Podcast appearances and mentions of sarah tavel

In this episode of Turpentine VC, we're sharing Erik Torenberg's 2023 interview with Sarah Tavel and Eric Vishria from Benchmark, exploring the firm's unique minimalistic approach, commitment to deep founder partnerships, and their deliberate avoidance of platform teams. — 

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website! Go to http://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. LinkedIn Jobs. A business is only as strong as its people, and every hire matters. Go to https://www.linkedin.com/twist to post your first job for free. Terms and conditions apply. OpenPhone. Create business phone numbers for you and your team that work through an app on your smartphone or desktop. TWiST listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at https://www.openphone.com/twist⁠ * Todays show: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel joins Jason to discuss strategies for competing in a changing venture landscape (9:12), the critical role of governance and accountability in startups (19:39), the relationship between hype, investment decisions, and startup promotion (55:20). and more! * Timestamps: (0:00) Sarah Tavel joins Jason. (1:38) Sarah Tavel, Benchmark Partner, on disciplined fund size and efficiency (5:06) Benchmark's commitment to founders and investment strategy (9:12) Strategies for competing in a changing venture landscape (10:00) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at http://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST (15:50) Valuations, ownership, and building deep relationships with founders (18:30) LinkedIn Jobs - Post your first job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/twist (19:39) The critical role of governance and accountability in startups (28:36) OpenPhone - Get 20% off your first six months at https://www.openphone.com/twist⁠ (30:16) The power of incremental improvements and executive limitations (34:32) Vanity metrics vs. building enduring value in startups (43:12) The consequences of choosing status over results in startup success (46:22) Building trust in leadership and the pressures of maintaining success (49:03) The importance of non-consensus bets and independent thinking (55:20) The relationship between hype, investment decisions, and startup promotion (58:19) In-person work vs. remote work: Impact on startup productivity (1:02:58) SaaS market challenges: Pricing, AI impact, and future models (1:07:33) Exciting AI investments and the transformative potential of new technologies (1:13:01) AI advancements, new use cases, and the competitive landscape (1:17:16) How incumbents and consumers are benefiting from AI advancements (1:19:15) Embracing AI in daily tasks and business operations * Subscribe to the TWiST500 newsletter: https://ticker.thisweekinstartups.com/ Check out the TWIST500: twist500.com * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Check out Benchmark: https://www.benchmark.com/ * Follow Sarah: X: https://x.com/sarahtavel LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahtavel/ Sarah's Substack: https://www.sarahtavel.com/ * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Thank you to our partners: (10:00) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at http://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST (18:30) LinkedIn Jobs - Post your first job for free at https://www.linkedin.com/twist (28:36) OpenPhone - Get 20% off your first six months at https://www.openphone.com/twist⁠ * Great TWIST interviews: Will Guidara, Eoghan McCabe, Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Bob Moesta, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@founderuniversity1916

Sam Altman is the CEO @ OpenAI, the company on a mission is to ensure that artificial general intelligence benefits all of humanity. OpenAI is one of the fastest-scaling companies in history with a valuation of $90BN and $2BN+ in revenue. Brad Lightcap is the COO @ OpenAI and the man responsible for the incredible scaling of sales, GTM, partnerships and business to today being over $2BN in revenue. Arthur Mensch is the Co-Founder and CEO of Mistral AI. Since its inception in May 2023, Mistral has raised over $520M in funding from investors like Andreeseen Horowitz, General Catalyst, Lightspeed Venture Partners, and Microsoft with a current valuation of $2 billion.  Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom, and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support. Today Des leads all of Intercom's R&D efforts, and parts of Intercom's marketing. Tom Hulme is a Managing Partner of GV (Google Ventures), and leads the European team. Today, GV has over $10BN in AUM and Tom has led investments in Lemonade.com (IPO), Snyk, Secret Escapes, Blockchain.com, GoCardless, and Currency Cloud (exited to Visa). Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages. Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful and renowned venture firms in the world. At Benchmark, Sarah has led rounds in Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Medely, Rekki, Glide, Cambly and more. In Today's Episode We Discuss: Will foundation models be commoditised? What is the end state for the foundation model landscape in 10 years? How will large cloud provider incumbents approach M&A with smaller foundation model providers? When will we see marginal revenue exceed marginal cost in the foundation model business model? Where is the value: the application layer or the infrastructure layer? How can startups know whether they will be threatened by OpenAI? What are good tests/questions to know if you are in the path of one of the large foundation models? How does the business model of SaaS fundamentally change in a world of AI? Will we see the end of per-seat pricing in a new world of AI? What is the right way to approach pricing in a world of AI? Consumption? Tokens?  

Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful and renowned venture firms in the world. At Benchmark, Sarah has led rounds in Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Medely, Rekki, Glide, Cambly and more. Prior to Benchmark, Sarah was a Partner at Greylock Partners. Before Greylock, Sarah was the first 30 employees at Pinterest. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. In Today's Episode with Sarah Tavel We Discuss: 1. Becoming a GP at The Most Renowned Firm in Venture: How did the process of Sarah joining Benchmark start? How did it progress? What was it that convinced her to leave Greylock and join Benchmark? What does Sarah believe makes Peter Fenton the world-class investor that he is? What does Sarah know now that she wishes she had known when she started in venture? 2. Foundation Models: Is it All Going to Zero: Will foundation models be commoditised? Will 99% of the funding going to foundation models go to 0? How does Sarah view the future of open vs closed source? Why does Sarah believe that all frontier models of the future will be closed-source? Why does the business model of foundation models remind Sarah of the food delivery business? 3. Application Layer: Where $BN Companies Will Be Built: Why does Sarah believe that sustainable value-creating companies will be in the application layer? How does Sarah determine between a wrapper on top of ChatGPT and true product value? Are enterprises opening real budgets for AI today or are we still in experimental budgets? How does Sarah think about how AI companies differentiate when there are so many in the same space of customer service, sales team support etc etc? Why does Sarah believe that it is rational to pay more for these companies when investing in them? What does Sarah mean when she says the future is "selling the work and not the tools"? 4. Inside Benchmark: How the Best Do Venture: What is the one rule that Benchmark is willing to break when doing a deal? Why do Benchmark aim to be the best recruitment firm in the world? Why do Benchmark not agree with the concept of reserves? In a case where Benchmark have lost, why did they lose? How did they change their approach?

Sarah Tavel is a general partner at Benchmark Capital. She serves on the board of Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Medely, Rekki, and Cambly. On this episode of World of DaaS, Auren and Sarah discuss the concept of selling work in the SaaS industry and how it differs from selling traditional productivity software. Sarah explains how selling work could unlock whole new verticals for software penetration and disrupt existing SaaS giants. Auren and Sarah explore the areas where these new, leaner software companies could flourish and discuss the broader impacts of AI in SaaS. As one of the earliest hires at Pinterest, Sarah also has deep expertise with consumer social, which is set to be transformed by AI. She and Auren talk chatbots, AI avatars, and the responsibilities founders have as AI begins to replace more human interaction. The conversation wraps up by touching on Harvard as an institution, conspiracy theories about UAPs and TikTok, and questioning conventional wisdom about fundraising and growth. World of DaaS is brought to you by SafeGraph & Flex Capital. For more episodes, visit safegraph.com/podcasts.Follow World of DaaS @WorldOfDaaSYou can find Auren Hoffman on X at @auren and Sarah Tavel on X at @sarahtavel.

Sarah Tavel is a General Partner at Benchmark and sits on the boards of Chainalysis, Hipcamp, Rekki, Cambly, and Medely. She is a founding member of All Raise, the nonprofit organization working to accelerate the success of women in the venture-capital and VC-backed startup ecosystem. Before Benchmark, Sarah was a partner at Greylock Partners. She joined Pinterest in 2012 as their first PM and launched their first search and recommendations features. She also led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hypergrowth. In this episode, we discuss:Sarah's Hierarchy of Engagement framework for growing a consumer startup• The three levels of the Hierarchy of Engagement: core action, retention, and self-perpetuation• The importance of measuring cohorts and maintaining focus on the core action• Examples of core user actions from Pinterest and YouTubeSarah's Hierarchy of Marketplaces framework for building a marketplace startup• The three vectors of growth for dominating a marketplace• Advice on “tipping the marketplace” and ultimately dominating the market• The value of focusing on a constrained market• How to avoid disruption—This entire episode is brought to you by Gelt—Redefine your approach to taxes.—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-hierarchy-of-engagement-sarah-tavel-benchmark-greylock-pinterest/—Where to find Sarah Tavel:• X: https://twitter.com/sarahtavel• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahtavel/• Substack: https://www.sarahtavel.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Sarah's background(03:33) Framework 1: The Hierarchy of Engagement(06:03) Level 1: Core action(10:33) Level 2: Retention(14:00) Level 3: Self-perpetuation(19:32) The importance of focus(23:54) The challenge of anonymity(26:04) Advice for founders who want to increase retention(29:34) What founders often get wrong(31:43) Examples of core actions(37:37) Finding your North Star Metric(38:12) Who should use the Hierarchy of Engagement framework(38:54) The Hierarchy of Marketplaces framework(46:09) Level 1: Focus on a constrained opportunity(50:19) Sarah's “happy GMV” and “minimum viable happiness” concepts(54:47) Thumbtack: a counterexample to this approach(56:36) Signs you're ready to move to level 2(58:06) Level 2: Tipping the marketplace(01:04:15) Tipping loops(01:10:53) Not all markets are susceptible to tipping(01:15:55) The challenge of homogeneity in B2B marketplaces(01:20:29) Signs you're tipping successfully(01:21:43) Level 3: Dominating the market(01:28:29) The opportunity in underestimated markets(01:30:11) The challenges of chasing GMV and losing focus(01:36:36) Recognizing currents and momentum in the market(01:39:20) You can never rest on your laurels(01:41:03) How to apply these frameworks outside of marketplaces(01:42:57) Three ways to find marketplace opportunity(01:45:10 ) Lightning round—Referenced:• Hierarchy of Engagement, Expanded: https://sarahtavel.medium.com/the-hierarchy-of-engagement-expanded-648329d60804• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com/• Evernote: https://evernote.com/• Notion: https://www.notion.so/• Houseparty app: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houseparty_(app)• Clubhouse: https://www.clubhouse.com/• How to price your product | Naomi Ionita (Menlo Ventures): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/how-to-price-your-product-naomi-ionita-menlo-ventures/• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/• Lessons on building a viral consumer app: The story of Saturn: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/lessons-on-building-a-viral-consumer• Saturn: https://www.joinsaturn.com/• What happened to Secret?: https://www.failory.com/cemetery/secret• How to determine your activation metric: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/how-to-determine-your-activation• Shishir Mehrotra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shishirmehrotra/• The rituals of great teams | Shishir Mehrotra of Coda, YouTube, Microsoft: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/the-rituals-of-great-teams-shishir-mehrotra-coda-youtube-microsoft/• Engagement Hierarchy: Core Actions: https://sarahtavel.medium.com/engagement-hierarchy-core-actions-dd4f72042100• Choosing Your North Star Metric: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/choosing-your-north-star-metric• Hierarchy of Marketplaces: https://sarahtavel.medium.com/the-hierarchy-of-marketplaces-introduction-and-level-1-983995aa218e• Mike Williams on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yoroomie/• Everything Marketplaces: https://www.everythingmarketplaces.com/• Fabrice Grinda on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabricegrinda/• OLX: https://www.olx.com/• DoorDash Loves the 'Burbs as Much as You Do: https://www.wsj.com/articles/doordash-loves-the-burbs-as-much-as-you-do-11605618001• Thumbtack: https://www.thumbtack.com/• NPS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_promoter_score• Sean Ellis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/seanellis/• Rekki: https://rekki.com/• Ronen Givon on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ronen-givon-535b2514• Hipcamp: https://www.hipcamp.com/• Demand driving supply: The little-understood growth loop behind a surprising number of iconic billion-dollar companies: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com/p/demand-driving-supply-marketplaces• Inside the Revolution at Etsy: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/25/business/etsy-josh-silverman.html• Faire: https://www.faire.com/• Bill Gurley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/billgurley/• Mechanical Turk: https://www.mturk.com/• Parker Conrad on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/parkerconrad/• Rippling: https://www.rippling.com/• “White Space” for Building a Marketplace: How to Find Your Competition's Vulnerabilities—and Capitalize: https://sarahtavel.medium.com/white-space-for-building-a-marketplace-how-to-find-your-competitions-vulnerabilities-and-79674aa4d399• Pachinko: https://www.amazon.com/Pachinko-National-Book-Award-Finalist/dp/1455563935• The Five Temptations of a CEO: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Temptations-CEO-Anniversary-Leadership/dp/0470267585• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable: https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fable/dp/0787960756• Tesla: https://www.tesla.com/• Reid Hoffman on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reidhoffman/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Miro. Working remotely doesn't mean you need to feel disconnected from your team. Miro is an online whiteboard that brings teams together - anytime, anywhere. Go to https://miro.com/startups to sign up for a FREE account with unlimited team members. Vanta. Compliance and security shouldn't be a deal-breaker for startups to win new business. Vanta makes it easy for companies to get a SOC 2 report fast. TWiST listeners can get $1,000 off for a limited time at https://vanta.com/twist Mercury. 90% of startups fail. Just 10 out of every 100 make it. Mercury exists to close that gap — helping companies succeed with banking and credit cards engineered for the startup journey. Join over 100,000 companies banking with Mercury at http://mercury.com * Today's show: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel joins Jason to discuss the state of VC (1:57), her time at Benchmark (13:33), her recent Substack blogs (31:51), AI's impact on startups (44:31), and much more! * Time stamps: (0:00) Benchmark's Sarah Tavel joins Jason (1:57) The state of VC and the biggest things founders have had to contend with (12:08) Miro - Sign up for a free account at https://miro.com/startups (13:33) Benchmark's culture (21:35) Evolving trends in VC (24:37) Vanta - Get $1000 off your SOC 2 at https://vanta.com/twist (25:45) Tradeoffs and common VC mistakes (31:51) Sarah's Substack blogs and the inspiration behind her writing (35:42) Mercury - Join 100K+ startups banking with Mercury at http://mercury.com (36:54) Entrepreneurship in 2023 and the importance of a founder's long-term vision (44:31) Technology catalysts and how AI is impacting startups (58:36) Business models, the amount of developers needed, and navigating funding rounds (1:04:42) The complexities of strategic partnerships and corporate VC (1:14:54) M&A in the era of Lina Kahn and looking at the macro picture as an investor * Follow Sarah: https://twitter.com/sarahtavel Check out Sarah's Substack: https://www.sarahtavel.com * Read LAUNCH Fund 4 Deal Memo: https://www.launch.co/four Apply for Funding: https://www.launch.co/apply Buy ANGEL: https://www.angelthebook.com Great recent interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland, PrayingForExits, Jenny Lefcourt Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow Jason: Twitter: https://twitter.com/jason Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

It's been a sad state of affairs for consumer companies not named TikTok. Poparazzi just shut down. (At least some of the team went to Instagram.) Popshop is struggling. The venture capital firm Benchmark helped establish both companies as consumer startups to watch by leading their Series A rounds. Sarah Tavel, who led the investment in Poparazzi and has worked closely with Popshop, agreed to come on the Newcomer podcast to talk about the brutal state of consumer startups. “Our deep belief at Benchmark is that our job is not to predict the future, but to try as best we can to see the present clearly,” Tavel told me.Of course, it's not just Benchmark's once high-flying startups that are reeling. Andreessen Horowitz audio company Clubhouse laid off more than half of its employees. Hype for the photo company BeReal seems to be dying down. (Searches for the company's name on Google are at less than half their peak.) “It is a really tough environment right now to build that type of company,” Tavel said about startups building for consumers. “It's always been difficult, but the level of difficulty has been turned all the way on. Because right now, anybody building something in consumer has to compete with the most addictive consumer format that we've ever had — which is short video.”Tavel, who co-led an early investment in Pinterest and then became the company's first product manager, talked through some of the most promising opportunities in startups. Artificial intelligence seems poised to create new consumer startups. Tavel flagged the legal artificial intelligence company EvenUp, which just raised at a $350 million valuation from Bessemer, as one such promising startup. I marveled at the bootstrapped rise of Midjourney. But, of course, many generative AI startups, especially ones building foundation models, are raising such large rounds that it can be difficult for a firm like Benchmark to rationalize an investment. We also talked about one of Tavel's most successful investments at Benchmark, Chainalysis. The blockchain data company raised $170 million at $8.6 billion last year. The New York Times wrote a glowing profile of the company last month. Tavel, who doesn't like to announce her startup investments, revealed that she has secretly invested in an unannounced NFT company.“Crypto is a bad word now,” Tavel told me. “It's really hard to train consumers to trust something again — once a consumer has made a first impression. It's much easier to teach a user a first impression than to rewrite that first impression.”Finally, I asked Tavel to give us a peek behind the curtain at Benchmark. Fortune's Jessica Mathews recently interviewed Benchmark's Bill Gurley about his decision to step back.Mathews wrote:“The venture business, if you want to be at the top, requires insane, remarkable hustle… You have to live in fear that the next Google is going to get funded by a firm that's not yours,” he says. “Either you're in there rowing as hard as you can, because we're all a team, or you're not.”That said, he still has strong instincts about the future of tech. “If I were still active as a venture capitalist, I'd be looking at a lot of the vertical applications of A.I. I look at the coding stuff, and it's insane… If you're not using it, I think you're probably writing your own death certificate as a programmer, because people are going to be so much more efficient. And the question is: What are other applications that have that kind of productivity boost or lift, and I think people are trying to figure that out.”But in the end, it was a book by Steve Martin, Born Standing Up, that helped convince Gurley it was time to step back. “One day, [Martin] is in Vegas and he comes out, and the top row is empty, the first time he's ever seen the top row empty. He quits the next day—never does standup again. And then he goes off and he does his banjo and his theater and his acting.… Like I said, I don't think I ever played the stage, so I'd rather not say I'm the same. It influenced me. That notion influenced me.”Today, the Benchmark partnership is made up of Tavel, Peter Fenton, Eric Vishria, Chetan Puttagunta, and Miles Grimshaw. Tavel said about the firm, “We've always had a pretty simple idea, which is that there's this creative destruction.”“Once you start — there's no training wheels. So you're thrown into the deep end. You're an equal partner and you're expected to be 100% until the minute that you retire,” Tavel said. “And when you have an equal partnership, it kind of pushes you in the direction of just recognizing — as Bill said in that interview — the hustle may not be in you anymore. And if you feel that way, then the model — as was set up by the founders — is such that it's time to raise your hand and move on.”Of course, my understanding is that partners like Gurley, Matt Cohler, and Mitch Lasky remain fairly heavily involved at Benchmark even so. “It's like an affliction. The reason they're here in the first place was because the curiosity and competitiveness and the drive for learning and relevance, being in the mix, that never leaves you,” Tavel said. “They are a significant portion of our LP base, they're still there on Mondays, and I'm texting all of them all the time.”Find the Podcast Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

It's been a sad state of affairs for consumer companies not named TikTok. Poparazzi just shut down. (At least some of the team went to Instagram.) Popshop is struggling. The venture capital firm Benchmark helped establish both companies as consumer startups to watch by leading their Series A rounds. Sarah Tavel, who led the investment in Poparazzi and has worked closely with Popshop, agreed to come on the Newcomer podcast to talk about the brutal state of consumer startups. “Our deep belief at Benchmark is that our job is not to predict the future, but to try as best we can to see the present clearly,” Tavel told me.Of course, it's not just Benchmark's once high-flying startups that are reeling. Andreessen Horowitz audio company Clubhouse laid off more than half of its employees. Hype for the photo company BeReal seems to be dying down. (Searches for the company's name on Google are at less than half their peak.) “It is a really tough environment right now to build that type of company,” Tavel said about startups building for consumers. “It's always been difficult, but the level of difficulty has been turned all the way on. Because right now, anybody building something in consumer has to compete with the most addictive consumer format that we've ever had — which is short video.”Tavel, who co-led an early investment in Pinterest and then became the company's first product manager, talked through some of the most promising opportunities in startups. Artificial intelligence seems poised to create new consumer startups. Tavel flagged the legal artificial intelligence company EvenUp, which just raised at a $350 million valuation from Bessemer, as one such promising startup. I marveled at the bootstrapped rise of Midjourney. But, of course, many generative AI startups, especially ones building foundation models, are raising such large rounds that it can be difficult for a firm like Benchmark to rationalize an investment. We also talked about one of Tavel's most successful investments at Benchmark, Chainalysis. The blockchain data company raised $170 million at $8.6 billion last year. The New York Times wrote a glowing profile of the company last month. Tavel, who doesn't like to announce her startup investments, revealed that she has secretly invested in an unannounced NFT company.“Crypto is a bad word now,” Tavel told me. “It's really hard to train consumers to trust something again — once a consumer has made a first impression. It's much easier to teach a user a first impression than to rewrite that first impression.”Finally, I asked Tavel to give us a peek behind the curtain at Benchmark. Fortune's Jessica Mathews recently interviewed Benchmark's Bill Gurley about his decision to step back.Mathews wrote:“The venture business, if you want to be at the top, requires insane, remarkable hustle… You have to live in fear that the next Google is going to get funded by a firm that's not yours,” he says. “Either you're in there rowing as hard as you can, because we're all a team, or you're not.”That said, he still has strong instincts about the future of tech. “If I were still active as a venture capitalist, I'd be looking at a lot of the vertical applications of A.I. I look at the coding stuff, and it's insane… If you're not using it, I think you're probably writing your own death certificate as a programmer, because people are going to be so much more efficient. And the question is: What are other applications that have that kind of productivity boost or lift, and I think people are trying to figure that out.”But in the end, it was a book by Steve Martin, Born Standing Up, that helped convince Gurley it was time to step back. “One day, [Martin] is in Vegas and he comes out, and the top row is empty, the first time he's ever seen the top row empty. He quits the next day—never does standup again. And then he goes off and he does his banjo and his theater and his acting.… Like I said, I don't think I ever played the stage, so I'd rather not say I'm the same. It influenced me. That notion influenced me.”Today, the Benchmark partnership is made up of Tavel, Peter Fenton, Eric Vishria, Chetan Puttagunta, and Miles Grimshaw. Tavel said about the firm, “We've always had a pretty simple idea, which is that there's this creative destruction.”“Once you start — there's no training wheels. So you're thrown into the deep end. You're an equal partner and you're expected to be 100% until the minute that you retire,” Tavel said. “And when you have an equal partnership, it kind of pushes you in the direction of just recognizing — as Bill said in that interview — the hustle may not be in you anymore. And if you feel that way, then the model — as was set up by the founders — is such that it's time to raise your hand and move on.”Of course, my understanding is that partners like Gurley, Matt Cohler, and Mitch Lasky remain fairly heavily involved at Benchmark even so. “It's like an affliction. The reason they're here in the first place was because the curiosity and competitiveness and the drive for learning and relevance, being in the mix, that never leaves you,” Tavel said. “They are a significant portion of our LP base, they're still there on Mondays, and I'm texting all of them all the time.”Find the Podcast Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Forbes Senior Editor Alex Konrad sits down with Benchmark General Partner Sarah Tavel to chat about the firm's differentiation, lessons learned from web3 and how they work with founders. Recorded March 2, 2023 at the Upfront Summit.

TCL Podcast: Hear how to Cambly found profitability before its Series ACambly was founded in 2012, and has since raised $80.29m from leading venture capital firms. Success didn't come overnight. The company had to weather a failed fundraise and countless competitors on its way to becoming a market leader. I had Cambly CEO Sameer Shariff and Benchmark partner Sarah Tavel on TechCrunch Live. It was the first event of the 2023, and the timing is great. Part of Cambly's story involves tweaking its business model to become cashflow positive much earlier than initially planned. And after the company started making money, it was able to close its Series A and a Series B.Hear this conversation in the TechCrunch Live podcast, or you can watch the video recap. Both are embedded below.TechCrunch Live records weekly, each Wednesday, at noon Pacific. It's free to attend. Register for the next event right here. It will feature Christina Ross of Cube and Rajeev Batra of Mayfield.OutlineWhy Cambly failed to raise a Series A, and how the company changed to keep it afloat.Where was Cambly at in 2016, and what was the company's runway and trajectory?What was the size of the total addressable market targeted by Cambly?After failing to close a Series A, how long did it take the company leaders to change direction?What moves did Cambly make to turn the company profitable?How to keep an investor engaged after they say no.What do investors expect after a pitch fails?How often should a founder email investors company updates?When is the right time for a company to fundraise?What metrics are important in a Series A raise?Don't fundraise when the company needs money, but rather fundraise when the company can tell a compelling story.How do investors value a company that's cash flow positive?On the struggles of building a marketplace.How to fight incumbent competitors.How to structure the company's gross merchandise volume (GMV).How to avoid getting stuck in a very small market.Assets mentioned in the episodeThe Hierarchy of Marketplaces — Introduction and Level 1, by Sarah Tavel

The TechCrunch Live Podcast is back for season 2 on February 6! Matt Burns sits down with experienced entrepreneurs and investors -- including market leaders from Benchmark, Sequoia, Index and Kleiner Perkins -- to help founders build better venture-backed businesses. First up, we're talking to: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel and Cambly's Sameer Shariff. Register here to join us live!Cube's Christina Ross and Mayfield's Rajeev Batra. Register here to join us live!The TechCrunch Live Podcast airs Mondays at 12 PT, wherever you get your podcasts. Want to join us live? TechCrunch Live streams on YouTube, Facebook, and Hopin Wednesdays at 12 PT. Visit TechCrunch.com for registration and more!

I moved from San Francisco to New York, in February 2019, back before it was cool to turn tail on the tech mecca. Truth be told, I’ll always have a special place in my heart for San Francisco, but my girlfriend beckoned from Brooklyn.I’m writing this from my flight back to New York after over a week in SF. I spent much of it in an Airbnb next to Mr. Pickle’s on Van Ness Avenue and then a few days crashing at a fellow tech reporter’s apartment in the Outer Richmond. I ate Mission Chinese and La Taqueria, drank at Brass Tacks and The Monk’s Kettle, and made it up to Calistoga for a picturesque vineyard wedding.But did I spend any time working for you, dear reader? Yes, not to worry. I spent my days shuttling from South Park to the Presidio, catching up with venture capitalists, founders, tech media insiders, and senior tech executives. And I spent my nights getting drunk with them, eager for looser lips.Here are my key immediate takeaways:One source told me that even Insight Partners — which announced a $20 billion fund in February — has decided to seriously slow down big late stage private investments. Until recently, Insight looked like one of the last holdouts when it came to doing late stage deals even as the market unraveled. But now, like pretty much everyone else, it’s mostly focused on its existing portfolio.VC advice on the downturn — even Sequoia Capital’s presentation to founders — has felt too much like content marketing. For some startup CEOs it can feel a bit like you’re the goody two-shoes, “A” student in the classroom, when the teacher reprimands everyone. You think the rebuke applies to you, but really the message is meant for the troublemakers. But it’s the most diligent among us that take these admonitions personally. Founders need advice specific to their company. There’s a sense that there have been many software engineers who have been overpromoted in the bull cycle and that this downturn could force some coders to reset their expectations about their appropriate rank and pay.I spent much of my time asking sources what the overarching, thematic story of the downturn would be. One venture capitalist gave me my favorite answer: He argued that we’d look back on this downturn as a story of the perfect storm between retail and professional investor excesses. On the retail side, we saw the rise of Robinhood and Coinbase, and r/wallstreetbets trades on Kodak and GameStop. On the professional side, we saw firms like SoftBank and Tiger go so, so long without enough diligence to back it up.If I had to name a couple companies/firms that I think are most likely to represent this downturn, right now I’d name Instacart, Coinbase, Robinhood, GoPuff, Bird, Tesla, Tiger, and SoftBank. Though, right now, I think increasingly crypto is looking like it will be the category most associated with this cycle’s excesses.There’s been a lot of envy in traditional startup world of people who went over to the the crypto dark side. Now there’s all sorts of schadenfreude going on as crypto prices plummet. Some VCs are starting to admit (mostly in private) that they never really believed in crypto. Still, there’s so much money. Just as I was leaving the city, Coinbase announced that it was brutally laying off 18% of its staff, locking them out of their emails before they even had time to say goodbye.We’re overdue for a reckoning over who screwed over credulous investors with implausible SPAC deals. ~cough~ Chamath ~ cough ~ At least, Brad Gerstner’s Altimeter led the PIPE on its own terrible Grab SPAC deal. Andreessen Horowitz still remains, probably, the biggest nemesis of many firms in Silicon Valley. Sure, Tiger blew up the startup world. But what Tiger did was so unlike anything venture capital firms were doing, so there’s less professional jealousy. There are whispers that things aren’t as copacetic internally at a16z as might appear from their highly choreographed public communications. It would seem that part of the explanation for the explosion of funds at the firm has been the explosion of egos. Instead of resolving interpersonal conflicts on the consumer fund, let’s just create a gaming fund. In that light, it’s pretty amazing that the firm couldn’t figure out a way to keep Katie Haun. Consumer investing across the board seems challenged. What’s going on over at Popshop, Lunchclub, Cameo, and Clubhouse just to name a few? I guess investors simply wishing consumer investing into being without a strong new thesis wasn’t exactly an omen for the sector’s inevitable success. (I will say that Whatnot and BeReal remain two consumer plays that I’m still following.) What will it mean for this generation of consumer investors? Benchmark’s next generation consumer investor, Sarah Tavel, seems to have made her best investment in business-to-business company Chainalysis, last valued at $8.6 billion. Speaking of Benchmark, the firm deserves some credit for holding firm on its strategy as other venture firms’ fund sizes got crazy. Sure, Benchmark probably could have made way more money if it topped up its own investments — but then it might be taking the heat that Benchmark favorite Altimeter is getting right now over its overexuberance. There’s money and reputation to manage. Benchmark has always made enough money to value its reputation. (That’s something Travis Kalanick, Adam Neumann, Nirav Tolia, etc. surely gripe about.)Last year’s hype around venture capital firms indefinitely holding onto private companies long after they go public is looking like pure bubble thinking. Sequoia’s timing on its all-in-one, hold indefinitely “The Sequoia Capital Fund” looks a little more like one of the excesses from the bull market. But limited partners seem too afraid to do anything to unwind the strategy shift that seems designed to enrich the firm’s general partners. (Reach out to me if you have off-the-record intel on this.)Investors are dramatically slowing the pace of their investments. These funds are going to last years longer than they would have in bull times. Multi-stage investors seem more inclined to double-down on their existing portfolio companies than to make new bets. Bridge rounds are on everyone’s lips. Still, I heard from investors who had made secret Series B and C investments in companies this year. It’s a good time to make a bet on a company that got away for a hype-y Series A round.Startup founders think prospective employees want assurances that their company is really worth what the company says it is. Good private unicorns are in a bit of a bind. Prospective employees are now automatically giving their equity offers a mental haircut based on the market downturn. So good companies have an incentive to reaffirm their valuations with funding rounds during the downturn — even if it otherwise might be smarter to keep their valuations artificially low so as to maintain room to grow should conditions worsen. (I wish employees would get better at assessing companies based on fundamentals, rather than the last tick fundraising round. Employees are basically begging founders to maximize for valuation, which then minimizes employee upside.)Some small-to-medium sized companies are shopping themselves to their rival startups but it’s not always clear why the competitor would want to buy. Why take on additional burn and headcount when all you might end up getting is leads on some new customers? Sure, you might do some venture capital firm a favor, but what’s that really worth?There are some cracks in up-start media world. The most obvious tremor is at BuzzFeed where the stock has sunk 54% in a month. Reporters have been leaving in droves. Meanwhile, The Information lost one of its top editors — Martin Peers. He’s long been a central figure over there. The Information’s up-and-coming venture capital reporter Berber Jin departed to the Wall Street Journal, as did Sarah Krouse who will be covering Netflix for the Journal. Stephen Nellis returned to Reuters. Meanwhile spirits seem strong at my former employer, Bloomberg. The ascendance of the player-coach editor seems to have people upbeat. Sarah Frier is leading big tech coverage and Lucas Shaw (who has been a guest on Dead Cat) is running the show on Hollywood coverage. And somehow Bloomberg just lured back a former star reporter who had left to join the startup ranks: Alex Barinka — who left Bloomberg as a deals reporter to help launch Imran Khan’s Verishop before going over to Stitch Fix — is joining Frier’s team as a social media reporter based in LA. Next week I’m in Toronto for Collision where I’ll be interviewing Uncork Capital’s Andy McLoughlin, Real Ventures’ Janet Bannister, and Left Lane Capital’s Vinny Pujji on a panel Wednesday called “Survival of the leanest: The importance of being capital efficient.” Then, less than an hour later I’ll interview General Catalyst’s Hemant Taneja about responsible innovation. On Thursday, I’ll ask “Has the tech bubble burst... again?!” in a panel with FirstMark’s Matt Turck, Lux’s Deena Shakir, and Neo Financial’s Andrew Chau. Expect the most interesting tidbits in this newsletter late next week.Talking about Chesa Boudin on Dead CatMy first meeting in San Francisco started with a tour of The San Francisco Standard, the Michael Moritz-funded local news enterprise. My old editor Jonathan Weber — once the editor of tech media dot-com icon The Industry Standard — is the editor-in-chief over at the SF Standard. Weber, Dead Cat co-host Tom Dotan, and I met up for a nice dinner at The Morris in the Mission. After spending the evening discussing San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin’s recall, Tom and I convinced Weber to come on the Dead Cat podcast and talk about the Standard and San Francisco politics.Tom thinks I’m going to get eviscerated by San Franciscans for my politics. This is something we’ve never seen before: a New Yorker opining on San Francisco local affairs. I did my best to offend conservatives and liberals alike, maligning the police while rooting for tech’s ascendant influence on San Francisco politics. Weber makes the case for objective, follow-the-reporting local news and outlines the real issues underpinning the recall. He explains how money is simultaneously to blame and not to blame for Boudin’s recall. And he defends the Standard against its critics for its influential story on Boudin’s refusal to make drug arrests. We interrogate what Boudin’s defeat means for the future of progressive politics and the city of San Francisco.Give it a listen.Read the automated transcript. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

I moved from San Francisco to New York, in February 2019, back before it was cool to turn tail on the tech mecca. Truth be told, I'll always have a special place in my heart for San Francisco, but my girlfriend beckoned from Brooklyn.I'm writing this from my flight back to New York after over a week in SF. I spent much of it in an Airbnb next to Mr. Pickle's on Van Ness Avenue and then a few days crashing at a fellow tech reporter's apartment in the Outer Richmond. I ate Mission Chinese and La Taqueria, drank at Brass Tacks and The Monk's Kettle, and made it up to Calistoga for a picturesque vineyard wedding.But did I spend any time working for you, dear reader? Yes, not to worry. I spent my days shuttling from South Park to the Presidio, catching up with venture capitalists, founders, tech media insiders, and senior tech executives. And I spent my nights getting drunk with them, eager for looser lips.Here are my key immediate takeaways:One source told me that even Insight Partners — which announced a $20 billion fund in February — has decided to seriously slow down big late stage private investments. Until recently, Insight looked like one of the last holdouts when it came to doing late stage deals even as the market unraveled. But now, like pretty much everyone else, it's mostly focused on its existing portfolio.VC advice on the downturn — even Sequoia Capital's presentation to founders — has felt too much like content marketing. For some startup CEOs it can feel a bit like you're the goody two-shoes, “A” student in the classroom, when the teacher reprimands everyone. You think the rebuke applies to you, but really the message is meant for the troublemakers. But it's the most diligent among us that take these admonitions personally. Founders need advice specific to their company. There's a sense that there have been many software engineers who have been overpromoted in the bull cycle and that this downturn could force some coders to reset their expectations about their appropriate rank and pay.I spent much of my time asking sources what the overarching, thematic story of the downturn would be. One venture capitalist gave me my favorite answer: He argued that we'd look back on this downturn as a story of the perfect storm between retail and professional investor excesses. On the retail side, we saw the rise of Robinhood and Coinbase, and r/wallstreetbets trades on Kodak and GameStop. On the professional side, we saw firms like SoftBank and Tiger go so, so long without enough diligence to back it up.If I had to name a couple companies/firms that I think are most likely to represent this downturn, right now I'd name Instacart, Coinbase, Robinhood, GoPuff, Bird, Tesla, Tiger, and SoftBank. Though, right now, I think increasingly crypto is looking like it will be the category most associated with this cycle's excesses.There's been a lot of envy in traditional startup world of people who went over to the the crypto dark side. Now there's all sorts of schadenfreude going on as crypto prices plummet. Some VCs are starting to admit (mostly in private) that they never really believed in crypto. Still, there's so much money. Just as I was leaving the city, Coinbase announced that it was brutally laying off 18% of its staff, locking them out of their emails before they even had time to say goodbye.We're overdue for a reckoning over who screwed over credulous investors with implausible SPAC deals. ~cough~ Chamath ~ cough ~ At least, Brad Gerstner's Altimeter led the PIPE on its own terrible Grab SPAC deal. Andreessen Horowitz still remains, probably, the biggest nemesis of many firms in Silicon Valley. Sure, Tiger blew up the startup world. But what Tiger did was so unlike anything venture capital firms were doing, so there's less professional jealousy. There are whispers that things aren't as copacetic internally at a16z as might appear from their highly choreographed public communications. It would seem that part of the explanation for the explosion of funds at the firm has been the explosion of egos. Instead of resolving interpersonal conflicts on the consumer fund, let's just create a gaming fund. In that light, it's pretty amazing that the firm couldn't figure out a way to keep Katie Haun. Consumer investing across the board seems challenged. What's going on over at Popshop, Lunchclub, Cameo, and Clubhouse just to name a few? I guess investors simply wishing consumer investing into being without a strong new thesis wasn't exactly an omen for the sector's inevitable success. (I will say that Whatnot and BeReal remain two consumer plays that I'm still following.) What will it mean for this generation of consumer investors? Benchmark's next generation consumer investor, Sarah Tavel, seems to have made her best investment in business-to-business company Chainalysis, last valued at $8.6 billion. Speaking of Benchmark, the firm deserves some credit for holding firm on its strategy as other venture firms' fund sizes got crazy. Sure, Benchmark probably could have made way more money if it topped up its own investments — but then it might be taking the heat that Benchmark favorite Altimeter is getting right now over its overexuberance. There's money and reputation to manage. Benchmark has always made enough money to value its reputation. (That's something Travis Kalanick, Adam Neumann, Nirav Tolia, etc. surely gripe about.)Last year's hype around venture capital firms indefinitely holding onto private companies long after they go public is looking like pure bubble thinking. Sequoia's timing on its all-in-one, hold indefinitely “The Sequoia Capital Fund” looks a little more like one of the excesses from the bull market. But limited partners seem too afraid to do anything to unwind the strategy shift that seems designed to enrich the firm's general partners. (Reach out to me if you have off-the-record intel on this.)Investors are dramatically slowing the pace of their investments. These funds are going to last years longer than they would have in bull times. Multi-stage investors seem more inclined to double-down on their existing portfolio companies than to make new bets. Bridge rounds are on everyone's lips. Still, I heard from investors who had made secret Series B and C investments in companies this year. It's a good time to make a bet on a company that got away for a hype-y Series A round.Startup founders think prospective employees want assurances that their company is really worth what the company says it is. Good private unicorns are in a bit of a bind. Prospective employees are now automatically giving their equity offers a mental haircut based on the market downturn. So good companies have an incentive to reaffirm their valuations with funding rounds during the downturn — even if it otherwise might be smarter to keep their valuations artificially low so as to maintain room to grow should conditions worsen. (I wish employees would get better at assessing companies based on fundamentals, rather than the last tick fundraising round. Employees are basically begging founders to maximize for valuation, which then minimizes employee upside.)Some small-to-medium sized companies are shopping themselves to their rival startups but it's not always clear why the competitor would want to buy. Why take on additional burn and headcount when all you might end up getting is leads on some new customers? Sure, you might do some venture capital firm a favor, but what's that really worth?There are some cracks in up-start media world. The most obvious tremor is at BuzzFeed where the stock has sunk 54% in a month. Reporters have been leaving in droves. Meanwhile, The Information lost one of its top editors — Martin Peers. He's long been a central figure over there. The Information's up-and-coming venture capital reporter Berber Jin departed to the Wall Street Journal, as did Sarah Krouse who will be covering Netflix for the Journal. Stephen Nellis returned to Reuters. Meanwhile spirits seem strong at my former employer, Bloomberg. The ascendance of the player-coach editor seems to have people upbeat. Sarah Frier is leading big tech coverage and Lucas Shaw (who has been a guest on Dead Cat) is running the show on Hollywood coverage. And somehow Bloomberg just lured back a former star reporter who had left to join the startup ranks: Alex Barinka — who left Bloomberg as a deals reporter to help launch Imran Khan's Verishop before going over to Stitch Fix — is joining Frier's team as a social media reporter based in LA. Next week I'm in Toronto for Collision where I'll be interviewing Uncork Capital's Andy McLoughlin, Real Ventures' Janet Bannister, and Left Lane Capital's Vinny Pujji on a panel Wednesday called “Survival of the leanest: The importance of being capital efficient.” Then, less than an hour later I'll interview General Catalyst's Hemant Taneja about responsible innovation. On Thursday, I'll ask “Has the tech bubble burst... again?!” in a panel with FirstMark's Matt Turck, Lux's Deena Shakir, and Neo Financial's Andrew Chau. Expect the most interesting tidbits in this newsletter late next week.Talking about Chesa Boudin on Dead CatMy first meeting in San Francisco started with a tour of The San Francisco Standard, the Michael Moritz-funded local news enterprise. My old editor Jonathan Weber — once the editor of tech media dot-com icon The Industry Standard — is the editor-in-chief over at the SF Standard. Weber, Dead Cat co-host Tom Dotan, and I met up for a nice dinner at The Morris in the Mission. After spending the evening discussing San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin's recall, Tom and I convinced Weber to come on the Dead Cat podcast and talk about the Standard and San Francisco politics.Tom thinks I'm going to get eviscerated by San Franciscans for my politics. This is something we've never seen before: a New Yorker opining on San Francisco local affairs. I did my best to offend conservatives and liberals alike, maligning the police while rooting for tech's ascendant influence on San Francisco politics. Weber makes the case for objective, follow-the-reporting local news and outlines the real issues underpinning the recall. He explains how money is simultaneously to blame and not to blame for Boudin's recall. And he defends the Standard against its critics for its influential story on Boudin's refusal to make drug arrests. We interrogate what Boudin's defeat means for the future of progressive politics and the city of San Francisco.Give it a listen.Read the automated transcript. Get full access to Newcomer at www.newcomer.co/subscribe

Connie & Alex go over a couple of top tech stories for the week, and then Connie talks to Sarah Tavel, one of Benchmark's Capital's five general partners, about how Web3 differs from crypto. Music: 1. "Inspired" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3918-inspired)2. "Blippy Trance" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/5759-blippy-trance)3. "Dream Catcher" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4650-dream-catcher)4. "Pamgaea" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4193-pamgaea)5. "EDM Detection Mode" by Kevin MacLeod (https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3687-edm-detection-mode)License: https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI features a talk by Sarah Tavel, General Partner at Benchmark from the IRL Traction Conference in Vancouver. Sarah started her career at Bessemer Venture Partners, and invested in Pinterest when it was a small five person company with about 30,000 registered users. She loved the company so much that she joined Pinterest to become their first product manager. Sarah led product at Pinterest through a period of hyper-growth, and when she left the company they had 100 million monthly active users.  In this session, Sarah shares the framework to build iconic businesses covering: Hierarchy of engagement Growing engaged users Retaining users once you've brought them in Building mounting loss and accruing benefits into your product Making your product self-perpetuating with virtuous loops Learn more about the Traction community at http://tractionconf.io  Connect with Sarah Tavel: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sarahtavel/ Learn more about Benchmark at http://www.benchmark.com/ This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don't get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI. Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca  Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com

Connie's motivational quotes for today is by – Sarah Tavel, “Obvious realization: Content that starts as video, can be downgraded to audio (in your pocket or as podcast), which can be converted to text (via transcription or blog). But content can't flow in another direction. Therefore, to maximize the audience for any content, start with video.” YouTube: https://youtu.be/MWGcnaPsAVg Check Out These Highlights:   A few years ago, Mary Lou, the owner of webtalkradio.net was coaching me on how to become a better host and make my podcast interesting, fun, and engaging.  Then one day she said to me, “you need to start recording your show using video.”  As if in a time warp, I couldn't hear anything after that.  In my mind I was thinking, “did she just tell me I need to record the show using video? So people could see me! That's crazy and not happening.” After a couple of minutes of her sharing the benefits of using video, of course I buckled and embraced her recommendations.  That was about 3 years ago.  Best advice ever! I have become so comfortable on video that when COVID hit being on Zoom was like breathing.  I created a digital class and yes you guessed it, I use short videos to teach the content of our weekly group coaching calls.  Basically, for most businesses using video isn't an option it's a must do.  Do not fear, I have an expert to break this down into actionable pieces so you too can create some binge-worthy videos. About Nina Froriep:   Nina Froriep has seen it all from the early 90's on independent features, to big national TV commercials, corporate mega-shows, and (Emmy award-winning) documentary films, including one she produced and directed, called Abraham's Children. Today she's super excited to enable business coaches, consultants, and service-based entrepreneurs to grow their businesses with fun + easy video marketing so they can attract their ideal clients. How to Get in Touch With Nina Froriep:    Website:  https://clockwiseproductions.com/  Email:  nina@clockwiseproductions.com  Free MasterClass:  https://clockwiseproductions.com/masterclass/ Stalk me online! Website:  https://whitmanassoc.com/ Connie's #1 International Bestseller Book - ESP (Easy Sales Process): 7-Step to Sales Success:  https://whitmanassoc.com/resources/ Download Free Communication Style Assessment:  www.whitmanassoc.com/csa Subscribe and listen to the Changing the Sales Game Podcast on your favorite podcast streaming service or on YouTube.  New episodes post every Monday on webtalkradio.net - listen to Connie dive into new sales and business topics or problems you may have in your business.

Overview: Today, we're going to talk about 54gene - the genomics HealthTech company. We'll explore the 54gene story across 6 areas: African Health care status & context 54gene early history Fundraising & Growth Product & monetization strategy Competitive positioning & potential exit options Overall outlook. This episode was recorded on Sep 19, 2021 Companies discussed: 54gene, llumina, African Centre of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases, Y Combinator (YC), 50 Years, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Gilead, IMS Health, Broad Institute, Novartis, Cathay AfricInvest, Helium Health & mPharma Business concepts discussed: Genomics, Capacity development / Local knowledge development, Healthcare technology, Health insurance coverage, commercial biobanks & public policy Conversation highlights: (00:54) - Why we're talking about 54Gene today (06:25) - Context on Healthcare and Genomics in Africa (27:02) - 54Gene founding and early history (34:13) - Fundraising and early growth - Seed, Series A, Series B (54:15) - Product and monetization strategy (1:11:00) - 54Gene capacity building (1:17:00) - Competition in this space, exit opportunities (1:30:39) - Olumide's overall thoughts and outlook (1:42:38) - Bankole's overall thoughts and outlook (1:56:03) - Recommendations and small wins Olumide's recommendations & small wins: Recommendation: Afridigest newsletter (by Emeka Ajene) Awesome and well done. Combines threads from multiple angles. Fabulous. Recommendation: Frontier FinTech Newsletter (by Samora Kariouki) So thorough and detailed. Love it. Recommendation: Kate Nash - Foundations. So good Small win: Galaxy Buds 2 - Small, ANC (Active Noise Cancellation), great battery life, good software controls Other content: Boom - Supersonic Passenger Airplanes Bankole's recommendations & small wins: Recommendation: Slow Down - King Promise, Code Breakers by Walter Isaacson & Sarah Tavel on 20 minute VC Small win: Chelsea FC 3-0 W vs Tottenham Other content: 54Gene partnership with Illumina & Colonialists are coming for blood - Literally Listeners: We'd love to hear from you. Email info@afrobility.com with feedback! Founders: We'd love to hear about what you're working on, email us at info@afrobility.com Investors: We'd also love to link up with you to drive the ecosystem forward. Contact us at info@afrobility.com Join our insider mailing list where we get feedback on new episodes & find all episodes at Afrobility.com

We're re-releasing some of the best episodes from the podcast this summer.Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), partner at Benchmark, and Nabeel Hyatt (@nabeel), partner at Spark Capital, joined Erik on this episode.They discussed:- Why they love investing in marketplaces and the evolution of marketplaces over the last decade.- Why the wave of Uber For X startups didn't take off.- How they evaluate marketplaces, and why founders get confused about “which race they're running” when creating a marketplace startup.- Where they're excited about seeing more marketplaces and which spaces they advise founders to avoid.- The impact of SoftBank and their analysis of the current crop of public marketplace companies.- Common mistakes they see founders making in marketplace startups.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.

Sarah Tavel has spent the past four years as a general partner at venture capital firm Benchmark, after previously serving in the same role with Greylock Partners and as the first-ever product manager at Pinterest. In this episode Shane and Sarah how studying philosophy helped in her career as a venture capitalist, the value of intellectual rigor, her concept of the net-present value of pain, why every strength has a corresponding weakness, where executive boards go wrong, assessing the performance of a CEO, lessons of rapidly scaling at Pinterest, and so much more. Go Premium: Members get early access, ad-free episodes, hand-edited transcripts, searchable transcripts, member only episodes, and more. https://fs.blog/knowledge-project-premium/ Every Sunday our newsletter shares timeless insights and ideas that you can use at work and home. Add it to your inbox: https://fs.blog/newsletter/ Follow Shane on twitter at: https://twitter.com/ShaneAParrish

Alfred Lin is a Partner @ Sequoia Capital, one of the world's most renowned and successful venture firms with a portfolio including the likes of Google, Airbnb, Whatsapp, Stripe, Zoom, Doordash and many more. As for Alfred, he has led deals in the likes of Airbnb, Doordash, Instacart, Reddit and Houzz to name a few. Prior to the world of venture, Alfred was Chairman and COO @ Zappos for 6 years leading to their acquisition by Amazon. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Alfred made his way into the world of venture and came to be a Partner @ Sequoia? How Alfred first met DoorDash? Where did the meeting take place? Who was there? What were the first impressions? 2.) Market: How did Alfred breakdown the food delivery market when doing the diligence for the investment? How did Alfred forsee the market changing over time? What were some unexpected elements of the market Alfred did not forsee? What does Alfred look for in markets; size or growth? 3.) Competition: How did Alfred analyse the competitive landscape for food delivery at the time? Why does Alfred believe that great companies are not built by focusing on the competition? What does Alfred mean when he says, "you have to be customer-obsessed and competitor aware"? 4.) Traction: Does Alfred agree with Sarah Tavel in the dangers of chasing topline GMV? What negative behaviours can chasing GMV trigger? What does Alfred mean when he says, "founders have to be able to distinguish between input and output metrics"? 5.) Acquisition: What does Alfred believe DoorDash did so well in terms of acquiring drivers more efficiently? How did they retain them so effectively? What allowed DoorDash to compete so effectively when it came to merchant acquisition? What were some of Alfred's biggest takeaways when it came to DoorDash's customer acquisition journey? As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Sarah Tavel is a General Partner @ Benchmark, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, WeWork, Snapchat, StitchFix, eBay and many more. As for Sarah, prior to joining Benchmark, she was a General Partner at another globally renowned firm, Greylock, where she led deals in Sonder and Gixo. Pre-Greylock, Sarah was the first PM @ Pinterest where she led three acquisitions, launched Pinterest internationally, and was responsible for closing their $100m Series C financing. 20VC: Benchmark's Sarah Tavel on Why Chasing GMV Will Lead To The Wrong Direction, The 2 Crucial Tipping Points For Marketplace Adoption, Why UGC Plays Are Like Marketplaces & How To Determine Between Existential and Non-Existential Risk In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her way from being the first PM at Pinterest to being a General Partner at one of the world's leading venture firms, Benchmark? 2.) What does Sarah mean when she says, "the small things are not the big things"? How does Sarah determine between existential vs non-existential risk? How does this impact the type of board member Sarah is? How has Sarah seen the best board members engage? Who are they? 3.) Why does Sarah believe that in marketplaces, chasing GMV will lead you in the wrong direction? How does Sarah think about good vs great when it comes to 1.) Average order values? 2.) Repeat purchase rates. 3.) NPS? 4.) Net revenue retention? How should they change with time? 4.) In marketplaces, what is a tipping point? What are the 2 crucial tipping points to be aware of? How can marketplaces ensure demand brings further demand? What can they determine from how demand engages with different suppliers? How does Sarah feel about feedback systems? 5.) Why does Sarah believe that UGC plays are like marketplaces? What lessons can be drawn from TikTok to suggest this? How does Sarah think about her biggest lessons when analysing the growth of DoorDash? What do many not see that is important to recognise? Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode Sarah’s Favourite Book: Pachinko: The New York Times Bestseller As always you can follow Harry and The Twenty Minute VC on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

On this preview of our most recent LP Show episode, Benchmark General Partner Sarah Tavel joins us for a master class on consumer investing. We start with why invest in consumer at all (given the inherent risks of its "hit-driven nature"), then deep dive on marketplace investing and wrap up with social, gaming and consumer transactional businesses. Big thank you to Sarah for sharing her immense knowledge on this topic, and to her partner (and fellow Acquired "master class lecturer" on enterprise investing) Chetan Puttagunta for introducing us and for making it happen!   This episode is a preview of the hour-long LP-only show. You can sign up to become an LP and get access to the full episode (and much more) at: https://glow.fm/acquired/   Links to Sarah's blog posts: "Hierarchy of Marketplaces" posts: https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-hierarchy-of-marketplaces-introduction-and-level-1-983995aa218e "Hierarchy of Engagement" post: https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-hierarchy-of-engagement-expanded-648329d60804 Rocks, Sand, and Water Framework for Consumer Attention: https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-opportunity-and-risks-for-consumer-startups-in-a-social-distancing-world-a-framework-for-15f65e2fbdff

Benchmark General Partner Sarah Tavel joins us for a master class on consumer investing. We start with why invest in consumer at all (given the inherent risks of its "hit-driven nature"), then deep dive on marketplace investing and wrap up with social, gaming and consumer transactional businesses. Big thank you to Sarah for sharing her immense knowledge on this topic, and to her partner (and fellow Acquired "master class lecturer" on enterprise investing) Chetan Puttagunta for introducing us and for making it happen!   Links to Sarah's consumer investing blog posts: "Hierarchy of Marketplaces" posts: https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-hierarchy-of-marketplaces-introduction-and-level-1-983995aa218e "Hierarchy of Engagement" post: https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-hierarchy-of-engagement-expanded-648329d60804 Rocks, Sand, and Water Framework for Consumer Attention: https://medium.com/@sarahtavel/the-opportunity-and-risks-for-consumer-startups-in-a-social-distancing-world-a-framework-for-15f65e2fbdff

June 12, 2020: Learnings inspired by listening to Invest Like The Best podcast episodes with Sarah Tavel of Benchmark and Jeff Lawson of Twilio. This took me down the rabbit hole of learning about 100 marketplaces from a16z's article on private/startups and First Round Capital's focused interview with Jeff Lawson on Twilio's values and culture.   Find detailed notes of the episode on omdventures.com/omddaily Support the podcast by donating at omdventures.com/stakeholder Music by icons8.com

Sarah Tavel of Benchmark joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss Consumer Marketplace Investing; Why Aggregate GMV is a Red Herring; and Minimum Viable Happiness as the Key to Market Leadership. In this episode, we cover: Background and path to venture? Quick overview of the thesis and your focus at Benchmark What are your thoughts on platform VC? What tactics or approaches do you use in the process of “scaling your founder”? You sit on the board of some companies, such as HipCamp, that have been greatly affected by the pandemic -- What are some of the creative responses you've seen from portfolio companies? Is there anything fundamental to Marketplace businesses that you think will shift as a result of the crisis and changes in consumer behavior? In the food delivery space, we recently witnessed DoorDash unseating the larger incumbent: GrubHub, with the greatest market share. DoorDash started after PostMates and years after Grubhub... how'd they do it? Do you currently see or do you predict more situations where a startup capturing more supply will lead to displacement of a large tech company as mkt share leader?... if so, in what markets? Recently, you published a series of newsletters talking about the hierarchy of marketplaces... first off, what are the three phases that you've outlined here? Why is a push to aggregate GMV across many markets, less important than dominance in one market? What is Minimum Viable Liquidity? How do you define/measure happiness? At what levels do you know you've reached MVL or MVH? Level 2 of your Marketplace framework... Can you talk about what it means for a marketplace to “tip” and how do marketplace based businesses achieve this? Is there something specific that happens w/ the metrics of a businesses that show that the marketplace is tipping? Do different stages of fundraising map to these phases? The third phase you refer to is the 'Outrun' phase... walk us through the main focus areas in this phase. Homogeneity of the buy-side as a negative... can you expand on this? How does your evaluation of a marketplace based business differ whether it's a b2b company or a b2c company, if at all? Let's say you are approached to invest in a Consumer Marketplace company with $10M in GMV, a 25% take rate, and 20% MoM growth for the last 6 months. Catch is you can only ask for 3 data points to make your decision. What 3 questions do you ask for? To listen more, please visit http://fullratchet.net/podcast-episodes/ for all of our other episodes. Also, follow us on twitter @TheFullRatchet for updates and more information.

My guest this week is Sarah Tavel, a general partner at Benchmark, working alongside past guests Bill Gurley and Chetan Puttagunta. Sarah has a long history as both an investor and as an operator.  She was an early product leader at Pinterest before joining Benchmark. Sarah has become one of my go-to resources for topics like networks, consumer technology, and marketplaces among many other topics. I’ve used her framework for how to think about client engagement, company data, and marketplace liquidity and quality over and over again in my business life. I’m so excited to finally have her on the show.  Please enjoy our conversation. For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast. Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub. Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag   Show Notes 1:24 – (First question) - Lessons learned from watching the food delivery space 5:44 – Hip camp and how they are thinking about the space rental sector             5:45 - The a16z Marketplace 100 7:47 – Valuing private companies vs public companies 9:37 – Building marketplaces 14:24 – Tipping a market             14:30 – Bill Gurley Podcast Episode 18:09 – How to incorporate reputation scores into a network 19:55 – Search ranking as a tool for marketplaces 21:00 – Size of marketplaces vs their competitors 22:15 – Niching of marketplaces             22:21 - Chetan Puttagunta Podcast Episode 23:26 – State of the consumer social sector 27:50 – The LinkedIn problem and how she would build a social platform 30:42 – Things that are piquing her interest in the consumer space 32:20 – Lessons learned about scaling while working at Pinterest 38:42 – Pricing and the marketplace 41:25 – Identifying and optimizing a Core Action in a digital business 44:18 – Accruing benefits and mounting losses as part of the product design 47:48 – Her investment in Reci 52:18 – How should companies gather the best data from their business 56:03 – Lessons to SaaS investing 56:29 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Sarah 57:45 – Most interesting philosophy lesson             58:09 – Creating a Kingdom of Ends   Learn More For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.  Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

The post E35: “Angel” Podcast: Sarah Tavel, Partner at Benchmark shares insights on getting recruited by Peter Fenton, disrupting VC gender norms from the inside, transitioning from operator to investor & more appeared first on This Week In Startups.

The post E35: “Angel” Podcast: Sarah Tavel, Partner at Benchmark shares insights on getting recruited by Peter Fenton, disrupting VC gender norms from the inside, transitioning from operator to investor & more appeared first on This Week In Startups.

0:50 Jason intros Benchmark's Sarah Tavel 1:20 Aside from Slack, what other companies grew like consumer-facing but charge like enterprise? 3:19 How was Sarah recruited to Benchmark? How is Benchmark different from other major VC firms? 12:04 Limited upside of talking to the press in 2020 17:30 Growing up in NYC and going to Harvard 21:30 Jason on becoming a "Don't touch the thermostat" dad 23:58 How did the offer from Peter Fenton go down? What drew Sarah to Benchmark? 28:36 Sarah's thoughts on disrupting VC as a woman from the inside & from the outside 37:30 How going from operating to investing is trading stress for anxiety 40:51 Jason and Sarah discuss their most personal & significant investments: Calm & Pinterest 47:26 How Pinterest's business model was a mold of Facebook and Google 49:45 Jason tells regulators how to stop Google 58:14 Investing in Chainalysis & Crypto infrastructure 1:12:44 Are the best companies polarizing? 1:16:30 Investing in Hipcamp 1:29:43 Marc Andreessen asks Sarah a question

Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), partner at Benchmark, and Ben Rubin (@benrbn), founder of Houseparty and Meerkat, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:- Where the white space is in social and the possibilities for vertical-specific social networks.- Why Facebook looks to young people today the way Yahoo! looked to Sarah’s generation.- What participatory social looks like and how to solve the problem of presence.- Their ideas for new social networks.- What Twitter could have been.- How social interacts with gaming, audio, dating, and other spaces.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Grace Chen is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), partner at Benchmark, and Ben Rubin (@benrbn), founder of Houseparty and Meerkat, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:- Where the white space is in social and the possibilities for vertical-specific social networks.- Why Facebook looks to young people today the way Yahoo! looked to Sarah’s generation.- What participatory social looks like and how to solve the problem of presence.- Their ideas for new social networks.- What Twitter could have been.- How social interacts with gaming, audio, dating, and other spaces.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global and is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg. Grace Chen is our audio engineer and the show is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

"The most exciting new podcast in the startup world.” - Eric Ries, Founder, and NYTimes bestselling author Today on the program, we've got Sarah Tavel. She’s a venture capitalist at the legendary and enigmatic venture capital firm, Benchmark Capital, which is one of the most renowned firms in the world. We covered a whole range of topics like, how her partners work together, how she chooses an investment, examples of what made her pass and then later invest in a company that she now loves, and the dynamics with a founder in that situation. We talked about the Gartner Hype Cycle and its implications for what the psychological journey in creation is like, whether it's launching a new company or launching a new feature. We also talked about the stories that have helped shape who she has become (and what has made her so damn impressive). Listen in for all this and more. You can email James questions directly at askbelowtheline@gmail.com or follow us on Twitter @ twitter.com/gobelowtheline — “Below the Line with James Beshara" is brought to you by Straight Up Podcasts LLC

Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), partner at Benchmark, and Nabeel Hyatt (@nabeel), partner at Spark Capital, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:- Why they love investing in marketplaces and the evolution of marketplaces over the last decade.- Why the wave of Uber For X startups didn’t take off.- How they evaluate marketplaces, and why founders get confused about “which race they’re running” when creating a marketplace startup.- Where they’re excited about seeing more marketplaces and which spaces they advise founders to avoid.- The impact of SoftBank and their analysis of the current crop of public marketplace companies.- Common mistakes they see founders making in marketplace startups.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), partner at Benchmark, and Nabeel Hyatt (@nabeel), partner at Spark Capital, join Erik on this episode.They discuss:- Why they love investing in marketplaces and the evolution of marketplaces over the last decade.- Why the wave of Uber For X startups didn’t take off.- How they evaluate marketplaces, and why founders get confused about “which race they’re running” when creating a marketplace startup.- Where they’re excited about seeing more marketplaces and which spaces they advise founders to avoid.- The impact of SoftBank and their analysis of the current crop of public marketplace companies.- Common mistakes they see founders making in marketplace startups.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this special live episode by Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), general partner at Benchmark. Sarah gave a fireside chat as part of Village Global’s Network Catalyst accelerator program in May 2019. They talk about:* The state of education and what Sarah is looking for in the space.* Why founders need to focus on “getting one thing really right, no matter how big or small.”* What Sarah sees in the crypto space and why she invested in Chainalysis.* The promise of vertical marketplaces.* Why Benchmark say “we are not in the business of predicting the future but rather of seeing the present clearly.”* How she evaluates markets and some of the verticals that she’s looking at investing in.* Company-building tips, including why as a company grows the CEO needs to “transition from CEO of the product to CEO of the system that builds a system.”And much more.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

Erik is joined on this special live episode by Sarah Tavel (@sarahtavel), general partner at Benchmark. Sarah gave a fireside chat as part of Village Global’s Network Catalyst accelerator program in May 2019. They talk about:* The state of education and what Sarah is looking for in the space.* Why founders need to focus on “getting one thing really right, no matter how big or small.”* What Sarah sees in the crypto space and why she invested in Chainalysis.* The promise of vertical marketplaces.* Why Benchmark say “we are not in the business of predicting the future but rather of seeing the present clearly.”* How she evaluates markets and some of the verticals that she’s looking at investing in.* Company-building tips, including why as a company grows the CEO needs to “transition from CEO of the product to CEO of the system that builds a system.”And much more.Thanks for listening — if you like what you hear, please review us on your favorite podcast platform. Check us out on the web at villageglobal.vc or get in touch with us on Twitter @villageglobal.Venture Stories is brought to you by Village Global, is hosted by co-founder and partner, Erik Torenberg and is produced by Brett Bolkowy.

On this episode I'm visiting Benchmark Capital, one of the world's most renowned venture capital firms, at their offices in the heart of the Tenderloin in San Francisco to chat with two of its general partners, Sarah Tavel and Eric Vishria. Sarah Tavel has a unique background as an investor, then operator, and back to investor. In the mid-2000s she joined Silicon Valley-based Bessemer where she led an investment in Pinterest and others. She went on to join Pinterest back when they were only a few dozen people before returning to venture three and a half years later. She's now a GP at Benchmark and on the board of Hipcamp and Chainalysis. Eric Vishria started his career as an operator, working at Opsware and HP before founding Rockmelt, a social take on the web browser, back in 2008. Later the company was acquired by Yahoo where Eric joined as a VP before making a leap into venture at Benchmark. Over the past four-plus years he's lead investments in Confluent, Contentful, Amplitude, and others. In this episode we talk about: What it's like to go from operating to investing and the different skillsets involved in those jobs, and why Benchmark has bucked the trend of venture firms expanding both in headcount and fund size. What Sarah and Eric are looking for in an investment, which spaces they're most excited about (hint: they say that contrary to reports of its death, consumer is very much alive), and why each partner at the firm only does on average one or two investments in a year. The importance of starting a company in Silicon Valley (or not) and why we're seeing more startups build outside the Valley. We also discuss some of her favorite products, including a couple apps that are enabling new forms of communication on mobile, an “Airbnb for campsites,” and why Sarah has been playing Fortnite for “research purposes.” 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. Also, big thanks to AngelList and FreshBooks for their support.

Sarah Tavel is a General Partner at Benchmark, one of the world’s leading VC funds with a portfolio including the likes of Twitter, Uber, Snapchat, eBay, WeWork, Yelp and many more revolutionary companies of the last decade. As for Sarah, Sarah has led Benchmark's investments in and currently sits on the boards of Chainalysis and Hipcamp. Prior to Benchmark, Sarah was a Partner at Greylock Partners, where she led Greylock's investment in Sonder and another (unannounced) company. Before Greylock, Sarah was one of the first 35 employees at Pinterest where she led the company's international expansion and aided in the closing of the Series C financing. Sarah was also the product lead for search, recommendations, machine vision, and pin quality and led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hyper-growth. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her first foray into the world of venture with Bessemer over 10 years ago? How that led to Pinterest and how she came to be a GP at Benchmark today? 2.) Speaking of Sarah's operating career with Pinterest, Pat Grady said on the show "never has the rate of decay on operating experience been greater". How does Sarah think about and respond to this? How has operating made Sarah a strong investor? What are the drawbacks that this operating experience can present for investors? 3.) Moving to evaluation, Andy Rachleff, Founder @ Benchmark said on the show, "good team poor market, market wins; good market, poor team, market wins. How does Sarah think about the balance between founder vs market? Why is going after big markets so hard? What should investors look for in a market with that in mind? How does Sarah determine the right time to open up adjacent markets? 4.) There has never been a greater supply of capital in the market than today, does Sarah believe we have an excess supply today? Does Sarah agree with her Partner, Peter Fenton, "no good deal is too expensive in hindsight"? How does Sarah assess her own price sensitivity? How does it depend on the opportunity? How has it changed over time? 5.) Having 2,5000 hours on boards, how has Sarah seen herself develop and change as a board member? What have been some of the biggest learning curves? What are the commonalities in the very best board members Sarah works with? how doe the best entrepreneurs manage and use their boards effectively? 6.) Why does Sarah think that crypto today is very much like the world of adtech in the early days? How does Sarah think about the requirement for specialisation in the space? WIll this be a game for the specialised crypto funds or can generalist VC funds compete? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Sarah’s Fave Book: Creating the Kingdom of Ends Sarah’s Most Recent Investment: Hipcamp As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Sarah on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Benchmark partner Sarah Tavel talks with Recode's Kara Swisher and Teddy Schleifer about her career in tech companies and venture capital. Her resume includes stints at Pinterest, Bessemer Venture Partners and Greylock Partners, but last year she became the first woman partner hired at Benchmark, where one of her focuses is cryptocurrencies. She explains why the field is interesting even though it has been flooded with scammy ICOs since late 2017. Tavel also talks about what she and other female VCs are doing to help women succeed in tech and how she views the influx of money into the ecosystem from SoftBank. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week we once again had the full crew on set: Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself. And even better, we were joined by Sarah Tavel from Benchmark, who helped us unspool a topic or three. Equity is recording a live ep at SaaStr which is cool. And topics we had. This being earnings season, we had little choice but to talk about at least one public company's results. Obviously, we picked Netflix, a firm whose stock has gone parabolic as its cashflow has moved in the opposite direction. But as we discuss, in the era of infinite money for land-grabs, why slow down? Next up was Twitter, from which a bird has flown the nest right into the arms of SoFi. Yes, SoFi is picking up Twitter's COO for its CEO role. Regular listeners will know why SoFi, a heavily-funded unicorn, needs a new CEO in the first place. Next up was the venture world. How much money did VCs disburse in 2017? Quite a lot as it turns out. In the United States and the world, the numbers were quite large -- records since the dotcom boom. (More here if you are so inclined). We also noodled over the ICO landscape, including the Telegram offering. All that and it turns out that Lyft is not woke. Alas.

This week we once again had the full crew on set: Matthew Lynley, Katie Roof, and myself. And even better, we were joined by Sarah Tavel from Benchmark, who helped us unspool a topic or three. Equity is recording a live ep at SaaStr which is cool. And topics we had. This being earnings season, we had little choice but to talk about at least one public company's results. Obviously, we picked Netflix, a firm whose stock has gone parabolic as its cashflow has moved in the opposite direction. But as we discuss, in the era of infinite money for land-grabs, why slow down? Next up was Twitter, from which a bird has flown the nest right into the arms of SoFi. Yes, SoFi is picking up Twitter's COO for its CEO role. Regular listeners will know why SoFi, a heavily-funded unicorn, needs a new CEO in the first place. Next up was the venture world. How much money did VCs disburse in 2017? Quite a lot as it turns out. In the United States and the world, the numbers were quite large -- records since the dotcom boom. (More here if you are so inclined). We also noodled over the ICO landscape, including the Telegram offering. All that and it turns out that Lyft is not woke. Alas.

In this interview, Sarah Tavel explains the right way to grow your startup and the right way to listen to your users. She also reveals the difficulties of building a consumer-led product and how Pinterest was able to succeed.

At #ProductSF, Greylock's Sarah Tavel is joined by Pinterest co-founder Ben Silbermann to talk about the evolution of his roles as both CEO and product leader at a high growth company. Ben shares how thinks about distribution, hiring and scaling teams, and what makes a strong product manager. #ProductSF is a product-centric event hosted by Greylock Partners. The conference brings together a community of founders, PMs, and product leaders to talk about the challenges of building new, innovative products that change lives and create habits.

Sarah Tavel is a Partner at Greylock Partners. Prior to Greylock, Sarah was a product lead at Pinterest. As one of the first 35 employees, her first order of business was to launch Pinterest internationally and close the Series C financing. Sarah then moved into product, becoming Pinterest’s founding PM for search and discovery, and launching Pinterest’s first search and recommendations features. She also led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hyper-growth. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. She spent six years at Bessemer, investing in a wide range of businesses from Quidsi to Cornerstone OnDemand.     In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her way into the world of VC from selling ads in college? 2.) What is the deal sourcing story behind your sourcing of Pinterest for Bessemer? What made Sarah so excited about the product? At what stage did Sarah realise the huge potential Pinterest did have? 3.) How did Sarah decide Greylock was the right VC to choose over the plethora of other options? 4.) How does Sarah try and appeal to the inner founder? What does she do to make sure she is the first person they call? What forms of communication does Srah like to communicate with? 5.) What is Sarah's attitude to VC's personal brand? How has Sarah seen the personalisation of VC in recent years? Why the shift from blog to Medium? 6.) What is the most important attribute for a consumer product to have? Does it have to be both 10X better and cheaper? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sarah's's Fave Book: Creating The Kingdom Of Ends Sarah's Fave Blog or Newsletter: A Crowded Space by Josh Breinlinger As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Josh 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!

Sarah Tavel is a partner at Greylock, previously ran product at Pinterest, and is one of my favorite investors in the Valley. We talk about her story at Pinterest - why she joined, how it scaled, and how she transitioned from PM to VC. She shares career advice talk about career advice — when to join a company, when to move on, and how to identify a rocket ship. And then we discuss investing and how to get good at it. Edited by @alexkontis Lavish Praise to @sarahtavel Constructive Criticism to @eriktorenberg