Podcasts about mattermark

JH Scherck is a growth consultant known for his expertise in developing effective content strategies for SaaS companies. He previously worked for companies like WP Engine and Docsend before striking out on his own with his SEO and content strategy agency, Growth Plays. JH is a wealth of knowledge about B2B marketing strategies, audience development, and SEO. Check out the full podcast to learn more about: (00:00) Introduction (01:47) Early career mistakes (11:34) Why targeting zero-volume keywords makes zero sense (15:54) How to market a product with no search demand (20:08) Owned vs earned media (26:46) Brand vs personal brand for social media (37:25) What is a community and how do you build one? (42:58) Why should you attend industry events? (51:07) Facilitating connections at events (55:39) When is marketing attribution useful? (01:11:31) Why AI will encourage uniqueness in marketing Where to find JH: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jhtscherck/ X: https://x.com/JHTScherck Website: https://growthplays.com/ Where to find Tim: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timsoulo/ X: https://x.com/timsoulo Website: https://www.timsoulo.com/ Referenced: Docsend: https://www.docsend.com/ WP Engine: https://wpengine.com/ Salesforce: Marc Benioff: https://x.com/benioff Drift: https://www.drift.com/ Dave Gerhardt: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davegerhardt/ Alex Poulos: https://www.linkedin.com/in/poulos/ MozCon: https://moz.com/mozcon Rand Fishkin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/randfishkin/ Sparktoro article (Provable Marketing Attribution Is a Boondoggle): https://sparktoro.com/blog/provable-marketing-attribution-is-a-boondoggle-trust-your-gut-instead/ Orbit: https://orbit.love/ Orbit model of community: https://orbit.love/model Olivier Pomel (CEO of DataDog): https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivierpomel/ Mattermark: https://mattermark.com/ Danielle Morill: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniellemorrill/ Patrick Stox: https://www.linkedin.com/in/patrickstox/ https://x.com/patrickstox Joshua Hardwick: https://x.com/JoshuaCHardwick Ryan Law: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thinkingslow/ https://x.com/thinking_slow Jason Cohen (WP Engine): https://x.com/asmartbear Ross Hudgens: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rosshudgens/ Wil Reynolds: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wilreynolds/ Hubspot: https://www.hubspot.com/ PubCon: https://www.pubcon.com/ Dmitry Gerasymenko: https://x.com/botsbreeder

In episode 1164 of the Arete Coach Podcast, titled "Beyond Automation: AI's Role in Empowering Coaches," host Severin Sorensen engages in an engaging conversation with Samiur Rahman, CEO and co-founder of Heyday, an AI software company focused on assisting coaches. Rahman's rich experience includes over 12 years in AI and machine learning, with prior roles at Amazon, Synapse, Mattermark, and as co-founder of Journal. Heyday, his current venture, integrates AI to enhance the effectiveness of executive coaches by automating mundane tasks and providing a comprehensive client profile by aggregating data from various sources like emails, documents, and Zoom calls. In this insightful episode of the Arete Coach Podcast, host Severin Sorensen and Samiur Rahman, CEO and co-founder of Heyday, explore the transformative role of AI in executive coaching. Samiur, with a decade-plus expertise in AI and machine learning, delves into how Heyday leverages AI to augment coaching effectiveness, from mundane task automation to creating intricate client profiles using diverse data sources. The discussion navigates through AI's impact on coaching, emphasizing data security, Heyday's distinctive approach in comparison to traditional note-taking apps, and AI's potential in augmenting, not replacing, the human touch in coaching. This episode offers a deep dive into the evolving landscape of AI in executive coaching, addressing ethical considerations, the future of AI in this field, and even a demonstration of Heyday's user experience, marking a significant conversation in the art and science of executive coaching. The Arete Coach Podcast seeks to explore the art and science of executive coaching. You can find out more about this podcast at aretecoach.io. This episode was produced on December 19, 2023. Copyright © 2023 by Arete Coach™ LLC. All rights reserved.

A Fresh Story, season 3, episode 17 We had the chance to talk to Adam Marx all about networking, human nature, relationships, and so much more! Adam is funny, honest, and we had a fantastic convo about career changes, networking when you don't feel like networking, music, and families. Adam Marx is a networking & branding consultant, speaker, tech founder, startup advisor, journalist, & the founder of The Zero to One Networker. Formerly the founder & CEO of music-tech startup Glipple, Inc., and as a writer appearing in Crunchbase News, Startup Grind, Mattermark, & others, Adam draws on more than a decade of experiences in the music & startup tech industries to teach others how to cultivate powerful relationships using strategies of patience, consistency, authenticity, & value creation. As a networking consultant and speaker, Adam has worked with numerous organizations, including TechStars Atlanta, the Atlanta Tech Village (ATV), ATDC (through Georgia Tech), and Panoramic Ventures, where he's advised & mentored founders on how to develop magnetic dialogues & long-term relationships. In addition to advising & consulting, Adam has given talks at ATV, ATDC, and most recently emceed the 2022 Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) State conference in Burlington, Vermont. Check out more from Adam on his website, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok.

Show Notes(01:48) Sarah talked about the formative experiences of her upbringing: growing up interested in the natural sciences and switching focus on terrorism analysis after experiencing the 9/11 tragedy with her own eyes.(04:07) Sarah discussed her experience studying International Security Studies at Stanford and working at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.(07:15) Sarah recalled her first job out of college as a Program Director at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies — collaborating with academic researchers to develop computational approaches that counter terrorism and piracy.(09:48) Sarah went over her time as a cyber-intelligence analyst at Cyveillance, which provided threat intelligence services to enterprises worldwide.(12:22) Sarah walked over her time at Palantir as an embedded analyst, where she observed the struggles that many agencies had with data integration and modeling challenges.(15:26) Sarah unpacked the challenges of building out the data team and applying the data work at Mattermark.(20:15) Sarah shared her opinion on the career trajectory for data analysts and data scientists, given her experience as a manager for these roles.(23:43) Sarah shared the power of having a peer group and building a team culture that she was proud of at Mattermark.(26:41) Sarah joined Canvas Ventures as a Data Partner in 2016 and shared her motivation for getting into venture capital.(29:47) Sarah revealed the secret sauce to succeed in venture — stamina.(32:00) Sarah has been an investor at Amplify Partners since 2017 and shared what attracted her about the firm's investment thesis and the team.(35:28) Sarah walked through the framework she used to prove her value upfront as the new investor at Amplify.(38:35) Sarah shared the details behind her investment on the Series A round for OctoML, a Seattle-based startup that leverages Apache TVM to enable their clients to simply, securely, and efficiently deploy any model on any hardware backend.(44:39) Sarah dissected her investment on the seed round for Einblick, a Boston-based startup that builds a visual computing platform for BI and analytics use cases.(48:45) Sarah mentioned the key factors inspiring her investment in the seed round for Metaphor Data, a meta-data platform that grew out of the DataHub open-source project developed at LinkedIn.(53:57) Sarah discussed what triggered her investment in the Series A round for Runway, a New York-based team building the next-generation creative toolkit powered by machine learning.(58:36) Sarah unpacked the advice she has been giving her portfolio companies in hiring decisions and expanding their founding team (and advice they should ignore).(01:01:29) Sarah went over the process of curating her weekly newsletter called Projects To Know (active since 2019).(01:05:00) Sarah predicted the 3 trends in the data ecosystem that will have a disproportionately huge impact in the future.(01:11:15) Closing segment.Sarah's Contact InfoAmplify PageTwitterLinkedInMediumAmplify Partners' ResourcesWebsiteTeamPortfolioBlogMentioned ContentBlog PostsOur Investment in OctoMLAnnouncing Our Investment in EinblickOur Investment in Metaphor DataOur Series A Investment in RunwayPeopleSunil Dhaliwal (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Mike Dauber (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Lenny Pruss (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Mike Volpi (Co-Founder and Partner at Index Ventures)Gary Little (Co-Founder and General Partner at Canvas Ventures)Book“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (by Robert Pirsig)New UpdatesSince the podcast was recorded, Sarah has been keeping her stamina high!Her investments in Hex (data workspace for teams) and Meroxa (real-time data platform) have been made public.She has also spoken at various panels, including SIGMOD, REWORK, University of Chicago, and Utah Nerd Nights.Be sure to follow @sarahcat21 on Twitter to subscribe to her brain on the intersection of data, VC, and startups!

Show Notes(01:48) Sarah talked about the formative experiences of her upbringing: growing up interested in the natural sciences and switching focus on terrorism analysis after experiencing the 9/11 tragedy with her own eyes.(04:07) Sarah discussed her experience studying International Security Studies at Stanford and working at the Center for International Security and Cooperation.(07:15) Sarah recalled her first job out of college as a Program Director at the Center for Advanced Defense Studies — collaborating with academic researchers to develop computational approaches that counter terrorism and piracy.(09:48) Sarah went over her time as a cyber-intelligence analyst at Cyveillance, which provided threat intelligence services to enterprises worldwide.(12:22) Sarah walked over her time at Palantir as an embedded analyst, where she observed the struggles that many agencies had with data integration and modeling challenges.(15:26) Sarah unpacked the challenges of building out the data team and applying the data work at Mattermark.(20:15) Sarah shared her opinion on the career trajectory for data analysts and data scientists, given her experience as a manager for these roles.(23:43) Sarah shared the power of having a peer group and building a team culture that she was proud of at Mattermark.(26:41) Sarah joined Canvas Ventures as a Data Partner in 2016 and shared her motivation for getting into venture capital.(29:47) Sarah revealed the secret sauce to succeed in venture — stamina.(32:00) Sarah has been an investor at Amplify Partners since 2017 and shared what attracted her about the firm's investment thesis and the team.(35:28) Sarah walked through the framework she used to prove her value upfront as the new investor at Amplify.(38:35) Sarah shared the details behind her investment on the Series A round for OctoML, a Seattle-based startup that leverages Apache TVM to enable their clients to simply, securely, and efficiently deploy any model on any hardware backend.(44:39) Sarah dissected her investment on the seed round for Einblick, a Boston-based startup that builds a visual computing platform for BI and analytics use cases.(48:45) Sarah mentioned the key factors inspiring her investment in the seed round for Metaphor Data, a meta-data platform that grew out of the DataHub open-source project developed at LinkedIn.(53:57) Sarah discussed what triggered her investment in the Series A round for Runway, a New York-based team building the next-generation creative toolkit powered by machine learning.(58:36) Sarah unpacked the advice she has been giving her portfolio companies in hiring decisions and expanding their founding team (and advice they should ignore).(01:01:29) Sarah went over the process of curating her weekly newsletter called Projects To Know (active since 2019).(01:05:00) Sarah predicted the 3 trends in the data ecosystem that will have a disproportionately huge impact in the future.(01:11:15) Closing segment.Sarah's Contact InfoAmplify PageTwitterLinkedInMediumAmplify Partners' ResourcesWebsiteTeamPortfolioBlogMentioned ContentBlog PostsOur Investment in OctoMLAnnouncing Our Investment in EinblickOur Investment in Metaphor DataOur Series A Investment in RunwayPeopleSunil Dhaliwal (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Mike Dauber (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Lenny Pruss (General Partner at Amplify Partners)Mike Volpi (Co-Founder and Partner at Index Ventures)Gary Little (Co-Founder and General Partner at Canvas Ventures)Book“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (by Robert Pirsig)New UpdatesSince the podcast was recorded, Sarah has been keeping her stamina high!Her investments in Hex (data workspace for teams) and Meroxa (real-time data platform) have been made public.She has also spoken at various panels, including SIGMOD, REWORK, University of Chicago, and Utah Nerd Nights.Be sure to follow @sarahcat21 on Twitter to subscribe to her brain on the intersection of data, VC, and startups!

#content #marketers #b2b Done right, #b2b #content marketingcan certainly match -- and sometimes, maybe even rival -- the creativity and appeal of the best b2cones. And we want to recognize the brands that are breaking that mold and creating great #content that grows fervent, dedicated audiences. 1. Cb insights: newsletter What it does well The cb insights newsletter shares some of the finest insights on technology, venture capital (vc), and emerging businesses, but it does so with fun images that ultimately relate back to the subject. The messaging remains relevant, even among the hint of silliness. Takeaway for #marketers: remember your buyer's goals When you're dying to create truly unique, cutting-edge #content, it's easy to stray from your organization's mission and focus. 2. Mattermark: raise the bar What it does well Raise the bar rounds up the best stories about a variety of different industries, giving you a great snapshot of trends to watch and news stories to follow without having to search for them yourself. Takeaway for #marketers: educate your buyers Think about the problems that your product or service already aims to solve for customers. Then, turn that into relevant #content that's going to both save time for and inform your audience -- and make it easy for them to access it. 3 . Unbounce: page fights (r.i.p.) What it does well Unbounce, a landing page software company, created an engaging microsite, page fights. Takeaway for #marketers: diversify your channels The internet is only going to become more crowded. And as the human attention span dwindles, that makes it even more important to create #content that engages and maintains your audience's attention. 4. Deloitte insights What it does well Deloitte is a professional services company specializing in consulting, tech, auditing, and more. Creating informed, useful #content for individual, specialized audiences is core to its marketing strategy. Takeaway for #marketers: separate your buyer personas If your company has a number of specialties, creating #content microsites for each of them is one way to keep that information organized, discoverable, and easy to navigate. Plus, it can never hurt to establish your brand as a go-to resource. 5. Zendesk engineering What it does well Zendesk realized that there's an audience to be tapped that's seeking insights and expertise on the technical side of the product, so it used that to build an entirely independent #content property. Takeaway for #marketers: tell your brand story Dig beneath the surface of the solutions your company provides. You offer solutions -- but what is your process? What have you learned? That makes you do what you do so well, and how did you get there? #digitalmarketingagency #marketingtips #follow #smallbusiness #design #bhfyp #love #webdesign #like #photography #graphicdesign #content #art #fashion #bhfyp --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/iidmusa/message

Coffee Sessions #33 with Sarah Catanzaro of Amplify Partners, MLOps Investments. //Bio Sarah Catanzaro is a Partner at Amplify Partners, where she focuses on investing in and advising high potential startups in machine intelligence, data management, and distributed systems. Her investments at Amplify include startups like RunwayML, Maze Design, OctoML, and Metaphor Data among others. Sarah also has several years of experience defining data strategy and leading data science teams at startups and in the defense/intelligence sector including through roles at Mattermark, Palantir, Cyveillance, and the Center for Advanced Defense Studies. //We had a wide-ranging discussion with Sarah, three takeaways stood out: The relationship between unstructured data and structured data is due for change. In most settings, you have some form of structured data (i.e. a metadata table) and unstructured data (i.e. images, text, etc.) Managing the relationship between these forms of data can constitute the bulk of MLOps. Because of this difficulty, Sarah forecasted new tooling arising to make data management easier. Academic benchmarks suffer from a lack of transparency on production/industry use cases. In conversation with Andrew Ng, Sarah shared her lesson that despite all the blame industry professionals place on academics for narrowly optimizing to benchmarks with little practical meaning, they also share the blame for making it difficult to create meaningful benchmarks. Companies are loath to share realistic data and the true context in which ML has to operate. MLOps is due for consolidation, especially as companies adopt platform-driven strategies. As many of you all know, there are tons and tons of MLOps tools out there. As more companies address these challenges, Sarah predicted that many of the point solutions would start to be consolidated into larger platforms. // Other Links https://amplifypartners.com/team/sarah/ https://projectstoknow.amplifypartners.com/ml-and-data https://twitter.com/sarahcat21/status/1360105479620284419 --------------- ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ------------- Join our slack community: https://go.mlops.community/slack Follow us on Twitter: @mlopscommunity Sign up for the next meetup: https://go.mlops.community/register Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/ Connect with Vishnu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vrachakonda/ Connect with Sarah on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarah-catanzaro-9770b98/

In this episode, we speak to Zero to One Networker Adam Marx on how to build powerful networks and relationships. Adam, is a networking & branding consultant, tech founder, journalist, music entrepreneur and a writer appearing in Crunchbase News, Startup Grind, Mattermark, and others. Adam draws on more than a decade of experiences in the music and tech industries to teach others how to cultivate powerful relationships using strategies of patience, consistency, authenticity, and value creation. In this episode, some of the topics that we cover include the importance of a secondary network, how he went viral and garnered 1.6 million views on LinkedIn, the most important acronym to your networking and some LinkedIn features that underused and underrated. Here are some links to get in touch with Adam: Twitter: https://twitter.com/adammarx13 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adammarx13/ Home blog: https://adammarxsmind.com/ Link to the 1.6 million views post - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/adammarx13_socialmedia-entrepreneurship-digitalmarketing-activity-6740650280641200129-H-rv

"Build an audience first" might be the most common advice given to indie hackers. But how do you build an audience at the highest levels? In other words, how do you build an actual media company? To find out, I needed to talk to a pro. Alex Wilhelm (@alex) the Senior Editor at TechCrunch. He's also built two news organizations from the ground up — Mattermark and Crunchbase News — the latter of which published thousands of articles and broke over a million monthly pageviews. These are numbers that could easily turn a mediocre indie hacker business into a successful one. In this episode, Alex and I discuss the strategies and principles that differentiate successful media companies from half-hearted content marketing efforts, and drive millions of pageviews in the process.

The Exit. Liquidity. Acquihire. Merger. No matter the name, it’s a milestone in any entrepreneurs life. Today we take a look at the real stories behind acquisitions, when the outcome isn’t quite what you read about in Techcrunch with stories from Andy Sparks, former COO of Mattermark, Courtland Alves VP of Product & Mentorship at Bloc and Morris Wheeler, DrummondRoad Capital founder and principal. BIG NEWS We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join today for $5/month or $40 annually, and get access to exclusive bonus shows of Rocketship, previews of new seasons, and an ad free version of every episode of the podcast. Check it out today by clicking here. This episode is brought to you by: Product Institute is an online course for new and tenured product managers. Head to productinstitute.com and enter the code ROCKET at checkout, you'll receive $200 off your subscription. LinkedIn Jobs will match the right talent with your open roll, fast. Head to Linkedin.com/rocketship to get $50 off your first job post. Digital Ocean is a cloud provider that makes it easy for entrepreneurs and startups to deploy and scale web applications with no issues and unplanned costs. Get started for free at do.co/rocketship. Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do you do when you're tasked with building a content team from the ground up? What are the first roles you should hire? What metrics should you be accountable to? What should your initial strategy look like? To tackle this challenge, I've called in Sonja Jacob, currently the head of content marketing at AppDynamics. She has over 10 years of experience working in content, generating demand for companies such as Drift, Mattermark, Zenefits, and HubSpot.This episode covers topics useful for people who are building teams from scratch, as well as those who are augmenting existing teams. From how to show ROI to justify new hires to the core functions that every content team needs, we're talking team building today so let's get into it. 

The team at Holloway grew up with big expectations around the possibilities the internet would bring. They envisioned a brave new world where anyone could find anything, learn anything. But out of this explosion of knowledge, we also got the foolishness of popups, banner ads, and how-to articles written by who-knows-who. Today, learning on the internet is a long and winding scavenger hunt. We sometimes stumble on that rare reliable source, other times we are forced to accept something that "seems legit," and otherwise still do our best to filter out flat out falsehoods. The thing is, others have faced and overcome almost all the big challenges we face in our life and work. Instead of having access to the knowledge of those who've been there and done that before, we're left to run on an endless treadmill reinventing wheels and tumbling down pitfalls. So Holloway was created to devote ourselves to building a corner of the internet that provides access to the consolidated wisdom of experts. Holloway works directly with top professionals like Brad Feld to write its professional guides that never go out of date, so that entrepreneurs, founders, and employees can learn the essentials of building a business from those who have done it. Holloway's guides also have no ads. They're incredibly easy to read. They have topics on raising venture capital, equity compensation, and technical recruiting + hiring, and more to come. But what about the startup story behind Holloway? I invited Andy Sparks, co-founder, and CEO at Hollway onto my daily tech podcast to learn more about his vision and lessons learned from his startup journey. When Andy Sparks was nineteen, he tried to start a microbrewery with a friend. That was the moment where he got hooked on business. After learning that it was illegal to own a microbrewery before turning twenty-one, he got a job at a startup, DOmedia. A year or so later, he joined an iOS and web development shop doing an odd combination of product design and sales. Thousands of TechCrunch articles later, Andy was convinced he could start his own company. I left for greener pastures, packed up everything that would fit in his Ford Focus, and moved to California with his two dear friends. After 500 Startups and a rude awakening to the challenges of starting a business, we shuttered our startup. Shortly thereafter, he joined Danielle and Kevin Morrill to start Mattermark and spent almost four years building that business. In the fall of 2016, he left Mattermark and started Holloway where he is now solving the discovery problem for long-form content. Andy admits that the whole journey of starting companies is hard as hell, and has gotten all the silly ideas like "doing it for the money" out of his system. Holloway is a pure labor of love—it's something that he believes can do some real good in the world.

You know what? It’s OK to be yourself with your peers and your prospects. It’s OK to let them know if you’re feeling intimidated, or if you are having a bad day. That kind of openness and honesty can really help build trust and form instant connections with people. Most of us just focus on the hard skills of sales and ignore the soft skills at their peril. However, taking advantage of them may just help you make that next sale.In this episode of INSIDE Inside Sales, Darryl is joined by Ashleigh Early, Sales Development Leader at Vendition and co-host of “The Other Side of Sales”.  Darryl and Ashleigh discuss using soft skills to make you a better, more connected salesperson. For example, embracing your humanity to make yourself more relatable, as well as the power of using radical honesty to establish a deeper connection with your prospects. They also talk about being both self-aware and truly knowing your audience so that you can close those difficult deals. Learn how to take advantage of soft skills, only on this episode of INSIDE Inside Sales! Ashleigh Early is a passionate advocate, trainer, and salesperson who has centered her career on supporting people new to the profession. After building and navigating sales development teams through hyper-growth periods and exits at companies like FireEye, Okta and Mattermark, Ashleigh joined Vendition to run their apprenticeship program so she could help shape the next generation of sales leaders through hands-on mentorshipThroughout her career Ashleigh has built a reputation for exceptional hiring, developing scalable systems and leveraging the intelligence gathered by her teams to drive communication, customer retention, and accelerated sales cycles.At the core of everything Ashleigh does is the belief that every interaction should add value and that talent is evenly distributed but the opportunity is not. Her training focuses on teaching sales reps how to critically evaluate their strategies while building empathy and listening skills.  ___________________________________________ INSIDE Inside Sales is hosted by Darryl Praill, CMO of VanillaSoft which is a program on the Funnel Radio Channel.  VanilaSoft is the sponsor for Inside Inside Sales.     

In 2013, Danielle Morrill was just starting up her blog, and writing about startups from a unique, data-driven lens. The blog turned out to be an MVP for what would later become Mattermark, a company she co-founded with her husband, Kevin Morrill, and Andy Sparks. Danielle's blog was also unique in that she opened up publicly about some of the challenges she was facing at the time, such as feeling lonely as a founder. She also admits to being a “secret introvert” and how over time, even with the level of transparency she brought to her writing, blogging “came to feel a bit like performance art.” “There’s so much content online but a lot of it is very impersonal... Pain is a little easier too bear when you share it. Sometimes it’s easy to believe when we’re struggling we’re going through something no one else has been through. But it’s not true.” In 2017, Mattermark was acquired by FullContact and Danielle moved to Denver Colorado, where she now resides. Danielle recently joined devops platform GitLab as GM of Meltano, a developer workflow tool. In this episode Ryan and Danielle talk about... Her love of reading, the mind-expanding power of fiction, and her book recommendations. Danielle admits that until recently, when she was on sabbatical, she hadn't read many of the classic “startup books.” She's checked many of those off her list now, but she still loves fiction for its mind-expanding power. She says that she thought of herself as a fairly worldly person before she started reading fiction. “I understand a lot more about emotions like empathy and compassion after reading fiction. Each time you read a new book, you try on these new characters’ lives and you get new perspective.” You can follow Danielle on Goodreads, “one of the most underrated social networks.” She loves to give book recommendations. They also discuss... The tools and strategies Danielle uses to track her time and stay productive, and how she ensures she makes time for solitude and self-reflection. Danielle runs through the tools she uses to manage her time and how her routine of Sunday planning and reflection lets her make sure ahead of time she won't have regrets about how she spent her time that week. She talks about the importance of solitude and says that she blocks out time for it in her calendar. “The blog was a good outlet but in a way it became another form of performance art. There’s always more truth you don’t share. There’s the internal work of constantly working towards some kind of coherent story about your life. Journaling, working out, or other things that cause you to have to be in solitude are good for that.” She also talks about what it was like to move from Silicon Valley to Colorado and what it was like to have a co-founder who's also a spouse. We’ll be back next week so be sure to subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, Breaker, Overcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts. Big thanks to Spoka and Pilot for their support.

Last month, we had the pleasure of hosting a panel at SXSW called Geography vs. Investing: Should Location Matter?This would not have been possible without the support and voting of our listeners, and we really appreciate your help. Please enjoy the panel, recorded in full, including audience Q&A at the end.Panel description:It's never been easier for entrepreneurs everywhere to start a company.But even with world-changing companies being built all over, access to capital is still concentrated in Silicon Valley.But we've found investors inside the coasts investing in Silicon Valley, as well as Silicon Valley investors funding companies inside the coasts.This panel examines the role geography plays in investment, what role it SHOULD play, and how investors can find companies with upside regardless of geography.//Brandon Bryant received his degree in economics from Ohio State University and worked at Bank of America Merrill Lynch as an investment banker for 3 years. Afterwards he transitioned to the marketing world as a social media content creator (@wallstreetpaper) working with companies like Uber, Microsoft, Walmart, WSJ and GQ. He also co-founded Harlem Capital, an early stage venture capital fund that is focused on investing companies founded by people of color and women.Twitter: https://twitter.com/wallstreetpaper//Rachel Carpenter is the Chief Executive Officer and a founding partner of Intrinio, a disruptive financial data platform launched in 2015. Based in the company's Florida office, Rachel has overall responsibility for Intrinio including driving its strategy and position for long term growth. She is an advanced front-end web developer and a graduate of The Starter League Advanced web design course. Rachel graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison with a BBA in both Finance and Management and minors in Spanish and European Studies. Rachel is a member of the Forbes Finance Council, a member of the Data Coalition advocating for open, structured data, and a Board Member at CASA (Community Action Stops Abuse), the largest domestic violence shelter in Florida.Twitter: https://twitter.com/Rachel_Ann_C//Andy Sparks is the Co-Founder & CEO of Holloway, a new digital publishing company focused on publishing the best knowledge on navigating the challenges of modern work for all to find. Holloway is backed by NEA and The New York Times. Previously, he co-founded Mattermark, a provider of data on private companies that raised more than $17M and sold for far less than that. Andy graduated from The Ohio State University, lives in San Francisco, and will be publishing a book on how to raise venture capital later this summer.Twitter: https://twitter.com/SparksZillaFollow upside on Twitter: https://twitter.com/upsidefm

Today’s question: Today’s question comes from Eric and deals with market research. Specifically, what’s the most effective way to do market research before launching your company? Jake’s answer: Market research can be a real pain because a lot of founders don’t know what goal they’re trying to achieve when they’re doing the market research. There are a lot of biases. The first step of market research is your own network (e.g. friends, family, peers, etc.). But you get the most value when get out of your own network. And one of the best ways to do that is to look up the testimonials or ratings and reviews of your competitors. Look at your competitor’s Facebook pages, Product Hunt, Google pages, etc. and ask yourself why people love this company and why they hate this company? When I did this for Launchpeer, I learned that people really loved the smooth on-boarding process and that they could get a price right there on the website. Or, at least that they didn’t have to go through a bunch of hoops to get a quote. So we took that to heart and changed our entire sales process to incorporate those elements. Conversely, one of the things people hated about our competitors were slow response times to in-website chats. So we made it a priority to respond quickly. These are the kinds of things I wish I had done before I started the company. And I strongly recommend you take the time to do them. This type of market research can be done in 15-20 minutes and it’s well worth it. Financial research For most industries, it’s very easy with Google to do some quick searching and find out a lot about a particular market (e.g. demographics, how much people spend, where they buy, what social groups they belong to, etc.). Funding research How much is a startup worth? Some of the numbers aren’t as public, but there are places you can go, such as AngelList, to find out how much funding you’re competitor’s have raised, how much their startups are worth, etc. and thereby give yourself an idea of what you may be able to accomplish. MatterMark is another place that is a huge research repository of business data. That’s where we do a lot of research for our clients. Goals determine the method At the end of the day, it all comes down to your goal. If you’re trying to validate an idea, follow the steps above using sites like Facebook, Product Hunt of Google. If you’re trying to figure out what you should pitch to investors, that’s where AngelList and MatterMark are going to be useful. However, if you’re tying to find out which parts of your market you should work on penetrating, that’s one of the most difficult kinds of market research to do. If that’s the case, you’ll need a combination of the previous two methods, but you’ll also want to start talking to your actual customers or potential customers. That’s the best way to find out what you can offer. For example, entrepreneurs are made of many different types of people. So when we started surveying our customers, we got a huge variety of answers based on age and demographic. Because of that, it would have been really hard to get much value out of the methods mentioned above. So, if that’s your goal, you MUST talk to your customers. And if you don’t have customers yet, talk to potential customers. Surveying customers, or potential customers, is the difference between shooting an arrow with a blindfold or without one. Yes, it’s hard to talk to potential customers, but the best form of market research is talking to people one on one. And if you’re willing to do it, you’re giving yourself a massive heads-tart of all your competitors who aren’t doing it. Ask Your Own Question Got questions about startups and/or startup culture? We’ve got answers. Head over to LaunchChat.io and record your own question to have it featured on the show. Stay in Touch Ask your own question Follow Jake Twitter Check out Jake’s articles Medium Jake’s personal site Check out Launchpeer Follow Launchpeer on Twitter

Danielle Morrill joined the show to talk about how she’s starting over from zero after the recent acquisition of Mattermark to FullContact where she held the role of CEO and co-founder who walked away with “zero dollars and a job”. We talked through the details of the company, the acquisition process, the deal — which she brokered herself — as well as her outlook on the startup grind and silicon valley today, and what she’s planning to do next.

Danielle Morrill joined the show to talk about how she’s starting over from zero after the recent acquisition of Mattermark to FullContact where she held the role of CEO and co-founder who walked away with “zero dollars and a job”. We talked through the details of the company, the acquisition process, the deal — which she brokered herself — as well as her outlook on the startup grind and silicon valley today, and what she’s planning to do next.

What’s the most effective way to do market research before launching your company? Today’s question: Today’s question comes from Eric and deals with market research. Specifically, what’s the most effective way to do market research before launching your company? Jake’s answer: Market research can be a real pain because a lot of founders don’t know what goal they’re trying to achieve when they’re doing the market research. There are a lot of biases. The first step of market research is your own network (e.g. friends, family, peers, etc.). But you get the most value when get out of your own network. And one of the best ways to do that is to look up the testimonials or ratings and reviews of your competitors. Look at your competitor’s Facebook pages, Product Hunt, Google pages, etc. and ask yourself why people love this company and why they hate this company? When I did this for Launchpeer, I learned that people really loved the smooth on-boarding process and that they could get a price right there on the website. Or, at least that they didn’t have to go through a bunch of hoops to get a quote. So we took that to heart and changed our entire sales process to incorporate those elements. Conversely, one of the things people hated about our competitors were slow response times to in-website chats. So we made it a priority to respond quickly. These are the kinds of things I wish I had done before I started the company. And I strongly recommend you take the time to do them. This type of market research can be done in 15-20 minutes and it’s well worth it. Financial research For most industries, it’s very easy with Google to do some quick searching and find out a lot about a particular market (e.g. demographics, how much people spend, where they buy, what social groups they belong to, etc.). Funding research How much is a startup worth? Some of the numbers aren’t as public, but there are places you can go, such as AngelList, to find out how much funding you’re competitor’s have raised, how much their startups are worth, etc. and thereby give yourself an idea of what you may be able to accomplish. MatterMark is another place that is a huge research repository of business data. That’s where we do a lot of research for our clients. Goals determine the method At the end of the day, it all comes down to your goal. If you’re trying to validate an idea, follow the steps above using sites like Facebook, Product Hunt of Google. If you’re trying to figure out what you should pitch to investors, that’s where AngelList and MatterMark are going to be useful. However, if you’re tying to find out which parts of your market you should work on penetrating, that’s one of the most difficult kinds of market research to do. If that’s the case, you’ll need a combination of the previous two methods, but you’ll also want to start talking to your actual customers or potential customers. That’s the best way to find out what you can offer. For example, entrepreneurs are made of many different types of people. So when we started surveying our customers, we got a huge variety of answers based on age and demographic. Because of that, it would have been really hard to get much value out of the methods mentioned above. So, if that’s your goal, you MUST talk to your customers. And if you don’t have customers yet, talk to potential customers. Surveying customers, or potential customers, is the difference between shooting an arrow with a blindfold or without one. Yes, it’s hard to talk to potential customers, but the best form of market research is talking to people one on one. And if you’re willing to do it, you’re giving yourself a massive heads-tart of all your competitors who aren’t doing it. Ask Your Own Question Got questions about startups and/or startup culture? We’ve got answers. Head over to LaunchChat.ioand record your own question to have it featured on the show. TechCruch Disrupt Giveaway We’re giving one Founder a free ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt 2018 in San Fransisco. We’re also going to cover the winner’s flight and hotel. You can enter the giveaway and get all the details at LaunchChat.io. Stay in Touch Ask your own question Follow Jake Twitter Check out Jake’s articles Medium Jake’s personal site Check out Launchpeer Follow Launchpeer on Twitter

How do you maintain momentum while fundraising AND running your startup? Today’s question: Today’s question comes from AJ and he asks about two parts of fundraising. First, are investors understanding of the fact that fundraising is hard and difficult to do while also trying to run your startup, especially in the early stages when you’re trying to get everything up and running? Two, what are some tips for keeping the momentum going while you’re constantly on the road fundraising and feeling overwhelmed from all the travel and meetings? Jake’s answer: Do investors care about your time and the work you’re putting into fundraising? The two kinds of investors: Looky-loos They love meeting people for coffee and taking up your time, but rarely actually invest in anthing. They don’t care about your time. Active Investors Actively investing Are always on the lookout for good startups in which to invest Obviously, you want to avoid the first. It’s important to make you’re meeting with the right investor. Check them out on MatterMark or AngelList and verify that they’re actually actively investing and will be willing to give you a firm yes or no, rather than a maybe. Looky-loos loving giving maybes. Real investors will give you a firm answer. Three things you can do to prepare and maintain momentum Have really clear expectations of the meeting before set the meeting. When you ask for the meeting, send an agenda outlining exactly what you’re looking for and you’re expected outcomes. Actually send a calendar invite. Even if you agree to a certain time over email, make sure it’s actually booked on the calendar with a defined time limit. Real investors will respect this. Make sure when you get to the last part of the meeting, make sure that time is spent on action steps. Treat these meeting like a sales pipeline. When you have a sales pipeline, you weed out potential customers with various filters (price, timeline, etc.), leaving you with your ideal customers. Instead of meeting with every investors with you find, focus only on the investors that are most likely to invest in your startup. Ask Your Own Question Got questions about startups and/or startup culture? We’ve got answers. Head over to LaunchChat.ioand record your own question to have it featured on the show. TechCruch Disrupt Giveaway We’re giving one Founder a free ticket to TechCrunch Disrupt 2018 in San Fransisco. We’re also going to cover the winner’s flight and hotel. You can enter the giveaway and get all the details at LaunchChat.io. Stay in Touch Ask your own question Follow Jake Twitter Check out Jake’s articles Medium Jake’s personal site Check out Launchpeer Follow Launchpeer on Twitter

All this month we’ve been exploring how startup fundraising is changing and why it’s going to continue to change in 2018.   We started off by talking about why you don’t want to reach out to an investor when you just have an idea, how to evaluate if seeking investment make sense for your business, and in the last episode why no matter how great your idea or business is you’re still going to receive a lot of NOs.   After what might seem like endless reality checks, I’ve saved the best episode for last, we’re going to be talking about what it’s going to take to get a yes from an investor. Ooshma Garg and Danielle Morrill are back. Ooshma is the CEO and Founder of Gobble, and Danielle is the CEO and Founder of Mattermark. They've both recently become investment partners at XFactor Ventures, an investment firm that's focused on investing in female founders and mixed-gender teams.   You’ll learn:   Some of the uncomfortable activities you’re going to have to do find that first investor How to approach the topic of check size How to leverage that first check and attract additional investors who may have been on the fence What the investment partners at XFactor Ventures are looking for and the types of startups they have already invested in   Finally, if you are a female founder or are on a mixed-gender founding team and want to pitch your startup to the partners are XFactor you can check out their website here and follow up with them via email: hello@xfactor.ventures.   Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.   ## What It’s Going To Take To Get That First Check From An Investor Transcript   Poornima:         In the last *Build* episode, we explored all the reasons an investor may say “no” to your big idea. If you missed the episode, I've included a link to it below this video. In today's episode, we're gonna dive into what it's gonna take to get that yes from an investor. So stay tuned.   Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. Now, it can be very disheartening to hear no after no from investors, and make you wonder whether you're eventually gonna hear a yes. But it is possible, and in today's episode we'll talk about what it's gonna take to get that yes. Today we're back with Ooshma Garg, who is the CEO and Founder of Gobble, and Danielle Morrill, who is the CEO and Founder of Mattermark. And they are both investment partners at XFactor, a new investment firm focused on funding female founders and mixed-gender teams.               So thanks for coming back, ladies. I know last time we talked about all the many reasons that we've received a no. This time let's turn it around and talk about what it's gonna take to get a yes and let's start by reveling in that moment where we each got our first yes. Danielle, when was the first time you got a yes? Danielle:            I got my first yes from Dave McClure. We were sitting on the curb in front of their new office they had just opened in Mountain View. It was my birthday and it was the “you can quit your job now” check.   Poornima:         Awesome.   Danielle:            So it was extremely exciting to kind of put that milestone.   Poornima:         Yeah. What about for you, Ooshma?   Ooshma:            I got my first yes from Ben Ling and Keith Rabois. I remember going to get a physical check from Ben. He was at Google at the time. Now he's a partner at Khosla Ventures. And so we had been meeting and going back and forth and then I showed up there and he just wrote this check that was more money than I had ever seen in my entire life. He's like, "Here you go." I felt like I was this bodyguard...like I needed an armored truck. I felt like anybody who looked at me could see that I was carrying tens of thousands of dollars in my hand. It was really funny. I remember just being so excited, but also funny enough, just so careful and so nervous carrying that check literally all the way to the bank.   Poornima:         Nice. You weren't like Serena Williams, who just hopped into the ATM and tried to put it in the machine or something like that? She did a drive-by with one of her first—   Ooshma:            Oh yeah?   Poornima:         Yeah. With one of her first grand slam winnings. It was like—   Danielle:            I didn't even have a bank account.   Poornima:         There you go.   Danielle:            That sounds awesome.   Poornima:         That's awesome. All right. And then what did you do right after you got that first yes...after you deposited the money in the bank?   Danielle:            I don't think I deposited it for a while. There's all this stuff that has to happen actually, so we also incorporated on that day, just luck of timing. But yeah, I think it's really weird. You get this check and it's like this life-changing thing and then you have to go back to your crappy one bedroom apartment with no windows in San Francisco and it's like, "Get back to work."   Poornima:         Yeah.   Ooshma:            Yes.   Danielle:            Keep coding, so it's bizarre and this thing happens and you wanna shout from the rooftops, like, "Ah!"   Ooshma:            Yes.   Danielle:            But on some level you feel like, "Oh shit, this is real."   Ooshma:            Yes.   Danielle:            Does that resonate for you?   Ooshma:            Absolutely. I think with every great success there's just great responsibility. And so now you have this amazing check and certainly it's time to crack a bottle of champagne and celebrate for a moment.   Danielle:            Yes.   Ooshma:            But with that comes everything that you were planning to do when you told the person you would do with it. And not only that. It's just the first check. Typically you're raising some kind of round and it takes 10 to 15 angel investors to get it all together. So it's a huge milestone that I think people can take a sigh of relief, but still have to carry it to the finish line.   Poornima:         Now, one of my first investors was somebody who understood my niche market. I know we talked about this in the last episode, but once I found him, actually fundraising became super easy because he went out and kind of rallied the other folks who were kind of on the fence, right? It was, "I believe in this market, I believe in this founder, I believe in this idea, I'm gonna write this check and you all would be stupid to not follow." Have you had that experience as well?   Danielle:            Yeah, I think different investors take different approaches. Sometimes they go and create the syndicate and sometimes you do and then they come back you up by adding a voice. But I think they're pretty networked so most investors here talk to each other or they're only one degree of separation away.   Ooshma:            Yes.   Danielle:            So you almost feel like when you're beginning to fundraise, you can kind of feel the Valley talking about your company. There's no trace of it on the internet, but they definitely are asking each other questions and saying, "Have you looked at the deal? What do you think of the price? What do you think of this person? Do you know anything about them? Have you heard anything negative?" Just all those questions. Because there is no diligence tool, and I'm laughing because Mattermark is part of that story—   Poornima:         Right.   Danielle:            —but when we were really early stage, it's really a reputational thing.   Ooshma:            Yes.   Danielle:            And so I think part of it is going out and beating the drum for you and part of it is also they're fielding questions. So as soon as you say, as soon as I said, "Hey, Dave invested in us." Then I should expect Dave is gonna get hit up with people saying, "What do you think of Danielle? Why did you invest?" etc., etc.   Ooshma:            Yeah.   Poornima:         Right.   Ooshma:            But I do think it's important to make sure that when you get some of those first checks that you ask the person who else they would recommend join the round. That would be leaving a lot of value in introductions and referrals on the table if you didn't do that. Because this person has just expressed huge conviction in your vision. And so they'll typically or should be able to bring along at least a handful of introductions.   Danielle:            And also, I've gotta add, I did not know to do that when I first started out. And I think it's because you think you're inconveniencing this person who's just written you a check.   Ooshma:            Yeah.   Danielle:            But actually they just wrote you a check because they wanna make you successful. And so you should ask and ask and ask. They will tell you if you've crossed the line, but you probably never will cross the line. And it's really easy, as an investor now, to just move on to the next thing and get busy. And it's not that I don't want to help, but I kind of assume if you're not asking, you're all right.   Poornima:         Right.   Danielle:            So ask. Because I think it's totally true. And I think I did leave a lot of that on the table and probably made it harder on myself than it had to be at first.   Ooshma:            Yup.   Poornima:         Yeah. They're also protecting their investment by getting their fellow investors to invest, right?   Ooshma:            Yes.   Poornima:         Yeah. So last time we talked a little bit about the stage that investors are at and oftentimes that makes a difference. And Ooshma, you sort of alluded to this. Now there's a lot of different types of investors out there in the market today. There's VC's, angels, super angels, micro funds, and so on. So let's talk through what makes sense at each stage, and let's start with accelerators because both of you have been involved with YC. So when does it make sense to approach an accelerator before or maybe after funding, and what did it take to get in?   Ooshma:            Wow. You know, one secret that a lot of people don't discuss is that many folks that got into something like a YC got in on their third or fourth try. So I did not know that until I started talking to a lot of founders. And YC might've given them feedback, maybe they kept working on their idea and they got to a certain stage. So I think that you might apply but you shouldn't just quit based on getting a no that we talked about. Even getting in to accelerators at an early stage sometimes takes a few tries.   Poornima:         And why would you even recommend people apply? Why does it make sense to do that?   Danielle:            So I think it really comes down to helping you set up the company for success down the road. So what an accelerator or incubator program is gonna do is help you with your go to market, and that doesn't just mean your product go to market. It's also the marketplace they create for financing your company.   So they're gonna help you validate that you've got a venture-backable business and they're gonna help set you up with the relationships and the communication pattern that you need to have in order to be a viable option for those investors. And that's really valuable, especially if you're coming to the Bay Area from somewhere else and you can't really build that network in a few weeks.   Poornima:         Sure.   Danielle:            You really need to be here. And so you're gonna be able to get a lot of time back. Of course, they take equity for this. But I think it's probably one of the best trades you're gonna make because in the beginning it's just so binary. You're either gonna raise that round or your company's probably not going to exist and so early on that's probably one of the best ways to de-risk financing and then you can focus on the product.   Poornima:         So you mentioned that marketplace pulling in intros for you. For the two of you, how did YC facilitate those intros to angels or super angels?   Ooshma:            Well, in my case we were very unconventional. I started the company without YC and I just wanted to build this idea and I felt that there was a problem that needed a solution. So I started prototyping it, I asked my friends for introductions. I was luckily already here for three years after college building a network. So I could just start my own process and seed round and ask for introductions, start raising money, and we didn't need Y Combinator for the first couple years of the company.   Then, it takes a while. First your company has to get funded so you can explore it, all right? And then you have to find product-market fit and you get to a stage of scale. So it took us a while to find product-market fit and I did YC in the middle of our company's story, at a time when we were changing models. Solving the same problem, but with different solutions, and when the fundraising environment was really tough.   So I had to make the decision of, “If it's worth working on, I'm gonna take what I can get.” And at the time that was joining an accelerator. So I think that that's a good example because it shows that you might've been working on something for five years and if YC can help you, or an accelerator can help you, you should still apply and use that as a catalyst for whatever next funding round or whatever growth metric you're—or awareness you're really looking for. But I would also say that you can't let anything like that stop you from building your company.   Poornima:         Right.   Ooshma:            So any investor saying “no” or any accelerator saying “no,” you should be building something because you see a way for the world to be better with something. And you have to decide to just do that and do it anyway, regardless of how you get there.   Poornima:         So let's talk about the mechanics behind this now. So there's obviously angels, there's super angels, there's micro funds, there's VCs. Walk us through what the check size is or who makes sense at what stage.   Danielle:            Right, so, there's a lot of flavors. Generally, if you're talking pre-VC, then there's very few private individuals who are gonna write more than a $50,000 to $100,000 check. Generally, if you think about someone's net worth, they've got some chunk of their net worth set aside for investing, and it's probably like 5% or 10%, so you can kind of begin to understand what's going on there.   But the easiest thing for anyone who's not a VC is just to ask them. What's your check size and how much risk do you wanna take? Will you invest pre-product or no, is question one. And then post-product, it's like what do you need to see from me to invest? There's so many investors now in that pre-Series A stage that I think it would be hard to give a blanket answer. But the most important thing is to just ask them, "Tell me about the last two or three deals you did. How big were they and what stage?" And I would try to not worry about getting them to do something exceptional. People kind of have their comfort zone with their personal money. And what they're doing is probably gonna continue to be the same because they're anchored on their last check.   Poornima:         Yeah. Danielle:            So if they've been writing a lot of $10K checks, that's probably the check size that they're writing unless they come into a huge amount of money and it changes their world.   Ooshma:            Right.   Danielle:            And then the other thing is you're gonna have these weird institutional investors who will invest before Series A. I guess this is super common now. When I started fundraising this was a lot less the case. So these are kind of these super angels, micro VCs, I don't really know what they're called today. Pre...what is it, pre-seed?   Poornima:         Pre-Series A.   Danielle:            They call it all these different things.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            But fundamentally no, those check sizes could be anywhere up to, let's say, $500,000. They're generally not leading or pricing a round. No one has to lead a round if you don't have a equity round, so that's—a big part of it is just, again, what size check are you normally writing, do you need control in some way, do you add a board seat, all those things. The good news is once you get to Series A, it's a lot more standardized in terms of ownership. So there's some rules of thumb and I'm gonna say these and then you tell me if you think they're different because I feel like maybe they're not all the same. One big piece of advice is don't sell more than 25% of your company before your Series A. So fully diluted, when you run your own cap table out. You don't wanna be in a position where you've already sold half your company, because what happens is a Series A investor probably needs to have 20% ownership just for them when they come in. So if you've already sold half your company, on top of that, it starts to be pretty demotivating. That can be a little higher or lower, just depending on what's going on with your business. And then you of course have your other investors that might come in. So maybe you sell 25% to 30% of your company total in that round.   And then the B and C and so on. The way to think about it is the better you're doing, the more leverage you have.   Poornima:         Sure.   Danielle:            People generally sell 15% to 20% of their company in the B. And then at the C, D, and onward, it's kind of a sliding scale downwards from there in terms of ownership percentage. And you might be thinking, "Well, doesn't this add up to more than 100%?" And the thing is that you're diluting everybody else as you go. So you're selling a chunk of the whole company at that moment in time. So these investors, it's generally gonna come down to...fund size will line up with check size. And they're gonna say something like, "We raised $150 million fund, we're planning to write $5 million to $10 million checks, and then we're holding on to $5 million to $10 million per company for follow-on." Something like that, and you can just do the math.   Poornima:         Right.   Ooshma:            Or like, in our case with Xfactor, we have a $3 million fund and we're putting $100K in 30 companies. And that's the rubric. So I think to Danielle's point, it's your job to understand everyone's rubrics and appetites so that you are not wasting your time and not wasting their time. And at each stage—and let's take the seed stage for example, because it's one of the only stages where there's so many investors involved—fitting all those puzzle pieces together to get to how much money you need for the next 18 months and a specific material milestone. So I think you start out with calculating that money and you get your friends or blogs or whatever advisors to help you. And then look for people in that stage and then fit those pieces together and ask them to make introductions until you fill the amount.   Poornima:         Yeah, so let's talk about that. How do you actually get these intros? If I'm outside of Silicon Valley, I'm coming in, or even if I'm here and I've been an engineer all my life or a designer or something and then I recently made the switch to a founder, I might not have that network. How do I get those intros?   Danielle:            So, the truth is you're just gonna have to get out there and talk to people.   Ooshma:            Yeah.   Danielle:            And I think the thing is you probably know people who can help you that you might not realize. It's pretty rare, if you live here, even if you just moved here, not to know somebody who works at a startup. So you just have to start asking. And the truth is you're gonna have to give away information to get information.   Poornima:         Sure.   Danielle:            "Hey, I have a startup." OK, everybody has a startup.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            "Hey, we're raising." OK, "It's really hard."   Poornima:         Right.   Danielle:            A lot of people immediately are like, "Oh, OK, interesting." "Do you know anybody who invests in startups?" And the thing is you're gonna have to do this at scale. So you're gonna need to go to events.   Poornima:         Right.   Danielle:            You're gonna need to ask the people that you worked with in the past and you're gonna need to do things that you might not enjoy doing, like going on LinkedIn and just doing a ton of research. Nothing is better than a warm intro. So even though this feels really weird and painful to ask, these are gonna generate the introductions that are gonna be the best possible. The next thing is cold after that.   Poornima:         Right.   Danielle:            So anything you can do to get something warm, even if it's many degrees of separation, is gonna help you more. And so that might also mean cold outbounding someone that you wanna then get an intro through.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            So portfolio founders are probably the best people to cold outbound rather than the VC themself or the investor themself. So if someone cold contacts me and says, "Hey, I'd love to get to know you and Mattermark, yadda yadda," and maybe their plan is that they'd like to get introduced to Brad Feld, the reality is if they can tell that we didn't click, they're not gonna ask for that intro. And that sounds really, I dunno.   Poornima:         Transactional?   Danielle:            Mercenary? Transactional?   Poornima:         Yeah, yeah.   Danielle:            But it's business, so that's what business networking is.   Poornima:         Of course.   Danielle:            And I think the truth is I wanna send Brad great companies.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Ooshma:            Yeah.   Danielle:            So if you're an interesting company and you pitch me and I get excited, one, I might angel invest in you, which is the absolute best way for me to introduce you to one of my investors.   Ooshma:            Yeah. Danielle:            But the other thing is we all got helped in the same way.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            So it sounds transactional, but it's also just kind of how it works.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Ooshma:            It's the culture of paying it forward.   Poornima:         Right.   Ooshma:            Everyone does that. And if they can't...they'll be honest. If they can't give you that introduction and you do click, maybe they'll give you some advice. And then we go back to that whole idea of listening and staying in touch and sending people updates. But I would say leave no stone unturned. If you just landed here, there's Techstars or 500 or Founder Institute or Y Combinator or TechCrunch Disrupt or Golden Seeds or who knows. There's all these things you can apply to. And of course, if you are an island and you don't know anyone, you have to start out cold. But cold will soon become warm.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Ooshma:            And you have to play the numbers game in the beginning.   Poornima:         Sure.   Ooshma:            And so just go to all the meetups, email everybody, send links and product demos. Just be creative. Oh! One hack that I had which actually led to me meeting you is that I would go to talks and sit in the front and come up with really good questions. And I'd strategically go to talks where I really wanted to meet the person and I knew they'd be a great investor or advisor. I would wait until the very end. They would give a talk and then all these people would be crowding around someone like Reid Hoffman. In this case it was Aaron Patzer from Mint. And so people were talking to him for 30 minutes. And I waited until the very end and he was like, "Oh my gosh. Who's this person waiting?" I said, "Hey, I'll just walk you to your car. I have a quick question." And then he became a very early on startup advisor and advocate for me. So there's all these unconventional things I think that you can do to get out there. And they might be uncomfortable but that's how we all did it.   Poornima:         Yeah. It's funny. I actually mentioned this hack to a bunch of people whenever they want my time. I tell them I'm gonna be at this event speaking. Some people take me up, some people don't. Some people have gone so far as to say, "I'll pick you up from the airport." I love those people. Because I'm like, "Great! I don't have to worry about how I'm gonna get from Point A to Point B," right? Or "I'll buy you dinner" or whatever, but yeah, I think it's definitely going out of your way to get that interest and build that network. So let's talk about what you guys are working on now. You are working on XFactor. So let's dive into that. Why did you even think this was important? Ooshma, you just rattled off 10 seed opportunities. So why XFactor?   Ooshma:            Yeah.   Poornima:         Why do you want to put another one in there?   Ooshma:            You know, there was not one female investor in our seed round. And I think...I firmly believe that diversity creates innovation, diversity of thought. And America in and of itself is this diverse nation and considered to be the best in the world. And it's because of all the different perspectives and kinds of people that we have here.   I like to emulate that in the company and I would like that in our investors. I don't think that one perspective is gonna make us this breakout, worldwide innovative company.   So, I think that XFactor is unique and necessary because it's brought together a partnership of nine people and it's all women and we are all operators, founders, CEOs, and active companies. We're not retired. We're extremely current. All these things...fundraising, hiring, strategy, growth, it's all on top of mind. We can add so much value to early stage companies. And we're just approaching it in this very kind of operators helping operators, allowing for bad-ass women to help other women in a space where there just aren't as many.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Ooshma:            And really just adding some more diversity to both the founder pool and the investor pool to build more breakout companies.   Poornima:         So you mentioned you were able to raise capital without having a woman founder. So why is that...why do you think that's important? Right? You did it, you proved it. You did it, you proved it. And I know I've...in my last company I raised from all men, so why is that important?   Danielle:            I think that it's important because it's hard and the reality is we want these products to exist in the world. It's not really that these companies can't get funded. It is harder, but the best ones get funded. And it's just what are we missing?   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            What are we missing out on in the world that could exist tomorrow?   Ooshma:            Yup. Danielle:            There's so many creative, amazing people who are not getting funded for reasons that have nothing to do with what the company is about. And the bad thing is that this kind of poisons the well too, so there's people who aren't even trying.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            And so I think we wanna send this message that, "Look, we shouldn't have to exist." XFactor shouldn't need to exist and if we do a really good job and we make a bunch of money, people are gonna realize that investing in women, investing in men, we wanna invest in the best no matter what. So down the road, hopefully we can't exist.   Poornima:         Nice. Yeah.   Danielle:            But until that happens I think we need to...the only way to change it is to actually create competition.   Ooshma:            Yup.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            So we are in competitive deals and we are sending this deal flow, we're creating market for each of these founders because we're gonna need to see a lot more female role models at the top. Ooshma's company is progressing, Mattermark is progressing, but we're still very early stage and there's not a ton of examples of huge exits run by women.   Poornima:         Right.   Danielle:            So I think we're really great examples here, but it's very early days and the best chance we have of seeing those results at the end is to put as much as possible at the top of the funnel. And I wanna say I also think it's just an incredible investment opportunity because it's under-invested so dramatically. Frankly, we should be able to see incredible returns partly because there's just so many opportunities that haven't been taken.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            So I feel like not only is it awesome for founders, and I'm so stoked about them, it's awesome for our LPs and it’s gonna prove to LPs that female fund managers can return awesome results as well. And you know what? There's more asymmetrical opportunities like this to take. There's room to create tons more funds focused on women. You can create the exact approach with any minority group.   Poornima:         Yeah. Danielle:            So it's...it shouldn't have to exist, but while it does, we should try to create wealth for all the people involved and then long term, I think create competition in the market.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Ooshma:            And it's so...this is not a not-for-profit.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Ooshma:            It is not a charity. We are looking at people who are the grittiest of entrepreneurs and are in it for the long haul and ready to build multibillion dollar companies, and can answer all the hard questions. And we've got—   Poornima:         So what are some of those?   Ooshma:            Yeah. Well, first of all, we've gotten hundreds of pitches.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Ooshma:            And we've only made about nine or so investments.   Poornima:         OK.   Ooshma:            Since July. So in just the last three months we've looked at so many companies, and I think people assume, "Oh my gosh, there's a female investor, she's gonna invest in a woman." But I think it's out of respect to founders that you...that investors ensure that they are looking for and helping you build huge companies and use your time in the best way possible.   Poornima:         OK. So what are you guys looking for in your...and what's kind of...you said that your check size is $100K, so we're looking at early deals. And what else are you looking for? What's it gonna take to get a yes?   Danielle:            Well, the first thing is that we are definitely looking for a return that's pretty impressive. So even at the early stage if we invest, let's say $100,000 in a $1-million round, I would say the average post-money valuation is $8 million to $10 million.   Ooshma:            Yup.   Danielle:            So right away, to get to a 10x outcome, we need to see a company with really meaningful revenue. The good news is we don't technically need to find the billion-dollar companies to have a really successful fund, but I think the reality is we wanna find those outliers. Poornima:         Sure.   Danielle:            So we're just like any other venture firm at the early stage looking for the most impressive opportunities to deploy their capital. We've got 30 bullets in the gun. So we're also thinking, "OK, we're gonna invest this money over the next two or three years. Is this the best deal that I can do this year for each partner?" Each partner is thinking about this constantly. So you're looking at the entire field and you're saying, "Of all the possible ways to deploy this money, what do we think can get the best return?"   Ooshma:            Right.   Danielle:            And that's what we're focused on.   Ooshma:            And the partners hold each other to a very high bar. We're all CEOs of our own companies and we hotly debate every deal.   Poornima:         OK.   Ooshma:            And it's incredibly smart, active people around the table. So it helps us make great investments. And it helps us keep the bar high because we have a lot to prove to each other and I think we have a lot to prove as a fund. And that we want to. Because this is...it's about the great returns, but it's also, like Danielle said, about setting an example and about proving a point and hopefully making ourselves obsolete.   Danielle:            So I think we should give some specific things for the viewers in terms of what we wanna see because, people listening, we want you to pitch us. So, you gotta have a product. You pretty much have to have revenue I would say for our group, although we would still talk to you, help you get there, stay in touch. We wanna some amount of revenue or customers. I would like to see high margin businesses. I'm looking for software scale. I don't think that that's true for all of my partners, but I struggle because I think we're looking for companies that take advantage of innovations to get the advantage in the market.   Ooshma:            Yes.   Danielle:            I'm looking for people who have some special passion. Ooshma talked about being mission driven. It's really hard. I think we really wanna find founders who are in it for the long haul, so if they're just an arbitrage deal, I don't know that we're quite as excited about that.   Poornima:         Right.   Danielle:            Again, I don't wanna speak for all my partners, but I personally would prefer to talk to somebody who's like, "This is the only thing I wanna do."   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            I'm looking for patents and technology innovation. I'm looking for stuff that solves problems in the enterprise space and software space for developers, just because I actually think there are a lot of women in those fields and I think there's more bias for women pitching those ideas than any other idea, and I think they—I wanna give them that check so they have the confidence to go do all the rest of the pitches.   Poornima:         OK.   Danielle:            I wanna write the quit-your-job check. That's the number one thing. So if you're watching this video and you're like, "I would have to quit my job and work on this full-time and I need $100,000," we wanna talk to you.   Poornima:         Yeah.   Danielle:            Because the quit-your-job check for me was life-changing. I think we would like to write that, so, sorry I'll let you tell them what you want.   Ooshma:            I mean, man. Yeah, Danielle really covered a lot of it. And I think just the founder DNA and passion and willingness, of course plays a huge role. But the interesting thing is that our partnership is so diverse that we have folks coming at it from retail, from consumer, from enterprise, from hardware. We've assembled this...and from the finance companies and healthcare, finance, SAS, etc., so it's really neat because no matter what your company is doing, there's probably an expert in our partnership that can talk with you, consider the deal, and at least give you feedback, if not invest.   So I think that we are looking for breakout companies in all of those industries. But your...yeah, we—   Danielle:            Our portfolio already has quite a range.   Ooshma:            It has quite a range. I mean, we've invested in fashion, in hardware, in AI—   Danielle:            Developer tools and machine learning and ag tech—   Ooshma:            Yes.   Danielle:            Huge range already.   Poornima:         Well I can't wait to hear when they come out. Ooshma:            Yes.   Poornima:         So, for our audience out there who's eager to get their idea out in front of you, how can they get in touch with you?   Danielle:            An email to hello@xfactorventures is perfect. Xfactor.ventures is the domain.   Ooshma:            Yes.   Poornima:         OK, what should they send you?   Danielle:            You can send us a pitch or you can send us a hello and we can set up a phone call. Either one is great.   Poornima:         Cool.   Ooshma:            Yup.   Poornima:         All right, well, be sure to take them up on their opportunity.   Ooshma:            Looking forward to it.   Poornima:         That's it for this episode of*Build*. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel to receive many more episodes like today's and great *Build* tips. Ciao for now.   Announcer:      This episode of *Build* is brought to you by our sponsor, Pivotal Tracker.

Think you’re onto something BIG, and surprised you’re receiving so many NO’s from investors? It can really make you second guess yourself, and shake your confidence... … but it shouldn’t! Receiving a LOT of NO’s is natural. You may be tempted to listen to the feedback after receiving some NO’s and think you just need to launch your product, change your business model, or grow your customer base, and then you’ll be more attractive to investors. Guess again. The reason you receive for the NO and the feedback you get may not be aligned. Why? Because at the end of the day, investors are human. They don’t want to hurt the feeling of a first time founder, and don’t want to seem rude in case they want to invest later. Yes they just might invest later. So how can you tell what is really going on? Well that’s what we’re going to debunk in today’s episode of Build! To help us out I’ve invited Ooshma Garg who is the CEO and Founder of Gobble, and Danielle Morrill who is the CEO and Founder of Mattermark. They've both recently become investment partners at XFactor Ventures, an investment firm that's focused on investing in female founders and mixed-gender teams. We’re going to help get comfortable with receiving NOs and deciphering what they really mean. You’ll learn: How Danielle and Ooshma learned to keep their spirits up despite all the NOs they received How to be politely persistent with investors who won’t bother taking a meeting with you The various tests investors put first time founder through How to maintain a relationship with an investors even after they say NO -- Build is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA. -- ## Why Investors Keep Saying NO To Your BIG Idea Transcript   Poornima Vijayashanker: In the previous two episodes of *Build*, we talked about why, even if you have an idea, you might not get investment from it, and it needs to be a big idea in order to even attract interest. But even if it's a big idea, chances are investors aren't going to say “yes.” In today's *Build* episode, we're gonna uncover all the reasons an investor may say “no” to your big idea, so stay tuned.   Welcome to *Build*, brought to you by Pivotal Tracker. I'm your host, Poornima Vijayashanker. In each episode, innovators and I debunk a number of myths and misconceptions related to building products, companies, and your career in tech. Now, one misconception that a lot of first-time founders fall prey to is if they have a big idea, some investor's gonna want to put capital and fund it.   The truth is that a lot of funders face nos, and just because they face nos doesn't mean that someone won't eventually invest in them. In today's *Build* episode, we're gonna explore all the reasons that investors may say “no” to your big idea. And to help us out, I've invited both Ooshma Garg and Danielle Morrill.   Ooshma is CEO and Founder of Gobble, and Danielle is CEO and Founder of Mattermark. They've both recently become investment partners at XFactor, an investment firm that's focused on investing in female founders and mixed-gender teams. Thanks a lot for joining me today.   Danielle Morrill: Absolutely.   Ooshma Garg: Thanks for having us.   Poornima Vijayashanker: We've come a lot way since that first South by Southwest where we all shared a hotel room in 2010, and all of us have gone out and fundraised a number of times. I want to start by asking the two of you, what was that first no like that you got from an investor?   Danielle Morrill: I was bummed. I mean, I think the first 10 investment meetings were just nos back to back. First, you're like, "I guess that it would happen. I would get a no," but I'm like, kind of the straight-A's type kid. I keep thinking, “Of course I would get a yes every time," and then after you get them over and over, you're like, "Oh, maybe this just happens. Maybe this is true that you get way more nos than yeses." What do you think?   Ooshma Garg: Man, you know, your company is like your baby. It's a reflection of yourself, so the first no, and even ongoing nos, they're always so personal. I think you get a little bit used to it because you just build some armor and build some strength every day and every year as an entrepreneur, but especially in the very beginning, it's kind of like a survival-of-the-fittest process. You have to be able to psychologically get through the nos, take some feedback, and develop that never-quit attitude early on if you're going to be successful ultimately.   How To Get Over Rejection When Fundraising And Keep Going   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. So, how did you get over that? How do you even know that you should just take the feedback, deal with the rejection, and keep going?   Danielle Morrill: I made a fundraising playlist on Spotify.   Poornima Vijayashanker: OK.   Danielle Morrill: I think it's Jay-Z who says, "On to the next one." I used to blast that song, like after every pitch, actually after the good ones, too. But honestly, you kind of just have to keep living, and I think part of it is just putting it in context with the rest of your life. Having a playlist for me was sort of a reminder of, “Oh, life just kind of goes on.” It's fun with your team too, I think, to just be...I guess not everyone does this, but with my team at the very early stage, it's not like you can hide the fact you got turned down.   Later on when you're raising, maybe you don't tell everybody that you're raising a series A, but when you're raising early stage money, you get your team to cheer you up. They buy you beers. You do silly things. You kind of have to let life keep happening so that it doesn't get too serious.   Ooshma Garg: Yeah, I agree. What's funny is my fundraising song is "Survivor," by Destiny's Child.   Danielle Morrill: How many people do you think have a fundraiser song?   Ooshma Garg: I don't know. This is the first time we're talking—   Danielle Morrill: We need to make a playlist.   Ooshma Garg: We need to make a playlist.   Danielle Morrill: That's a good idea.   Ooshma Garg: We need to make a playlist for our portfolio.   Poornima Vijayashanker: We'll link with the playlist to you guys. So, do you ever go back to the people that said “no?” Because you guys have done multiple rounds now, where you might have had to go back to those early investors who said “no” and ask for more.   Ooshma Garg: Absolutely. In our case, even our first check as a seed investment, it took me three different introductions, multiple follow-ups, to even get in the door before the no. After someone says “no,” it feels very final, but I think that the big secret is that you have to go back and that you should keep following up. Time and time again, I hear friends talk about series As, series Bs, and so on, where they got a no. They were...they kind of welcomed it and took all the feedback. They updated different investors every week for two months, three months, sometimes six months, and then they close that same investor. They might be a Sequoia, or Andreessen Horowitz, or what have you.   All those funds are looking for stamina and looking for breakout businesses. A breakout business has to have someone that's willing to listen, iterate, and improve. So, the funny thing is, you should see that as just the beginning of your relationship. For our venture financings, we had multiple failed fundraising attempts and then ultimately successful ones. Our funds that invest in us now, Andreessen Horowitz, Trinity Ventures, etc., absolutely said “no” once or twice before. But I maintained that relationship.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. What about—   Why It’s Valuable To Reconnect With People Who Said NO   Danielle Morrill: You have to think about it like sales. Like, would you have never contacted a lead again because they didn't convert at the end of the trial? No. If you are in my database, I am going to be talking to you for the rest of your life. If you're in this business, there's a certain set of investors that you really wanna work with. Frankly, they're looking for the people who don't take it so hard that they never come back, to your point about stamina.   I think also, once you go back to people a few times and kind of...you have that feeling of like, “This feels like it's against the rules to go back.” Then you realize that it's actually respected, and so it's a self-fulfilling thing, and you start to find yourself going back more and more.   How To Push For Specific Feedback   Poornima Vijayashanker: Well, it's great that you got feedback, but I think a lot of times, you get this generic feedback, where it's like, "I wanna see more traction," and you're like, "I'm already at, you know, 10k in monthly recurring revenue," or, "I'm already at, like, a million-dollar run rate," like, "How much more traction do you want to see," right? So, how can you kind of push an investor to give you more directed feedback in that note?   Danielle Morrill: Well, I mean, I think...We sit on both sides of the table now, so I think sometimes it's laziness that causes people to ask for these things. So, for example, the "I wanna see more traction." It's kind of like going into Macy's and being like, "Why isn't this a Dior dress?" It's like, OK, if you want a Dior dress, maybe you should go buy one. If you wanna find a company that has, like, $5 million a year of revenue, and you're at seed stage, sorry, this is what we have, and this is what I'm selling, and if it's not what you're interested in, it's fine for you to turn me down, but I'm not...this is not a buffet where you can come back anytime between 10 and 1. I'm trying to raise a round.   You kind of have to, at least inside, hold a certain amount of entitlement over your time. It's not that you need to be entitled to their money, but you're running a process, and I think that that is really important. So, for a lot of these unclear feedbacks, I think it's more important to say, like, "What do you think of what I'm selling now? And if it's not clear what I'm selling, let me remind you and redirect." Honestly, you have just as much a right to claim your time as they do.   Ooshma Garg: Absolutely. And you have to kind of draft or pick your draft, in a way, with your investors. There are ones that I really wanna follow up with, and I would love to work with, and it's not just from my side of the table. I think, just like with employees or anyone else, or with a relationship, you want it to be good with both sides. So, you might see something that they don't, but they've only known you for 30 minutes. You've done all your homework. You know what they've invested in. You know the other founders.   So, you don't just follow up with everyone. You hear the nos. Sometimes, it's not even worth following up. Sometimes it was an introduction, and you didn't really connect. A no is OK. Other times, it comes with something that says, "Our fund requires x, y, or z. Someone at this stage. We need this much ownership." It's important to know what's a BS no and what's actually a valid no. Sometimes...it took me a long time to learn that funds vary drastically in size, and that actually has a huge impact on who can invest in you at different times in your lifecycle. So, timing is important.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, hold that thought. We're gonna come back to that in a little bit, the whole fund size, and what makes sense and what doesn't. So, but let's go on to some of the more easy things that you hear and might get rejected. So, I don't know if either of you have faced this, but the whole, "You don't have a technical co-founder." And somehow that's like a gating factor to even get a dollar out of this investor, right? You hear things like this where you're just not meeting a certain checkbox. What's been your response to that sort of stuff?   Danielle Morrill: It depends on the checkbox. Basically, what I would say for technical co-founder or a lot of these is, they're like risk boxes. So, each one...it's almost like if it was a survey, and you added up enough points, then there's too much risk here. It's probably no one reason that's gonna knock you out, but they're trying to figure out where you fit. So, technical co-founder is not necessarily a problem if you nail everything else, but if you don't have a product, and there's no one to build it, then of course, that's gonna be expensive.   So, I think it's—sometimes the way it seems to be coming across to the investor is like it's a checkbox thing, but they're really trying to ask a bigger question. So, I think one thing I've found is that it's good to say, like, "Tell me more about why you're worried about that," rather than just answering the question, making them elucidate more. Cause I've been surprised by some of the answers that I get. The technical co-founder question, I think the assumption is, who's gonna build the product? And they might just be thinking, "Dang, we're gonna need to go raise a big round because you need to hire two or three engineers instead of building it yourself."   They're not actually worried about you not being technical. They don't care that you're not technical. They're more like, "OK, so now I have to assess fundraising risk cause this person's gonna need to go build a team." So, it's easy to think it's about you, and, "Oh, you can't code." And then you kinda like lock down and feel guilty, but I think that's not always the case. A lot of these things are not actually what they seem on the surface.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Right. Yeah, I think another one along those lines is also, "Why are you working on this idea?" Right? So it's, what puts you in that unique position to kind of own domain expertise? Have you guys ever gotten that question, like, "Why this? Why Gobble, Ooshma? Why help people with cooking at the end of their day?"   Ooshma Garg: Right. Well, Gobble is a lucky one for me because it's a mission-driven company, and it started out of my family. What we do is we help people cook home-cooked food in 15 minutes in one pan, and we bring this tradition, and ritual, and love of a household into the modern, busy life. That's something that's very near and dear to me. So, because of that, it shows that I'm just gonna give it my all and not quit.   I think some folks stumble on an opportunity sometimes. You are...you're just a inventor, and you want to tinker around, and you try finding what's gonna fit in today's zeitgeist. Just like founders come in different flavors, I think investors come in different flavors, too. There are investors who are great at investing in arbitrage opportunities. There's investors who really wanna back founders, or social good, or mission-drive folks. Or they wanna back moon-shoots. Or some people wanna back things that have a linear, direct, immediate path to growth.   So, I think having that context when you assess someone's response to you is really important because you kinda, just like with your friends, you have to find your tribe with your investors, as well.   Is The Market For Your Product Big Enough?   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. So, there's definitely this sizing-up thing, and I think one of the early signals is, they don't feel like your market is big enough, maybe because they're not aware of that market, or maybe they don't get the space. Have either of you had that situation where you come in, you've already got traction, you've got the go-to market team, products in the hand of customers, and they're just kind of scratching their head, like, "Oh, is food...do people eat dinner still these days? Is that still a thing?" How do you deal—   Danielle Morrill: Oh my gosh. I actually don't think it's worthwhile to continue to have the conversation, and I have to shout out to Hunter Walk, who wrote an excellent post about this, I don't know if you guys saw, around a woman who was pitching, and someone said like, "Convince me this market's big enough." And she just said, "Look, I don't wanna work that hard. I've already got traction, people eat dinner, right?" I think there are times when you're looking at this investor, and you have to consider, if they don't get it at this point, especially if you're doing something where you have traction, and it's fairly obvious that the market is big...   I mean, most of us...if you're building breakthrough tech, you might find a situation where markets are unclear in terms of size, like Blockchain, for example. But in most cases, these are professional investors, and they may be testing you, and they might wanna know what you know, so it's worthwhile to at least give them a rough answer, but I would take it as serious data, if they need to be convinced that the market's big enough.   The other side is that, not all markets need to be big to be interesting. It's more about if you can create something that can grow. Obviously creating a market that doesn't exist is a really valuable thing. So, again, I think it goes back to flipping the script a little bit in terms of trying to make sure you understand what they're really getting at. Like, do they not know? Are they testing you? Are they gonna be a huge waste of your time?   How To Get To The Real Question They Are Asking   Poornima Vijayashanker: How can you kind of suss that out? Are there questions or techniques?   Danielle Morrill: I would just start getting curious, like, "How much do you know about the market? Have you invested in this space? Obviously you're interested in us. What do you think?" And it doesn't have to become combative. It's much more of just, like, how does this become a dialogue instead of playing 20 questions, where you're doing all the talking? I think about it kinda like a job interview, I think, in both parties are confused about who's interviewing who, and you really wanna make sure that you find a balance where it's not you, as the founder, talking 80% of the time.   Ooshma Garg: The framing is so important. So, if you're getting some feedback repetitively that, "I don't understand your market," or, "I don't understand your path forward, or your path to revenue, or how you're gonna hire," then you do have to take that feedback and try to iterate and improve your pitch itself. I think that every company...it's very hard that you meet a perfect de-risked company at an early stage. They all have some mini risks, and often times, one big risk. So, sometimes it's, "Wow, there isn't a market for this, but we see that being the future."   Other times, there's a really big market, but maybe it's crowded. So, the question is, how are you gonna be, for example, defensible in the food space? Other times, it's...you have something defensible and proprietary. It's a huge market, but no one's willing to pay for it. So, people aren't willing to pay for music, or TV, or whatever. So, how are you even gonna make money for something that everybody's using?   Whether it's revenue, market, defensibility, IP, every business typically gets stuck, I find, on one big discussion. The better you can hone your slide and your couple lines to make sure that your message is getting across properly, and that resonates, it's just to your advantage cause people have such limited time with you and attention span. You know what is gonna be the hot button in your pitch, so identifying that early and practicing that part the most would probably do you well.   How To Get At An Investors Hot Buttons   Poornima Vijayashanker: So, we previously had Marie Perruchet on the show, and she talked about taking your pitch and then seeing how other people reformulate it, or what are the pieces that they extract? That usually becomes these hot-buttons, or the thing that is most memorable that maybe you need to dive into. Are there other ways that you guys have found to extract that information?   Danielle Morrill: I think...reformulating, literally having someone pitch it back to you, is that what you mean?   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah. As one technique to, like...what's sticky, what is impactful, but then there's the other case of, yeah, what is the hot button that people are probably gonna step away from?   Danielle Morrill: I mean, I think one of the things that is really interesting is whenever you're opening the conversation with an investor, at the very beginning. If you can get them to tell you, like, "Hey, what do you know about my company?" Because that actually is gonna tell you a ton about what they've already decided you're doing, and it's sometimes really wrong, or it's like...you know, there's a lot there, and then you can kind of work from there. If you notice that, pretty consistently, people are having the wrong idea, I mean, kinda to your point about feedback, it's another way of getting—   The reality is, people act like you setup your pitch, and then you go out. But you actually create your pitch, start to go out, and then you're continuously iterating on the pitch. So, you have so many opportunities to make the pitch better. I actually look at the first 10 pitches or so. I kind of set up pitches with targets where I would be interested in working with them, but they're not my top picks, so that I'm actually running the pitch against those folks. That way, if the first three or four say that their first impression of you is different, then you can realize, “Oh, the market already knows who I am.” Very rarely do you get to just go pitch, and no one knows who you are. That's another tactic that I think can be really helpful.   Finding Investors Who Are a Fit   Poornima Vijayashanker: So, coming back to kind of Ooshma's point around finding investors who fit into one of many opportunities, like arbitrage, moon shots, love the space, etc., there's also people who really get beholden to certain stages, right? They're like, "Oh, come back and talk to me once you've figured out your customer acquisition cost, or your lifetime value," right? Are there ways in which you've been able to address that, even if you don't have those metrics yet?   Ooshma Garg: One concept I keep running back to is that MVP concept, or minimum viable product, or even like a prototype. So, with my first company, the vision was to make this recruiting platform for universities all around the country. I made...I started by making wireframes, and envisioning the product, and keeping it simple, but thinking through those wireframes. But then, an advisor kind of looked at that, told me to scrap the whole thing, and said, "Why can't you just start with a mailing list? You're making a recruiting platform. Why don't we just see if there's people interested in your concept, and can you get 10,000 people, or 50,000 people, or how ever many students on your mailing list?"   At first, I was offended because I thought, "Oh my gosh, a mailing list is not a tech company." But often times, you can think about some scrappy proxy or prototype to prove what the person is asking, even if you don't have that exact number or the software or resources to get what exactly they want.   Poornima Vijayashanker: So, what's an example...yeah, if somebody throws out, like, "Ooshma, early days, three years ago, what was your LTV?" And you're like, "I don't have an LTV because I don't know," what would your response be to that?   Ooshma Garg: You know, I probably do two things. So one is, I would look at comparables in the market, and so, just doing studies of the general food industry, in my case, like how often people order takeout, or how often...what are people paying for SAS for these particular products each day, or whatever's relevant to your market. I mean, I'm assuming that you're...that you have some prototype. Very few companies pitch pre-product, so whatever data you have for three months or six months, there has to be something there, some monthly active users, how many times people are logging in, how many purchases people have made.   So, you just have to...I mean, our seed round was raised off of two to three months of early prototype data. I think that's all you need. It's just some prototype that shows some user willingness to pay or engage for three months, and then you can extrapolate that into your vision.   How To Handle Disagreements   Poornima Vijayashanker: Now, there's obviously times where people may disagree, right? They may say something like, "You know what, Danielle, I don't like your distribution strategy. I really just don't think it's gonna work. So, you know, cause I think it's gonna be expensive. Come back when you've figured out something that's a little bit cheaper. Then let's have the conversation. But, for now, no."   Danielle Morrill: It seems like an opportunity for them to prove their value-add as an investor. You know, I think that's valid for people to challenge strategy, but I think, what I would wanna know in that situation is, "If you were my investor, what would you suggest that I do? I totally hear your concerns." Make sure to show them that you're listening, but I think that's their opportunity to step up and actually offer something constructive. I think if they're gonna be in an investor where they're gonna be critical without being constructive, that's actually data for you.   The truth is that strategy's tough. Strategy often breaks down, and we change strategy all the time in startups. That's a huge part of what you're testing. So, I think being gracious and not taking it personally is important, but also making sure that you're asking them to demonstrate their value. I actually think that's gonna make them want to work with you. If that goes well, that's actually gonna be a way to test out, what would this working relationship be? So, I think that's...see it as an opportunity.   Poornima Vijayashanker: I like that.   Ooshma Garg: Yeah. And most people kind of...they send you that no via email, and I'm sure that the large majority don't even ask further questions. Some may not even respond, and others might respond and say, "Thanks for your time. I'll move on." But some small percentage are asking follow-up questions, and I think that's just making them stand out and starting that relationship that we said is so important.   I think that if you really did like someone, and their no isn't tactical or directional enough for you, to ask for a 10-minute phone call just to get a little bit more detail or their advice on strategy towards de-risking that investor's concern, I think can go a really long way. So, I think folks should just practice embracing the no and getting that 10-minute call and feedback as much as possible because that will help give them building blocks for another three months, if they can, and not just sort of wander aimlessly, wondering what someone was saying, or worse, completely ignoring it.   Danielle Morrill: Right. If you're gonna go and worry a bunch about the feedback but not ask for the follow-up, go round and round in circles over three glasses of wine, it would be much less painful to just have that awkward 10-minute call and just know where you stand. I think I've seen founders go in circles over this stuff. Literally years later, they'll tell these stories. It's just not worth the energy. The investor's also probably super uncomfortable giving the rejection. We're gonna talk a little bit about saying no on the other side. So, they're kinda beholden to you to give you that 10 minutes, honestly, so you should take it.   How To Know When An Investor Isn’t A Fit   Poornima Vijayashanker: Now, there's a lot of times where it's very obvious, you know, they tell you, "Here's the no," but...aside from some of the ambiguous feedback around the traction, there are times, though, where they may see a signal. Maybe it's something that happened in a meeting between you and your co-founder, or something else. Maybe they did some back-channeling, right? How do you handle those situations where they might feel like, “Oh, there's no chemistry,” or “I'm not sure where this is going?”   Danielle Morrill: It's tough cause they usually don't tell you.   Ooshma Garg: Yeah, they usually don't tell you. I think that's quite rare, as well. I think the way...the best way to handle that or avoid that is actually to construct your own back-channeling. So, like I said, some of the biggest investors, they will only invest based upon referral. Then, when you get so, kind of, well-known and in high demand, they'll only invest based upon two or three referrals. So, every single step is just like hard work. You can't ask for one intro. You can't just take the no on face value. You have to ask for three intros. Then you have to ask for follow-ups. Then you go to the meeting. Then you follow up on the meeting, and if they say “no,” you follow up again. There's all those little, little, extra steps that other people are doing that I think more folks should know about.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, and invest their energy in that versus what Danielle said, around the drama in their heads. So, anything else you guys have heard from your experience? Any other nos that we maybe haven't covered? I know there was some of the stuff that Ooshma was talking about, like the type of investors. Maybe we can dive into that a little bit?   Ooshma Garg: Yeah. I think...Well, with regards to the nos that people give, one of the toughest ones is simply just environmental. There are times when you're starting a company, and it's just a rough funding environment where it's just rough for your market. There might be bigger companies who are...for whatever reason, they're not doing well on the public markets, and that's affecting you. So, like the stamina, managing your psychology, being frugal, focusing on just the minimum prototypes, all of that's so important because the main thing you need to get to yes and get funding is time. You can correct a lot of things in the nos overtime, but there's some environmental factors you just have to weather.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Yeah, let's dig into that a little bit more. What do you mean by like, public companies? "How does that impact me? I'm just a two-person start-up, why should I care what Google or Facebook is up to?"   Ooshma Garg: Yeah. Well, hopefully your aspiration is to be a big public company, or to just be a big organization in general, and to be, one day, going from wherever you are to making hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars of value for your shareholders, for your employees, for your customers, and so on. So, investors will look at the current state of the market, at the public market, to understand what's happening in your industry. How are those companies valued? What are your chances of getting there, of breaking out? What is it gonna look like when you IPO? That trickles all the way down and influences your valuation, even as early as at the seed stage. So, it's very well-advised to not be delusional and to take a look at the public markets of your industry—   Poornima Vijayashanker: The landscape, yeah.   Ooshma Garg: —and be able to speak to that. I think people will be very impressed.   Paying For A Previous Founder’s Mistakes   Poornima Vijayashanker: I think another situation is, often, we have to pay for previous mistakes. So, the investor might have invested in a space when it was too young, or maybe the founders that they invested in weren't that knowledgeable or were the first. You know, just a number of factors to where, now, they just aren't willing to look at the space, or even...no matter how amazing you are, they're like, "No, sorry, not interested in the space. You might be amazing, unicorn person, but I'm just gonna say ‘no.’"   Ooshma Garg: I would take that no. It's kinda like in relationships. Someone had some issues with another girl that looked like you, or whatever, like it is not your—   Danielle Morrill: He is never gonna stop saying that.   Ooshma Garg: That is not the best guy for you. So, there are many investor fish in the sea, and I think that's just when the numbers game comes into play, and you have to make sure that you're not just talking to five, you're not talking to 10, but you have a big target list that you're just setting up and rolling through.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Awesome.   Danielle Morrill: I think one other thing that is valid but complicated is, people might say to you, "This isn't venture-backable." I actually think that's very helpful feedback to hear. Whether you agree is sort of beside the point. Find out why they think that. Sometimes, investors know things about markets that you never...can't learn until you're in them for a long time, and they can save you years of your life.   So, part of why people get a bad taste in their mouth often has to do with, like, a poor-margin business that can never get better, or a business that caps out somewhere, and there's this trough of sorrow that seems to go on forever and ever, and you don't get to find out until you're a $50-million company, which is great, except for when you have a huge burn rate and expectations. So, especially if you're entering a market where you're fairly new, maybe you're a software-centric person, but you don't have domain expertise, those types of nos can tell you a ton about things that.   It's easy to say, "I don't care. If I get to $50 million of revenue, I'll deal with that then." And you can still make that decision, but I think the key is to actually make sure you understand that no because they are in the business of billion-dollar outcomes. They might know something that you don't, and they might be able to help you redirect towards something that is worth it.   Poornima Vijayashanker: Alright, well thank you, Danielle and Ooshma, for walking us through all those nos. For all of you out there who are watching, if there was a no that you recently received that maybe we didn't unpack, feel free to share it with us in the comments below this video.   That's it for today's episode. Be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel where we'll continue the conversation and talk about what it's gonna take to get that yes from an investor. Ciao for now!

In this episode I interview Jonathan Kressaty, the head of marketing at Mattermark, which helps sales teams find potential customers. Mattermark also runs two very successful e-mail newsletters, Raise the Bar and the Mattermark Daily, which reach hundreds of thousands of subscribers everyday. Jonathan explains how data drives everything about their newsletters including the content, subscriber focus, and eventual measures of success.

Andrew Yates. He’s the CEO and founder of Artesian and they want to make sellers more effective at engaging with buyers using smart data and new techniques to create the right impact. He’s been involved in the sales and marketing for the past 25 years and is aiming to make a difference to people by creating software companies that make a meaningful dent in the universe. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Escape Velocity What CEO do you follow? – Godfrey Sullivan Favorite online tool? — Microsoft Outlook, GeckoBoard, Salesforce How many hours of sleep do you get? — 8 If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “I wished I knew more how money and leverage finance works”   Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:13 – Nathan introduces Andrew to the show 01:46 – Artesian provides a sales acceleration platform 01:56 – With Artesian, you can track every single customer, prospect and competitor every day and manage your pipeline risk 02:11 – Artesian’s phrase is “customer curious businesses” 02:44 – Artesian combines thermographic data with the real-time contextual intelligence 02:50 – You can ask Artesian to find you a company that fits a certain profile 03:15 – Artesian has natural language processing science that scans over 10M sources of structured and unstructured data 03:47 – Artesian started providing their service in 2010 03:54 – Artesian currently has 30K paying subscribers with 100 large enterprise customers 04:09 – Artesian covers a broad sector 04:20 – Artesian’s customers are in high value, relationship-oriented, sales engagement 04:30 – Team size is 60 04:38 – Artesian’s goal is to accelerate more in 2017 04:50 – Average pay per customer is $10K to over $2M per year 04:59 – Artesian licenses to software per user, per month basis 05:04 – 68% of target ARR for 2017 has been contracted 05:38 – Before, Artesian’s licenses were cheaper 06:08 – The 30K customers are the number of seats from 120 enterprise customers 06:43 – Artesian made the decision to take down their cash burn in terms of investment 07:04 – Artesian was burning $300K-400K a month 07:15 – Artesian has raised $40M in equity and debt 07:50 – MRR is $700K 08:24 – Customer retention is around 93 and 120 in terms of net 09:10 – Artesian is now number in the GT crowd ranking in terms of the most popular and most intelligent platform 09:59 – Artesian uses a team of researchers to build deep and cool data sets 10:39 – Artesian also invites users to define their own sales triggers 11:40 – Nathan had Danielle in Episode 318 12:00 – Andrew thinks that a market consolidation practice is inevitable 12:26 – A scenario where companies could join forces to give broader reach and greater depth—a better customer experience is definitely more valuable 12:47 – Andrew also drives growth for Artesian 12:58 – It is important to spend time speaking with other companies that are active in the same space 13:14 – The companies can be quite different and quite complementary 13:29 – The last round was a bridge round 13:49 – Artesian is currently equipped to keep going, without investments, for the next 2 years 14:08 – By the middle of 2017, Artesian will be in a cash flow, breakeven profitability state 14:40 – CAC 14:41 – Artesian was tracking 1x in Year 1 15:08 – Artesian uses great people to drive adoption 15:13 – Artesian has 5 methods inside the platform 15:25 – Artesian uses customer relationship management and what the system is telling them to do 15:42 – Running 89% daily user engagement 16:15 – Artesian launched a way to build a smart calendar for each user every day 16:29 – Artesian is partnered with FullContact and others that provide social profiles 16:56 – Artesian is spending $60-70K on acquisition depending on the segment 17:20 – LTV is 5.2 years 17:30 – Artesian tracks this by looking at the average of customers they’re holding on to 17:40 – HBC is one of their customers 19:28 – Andrew would be interested in talking with Salesforce to share the value 19:38 – 50% of Artesian is owned by institutions 19:46 – Andrew has 2 co-founders 21:27 – The Famous Five   3 Key Points: Companies in the same space should talk more—they can find out how they’re different and how they complement each other. Being transparent shows that you want people to see your value and learn from it. Handling your finances and controlling what you burn wisely will help your company manage without additional capital.   Resources Mentioned: The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences Organifi – The juice was Nathan’s life saver during his trip in Southeast Asia Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books Freshbooks – Nathan doesn’t waste time so he uses Freshbooks to send out invoices and collect his money. Get your free month NOW Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

How do you decide which way to go with your product? What problem are you solving? How do you rank your priorities? Shira talks with Danielle Morrill, the CEO and founder of Mattermark on brand, product, and how veering off from what Sales is telling you is always the wrong way to go. They also talk a bit about account based marketing. Danielle Morrill Danielle is CEO and Cofounder of Mattermark, and formerly led Marketing at Twilio. She is a graduate of Y Combinator, named to Forbes 30 Under 30 and is an angel investor in several companies including Boom Supersonic, Estimate and LeTote. She loves to cook, paint, and explore the world from her home base in San Francisco, California. About Shira Abel Shira Abel is the CEO and Lead Strategist at Hunter & Bard (http://www.hunterandbard.com), an inbound marketing and branding agency. Clients include: Folloze, Totango, Cyara, Sarine Technologies, Pushbullet, AXA Tech, CloudEndure, AppsGeyser, Pitango VC, Allianz, and more. Creator and host of the SaaS Insider podcast. Creator of the Behavior Engineering Canvas. Mentor at 500 Startups. Former professor of Marketing for Startups at Tel Aviv-Jaffa Academic College. MBA from Kellogg School of Management. Loves family time, cooking, and traveling. Hates writing about herself in the third person. She lives in Silicon Valley with her husband, teen and tween sons and a very large Great Pyrenees. If you would like to be interviewed on SaaS Insider - please contact Shira at the URL above. The SaaS Insider podcast is brought to you by Hunter & Bard, a marketing agency specializing in design, branding, content and marketing automation – helping SaaS companies reduce their marketing debt. It’s also a member of the C-Suite Radio Network. Check out Hunter & Bard today at http://hunterandbard.com

In Episode #255, Eric and Neil discuss how to keep track of emerging trends in your industry. Tune in to learn why networking is of the utmost importance when it comes to being up to date with the latest trends and tools. You’ll also find out what blogs and social media platforms Eric and Neil use to stay on top of their game. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today’s topic: How to Keep Track of Emerging Trends in Your Industry 00:37 – Eric looks at Feedly to take their RSS feeds and segment them 00:52 – When Eric wakes up, he’s puts them into Pocket which is his “read later” tool 01:02 – Looking at the headlines in the morning gives Eric an idea on what is going on and gets his brain moving 01:23 – Neil uses Twitter 01:31 – It is still a great tool to know the latest in your industry 01:49 – Follow the people within your industry 01:59 – For Twitter, Eric uses Tweetbot 02:29 – Eric likes Twitter because when something big happens, it will trend easily 03:03 – Listen to different podcasts in your industry 03:24 – The new tactics and trends can be easily shared through podcasts 03:59 – Eric and Neil discuss with each other what they are doing and their results 04:30 – Eric and Neil are doing this with other people in their space 04:35 – “If you’re not networking with people, you’re not going to be ahead of them” 04:40 – Eric had a chat with Sean Ellis of Growth Hacker 04:52 – Shawn shares why he started Growth Hacker 05:04 – If you meet with other people, you can build relationships 05:18 – Eric shares when he went to the Traffic and Conversion Conference 05:25 – One of Neil’s business partners connected with one of Eric’s friends 06:16 – Make sure you reciprocate 06:28 – Eric enjoys looking at Venture Capital blogs like CB Insights, Mattermark and Crunchbase 07:03 – It can give you an idea of where things are going, in general 07:13 – That’s it for today’s episode! 3 Key Points: Twitter might be dead, but it is still a good platform to know what is currently happening in your space. Networking with people in your industry builds relationships and helps you stay updated on the latest news and trends. You will learn more if you reciprocate. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

In Episode #255, Eric and Neil discuss how to keep track of emerging trends in your industry. Tune in to learn why networking is of the utmost importance when it comes to being up to date with the latest trends and tools. You'll also find out what blogs and social media platforms Eric and Neil use to stay on top of their game. Time Stamped Show Notes: 00:27 – Today's topic: How to Keep Track of Emerging Trends in Your Industry 00:37 – Eric looks at Feedly to take their RSS feeds and segment them 00:52 – When Eric wakes up, he's puts them into Pocket which is his “read later” tool 01:02 – Looking at the headlines in the morning gives Eric an idea on what is going on and gets his brain moving 01:23 – Neil uses Twitter 01:31 – It is still a great tool to know the latest in your industry 01:49 – Follow the people within your industry 01:59 – For Twitter, Eric uses Tweetbot 02:29 – Eric likes Twitter because when something big happens, it will trend easily 03:03 – Listen to different podcasts in your industry 03:24 – The new tactics and trends can be easily shared through podcasts 03:59 – Eric and Neil discuss with each other what they are doing and their results 04:30 – Eric and Neil are doing this with other people in their space 04:35 – “If you're not networking with people, you're not going to be ahead of them” 04:40 – Eric had a chat with Sean Ellis of Growth Hacker 04:52 – Shawn shares why he started Growth Hacker 05:04 – If you meet with other people, you can build relationships 05:18 – Eric shares when he went to the Traffic and Conversion Conference 05:25 – One of Neil's business partners connected with one of Eric's friends 06:16 – Make sure you reciprocate 06:28 – Eric enjoys looking at Venture Capital blogs like CB Insights, Mattermark and Crunchbase 07:03 – It can give you an idea of where things are going, in general 07:13 – That's it for today's episode! 3 Key Points: Twitter might be dead, but it is still a good platform to know what is currently happening in your space. Networking with people in your industry builds relationships and helps you stay updated on the latest news and trends. You will learn more if you reciprocate. Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

In this episode, you’ll hear about: -How Andy’s cofounder Danielle convinced him to stay in the Valley to build what would later become Mattermark -Why a company’s data tells more of a story than its press releases -The pivotal moment for Mattermark, where publishing an article on Zombie VCs turned into finding a product / market fit -Why Andy finds starting a company more inspiring than taking a high-paying job (and why you should ignore people’s opinions on the matter) -The first business Andy started at a young age, and how its unfortunate business name enabled him to find his first customers -The self-awareness needed to move your company forward and how having shared values with your cofounder is critical Stay tuned to the end of the episode, where Andy tells us more about what he’s currently working on and what he would ask Jeff Bezos if he had the chance to interview him.

In this episode, Danielle Morrill, the CEO and co-founder of Mattermark, shares her company's origin story, including how they created an addicting, ubiquitous newsletter read by VCs and entrepreneurs everywhere. You'll also hear... 1) Why a TV show inspired Danielle to launch a media company, not software startup, and why she was disillusioned with Silicon Valley. 2) The domino effect of thinking and operating with that desire in mind, and how this led to the SaaS startup success that is Mattermark today. 3) Why Danielle would outright argue with almost every VC she called to sell early on in the company's history. Follow Danielle - @DanielleMorrill and subscribe to the Mattermark Daily newsletter - mattermark.com/app/newsletter Follow Jay - @jayacunzo - and let him know what you think of the show. ORIGINAL BROADCAST DATE: September 2015

Neste episódio respondo a seguinte pergunta recebida: Como escolher seus sócios? Aproveito ainda para comentar sobre a formação de times para desenvolvimento de negócios inovadores. Não esqueci do tema provocado ao final do episódio #7 sobre Snapchat e Instagram Stories. Como indicação de textos interessantes trago a Mattermark (www.mattermark.com). Espero que gostem! Mandem opiniões, críticas, perguntas e ideias para contato@leojianoti.com.br ou Facebook mesmo. Obrigado! Som na caixa: Tommy Flanagan - Overseas - 09 - Willow Weep For Me --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/leojianoti/message

In high school, Danielle Morrill started working at her father's business. After spending time as an analyst and the Head of Marketing for Twilio, she founded Mattermark, a business that helps companies uncover actionable insights in the wealth of data at their fingertips. In this episode, Danielle talks about expanding Mattermark’s target market, finding “work-life balance” when you start a company with close friends, and building a team when you’re early on in your startup’s journey.

Andy Sparks is the Co-Founder and Head of Sales @ Mattermark. He was previously the Technology Editor at Referly before the company pivoted to become Mattermark. Andy joined the Referly team via an acqui-hire of his company, LaunchGram, by Referly in February of 2013. Now I am going to leave the bio there as Andy does a much better job of it in the show than I do! In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How Andy came to be a 1st time Head of Sales with Mattermark? What are the requirements for stretch VPs to be successful? How can Head of Sales clearly and efficiently communicate with their reps? What are the 3 things all sales reps have to be trained on? What are the must haves when looking at sales reps? Are there different types of reps for different stages in the business? How to effectively establish a compensation structure for your sales team that is incentivising to them and to the company? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings Saastr Andy Sparks  

Natural language processing (NLP) sounds cool in theory. We're familiar with Siri and Echo of course, but where does it play a role in other companies? In today's episode, we speak with Samiur Rahman from Mattermark, whose entire business model is predicated on organizing and making findable information about companies, and generating a platform to search by unique criterion. Doing so involves some conceptual work with NLP to make things findable. Samiur talks about what Mattermark is doing with this technology now and where he thinks the future may take the field, and interesting topic for investors and founders alike.

Danielle Morrill, the technology exec who left Twilio to found Mattermark, a SaaS business that’s aiming to make almost $5 million this year. Danielle’s an ambitious CEO who can’t stand to be bored. Listen in to hear why you should never split equity evenly, why focusing on churn rate will make you lose customers, and the one crucial thing you should think about before you sell your business. Famous 5 Favorite Book? – The Pyramid Principle What CEO do you follow? — Elon Musk What is your favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— No If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? —It was all going to be okay. She should stop angsting and just keep doing what she’s doing. Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:08 – Nathan’s introduction 01:46 – Mattermark is a SaaS firm that lets customers research private companies 02:20 – Helps people who are looking to sell, buy, or invest in companies 02:41 – Launched in 2013 02:50 – First year revenue was around $200k 03:07 – Left Twilio to start a different startup - an affiliate marketing program 03:43 – Shut down the company completely and started again with the same investors 04:18 – Three co-founders. Danielle is the CEO, her husband codes, and her friend runs sales 05:21 – “We don’t have a 1:1:1 split - because things aren’t ever even.” 06:04 – “I think it’s the CEO’s job to offer equity portions that are fair and make sense” 07:30 – “It’s intellectually lazy to not discuss the equity portions” 08:01 – Topline revenue in 2015 was $2.4 million 08:20 – Monthly recurring revenue is around $260k 08:50 – Around 500 customers 09:07 – Annual customer revenue is around $10k 09:50 – Annual churn is less than 10% 10:11 – “Not everyone has turned over on a year yet - around 80% of customers came on board in the last 11 months” 10:34 – What other metrics measure customer engagement? 10:40 – “By the time they churn, it’s too late” 11:30 – “We think lifetime value will be in the $50k range” 12:10 – Started up an in-house marketing team 8 weeks ago 13:40 – What’s Danielle’s goal with the business? 13:55 – “My goal is to work on interesting things my entire life. If I sold the company for $100 million today, what would I do?” 16:02 – Danielle would be delighted if this year’s revenue hit $4.8 million 16:28 – Connect to Danielle on Twitter 18:08 – Famous Five 3 Key Points: Discuss equity portions with your co-founders. All an equal split proves is that you don’t know how to have difficult conversations By the time customers have churned, it’s too late. Look at other engagement metrics to catch them before they leave. Think about your personal goals. Why are you running the business you are? What do you really want out of it? Resources Mentioned: Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible. Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books. Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

Sam Lessin is a Partner at Slow Ventures who have made investments in the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Mattermark, AngelList,Dropbox and many more. On top of this, Sam is also the Founder and Co-CEO at Fin, which is basically like Siri Echo or Google now except it actually works, truly a phenomenal product. Prior to Fin and Slow, Sam was VP of Product Management at Facebook following the acquisition of his company, Drop.io by Facebook in 2010. Sam is also an intern at The Information where he reports directly to the boss Jessica Lessin!  In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Sam come to found Fin and what was his route into VC with Slow? 2.) What are the fundamental shifts that have occurred in the world of tech? How has this affected the wider tech and investing ecosystem? 3.) Will the transition to bots and conversational interfaces represent a major point of disruption or more of an evolution in the interface paradigm? 4.) How can bots establish the same relationship and stickiness with the user as apps? In a world of bot domination where strong data sets is the ultimate weapon, are we not at a fundamental incumbency disadvantage? How can the platforms react to this? 5.) What will the effect of self driving cars be on society? How long before this was be possible? How does the sharing economy and capitalism survive in unison? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode:  Sam’s Fave Book: The Three-Body Problem  Sam’s Fave Blog: The Information Sam’s Most Recent Investment: Common As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Sam on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   The Twenty Minute VC is brought to you by Leesa, the Warby Parker or TOMS shoes of the mattress industry. Lees have done away with the terrible mattress showroom buying experience by creating a luxury premium foam mattress that is order completely online and ships for free to your doorstep. The 10 inch mattress comes in all sizes and is engineered with 3 unique foam layers for a universal, adaptive feel, including 2 inches of memory foam and 2 inches of a really cool latex foam called Avena, design to keep you cool. All Leesa mattresses are 100% US or UK made and for every 10 mattresses they sell, they donate one to a shelter. Go to Leesa.com/VC and enter the promo code VC75 to get $75 off!  

A great podcast with the Co-Founder and COO of Mattermark.

Rebecca Kaden is a Partner at Maveron where she identifies emerging consumer-focused entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley, Southern California, and New York. Rebecca also plays a leading role in Maveron's seed program, where they partner with emerging consumer companies at their earliest stages. She’s a Board Observer at August, Common, Darby Smart, Dolls Kill, Eargo, Earnest and General Assembly. Her outstanding achievements have been recognised by Forbes who included Rebecca is their annual '30 Under 30'.   As always we would like thank the awesome team at Mattermark for providing us with all the data and analysis for the show today, check out Mattermark search here!   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rebecca made her way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) Maveron have shown their belief in the consumerisation of IOT. What are Rebecca's thoughts on the space, how it is progressing, barriers that are preventing mass adoption? 3.) What is your take on the integration of messaging and chat with IOT? Whis there a recent broader market positivity towards chat interfaces at the moment? 4.) Maveron have also shown their likeability towards hardware investments so why is this? Why do Maveron not feel the broader VC market concerns of shipping, logistics? Are we seeing a shift in investing patterns in hardware? 5.) How do Rebecca approach the common problem with consumer startups transtioning from an early adopter market to a mass market product?  What does Rebecca feel is the tipping point? What is necessary to make the transition from SF hipster client to everyone? 6.) What are the benefits are of having a narrow investing thesis (only consumer)? How has Rebecca found it? Is it challenging when finding companies you would like to invest in but are outside the mandate? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Rebecca's Fave Book: Pale Fire, Vladamir Nobokov Rebecca's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Sarah Tavel, Brad Feld, Wait But Why Rebecca's Most Recent Investment: Booster Fuels   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Rebecca on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   How many emails do you have in your inbox right now? A hundred? A thousand? The answer is too many. But here’s the thing—even though I knew I wanted to do something about it, I didn’t know how. It’s called SaneBox. SaneBox sorts through your email and moves all of the trivial stuff into a different folder so the only messages in your inbox are the ones you actually want to see. Visit sanebox.com/20VC today and they’ll throw in an extra $20 credit on top of the two-week free trial.   

In this episode of Y Combinator's Startup School Radio, we interview Segment founder Peter Reinhardt and Mattermark founder Danielle Morrill.

Ciaran O'Leary is the General Partner at one of Europe's newest funds, BlueYard. A $120m fund located at the early stage, centring around 3 key areas: The decentralisation of markets, the democratisation of capabilities, and the liberation of data. Prior to BlueYard, Ciaran was a Partner at Earlybird with investments in the likes of Peak Games (emerging markets social gaming), 6Wunderkinder (productivity apps), Moped (private messaging), B2X Care Solutions (outsourcing platform), madvertise (mobile targeting network) and simfy (digital music distribution company). Before Earlybird, Ciarán co-founded a startup and gathered operational experience at others. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ciaran made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What is the thesis with BlueYard? What is the preferred cheque size, sector and geography? 3.) With the mass of VCs emerging, how can startups at the early stage determine whether a VC really is early stage? Are there any defining characteristics? 4.) For startup founders out there who always hear from fellow founders that everything is going gangbusters, how should they react to that? How can you determine whether a startup really is doing well? 5.) Say the startup really is going well and they are looking to scale and hire, we always hear we need a world beating, world class X? How can they communicate that hire better to their current team and their board? What should the CEO or Head of Talent be focusing on when viewing talent? Is there anything they should look out for in particular? 6.) Now when a startup really scales, board meetings become a big part of a CEO’s life. So how can CEO’s turn useless board meetings into very useful value added meetings? How can they optimize that time? What should they look for? What should they ask for? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Ciaran's Fave Book: The Road Ciaran's Fave Blog: The Economist Espresso As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Ciaran on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Niccolo De Masi is the CEO & Chairman @ Glu Mobile, one of the world’s hottest gaming companies with title including the current No 1 Game in the App Store with the Kendall and Kylie Game, Glu is also the maker of the Kim Kardashian game and the likes of Deer Hunter and many more. Prior to Glu, Niccolo was CEO at mobile entertainment company Hands On Mobile and before that Niccolo was the CEO at London listed mobile entertainment company, Monstermob Group Plc. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What does Niccolo make of the wildly unrealistic pricing applied to early stage startups today? What will result from this incredibly optimistic pricing? 2.) If Niccolo were a VC today, how would he respond to the impending implosion of the early stage startups? What are the best VCs currently doing and what can startups do to preserve as much value as possible? 3.) How central a role does first mover advantage become in a down turning market? Will we see large scale consolidation and if so what will the effects of this be? How can startups position themselves to be the consolidator not the consolidated? 4.) How do Glu pick the celebrities that are featured for their celebrity feature games? What are the KPI's? What are the requirements in terms of existing brand and audience for a celebrity game to be a success? 5.) Why are women better at establishing larger social following than men? What celebrities would Niccolo most like to have on Glu's platform who they currently do not have?   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Niccolo on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Christian Hernandez is the Co-Founder and Partner @ Whitestar Capital in London. Prior to co-founding White Star Capital, Christian worked at Facebook and led the international expansion of the company’s Business Development, Platform and Developer Network groups. He previously held leadership roles in the U.S. and Europe at Google and Microsoft and started his career in technology at MicroStrategy, a startup he joined prior to its 1999 IPO. Christian has worked closely with entrepreneurs and leading VCs and has been an active angel investor and advisor.  He represents White Star on the Boards of KeyMe, Glow Media, Bloglovin’ and Hole 19. Christian also serves as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Christian made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Having worked with the likes of Facebook, Google and Microsoft, how has Christian seen the ecosystem develop; for both the good and the bad? 3.) Moving to White Star specifically now, what is the thesis, investment mandate? Average cheque size, preferred sectors? Geography? Talking of geography, WSC has a transatlantic model with offices in both London and NYC, why is that? What are the benefits of having this spread? 4.) According to Mattermark, White Star have 38% of your portfolio in mobile, so what are Christians views on the evolution of mobile? How does he respond to Fred Wilson’s post about the mobile downtown and the difficulty in attaining and maintaining traction for mobile apps? What are Christian's thoughts on discovery? 5.) Where does Christian stand on the relationship between growth and revenue? Are there any cases where it can be beneficial to focus solely on growth? In today’s environment, with VCs moderating their valuations more, is it possible to raise on pure momentum growth? 6.) Christian recently wrote an article: ‘Hiring For The Future Of Your Company’, so what does he really mean by this? Is it not a little ironic coming from the VC scene, an inherently risky asset class who have a fundamental unwillingness to move away from the old hiring style of investment bank or consultancy, in many cases? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Christian's Fave Book: Physics of the Future Christian's Fave Blog: Medium, Nuzzel Christian's Most Serendipitous Investment: Keyme As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Christian on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Tom Tunguz is a Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, where he has invested in Axial, Dremio, Expensify, Electric Imp, Looker, and ThredUP. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. Tom is also the author of the world famous blog and newsletter which can be found at http://tomtunguz.com We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Tom made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What does the huge drop in late stage saas valuations mean for the early guys? Does Tom expect them to hunker down? Take more time? Spend less cash? 3.) In recent years with the likes of Zenefits, we have seen the rise of Free Saas Enabled Marketplaces, why have we seen this rise, what are the benefits of adopting this strategy? Does the lack of predictability and lower (30%) gross margin not generate concern towards the model? 4.) Where does Tom see room for real innovation in SaaS? Is Tom excited about mobile enterprise? 5.) Question from Javier Soltero @ Microsoft: How have you approached developing your 'personal' brand and how that has made an impact in your development as an investor? 6.) Question from Eric ver Ploeg (episode 70) and Tak Lo (Episode 37): Where does Tom generate the ideas for articles and what does the idea creation process look like?’ What does the scheduling look like to churn our such high quality content on a daily occurrence? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Tom's Fave Book: Narcissus and Goldmund Tom's Fave Blog: Saastr, David Skok Tom's Most Recent Investment: Dremio As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Tom on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Hiten Shah is one of the most prominent players in the data marketing industry having co-Founded both KissMetrics (raised $10m+ VC Funding) and Crazy Egg (bootstrapped), both wildly successful businesses serving some of the world's largest companies. Hiten is also an extremely successful angel investor with investments in the likes of Buffer, Mattermark and MessageMe (acquired by Yahoo.) In addition, Hiten is also a serial startup advisor having been an advisor with Linkedin, SlideShare and Wordpress' Automattic. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Hiten made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Why did Hiten decide to take VC funding for on startup and not the other? Did taking VC funding allow for much greater growth or make him less resourceful and creative? 3.) How have Hiten's entrepreneurial endeavours altered his attitude to investing? How does Hiten's large personal brand add to his investing style? 4.) Hiten has said before that he likes to ask founders 'what is their earliest most traumatic memory'? Why is that and what does Hiten learn from that? 5.) Question from Erik Torenberg @ ProductHunt: How does Hiten assess which startups he wants to spend time with as an advisor?  6.) Question from Ryan Hoover @ ProductHunt: What is the most counter-intuitive advice for this starting a company? Items Mentioned In Today’s Episode: Hiten’s Fave Book: The War of Art Hiten’s Fave Blog: 731 Users Reveal Why Slack Is So Addictive As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Hiten on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Jim Scheinman is the Founder and Managing Partner @ Maven Ventures, a leading seed stage consumer VC with investments in the likes of AngelList, WealthFront and Altspace. Prior to founding Maven, Jim was a pioneer in the early days of the social media revolution as Head of Business Development and Sales at the first social networking site, Friendster. However, in 2005, Jim left Friendster to join co-founders Michael and Xochi Birch to launch Bebo as the first employee and Board member. Bebo later went on to become a unicorn for Jim, however, that was not his only unicorn as he was also an investor in Tango ($bn valuation) and NBCi (IPOd for 6bn.) We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Jim made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What was it like being in the midst of the social media revolution as it was taking place? How does Jim view the social scene today? Why does Jim think there is skepticism to investing in social? 3.) On consumer mobile Fred Wilson stated: ‘doing anything in the consumer mobile space is super hard. i can’t think of many consumer mobile apps that have gained massive traction and sustained it. can you?' So why is the space so hard? Is it not a monopoly play with the dominant incumbents?  4.) How has Jim seen the consumer landscape develop over the last decade with the rise of mobile? How can you tackle the distribution challenges inherent within mobile? Does Jim agree that with mobile consumer product market fit is no longer enough to gain a large user base? 5.) What are the core elements of building a successful consumer business? What are the challenges? Is there a pareto’s principle on this, with 20% determining 80% of the returns? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jim's Fave Book: The Boys In The Boat  Jim's Fave Blog: Mattermark, Strictly VC, TechCrunch Jim's Most Recent Investment: HomeMade As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jim on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Gary Liu is the CEO @ Digg, the incredibly famous platform that allows users to find, read and share the most talked about stories on the internet. Prior to joining Digg, Gary was an early employee at Spotify holding numerous positions including, Head of Spotify Labs and Global Director of Ad Product Strategy. Gary joined Spotify from AOL, where he was the Director of Sales Strategy and Operations at Patch. Before joining AOL, Gary was a business and sales operations leader at Google and Clickable. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Gary made his entry into the world of tech and later became CEO at Digg? 2.) What were Gary's biggest takeaways from his time at Google and being an early employee at Spotfiy? How has he adapted those learnings to his role now at Digg? 3.) What really happened at Digg? What went wrong? Why did Digg not live up to the early hype of being the darling of the internet age? How are Digg evolving to change this? 4.) In the vastly competitive space of content creation and distribution, how do Digg stand out and differentiate themselves from the plethora of options available to consumers? 5.) How do Digg try to engage and unite the community through the commenting process without alienating people through the potential for malicious posts and trolling? 6.) How does a platform like Digg plan to monetize content with the ever disappearing ad dollar? Does it concern Gary or does he see potential in other avenues? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Gary's Fave Book: J.D Salinger, The Catcher and The Rye Gary's Fave Blog: Jon Russell, Asia Tech News Review As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Gary on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Adam Draper is a fourth generation venture capitalist and the Founder & CEO @ Boost VC, a specialised seed stage accelerator that invests in blockchain and virtual reality startups. Before starting Boost, Adam angel invested in 20 companies including Coinbase, Plangrid and Practice Fusion. During his angel investment period, Adam was also the Founder of Xpert Financial in his aim to revolutionise the financial markets for private companies. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Adam made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Why is Adam so bullish on the topics of bitcoin and virtual reality? 3.) What are the fundamental use cases for bitcoin and why have we not seen mass adoption on a global scale so far? What are the barriers to adoption? 4.) What is the investment attitude to the bitcoin and VR space? Does the volatility of the price in bitcoin affect the level of investment going into the sector? 5.) What would Adam like to see more of in the space? What is he most excited for and where does he see the most potential? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Adam's Fave Book: The Name Of The Wind Adam's Fave Blog: Mugglenet Adam's Most Recent Investment: Joystream As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Adam on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Tim Draper is the founding partner of leading venture capital firms Draper Associates and DFJ. Some of his Venture successes include Skype, Baidu, Tesla, Hotmail, Twitch.tv, and hundreds of others. Fun fact about Tim, it was his original suggestion to use viral marketing in web-based email to geometrically spread an Internet product to its market was instrumental to the successes of Hotmail, YahooMail, and Gmail and has been adopted as a standard marketing technique by thousands of businesses. His prominence is evident through his being named 100 most influential Harvard Alumni, and seven on the Forbes Midas List. He was named Always-On #1 top venture capital deal maker. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Tim made his way into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Having founded Draper Associates in 1985, how has Tim seen the investing landscape develop over time? 3.) Draper obviously invests across a variety of stage, but what is Tim's preferred stage? Where does he see the most opportunity for venture returns? Why? 4.) Of all the companies Tim has seen, which was the best pitch? Why? Which founder inspired Tim the most? Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently? 5.) What is DraperU? What are the plans for the future? What is the vision? Why did Tim choose to do a reality show in StartupU? Has it been a very different experience being the lead in a TV show compared to investing in startups? 6.)Why is behind Tim's immense belief in Bitcoin. Why is this? When did Tim realize the potential? How long will adoption take? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Tim's Fave Book: The Startup Game by William Draper, Michael Rothschild: Bionomics Tim's Most Recent Investment: Laurel and Wolf, Favor Delivery As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Tim on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Niccolo De Masi is the CEO & Chairman @ Glu Mobile, one of the world's hottest gaming companies with title including the current No 1 Game in the App Store with the Kendall and Kylie Game, Glu is also the maker of the Kim Kardashian game and the likes of Deer Hunter and many more. Prior to Glu, Niccolo was CEO at mobile entertainment company Hands On Mobile and before that Niccolo was the CEO at London listed mobile entertainment company, Monstermob Group Plc. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Niccolo came to be CEO at one of the world's hottest gaming companies, Glu Mobile? 2.) How did Niccolo make the transition from feature phone business to smartphone business with Glu so successfully? How did Glu's public market status affect the transition? 3.) How important is transparency within organisations as a leader, whether it be Founder or CEO? What are the important elements to communicate with your team and your investors? 4.) Why are private market valuations so misaligned with the public market? What will happen to the plethora of newly made unicorns?  5.) How does Niccolo source potential acquisition targets, what does he look for in, so called 'well valued assets'? What makes them well valued? 6.) What is Niccolo's turnaround strategy for his acquisition targets? How can Glu's platform elevate companies that are in distress? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Niccolo's Fave Book: The Rise and Fall Of The Great Powers  As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Niccolo on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Tyler Willis is probably one of the best angel investors around and has invested in seed stage companies that have gone on to raise from the likes of Index Ventures, Founders Fund, Khosla Ventures and others. Some of these investments include the likes of wildly popular ride sharing app Lyft, the incredible Patreon (now delivering 2m a month to creators) and Change.org which now has over 80m users. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here!   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Tyler made it into startups and the investing industry? 2.) Where does Tyler sit on investor specialisation? Is it best to have preferred sectors and round sizes? 3.) What elements are essential for Tyler pre investment and what can be tweaked later down the line? 4.) Question from Arielle Zuckerberg: How does Tyler evaluate customer acquisition so well? What is his approach to this with potential investments and portfolio companies? 5.) Why are people so negative on the future of innovation? Is Founders Fund's 'we expected flying cars and instead got 140 characters' fair? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Tyler's Fave Book: Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen Tyler's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Mattermark Daily As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Tyler on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Arielle Zuckerberg, Partner @ Kleiner Perkins Caufield and Byers. Arielle Zuckerberg joined KPCB in 2015 and focuses on early-stage investments in the firm’s digital practice as part of the venture team. Arielle joined Kleiner from Humin, where she led product for the company’s mobile apps. She started her career as a product manager by day and Hackathon host by night at Wildfire Interactive, Inc., which was acquired by Google in 2012. After the acquisition, Arielle worked as a product manager on social ads at Google. Outside of KPCB, Arielle has made several angel investments across the food tech and health sectors in the likes of Partender, Bitty Foods and The Ticket Fairy, just to name a few. We would like to say a special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in the show today and you can check out Mattermark Search here! In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Arielle made it into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What has the move been like from angel to VC? What theories and investment theses are adjustable? How doe the fiduciary responsibility to your LP's adjust your risk profile when investing? 3.) Questions from Tyler Willis: How does Arielle evaluate new products? How does Arielle learn and how does Ariele come down on the learning curve on new things so quickly (new investor to KPCB in ~2 years, for example). 4.) Arielle has now spent her first few months in venture, what have been the biggest surprises? Biggest challenges? What is Arielle's fave part and what is her least fave part? 5.) How does Arielle see the AI space now? Where does she see room for innovation? Is there anything Arielle is concerned about? 6.) Now when doing research for this interview I came across Arielle's New Years Resolution list from 2012! So what are your new years resolutions for 2016? What are the goals you are aiming for? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Arielle's Fave Book: The Symposium by Plato As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Arielle on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

This week’s episode is with Danielle Morill, co-founder and CEO of Mattermark. We dive into her Mattermark story — company building, fund-raising, scaling, etc -- and then we get into her own personal story — what it’s like to start a company with her husband, her personal/professional rituals, her intellectual heroes (Ayn Rand being one of them), and much more. Edited by @alexkontis Lavish Praise to @DanielleMorrill Constructive Criticism to @eriktorenberg

Kelly Peeler is the Founder and CEO of NextGenVest, the College Money Mentor for every student, helping students navigate the financial aid and student loan application process. While at Harvard, Kelly started Business Across Borders, a non profit that helps Iraqi students rebuild their own economy by starting their own companies and the International Women in Business Summit, bringing together top female college leaders. She was selected as one of the eight Kauffman Foundation Global Scholars, named by Goldman Sachs as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, and named a White House #StartTheSpark Ambassador. Her TED Talk is called "How to Change the World as a Millennial - Don't be Stupid with Money" and can be found here.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How Kelly made it into startups and what was the origin story for NextGenVest? 2.) How has the Fintech ecosystem evolved over the last 5 years? What does Kelly mean by Fintech 1.0 and the next phase of Fintech? 3.) How can emerging brands and in particular fintech brands build loyalty with the emerging millennial generation? What is the attention graph for millenials looking like? 4.) What does Kelly mean when she states a shift from financial organisation with Mint to financial efficiency today? 5.) What key determinants that have made Uber so successful can be used within Fintech startups to build the same trust and relationship? 6.) What is Kelly's view of startups taking a platform dependent approach? What are the benefits and what are the concerns? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Kelly's Fave Book: The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Kelly on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Hadley Harris is the Founding General Partner at Eniac Ventures, the first seed stage venture fund focussed exclusively on mobile. Eniac's investments include the likes of Soundcloud, Airbnb, Elevate and many more incredible mobile first companies. Before Eniac, Hadley was a two-time entrepreneur in the mobile space, as an executive at Vlingo, acquired by Nuance Communications for $225m and after Vlingo he became CMO of Thumb, which was acquired by Ypulse. Hadley also worked at Charles River Ventures where he spent time helping with mobile investments while looking for a young startup to join. As if his portfolio does not prove enough of what a seed stage investing legend he is, he was also named by Business Insider as 'New York's Best Early Stage Investor'.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:  1.) How Hadley made it into startups and the investing industry? 2.) What does an engineering degree provide when investing? Why did Eniac decide to focus solely on mobile? 2.) How has Hadley seen the NY venture and startup scene develop over the last years? Does an ecosystem need anchor companies to be great? Ex-Googlers, and ex-Facebook, ex-LinkedIn, ex-Sun, etc. are so important to the Bay Area ecosystem. What are New York's anchor companies? How has that affected the ecosystem? 3.) What is it like helping companies like Soundcloud and Airbnb scale when in hyper growth mode? At the seed level, how important a role does valuation play when determining whether to invest or not? 5.) Why is raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell? Has NYC, like London, seen a rise in the second seed round? 6.) What are Hadley's thoughts on VC founder alignment? What are the common characteristics of the best founders that Hadley has worked with and invested in? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Hadley's Fave Book: Freakonomics by Stephen Dubner Hadley's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Nuzzel Hadley's Most Recent Investment: Phhhoto: Instant Moving Pictures   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Hadley on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Martin Mignot is an early stage investor at Index Ventures where he specialises in SaaS, marketplaces and mobile. He is actively looking after Index's investments in Algolia, Blablacar, Capitaine Train, Deliveroo, Drivy, Rad, Swiftkey and TheFamily. He worked on 50+ transactions to date, including Assistly, Auxmoney, BaseCRM, Cloud.com, Codecademy, DimDim, Factual, Farfetch, Flipboard, Funding Circle, Gluster, HouseTrip, Just-Eat, Lookout, Nastygal, Notonthehighstreet, Onefinestay, PeoplePerHour, TrustPilot, Soluto and SoundCloud.  Prior to joining Index, Martin was in the TMT team at UBS Investment Bank and co-founded the beauty subscription business Boudoir Prive (acquired by Joliebox/Birchbox) and a student web radio service (www.rsp.fm).   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) Where did it all start for Martin? What is the Martin Mignot story? 2.) How does Martin view venture as a career vs coming into it later on? Why does Martin think venture is now a viable career from the offset? 3.) Does Martin agree with Sheryl Sandberg’s statement, it doesn’t matter where you sit, as long as you have a seat on the rocketship? How important is valuation for Martin when making the decision? 4.) How Martin goes about sourcing the latest and greatest startups from the European ecosystem? 5.) How does Martin evaluate founders and consider their ability to execute on their plan, prior to making the investment? 6.) Talking of difficulty for startups attaining funding, what are your thoughts on VC founder alignment? You have said to focus before on the business and not the team, unless exceptional cases prevail, this is very strange for me to hear. Why is it you have adopted this stance and why do you feel it is best? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Martin's Fave Book: I Have America Surrounded by Tim Leary Martin's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Ben Evans Newsletter   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Martin on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

We know that funding is critical for the life of a startup, and founders can opt to bootstrap or raise capital from VCs. Many do both as we saw in episode 8 when I interviewed Melody McCloskey. Then in episode 9, I spoke to Shruti Gandhi, the founding and managing partner at Array VC, a fund that invests in early stage startups. Shruti shared with us the different ways investors can help a company grow, plus tips for dealing with different types of investors, and how to dig into an investor’s thesis to see if they’re the right fit for you. In today’s episode, we’re going to expand beyond the mechanics of funding, and learn about a startup that’s helping investors and founders learn all they can to make decisions when it comes to investing.  Danielle Morrill is the CEO and co-founder of Mattermark, a data platform that keeps track of startups and their growth signals. Danielle began her startup career working Pelago, then went on to become the first employee at Twilio, and recently launched Mattermark.   Her goal is to make Mattermark the go-to source for information about startups and their investment potential.  Think of it as Bloomberg  for private companies.   In this episode you’ll learn: How Mattermark compiles information about private companies and help investors make informed investment decisions What Mattermark’s Startup Index and Growth Score are, and how they benefit startups How startup founders can benefit from Mattermark using it as a one-stop shop for finding the right investors How Mattermark helps startup discover potential customers

Jeff Seibert is an experienced serial-entrepreneur and currently Senior Director of Product at Twitter. Previously, Seibert was the CEO of Crashlytics, which he co-founded in 2011 with Wayne Chang. Crashlytics delivered crash analysis tools for iOS and Android apps via an SDK that reached 300 Million mobile devices worldwide. Crashlytics was acquired by Twitter in 2013 for $259m. In 2007, Seibert co-founded Increo and served as its COO and lead architect until its acquisition by Box in August of 2009. He subsequently oversaw the integration of Increo’s document preview and annotation technologies into the company's cloud-based content platform. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How Jeff made his move into the wonderful world of tech?  Today we are going to break up your story into 3 chapters: 1.) Acquisition by Box:  What was it like going to Sand Hill Road to raise in 2009? How much runway would Jeff advise for a startup and how can companies know whether a strategic acquisition is optimal or whether they should continue building with a further round? Jeff has spoke before about being overly transparent with this team about the acquisition. What are the problems with being overly transparent and how can you balance the two?  2.) Acquired by Twitter: At what point did Jeff transition to thinking the acquisition by Twitter would be a beneficial and viable and why? A reason for Jeff being favourable to the acquisition was Twitter's agreement of continued investment in the space. How can founders negotiate and ensure that this occurs with their acquisition? One of the mistakes stated about the acquisition by Twitter was the reporting structure. How can founders ensure that they are speaking to the VPs of engineering, CEOs etc and attain the support they need?  3.) Life at Twitter:  How life is following the acquisition? What are Jeff's plans for the future as Senior Director of Product at Twitter?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Jeff' Fave Book: How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie Jeff's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Daring Fireball   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Jeff on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

In this interview, Danielle Morrill reveals what it was like pivoting to work on Mattermark. We then explore why founders should take a long term approach and be committed to an idea. We also delve into acquiring customers, pricing and raising money effectively.

Bryan Johnson is an entrepreneur and investor. He is the founder of OS Fund and Braintree, the latter of which was bought by eBay in 2013 for $800 million in cash. Bryan launched OS Fund in 2014 with $100 million of his personal capital to support inventors and scientists who aim to benefit humanity. His investments include endeavors to extend healthy human life to 100+ (Human Longevity), replicate the human visual cortex (Vicarious), mine an asteroid (Planetary Resources), reinvent transportation (Matternet), and reimagine food (Hampton Creek), among others. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Bryan made his start in the world of tech and how he has come to the OS fund today? 2.) What was the pivotal moment in Bryan's career? When was the turning point? What was was the hardest part of the entrepreneurial journey and how did Bryan conquer it? 3.) What is the main motivation behind the OS fund? Which areas does Bryan most want to solve and where does he see significant market opportunities? 4.) Does the longevity of return to Bryan's exits concern him? Most investments exit with 10 years, human lifespan startups take a little longer! What sort of time frame does Bryan have in mind when investing in these companies? 5.) What does Bryan really perceive synthetic biology to mean? Are we seeing improvements in this sector? 6.) The OS Fund have recently released a white paper detailing extensively their process for investing? Why did Bryan decide on this open source style of investing? 7.) What would Bryan like to see more of? Where does Bryan see a lot of people investing that he thinks is a mistake?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Bryan's Fave Book: Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage to the Antarctic Bryan's Most Recent Investment: Ginkgo Bioworks   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Bryan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

James Beshara is the Co-Founder @ Tilt the micro-crowdfunding platform that allows you to receive funding from friends—changing the way collaborative funding works. Tilt has raised $37 million from 3 rounds of funding from the likes of Andreesen, SV Angel, Alexis Ohanian, Naval Ravikant and Sean Parker just to name a few. As for James Before co-founding Tilt, he studied Development Economics as an undergrad and then went on to build dvelo.org, a site for crowdfunding loans and donations to poverty-alleviation organizations in developing countries. In order to vote for who you think will win James and Harry's beer pong match, head over to @twentyminutevc on Twitter and vote using our poll. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) What were the origins of Tilt? How did James go from a micro loans collector in Africa to founder of one of SF's hottest startups? 2.) What does James make of the current crowdfunding landscape? What will it take for crowdfunding to go mass market? 3.) What are Tilt doing to make crowdfunding more bite sized and consumer friendly? How important is the on boarding process for Tilt? How are Tilt approaching customer retention? What are James' targets for the year ahead with Tilt? 4.) With investors like Andreesen, SV Angel, Naval Ravikant, Sean Parker just to name a few, what the investment journey like? I heard the first funding took 6-8 months and the series A took 6 days with a16z. What changed to turn it around? 5.) On PH LIVE James stated that founding a company is a destination less journey and although admirable I struggle with that from the investors perspective. How did James sell a startup in a pitch with no exit strategy? 6.) What was it that attracted James to the investors that he chose? What value add was James most attracted to? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: James' Fave Book: 100 Years of Solitude, The Power Of Now   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and James on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

James Cameron is an early stage investor at Accel where he focuses on enterprise software, security, fintech and marketplace businesses. Prior to joining Accel, he founded and ran BipSync, a SaaS-based research platform for investment management. James also spent time on the tech banking team at Morgan Stanley and as a corporate lawyer at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London, Shanghai and Hong Kong.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How James made his way into the world of startups and investing? 2.) How does James go about finding the needles in the haystack in the sea of amazing startups? Do James use data to find great companies? Do you think this will be a continuing trend, in terms of algorithmic deal sourcing? 3.) What cool stuff has James been seeing in the enterprise software and security sector? Does James think there are any underhyped or overhyped segments of these markets? 4.) One very dominant eco system for tech in general but specifically security is Israel, how do the UK and Israeli ecosystems differ? Is there anything we can do in the UK to harness the spirit encapsulated by the Israeli ecosystem? 5.) What are the catalysts or drivers of these communities’ growth? Do you agree with Marc Andreesen in saying we shouldn't think about building "The Silicon Valley of X" because the components that make up SV aren't repeatable and areas should instead specialize on specific verticals, like bitcoin or security. What do you think about that concept? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: James' Fave Book: Crossing The Chasm  James' Fave Blog or Newsletter: Adrian Colyer: The Morning Paper James' Most Recent Investment: Doctolib   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and James on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Fred Destin is General Partner at Accel in London where he focuses on consumer and software investments. He is the lead investor and board member at Deliveroo, Pillpack (featured in ep: 89 with Eric Paley) and KNC. Prior to Accel, he was a partner at Atlas Venture where he worked with with companies like Zoopla (public), Secret Escapes, Integral Ad Science, Dailymotion (acquired by Orange), PriceMinister (acquired by Rakuten) and others. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Fred made his way into the world of startups and investing? 2.) What is it like investing in rocketships like Deliveroo and PillPack? 3.) What are the reasons most startups fail at the seed stage? What are the most common reasons that founders get fired? 4.) Why does Fred believe raising a Series B so tough? Is it the embodiment of the funding barbell? 5.) What are Fred's thoughts on VC founder alignment? Why does Fred deliberately cause tension between a founder prior to making an investment? In what form does this take? 6.) When I asked Fred for topics he was interested in, he gave me a list and one of them, I have never had suggested before and it is ‘Why are VC’s so schizo’? What does Fred mean? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Fred's Fave Book:  Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master & Margarita Fred's Fave Blog or Newsletter: The Atlantic, Tech.eu Fred's Most Recent Investment: Deliveroo   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Fred on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Kate Shillo is Director @ Galvanize Ventures, a prolific seed fund which acts as the the investment arm of Galvanize -- a collection of "tech campuses" that offer coworking space and educational programs in order to encourage continuous learning and helping others to grow. within Galvanize, the organization focused on continuous learning and helping others to grow. To date Galvanize ventures have made an astonishing 48 investments in 2 years. Prior to Galvanize, Kate helped Ken Lerer launch Lerer Ventures, now called Lerer Hippeau Ventures due to the addition of Eric Hippeau who was only the show only recently, there Kate lead the investments in the likes of Venmo and Paperless Post.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How Kate made her way into the world of startups and investing? 2.) What were the biggest takeaways from Kate's time at Lerer Hippeau Ventures and working with the amazing Ken Lerer? 3.) What was it about Galvanize that made Kate  leave LHV and Kate provides a brief synopsis on Galvanize Ventures? Sectors? Stage? Geography? 4.) With 42 investments since Feb 2014. What is the strategy at Galvanize? Galvanize's sector weighting is largest in mobile, how does Kate view the space and how would Kate respond to the likes of Fred Wilson stating consumer mobile is very difficult with difficult customer acquisition and then even harder, customer retention? 5.) How has the process been for Kate in establishing the fund? What are Kate and Galvanize's key differentiators to the sea of other NYC seed funds? How does Kate  approach deal sourcing at Galvanize? If investing outside the Galvanize community, what channels are the preferred channels? 6.) Why is Kate so excited about hardware? Where does Kate see the future of IOT going? Is crowdfunding an option for hardware startups? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Kate's Fave Book: The God of Small Things Kate's Fave Mobile Apps: Slack, Sunrise Calendar, Moments, TwoDots, Panna, Wildcard Kate's Fave Blog or Newsletter: AVC, Ben Evans Kate's Most Recent Investment: Msg.ai   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Kate on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

David Tisch is the Managing Partner of BoxGroup, one of New York most prolific seed investors with investments in over 120 seed-stage technology companies including Vine, Sunrise Calendar, Warby Parker, Harry’s, Oscar, Meerkat, and Zady. As of 2014, David is also the Co-Founder of Spring, an app that allows the worlds best brands to sell directly to consumers on mobile, with his brother Alan who is the CEO. Prior to Box and Spring, David co-founded TechStars NYC, and was named to NYC Mayor Bloomberg’s Advisory Council on Technology.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn:  1.) How David made his way into the world of startups and investing? 2.) Having started Box in 2008, how has David seen the NY venture and startup scene develop over the last years? Matt Hartman @ Betaworks: how has that impacted the type of investments you make? Has it changed your thesis, theme, or any other aspect of how you invest? Kanyi Maqubela @ Collaborative: Does an ecosystem need anchor companies to be great? What are New York's anchor companies? 3.) What is the vision with Box? Is this a fund that lasts through the ages? Last year I heard you made 3 hires, is this a sign of a desire to create the NYC fund? At Box you have a weighting towards mobile consumer tech, how do you respond to Fred Wilson’s post about the mobile downtown and the difficulty in attaining and maintating traction for mobile apps? 4.) What was the motivation behind moving into the world of entrepreneurship with Spring? What aspects of Alan's and Box as a product has contributed to it’s massive success?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: David's Fave Productivity Tools: Captio  David's Most Recent Investment: Nucleus: The Smart Home Wireless Intercom   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and David on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Ivan Mazour is a serial entrepreneur, investor and author. He is the CEO and Founder of Ometria - a predictive analytics and marketing platform built specifically for retailers, letting them use data to increase revenues and provide an improved customer experience. Alongside this main role, he is also the Founding Partner of Innova Kapital - an early stage VC firm investing in UK-based technology startups, including companies like YPlan and organisations like Entrepreneur First. Ivan also writes a popular blog called “A Young Entrepreneur in London”.   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    Click To Play   In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Ivan progressed from making 30+ investments to founding one of Europe's hottest startups? 2.) Considering Ivan's recent fundraising, what does Ivan think of the recent funding environment and landscape? How was it raising venture funding now? 3.) What was the difference between raising an angel round to raising a VC round? Did Ivan have to adapt your pitch accordingly? Do they have differing desires and expectations? 4.) Having raised both VC and angel money recently for Ometria, how has that led Ivan to view his own investing style? Is there anything Ivan looks for or at differently now he has experienced fundraising from the other side? 5.) What have been the hardest and most challenging aspects of growing Ometria? How did Ivan overcome them? 6.) Taking futuristically now on the sector of e-commerce, where does Ivan see the future of technology integrating with retail? Will we see an end to bricks and mortar stores?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Ivan's Fave Book: Rich Dad, Poor Dad & How To Win Friends And Influence People Ivan's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Saastr Ivan's Fave Productivity Tools: ToDoist, Google Keep, Google Hangouts   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Ivan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!    

Philipp Moehring is Head of AngelList Europe and their first European hire, a role he has had since Jan 2014. Whilst being Head of AngelList Europe, he is also Venture Partner for 500 Startups and prior to 500 and AngelList, Philipp was a Principal at Seedcamp and has been involved in more than 100 startups since becoming an investor. For anyone looking to join an AngelList syndicate, absolutely check out Philipp’s here!   A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Philipp made it into startups and investing with AngelList and now 500? 2.) In a recent post Philipp said that management consulting, investment banking and accounting were the worst backgrounds for VCs. Why do you think this and where would you like to see the new breed of VCs emerging from? 3.) Considering your work with AngelList, how do you think the US investing scene differs from the European? Why are we seeing this sudden influx of US capital into European markets? What is driving this influx? 4.) The recent £400m that AngelList received from CSC, Philipp tells us a little more about this and what it means for European companies? 5.) How does Philipp's role with 500 integrate with the AngelList model? How does Philipp split the time? Is Philipp ever concerned that with the dominance of syndicates in the years to come, VCs will become non existent? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Philipp's Fave Book: Snow crash, Follow Philipp on GoodReads Here Philipp's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Brad Feld's: Feld Thoughts Philipp's Biggest Productivity Tips: SelfControl (Mac)   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Philipp on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Morten Lund, best know for his seed investment in Skype, he has also founded and co-invested in more than 100 startups including the likes of Airhelp who you might recognize as we interviewed their CEO Nicolas Michaelsen in episode check 32, as well as Bullguard, Maxthon and many more. In today’s incredible interview we talk about the story behind his skype investment, how he went from $150m to bankruptcy moving to the present both with his work with Coders Trust helping coders in developing countries to improve their lives to his rocketship journey with one of the world’s most exciting fintech companies in Tradeshift, who have raised a total of over $200m. If you love today's episode, simply click here and share the love! A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Morten got into the technology industry and the world of investing? 2.) How did Morten's investment in Skype come about? How did Morten deal with the bankruptcy and how it changed him as a person? 3.) How does Morten view the current state of European fintech? Where are the significant market opportunities that are yet to be exploited? 4.) Following Morten bankruptcy, he only works with "really cool people". So what makes Morten like someone and believe in them? 5.) How did TradeShift come about from Morten's basement? What was the a-ha moment? What has driven the immense success with over $200m invested? What is the future for the company and the future of money? 6.) Looking forward, what is Morten's main goal and aspiration and how does he plan on attaining it? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Morten's Fave Book: Shantaram Morten's Fave Blog or Newsletter: The Economist Morten's Most Recent Investment: Hippocorn   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Morten on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Richard Hanson is CEO and co-founder of HiringScreen, where rocket science meets recruitment. Founded in Jan 2015 in Hong Kong, HiringScreen has raised over $800,000 from a number of investors with plans to expand into the Philippines and Indonesia. Before founding HiringScreen, Richard was an award winning headhunter and recruitment consultancy owner. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What were the origins of Hiring Screen? What was the a-ha moment for Richard? 2.) What advice would Richard give to founders contemplating entering accelerators? What should they look for and why should they be wary of? 3.) Why does Richard believe that a startup with multiple founders is more beneficial than single founder startups? What would he suggest someone looking to find a co-founder is to do? 4.) Why did Richard start Hiring Screen in Hong Kong? What are Richard's views on Asia's emerging tech scene? What advice would Richard give to a founder deciding where to start a startup? 5.) What has been the most challenging element of growing Hiring Screen? How did Richard overcome it and alter the company from there? 6.) If Richard were to found Hiring Screen again, what would he do differently? Is there anything he wishes he had known before the process?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Richard's Fave Book: The Alliance by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh Richard's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Calacanis, Feld Thoughts   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Richard on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!    Free Ebook: How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by over 100% I would like to say a huge thank you to our sponsor for today's show: LoyaltyBay. Have you ever wished more of your website visitors would convert into a sale, signup or referral? If so, you need Loyalty Bay. With their saas conversion optimizer tool they increase any conversion metric by offering potential customers a choice of personalised rewards to get them to convert. They work with large enterprises like Virgin Media through to startups and have increased conversions on average by over 100%. Free 30 day trial at www.loyaltybay.co.uk  

Sitar Teli is Managing Partner at Connect Ventures and has been a venture capitalist for eight years, focusing on early-stage investments in both consumer and B2B companies. Previously with Doughty Hanson Technology Ventures, where she led their Series A round in SoundCloud, she has experience with content, gaming and ecommerce startups. Sitar has a dual degree in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from Duke University. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!     In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How did Sitar make her way into the wonderful world of VC?   2.) How does Sitar approach the difficult task of saying no to entrepreneurs? What is the framework she has adopted over her 8 years in venture? 3.) There are a large amount of sources of capital for business in the seed stage, why did Sitar believe this was the stage with the most opportunity? Is too much capital chasing too few deals? 4.) With the increasing prominence of crowdfunding, is it a viable alternative to VC? Is Sitar concerned that quality deal flow is being lost to Crowdfunding? 5.) What is driving the growth of the European tech startup scene? 6.) Prior to making investments such as that of Citymapper, one obviously has to look at the team and the product. So what do you look for in a founder and what to you makes a great product?    Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sitar's Fave Book: The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay Sitar's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Benedict Evans Newsletter Sitar's Fave Apps: Outlook, Sunrise, Citymapper Sitar's Most Recent Investment: Knyttan   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Sitar on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!      Free Ebook: How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by over 100%   Have you ever wished more of your website visitors would convert into a sale, signup or referral? If so, you need Loyalty Bay. With their saas conversion optimizer tool they increase any conversion metric by offering potential customers a choice of personalised rewards to get them to convert. They work with large enterprises like Virgin Media through to startups and have increased conversions on average by over 100%. Free 30 day trial at www.loyaltybay.co.uk

Boris Wertz is one of the top tech early-stage investors in North America and the founding partner of Version One.  He is also a board partner with Andreessen Horowitz. Before becoming an investor, Boris was the COO of AbeBooks.com which sold to Amazon in 2008. He was responsible for marketing, business development, product, customer service and international operations – leading a team of 60 people. In 2005, he was named the Pacific Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!      In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How did Boris make his way into the wonderful world of VC? 2.) Why have we seen a mass re-emergence of the marketplace model now? 3.) What was the objective in writing Version One’s book, A Guide To Marketplaces? What did Boris feel the public needed to know that was not already known? 4.) For an entrepreneur looking to move into the marketplace sector, how can they select the right market, are there any essential components they must consider? 5.) The book discusses the benefits of both direct and indirect network effects for marketplaces but in the early days what should startups focus on; demand or supply? How should they go about addressing this element? 6.) What are the core required elements of scaling a marketplace?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Boris's Fave Book: Hard Things About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz Boris's Fave Blog or Newsletter: AVC by Fred Wilson  Boris's Most Recent Investment: Headout   To check out The Two Minute Takeaway from today's show, click here!   As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Boris on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!    Free Ebook: How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by over 100%   Have you ever wished more of your website visitors would convert into a sale, signup or referral? If so, you need Loyalty Bay. With their saas conversion optimizer tool they increase any conversion metric by offering potential customers a choice of personalised rewards to get them to convert. They work with large enterprises like Virgin Media through to startups and have increased conversions on average by over 100%. Free 30 day trial at www.loyaltybay.co.uk  

Eric Hippeau is a Managing Partner at Lerer Hippeau Ventures. He is the chairman of RebelMouse and co-founder of NowThis Media. Previously, Eric was the Chief Executive Officer of The Huffington Post and a Special Partner at Softbank Capital, where he served as Managing Partner. Prior to Softbank Capital, Eric was Chairman and CEO of Ziff-Davis, which was the largest media company serving the technology sector. He serves on the Board of various private and public companies, including Buzzed & Starwood Hotels and Resorts. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn:   1.) How did Eric make his way into the world of tech and venture? 2.) Question from Eric Paley: How does Eric compare the role of VC to the role of operator and does Eric think each draws on the same skills and strengths?  3.) What does Eric think makes a great VC and what makes a great operator? Are there any commonalities in the individuals he has come across? 4.) Eric reveals the best pitches he has seen and what made them so effective and flips the coin to discuss the worst pitches and what not to do when pitching a VC? 5.) Eric has made many investments in adtech and content, an area most VCs are hesitant of. So why are VCs hesitant of this space and why does Eric think he and Ken have been able to master it and produce great returns? 6.) With Eric's experience as CEO at Huffington Post, how does Eric view the changes to the media landscape and what are his predictions and concerns for the next few years?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Eric's Fave Book: The Lord of The Rings Eric's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Strictly VC, Dan Primack: Termsheet Eric's Most Recent Investment: The Drone Racing League As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Eric on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!    Free Ebook: How to boost your Conversion Rate Optimization (CRO) by over 100%   Have you ever wanted to know who someone is simply from an email address? With Loyalty Bay's Super Users product now you can. Simply input an email address and it will go off and find publicly available profile information i.e. Linkedin, Facebook, Twitter etc for that email address. This is incredibly powerful in building a richer data profile on your users for marketers and business development people alike. Free 30 day Trial. Check out www.loyaltybay.co.uk      

Daniel van Binsbergen is CEO and co-founder of Lexoo, an online marketplace that connects businesses with lawyers. Founded in 2014 in London, Lexoo has raised over $1.7M from a number of investors, including Forward Partners. Before founding Lexoo, Daniel was a senior associate at an international law firm, working in London and Amsterdam. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data displayed in today's show and you can find out more about Mattermark here!    In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) What were the origins of Lexoo? What was the a-ha moment for Daniel? 2.) Was Daniel nervous about leaving the security of the legal profession to found a startup? What does Daniel advise people who want to make the leap but are not sure if it is worth risking everything? 3.) Why is there a divergence between the advancement of tech and the lacking progression of the legal space? 4.) Why did Daniel start Lexoo in a completely no tech, manual way? How was that? What would Daniel advise fellow founders who do not have the technical skills to build their idea? 5.) How did Daniel meet his investors? How did he find the fundraising experience? What was the challenging and surprising elements of the journey? 6.) If Daniel were to found Lexoo again, what would he do differently? Is there anything he wishes he had known before the process?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Daniel's Fave Book: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick  Daniel's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Mattermark, Seth Godin, James Altucher Daniel's Must Have Software: Sunrise, Trello As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Daniel on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Matthew is an Investor at Forward Partners: a super-early stage London VC. Forward Partners invests in solo-founders, idea stage and seed stage eCommerce, marketplace and related software businesses providing them with funding, office space and the support of an expert in-house engineering, product and growth team. Before becoming a VC, Matthew had varying degrees of success (!) with retail and security tech start-ups. He began his career in Sales, Structuring and Trading at investment banks. He holds a BA in Economics and Politics and an MBA from SDA Bocconi. A huge thank you to Mattermark for all the data discussed in today's show and you can find them here!  CLICK TO PLAY In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Matt make his way into the world of VC? What would he advise someone wanting to get into the industry? 2.) How does Forward Partners differentiate themselves in such a sea of seed funds? What is unique about their model? 3.) What are the key activities that entrepreneurs can do to build a successful business, ready for Series A? What would Matt advise someone who has an idea but no technical skills? 4.) What are the nuances and complexities of the early stage funding environment? How do Forward approach and overcome them? Are there any common misconceptions? 5.) What are the similarities and differences between the US and the UK with regards to start-up attractiveness? Where would Matt choose to found his startup if he were a founder? 6.) Considering YC’s recent intake, where does Matt see growth areas in consumer facing startups? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Matthew's Fave Book:  Mikhail Bulgakov: The Master & Margarita Matthew's Fave Newsletter: Mattermark Daily, The Equity Kicker, First Round Review Matthew's Most Recent Investment: Live Better With As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Matthew on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Dharmesh Raithatha is the Product Partner at Forward Partners. He works with idea stage investments on product, growth and business strategy. He has a passion for User Research, Lean UX and using data to inform decision making. Dharmesh has over 15 years in product roles for companies like Mind Candy and the BBC. He has founded 2 startups and successfully sold one. A special thank you to Mattermark for providing all the data used in today's episode and can find out more about Mattermark here!  In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did Dharmesh make his way into the world of VC? 2.) How has Dharmesh's startup driven past, altered his investment pattern? What are the benefits and weaknesses to this kind of operational experience? 3.) At Forward there Open Office Hours where people come and share ideas, so what is it about the ideas you like that make them good, what makes the bad ones bad? 4.) What are Dharmesh's tips or advice for idea creation and brainstorming? 5.) What would Dharmesh advice non-technical people looking to found a tech startup? 6.) What does Dharmesh believe makes a great founder? Has he seen any commonalities in the great founders he has worked with? 7.) What should teams focus on in the first 100 days of their startup? What is the 20% that produces 80% of the results? Items Mentioned In Today's Show: Dharmesh's Fave Book:  How To Create A Product Customers Love by Marty Cagan Dharmesh's Fave Newsletter: Silicon Valley Product Group Dharmesh's Most Recent Investment: The Gifting Company As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Dharmesh on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!   I would like to say a huge thank you to our sponsor for today's show: LoyaltyBay. Have you ever wished more of your website visitors would convert into a sale, signup or referral? If so, you need Loyalty Bay. With their saas conversion optimizer tool they increase any conversion metric by offering potential customers a choice of personalised rewards to get them to convert. They work with large enterprises like Virgin Media through to startups and have increased conversions on average by over 100%. Free 30 day trial at www.loyaltybay.co.uk  

Ryan Hoover is the Founder and CEO @ ProductHunt, winner of TechCrunch "Best New Startup 2014". ProductHunt is a community of people sharing, upvoting, and geeking out about new technology products, games, and books. Before Product Hunt, Ryan was an EIR at Tradecraft and Director of Product at PlayHaven. As a writer, Ryan has contributed to Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal and written many essays, including features for TechCrunch, Forbes, Pando, Fast Company, and The Next Web. He writes about startup trends, product designs, and production growth on his blog, ryanhoover.me. I would like to thank Mattermark for providing all the data and analysis for this interview and you can check them out here! CLICK TO PLAY In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did ProductHunt get started and what was the a-ha moment for Ryan in the founding of ProductHunt? 2.) PH has gone from a newsletter to friends to a a16z backed startup with employees around the globe. What have been the drivers of PH's success? 3.) PH harness the crowd for feedback on everything from designs to features. Why does Ryan prefer this open sourced feedback approach? What are the benefits? What would Ryan suggest to founders looking to adopt a similar feedback style? 4.) Question from Matt Hartman at Betaworks: Considering Ryan's work with Nir Eyal on Hooked, are there elements of Hooked that Ryan baked into the infrastructure of PH and what were they? 5.) How has Ryan created such a close and intimate relationship with his audience? What are the tools and strategies that Ryan uses to build that community? What advice does Ryan give for people looking to network and make a community around them? 6.) Where does Ryan see PH in 5 years time? What is his vision for the PH platform? How does a platform such as ProductHunt plan to monetise?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Ryan's Fave Book: The Art of Game Design: A Book Of Lenses Ryan's Fave Podcasts: TWIST by Jason Calacanis, Startup: Gimlet Media, Mystery Show: Gimlet Media As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Ryan on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

David Teten is a Partner at ff Venture Capital and is also Founder and Chairman of Harvard Business School Alumni Angels of Greater New York, the largest angel group in New York. David is currently co-leading the first study on “how to disrupt the investing industry.”  He led the first-ever study of best practices of venture capital and private equity funds in originating new deals (#1 all time most-read study in the Journal of Private Equity) and the first-ever study of VCs in creating portfolio company value.  He has published in Harvard Business Review, Institutional Investor, and other leading publications. David's blog is one of the most extensive and actionable blogs there is, seriously you have to check it out and it can be found at teten.com. I would like to thank Mattermark for providing all the data and analysis for this interview and you can check them out here! CLICK TO PLAY In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How did David make the move into the world of vc and technology? 2.) What is David's approach to deal sourcing? What strategies would he recommend to other VCs to find the best startups and entrepreneurs? 3.) What does David think are the most effective ways that VC and PE funds are helping to increase portfolio company value? 4.) How should an entrepreneur evaluate how value-added a VC can be? Are there any signs that one VC has more value add than another? 5.) Is VC moving to the operational model in terms of headcount, with the moves of firms like a16z who provide extensive services as additional value add? 5.) Why did David and ff invest in Indiegogo? Is it not an alternative finance method that is competing with VC? Has David notice a loss in deal flow to AngelList?   Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: David's Fave Book: Edward Tufte: Graphical Communication of Quantitative Data David's Fave Blog: PandoDaily David's Most Recent Investment: Skycatch As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and David on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

Kanyi Maqubela is a Partner at Collaborative Fund, who have made investments in AngelList, CodeAcademy, AltSchool, Reddit, Task Rabbit just to name a few. On a more personal note, and a little background on Kanyi, he is originally from Johannesburg South Africa, and was a founding employee at Doostang, a venture-backed peer-to-peer career marketplace, he attended Stanford University and as Kanyi states his most meaningful and difficult work done so far is his work on the Obama Campaign in 2008. You can checkout Kanyi's blog here! I would like to thank Mattermark for providing all the data and analysis for this interview and you can check them out here! CLICK TO PLAY In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Kanyi made the move into VC and tech from South Africa? 2.) Was the decision to leave Stanford tough? Why would Kanyi advise others to say in school? What was so tough about the startup experience for Kanyi? 3.) What is the investing thesis at Collaborative Fund? What stage do you prefer? Average cheque size? Sector preference? Does specializing in themes result in higher returns? 4.) How is it being such a young partner in the industry? What are the challenges Kanyi has face? Does Kanyi think his age acts as a disadvantage when it comes to attracting older founders? 5.) What are Kanyi's personal marketing strategies that he uses to establish his own personal brand? What platforms are most effective? 6.) How effective does Kanyi find demo days and hackathons as source of deal flow? Are there any tips Kanyi would suggest to maximise their utility? What is Collaborative's most effective form of deal sourcing today? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Kanyi's Fave Book: The Brothers Karamazov Kanyi's Most Recent Investment: CircleUp As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Kanyi on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!  

It goes without saying that customers are absolutely essential to the success of any business, but to get to the customers you first have to understand where your product fits into the marketplace. So many new ventures, however, don't think about this in depth until after launch. Jerrod Bailey, who has worked in venture-backed technology start-ups for 15 years and today is a partner and VP of business development at Tallwave, said there are three main “levers” startups need to activate prior to launch. Finding Product Market Fit Jerrod said a common path many ventures follow is they'll think about the product then go develop it. Somewhere along that path they'll think about the user experience then have a product they can launch. Branding doesn't come into play until launch time. “They'll launch with a name and logo, then ask, ‘Who is our buyer, really?,'” Jerrod said. “Then they'll start thinking in depth and detail about who their buyer is and what kind of position they want in the market to go after that buyer.” It's not until that point that most startups begin to think about how to reach their true buyers and create the systems to go after them. All of this should really be done during the build - in parallel. Jerrold said there are really three key things startups should be thinking about while they are building their product: 1. Product. What can the product itself do to drive business? What features can be included to drive virality? “Does it have any viral components? Can my software let users share things on social and get the word out? There's any number of things a product can do to inherently share itself,” Jerrod said. “But there are three major categories of features that I'm worried about during a product's development.” Activation: What will drive users to download, sign-up, create a login, complete a first task, etc. Focus on features and UX principles that either drive activation or eliminate barriers to activation. For instance, an activation feature of Instagram is the ability to share across multiple social networks. When your Facebook or Twitter friends see your post originated from Instagram, they are more likely to activate with the platform. Engagement: You have to be able to show and prove users are willing to engage with your product over time. You will need to track Daily Active Usage (DAU) and Monthly Active Usage (MAU). Regular engagement is key. This includes use of push notifications, email and other ways of bringing them back to the app. An example of this is Instagram's “core loop” – take a photo, apply a filter, add a comment, share. It's simple and effective. Retention: You have to prove users want to return over the long term. If 100 users engage, but 99 disappear after a month, you may not be around long. Instagram does effectively by showing you your follower count. Once you build it up, you are reluctant to quit after investing so much to grow that. 2. Tools. The next important thing a startup needs to be thinking about is creating a tool stack for sales and marketing. “When you're a startup, your tool stack is probably going to include things like a CRM, but it's probably not going to be Salesforce,” Jerrod said. “As I'm collecting email addresses and users as I grow, I want to have a CRM in place so I don't lose all of those people, so I might have a light weight CRM in place.” Jerrod mentioned other tools for the tech stack should include an email system like Mailchimp and retargeting, which will allow you to cookie people as they visit the landing page you've created, then you can push ads to them as they browse online. From there you might begin to experiment with acquisition methods. “Sometimes I'll take my landing page and deploy to places like BetaList and other places that attract early adopters to join betas,” he said. “I might also run small, paid ad experiments to see if I can attract certain users.” Jerrod said this allows him to learn what messaging works well, what questions people have, and start to build relationships. “We've noticed that the original assumptions coming into building a company, as soon as you start engaging users and trying to get something from them like an email, you learn what's true about your assumptions and what's not,” he said. “And we pivoted whole businesses just looking at the interaction with the users.” 3. Branding. Finally it's essential startups think about branding as they're building. For more on this, see last week's post, “How to Use Storytelling to Create a Game-Changer Company.” Jerrod's tool picks: Salestools.io Hubspot's free CRM for startups Mailchimp Outreach.io Blockspring Biz Hack: Mattermark crawls the web and compiles massive lists of companies in specific industries based on your search. You can create highly targeted and narrowed list based on revenue, geography, industry specific, etc. Mattermark will compile the list of companies with contact information. Next week I'm in the Lab with Ed Borromeo, COO at Tallwave. That will be the fourth and final episode with the Tallwave team. Since the first three focused on what entrepreneurs need to do to have a successful launch, in this episode I talk with Ed about when entrepreneurs should start thinking about outsourcing and how to do it. He also gives a few productivity hacks. So that will be a nice way to round things up. So be sure to tune in. Until then, have a prosperous week.

Danielle Morrill, CEO of Mattermark -- In this episode, Danielle shares her company's origin story, including how they created an addicting, ubiquitous newsletter read by VCs and entrepreneurs everywhere. You'll also hear... 1) Why a TV show inspired Danielle to launch a media company, not software startup, and why she was disillusioned with Silicon Valley. 2) The domino effect of thinking and operating that way at first and how this led to the SaaS startup success that is Mattermark today. 3) Why Danielle would outright argue with almost every VC she called to sell early on in the company's history.    Follow Danielle @DanielleMorrill and subscribe to the Mattermark Daily newsletter at mattermark.com/app/newsletter Let me know what you think of the show -- tweet me (Jay Acunzo) @jayacunzo

Danielle Morrill, CEO and Co-Founder of Mattermark, Guests on this episode of The SaaS Revolution Show. Providing Great Insights on Startups, Mattermark and Danielle Morrill. Essential listening for SaaS Fans, Startup Fans and Fans of the amazing Danielle Morrill.

Andy Sparks, co-founder of Mattermark, talks about Mattermark's sales strategy and culture of their sales team. He shares how they heavily rely on customer discovery and gain a deep understanding of what people need, as well as some tactical points of clo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's a problem most entrepreneurs would love to face, a massive valuation offer from investors for the startup they've been killing themselves over. But what terms come along with that big number? In this segment a16z's Scott Kupor is joined by two startup CEOs to pick apart the topic of valuations – serial entrepreneur Danny Shader, founder of PayNearMe, and Danielle Morrill, co-founder of Mattermark.

In this episode of Product Hunt Radio, Danielle Morrill (Co-founder & CEO, Mattermark), Andy Sparks (Co-founder & COO, Mattermark), and Angela Kingyens (VC, Version One Ventures) join me, Ryan Hoover, in San Francisco's sunny Potrero Hill. Danielle confesses her love for Secret, we chat about productivity services like Clara, and discuss the fears/opportunities in offering a public Product Hunt/Mattermark API. Listen in. Products mentioned: - Mattermark (http://mattermark.com) - Research, prospect, and track the fastest growing private companies with deal intelligence - Secret - Share anonymously with your friends. Speak freely. - Whisper (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/whisper-4-0-for-ios) - The best place to express yourself online - Kindly (http://kindlychat.com/) - Chat with helpful people who enjoy lending their ears - Anonyfish (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/anonyfish) - Chat anonymously with another Secret user - Sunrise (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/sunrise) - Beautifully designed calendar app - Audible (http://www.audible.com/) - Great stories, beautifully told - Stitcher (http://www.stitcher.com/) - Radio that instantly connects you to any conversation - Clear (http://realmacsoftware.com/clear) - The simple to-do app - Anxiety (http://www.anxietyapp.com/) - Lightweight to-do management - Evernote (https://evernote.com/) - Remember everything - Hackpad (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hackpad) - The simplest way to organize and share knowledge - Clara (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/clara) - Virtual employee that schedules your meetings - Super.cc (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/super-cc-1231) - Quickly add events to your calendar from any email - Jarvis (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/jarvis) - A personal assistant for $100/mo - Facetune (http://www.facetuneapp.com/) - Powerful and easy to use portrait editing app - Insta3D (http://www.spe3d.co/product/) - Instantly create your 3D avatar - Front (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/front-now-mobile) - Take out the pain of shared email accounts - Buffer for Mac (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/buffer-for-mac) - Official Buffer app for Mac - HunterData (http://www.producthunt.com/posts/hunterdata) - Product Hunt Leaderboard! - The News (iOS) - http://www.producthunt.com/posts/the-news-ios) - Designer News + Hacker News, now on iOS - Product Hunt Alert - http://www.producthunt.com/posts/product-hunt-alert) - Get a text when your domain is mentioned on Product Hunt As mentioned in the podcast, The Product Hunt Community Scares Me, In a Good Way: http://ryanhoover.me/post/93109569743/the-product-hunt-community-scares-me-in-a-good-way Visit Product Hunt (http://producthunt.com), a curation of the best new products, every day.

Danielle Morrill, Co-Founder and CEO of Mattermark, talks all about funding - when companies should consider seeking it, and the metrics you should be monitoring to know if/when the time is right. She also shares some incredible lessons learned along the Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices