach a course called Piloting AI and it's a common talk I'll give at conferences when we're going to conferences. So what I guide people to do is take a spreadsheet. Write down in column a, all the things you do every month and then have a column B it's like, how frequently do you, as a daily? Weekly? Monthly? Then a column that says, how many hours did you spend doing it? And then a column that says, what would be the value to you if you could intelligent automate this? And just do a one to five rating, five being “it transformed my life.” One being, “yeah, it's all right.” Do that, go through it. Take the things that are level fives and then go search AI for that thing. So like just go find a tool that is built to do the thing you spend a bunch of time doing and you know it'd be valuable to you. Use that as your pilot project prove to yourself and your team that AI can have either an efficiency gain for you or a performance gain. Cause any AI you use, those would be the two reasons you would do it--you want to reduce it, reduce costs by increasing efficiency, or you want to accelerate performance or give yourself a greater probability of achieving success. Like otherwise you don't, you don't do it. You need a reason to put AI into something. Pam Didner: So sounds like the course and co-pilot AI can help you to conduct assessment and give our audience a templates to evaluate their workflows, evaluate the repetitive tasks that they do on a regular basis, and then determine what are the areas that they want to allocate or distribute that to AI and then source to technology accordingly. Paul Roetzer: Yeah, and we also have, there's a free tool. I'll give you, I'll send you the link you put in the show notes, but it's score.marketing.AIinstitute.com. And we actually built a use case assessment tool. So there's 49 use cases in their common AI use cases. And you can— Pam Didner: Can you say the name of that course again or the topics? Paul Roetzer: AI Score for Marketers, but it's score.marketing.AIinstitute.com. And it's un-gated. You can, you can give your contact information if you want, but what it'll do is it walks you through the 49 use cases. You rate them on a zero to five scale. And then on the results page, it shows you all the ones you rated a 3-5 and it actually recommends vendors if we have them in our database to do those things. Pam Didner: I love that. That's actually a great tool. I want to check that one out. Paul Roetzer: And we're actually using it right now to do a state of the industry survey with Drift. So we teamed up with Drift to take the data from that and turn it into a state of the industry report. Pam Didner: Excellent. So this is great. You are sharing a lot of useful information and the, from your online, um, uh, Marketing AI Institute, that the tools and also those templates that people can use. And I'm also very grateful that you launched the online platform, which is AI Academy for Marketers. If you are listening or you are watching the show, please check that out. Before we wrap this up, I want to ask you one parting question. And so what is the most useless talent that you have? That contributes nothing, literally nothing to the society? Paul Roetzer: I have thought about this before, and I don't-- to my daughter spinning a basketball on my finger. She thinks it's like, just like it's unicorn magic or something. Like, so we're playing basketball in the backyard (laughs) Pam Didner: Were you a basketball player before? Paul Roetzer: Yeah. Like globe Trotter style, just like spin a ball. Pam Didner: Yes, exactly. So you can do that? That's amazing! Paul Roetzer: She thinks it's amazing. I'll take it. When she was really young, I would dunk on an eight-foot hoop and she thought I was like LeBron James. So I have to find things that still impress her now that she's getting older. So apparently spinning a basketball works right now. (Pam laughs) Pam Didner: Well said, well said. So thank you so much for coming to my show, Paul, and to share a lot of useful information and relevant templates that, um, the audience can use really, really appreciate it. Paul Roetzer: It was fun. Do it again soon! Pam Didner: Thanks a lot, Paul. Again, thank you so much for listening to my podcast. Really, really appreciate it. If you want to chat, reach out on any social media channels or email me hello@pamdidner.com. You can also join my Facebook community Build Your Marketing Skills to Get Ahead. Love, love, love to hear from you. Take care. Bye.
Masterworks is democratizing fine art investing. The startup has created an online platform that allows consumers to invest in paintings for as little as $20. By securitizing multi-million dollar paintings and opening them up to the masses, Masterworks is disrupting the art collection & resale market. There are already 100,000 investors on the Masterworks platform. In this interview, I discuss art investing, Masterworks & more, with CEO/Founder Scott Lynn.
digital kompakt | Business & Digitalisierung von Startup bis Corporate
Börsengänge werden oft mit großen, anonym geführten Unternehmen assoziiert. Aber wie verhält sich dieser Schritt für ein Familienunternehmen? Und wie verändert sich die Kultur eines Start Ups auf dem Weg zu einem Grown Up? Mit diesen Fragen setzen sich Joel und unsere zwei Experten auseinander. Stefan Weiner (Managing Director bei J.P. Morgan) und Martin Link (IR Manager der Bechtle AG) geben einen Einblick in den Prozess des IPOing. Du erfährst… 1) …wie du mit deinem Familienunternehmen den Gang an die Börse schaffst 2) …warum IPO für dein Start Up der nächste große Wachstumsschritt ist 3) …von Experten Erfahrungswerte rund um den IPO Prozess 4) …welche Veränderungen der Börsengang mit sich bringt
It's somewhat of a milestone, our 25th show, and to celebrate what better way than with the most bonkers and bemusing IPO in recent history – Airbnb! What do we make of the wild valuations of these new tech 'Leprechauns' as we coin the phrase of a former tech 'Unicorn' IPOing at $100 billion valuations? Also why is this happening and should we re-write the fundamental rules of finance because of it?All that and beer reviews of course – after all it's all about the Booze, the Booms and the Busts on the Booze, Booms and Busts podcast,
Börsengänge werden oft mit großen, anonym geführten Unternehmen assoziiert. Aber wie verhält sich dieser Schritt für ein Familienunternehmen? Und wie verändert sich die Kultur eines Start Ups auf dem Weg zu einem Grown Up? Mit diesen Fragen setzen sich Joel und unsere zwei Experten auseinander. Stefan Weiner (Managing Director bei J.P. Morgan) und Martin Link (IR Manager der Bechtle AG) geben einen Einblick in den Prozess des IPOing. Du erfährst… 1) …wie du mit deinem Familienunternehmen den Gang an die Börse schaffst 2) …warum IPO für dein Start Up der nächste große Wachstumsschritt ist 3) …von Experten Erfahrungswerte rund um den IPO Prozess 4) …welche Veränderungen der Börsengang mit sich bringt
Episode 27! TUNE IN! Biz Bites N' More covers Quibi and it's desperation for a buyer, ChargePoint is looking to IPO and thrive in the Electronic Vehicle takeover. And finally, the mouse wants you out of his fucking house, yeah, Disney is cutting jobs in order to save their bottom line. The cut? Oh just a small 28,000. Grayson also rambles on about the presidential debate, Mark Cuban saying americans need money, and some other stuff happening in the world. LISTEN NOW! and go to bizbitesnmore.com for blog content as well as the Twitter or Youtube for extra Biz Bites N' More. Thanks for staying with me! I will be pushing out more cotnent than the parents pushing out children on 19 and counting. Wasn't that a really fucking weird show? I feel like we overlooked that one as a society. Tune in now! Thanks for supporting! --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/biz-bites-n-more/message Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/biz-bites-n-more/support
We are forgetting about health tech, and celebrating Chicago-oo! Just kidding, today on Health in 2 Point 00, Jess asks Matthew about Truepill getting a 75M Series C after just closing their B, Sana Benefits getting $20.8M, and Decent getting $10M, both of which are in the space of health benefits & insurance for small business have raised funding, MDLive closing a $50M round for their Virtual Primary Care (but weren't they going public?), Owl Insights getting $15M from Ascension and Blue Ventures, and Boehringer Ingelheim & Click Therapeutics working on a $500M deal together on a DTx platform for Schizophrenia patients.
Crypto Weekly | Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Altcoin and ICO news from the week
This week in the crypto news: - Justin Sun sued for being racist - Japanese central bank considering issuing a digital currency - Bittrex gets insured bigly - Rumours that Ripple is IPOing in 12 months - PSG launch a fan token - Iran trying to get dat crypto paper by firing up loads of miners All this and more!
My guest on this episode is Will Schoeberlein. Will started his career in investment banking and private equity before taking a leap to Southeast Asia to work on startups and software. He finished his time in Asia in Japan where he met his wife and he has since developed a small company acquisition thesis on the Japanese market. In the episode we discuss his thoughts about investing in private companies, acquiring companies in the U.S. and Japan, aging Japanese business owners and what that means for their economy, IPOing in Japan, and our shared use of Twitter. Episodes of Think Like an Owner are available on iTunes, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, Breaker, and TuneIn. Links Golden Southeast Nihon M&A Center Teledyne
The Real Real, a luxury consignment platform, is IPOing today, to much hype. Will it perform like other online retailers like Chewy, Farfetch or Revolve? Check out BehindTheBid.com. Where you can get all your premarket news at a glance! https://www.behindthebid.com/posts/premarket-breakfast-for-friday-june-28th CNBC on the Real Real: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCej0trSLAI
STOK stock will be listed today, IPOing at $18, market cap of ~$550mm. They have a drug for treating Dravet Syndrome which is in in Phase 3 trials. Show notes: ~greetings and salutations~ $STOK: Stroke Therapeutics $ADBE: Adobe $AXTA: Axalta Coating ~intermission~ $IRWD: Ironwood Pharma $MLNT: Melinta ~fin~
Abadesi and Michael are back breaking down. The controversy over Jay-Z’s statement about Gentrification Serena announcing that’s she’s been VCing on the low for the last 5 years. The Pinterest IPO Avengers Endgame/ Spoilers Going to space with SpaceX Further Reading: https://www.forbes.com/sites/simonogus/2019/04/19/serena-williams-announces-her-vc-firm-on-instagram-after-five-years-investing-in-diverse-companies/#6e4bc9aa7bac https://eu.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/04/18/pinterest-ipo-stock-priced-above-range-lyft-uber/3505778002/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/louisefron/2019/04/26/will-your-next-job-be-on-mars/#139be17ae27f https://gizmodo.com/skip-the-gym-plastic-surgeons-can-now-sculpt-belly-fat-1834239462 Find A Job: www.pocitjobs.com Support Techish at www.patreon.com/techish Advertise on Techish: goo.gl/forms/MY0F79gkRG6Jp8dJ2 #Techish Stuff: Use the hashtag #Techish www.twitter.com/michaelberhane_ www.twitter.com/abadesi www.twitter.com/pocintech Email us at techishpod@gmail.com
Japanese thoughts on risk are changing, but they are changing slowly. Many people still consider failure to be a permanent condition, and that makes it hard to take risks, or in some cases even to be associated with risks. Today we talk with Hajime Hirose, one of Japan's new breed of serial entrepreneurs. Hajime has started companies in three different countries and several different industries. We talk about the challenges and importance of going global and how a Japanese founder ended up running a Chinese company that IPOed in New York. And of course, we also talk about how difficult it is for startups to combat rumors in Japan, even when everyone knows those rumors to be false. It's a great conversation, and I think you'll enjoy it. Show Notes The road to China runs through Seattle Today's management crisis in Chinese and Indian companies Why leave Japan to start a startup Why not all publicity is good publicity in Japan Why the truth cannot fix lies How to survive when your competition is giving away their product for free What startups are best started outside Japan Links from the Founder Connect with Hajime on LinkedIn Hajime's latest project, Datadeck PTMind's PT Engine Leave a comment Transcript Welcome to Disrupting Japan, straight talk from Japan’s most successful entrepreneurs. I’m Tim Romero, and thanks for joining me. You know, there aren’t many serial entrepreneurs in Japan. The reason for that is, well, the same reason why we don’t have a lot of angel investors in Japan. Until very recently, the idea of both startup success and startup failure was permanent. If your startup succeeded, you were expected to be running it until either you or the company expired, and if you failed, well, if you failed, you were done. Until very recently, failure was considered a permanent condition. No one was inclined to give you a second chance, but things are changing, and today, I would like to introduce you to Hajime Hirose, a Japanese serial entrepreneur who has built and sold startups and also bankrupted them. We talk about how Japanese attitudes towards startups are changing, but how in Japan, a bad rumor, even a completely unfounded rumor can kill and otherwise promising startup. We also talk about the importance and the difficulty of going global, and the unlikely tale of a Japanese man running a Chinese startup that ended up IPOing in New York, and we also talk about Hajime’s old startup story that wheezed its way through London, Shanghai, Redmond, Jakarta, and yes, of course, Tokyo. But you know, Hajime tells that story much better than I can, so let us get right to the interview. [Interview] [pro_ad_display_adzone id="1411" info_text="Sponsored by" font_color="grey" ] Tim: Cheers! Hajime: Cheers! Tim: All right, so I am sitting here with Hajime Hirose, the what the future founder of BuzzElement, and a few other startups as well, so thanks for sitting down with me. Hajime: Well, thank you. I’m really excited because I’m a big fan of your show and I’m really thrilled to be on this side of the show. Tim: Well, listen, I’m excited to have you here because there are relatively few serial entrepreneurs in Japan. So, I’m looking forward to this conversation. Your first real international business was in China, but before we get to that, let us back up and talk about how you wound up there. Hajime: So, I was born in Tokyo, grew up in Yokohama, and I went to CIO for university, and I’ve been living outside of Japan for the last 26 years. Tim: And, you ended up working for Microsoft, right? Hajime: That’s right. Tim: Back when MSN was still a thing. Hajime: That’s right, yeah. So, that was back when Microsoft just bought Hotmail back in 1998. Tim: Oh, the good old days. Hajime: Yeah, that was good, that was really fun. So, I was lucky to be the only two Japanese guys on the project.
Crypto Weekly | Cryptocurrency, Bitcoin, Ethereum, Altcoin and ICO news from the week
Huge news, Crypto Weekly is here with another episode! This week: - Kimmy K uses Bitcoin at a poker tournament and price does not move - what a tough market we are in. - Bitmain could be IPOing after $1billion profit in Q1 2018. - Bill Clinton is announced as opening Ripple's Swell 2018 conference. Everyone is confused. - DApps take over everyone's imaginations again as Dope Raiders enters the limelight.
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Jason Pressman is a Managing Director @ Shasta Ventures who have made investments in the likes of Nest, Dollar Shave Club, Smule, Class Dojo and more. With 10 portfolio company investments under his belt, Jason invests in both enterprise and consumer, currently serving on the boards of Crittercism, subscription billing unicorn Zuora, as well as Nextdoor and mobile music platform Smule. Prior to joining Shasta, Jason was Vice President, Strategy and Operations at venture-backed Walmart.com, where he took the online retailer from zero to large scale revenue in five years. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jason made his way into the world of venture from Walmart? What were the big takeaways from seeing Walmart enter their hyper-growth phase? 2.) Why does Jason believe it is bullshit to say, "you never regret paying a high price for getting into a good company"? How does Jason evaluate entry point? What makes one entry point attractive and another not? 3.) What does Jason see as the catalysts for the opening of public markets to tech companies? How long does he think this will continue? Is he concerned by the likes of Yext, IPOing with less than aggressive growth rates? 4.) Why does Jason believe there are only 2 price points that work in SaaS? What are they? How does this affect the structure and operations of your SaaS startup? What are the circumstances in which these price points do not apply? 5.) Why does Jason believe that eSports will be bigger than the NBA in 5 years? What are the catalysts driving this change? What needs to be formulated within eSports for this to happen? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Jason’s Fave Book: First, Break All The Rules Jason’s Most Recent Investment: Plays.tv As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Jason on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. WePay helps online platforms increase revenue through integrated payments processing, helping platforms offer ROI-positive integrated payments to their users - within their UX and without taking on fraud & regulatory exposure. WePay also offers award-winning support and can even work with your team thru Slack or Zendesk. Get the payments revenue you want, without getting bogged down every time a user has a payments question. Simply visit wepay.com/harry PipeDrive is the Sales CRM and pipeline management software to use, with the primary view being the pipeline a clear visual interface that prompts you to take action, remain organized and stay in control of a complex sales process. This is why sales pros and deal makers love it (my words, not Pipedrive’s). Plus it easily lets you find the stats you need and is fully customizable. Even better, you can signup for free on here it really is a must.
In this episode of the ARCHITECHT Show, IBM Fellow and Watson Data Platform CTO Adam Kocoloski talks about the evolution of big data—from his days as an MIT physicist and co-founding Cloudant, to the application design trends dictating today's cloud data platforms. In between, Kocoloski touches on a variety of topics, including the fate of Hadoop, the promise of quantum computing, the role of specialized hardware for AI and big data, and the effects of marketing on selling the Watson technologies. In the news segment, co-hosts Derrick Harris (ARCHITECHT) and Tom Krazit (GeekWire) talk about Baidu's rise in the cloud (and Nvidia's growing footprint), the cost-benefit analysis of data privacy re: DeepMind's recent troubles, and why any IPOing web company would still run on a single data center with no backup.
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Patricia Nakache is General Partner at Trinity Ventures where she focuses on funding companies launching innovative online consumer and business services. Her portfolio of past investments is just astonishing with the likes of LoopNet and Care.com IPOing, PayScale being acquired by Warburg Pincus, Uptake being acquired by Groupon and many more. To be entered into the competition to win a signed copy of Brad Feld's legendary Venture Deals, all you have to do is click here and upvote this episode on ProductHunt and you will be automatically entered into the competition. In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Patricia get into the technology industry and then later make her transition into the world of Venture Capital? 2.) A recent study has shown that the total number of female partners has fallen from 10% to 6% in the time that you have been at Trinity. Why is there this gender misrepresentation and what can be done to improve female equality in the VC industry? 3.) Sheila has invested in some incredible female entrepreneurs such as Sheila Marcelo at Care.com, Illana Stern at Weddington Way and Anna Zornosa at Ruby Ribbon? What excited Patricia about these entrepreneurs and what can female entrepreneurs do to increase their chances of funding? 4.) With the increasing amount of capital available, VCs face greater competition between firms, what can VCs bring to the table to beat the competition? 5.) What elements of the on demand economy face danger in the coming years in a similar way to Homejoy? 5.) Which sector is Patricia most excited about and why? 6.) Why has there been a resurgence in the marketplace model particularly in ecommerce? What are the drivers of this change? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Patricia's Fave Book: Good To Great by Jim Collins Patricia's Fave Blog: Strictly VC, Owler Patricia's Most Recent Investment: Mayvenn As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Patricia on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session you can follow Harry on Instagram here!