POPULARITY
ABOUT WADE CHAMBERSWade Chambers will be leading Engineering at Amplitude. Amplitude is the leading digital analytics platform that helps companies unlock the power of their products. Wade has over 25 years of engineering leadership experience, both advising companies and being hands-on in key leadership positions at companies such as Included Health, Twitter, TellApart, Proofpoint, Yahoo, and Opsware. He is a deep technical expert with a proven track record of scaling teams, leaders, market-defining technology innovations, and business growth. Build AI Voice Agents with ElevenLabsElevenLabs is the leading Voice AI platform for developers with thousands of ultra-realistic, human-like voices across 32 languages.Developers use ElevenLabs to build life-like, conversational AI voice agents to handle customer support queries, appointment scheduling, and even offer personalized 1-1 tutoring.Get started for free at elevenlabs.io/elc SHOW NOTES:Why empowering engineering teams to own their mission matters (3:16)Common traps that prevent eng leaders from empowering teams (5:15)Understanding the “why” behind ownership & systemizing individual ownership (7:09)Systems change for empowerment: Aligning company vision, outcomes, competencies & behaviors (9:48)How to bring someone from low ownership back to high ownership (13:49)Developing trust & having tough conversations around ownership (15:17)Nonobvious factors to that erode ownership over time (17:42)Empowering teams through meaningful missions, clear expectations, defining success, & ongoing check-ins (20:55)Identifying engineers w/ competencies & behaviors that align w/ your org's vision & goals (24:00)When having too much ownership becomes a problem (27:22)Wade's process for officially transferring ownership (28:47)Coaching and navigating conversations around ownership (32:01)Impactful questions to ask during the coaching / check in process (34:08)Closing gaps in leadership competencies & behaviors (37:27)Coaching leaders to align personal growth with org goals (39:25)Rapid fire questions (41:34)This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
In today's episode, we're highlighting one of our favorite past conversations, featuring Wade Chambers, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Included Health. We cover tools for increasing your capacity to win as an eng leader, getting unstuck in your career / moving forward, and applying “conscious growth” and neuroplasticity principles to the career. Wade shares stories of success – and failure – as an eng manager, best practices to measure success as an eng leader, and how to increase your team's performance & potential.ABOUT WADE CHAMBERSWade Chambers (@wadechambers) is the CTO and SVP of Engineering at IncludedHealth, a company that provides technology solutions to improve the way patients get healthcare matched to their needs. He has over 25 years of engineering leadership experience, both advising companies and being hands-on in key leadership positions at companies such as Twitter, TellApart, Yahoo, Proofpoint, and Opsware. He is a deep technical expert with a proven track record of scaling teams and leaders, market-defining technology innovations, and business growth.“The more that you can recognize that, ‘Oh, I feel uncomfortable...' and you can just sit with it a minute. As opposed to react to it. There's always a feedback mechanism in that. That willingness to be in the discomfort a little bit longer. You're actually going to learn so much about yourself in that moment. And if you can act on that, that's what unlocks you to move forward.”- Wade Chambers Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discountSHOW NOTES:Wade's background in building a habit of conscious growth & digging deeper (4:14)Overcoming early failures as a first-time manager (8:11)Why it's hard to unhear the truth & how to incorporate feedback as a manager (13:08)How understanding neuroplasticity impacts career development (18:11)Moving along the spectrum of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence (19:30)Align your growth to impact your company AND move your career forward (24:37)Why eng leaders need to truly understand their org's business needs (29:49)Strategies for both winning & increasing your capacity to win (35:30)How to increase the potential of individuals & your overall team (40:52)Factors that are keeping you stuck in career growth (44:39)Turning to books to maximize learning / growth (52:11)How to identify core principles & why they drive your behavior (55:37)Final thoughts on closing the gap between where you are & where you want to be (58:54)This episode wouldn't have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan's also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
After 12 years as an operator (Bonobos, TellApart, Floored, CBRE), Dave is now a full-time investor with Zigg, a global investment organization with a singular mission: to accelerate the combination of real estate and technology, improving our collective quality of life, work, and community. On this episode, Brandon and Dave discuss:How Zigg sources dealsThe innovation of Real Estate TechnologyHow Zigg approaches portfolio constructionWhat needs to change in order for the industry to mass-adopt technological advancementsLinks:Zigg CapitalDave on LinkedIn & TwitterHello@Ziggcap.comJuniper SquareBrandon on LinkedInTopics:(00:00:00) Intro(00:01:27) Dave's background and Zigg Capital(00:04:26) - What are some of the big differentiators of the different chapters of your career?(00:08:30) What was your experience transitioning into entrepreneurship and becoming an operator?(00:12:17) Zigg Capital(00:18:22) How do you source deals?(00:20:05) Where do you think we are in the innovation of real estate technology?(00:23:03) Where are you seeing the highest level of technology adoption?(00:24:50) Are there niches where you hope the flywheel will start picking up?(00:27:42) How would you describe your approach to portfolio construction?(00:38:14) Where do you think capital will come from for those investing in real estate?(00:41:18) Why would a company select Zigg for capital?(00:47:42) What's your take on AI and where we will be in the next decade from an innovation perspective?(00:51:32) What must change in order for the industry to achieve the Cambrian explosion?
“I do believe in direct feedback and specifically from a good place where you want the person to improve, it is one of the most helpful things you can do for someone.” – Dave Eisenberg Dave Eisenberg (@Eisenberg) is Founding Partner at Zigg Capital, a venture capital firm investing in real estate and construction technology. Before founding Zigg, Dave spent twelve years as an operator at Bonobos, TellApart, Floored, and CBRE. He started his career at Bain & Company, then moved on to found Red Swan Ventures. Show notes with links, quotes, and a transcript of the episode: https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/dave-eisenberg2-outlier-academy-show-notes Chapters in this interview: Daily family time as an important habit Favorite tools including Twitter, Superhuman, and Peloton Dave's superpowers, inspirations, and favorite books On failure and success Sign up here for Outlier Debrief, our weekly newsletter that highlights the latest episode, expands on important business and investing concepts, and contains the best of what we read each week. Follow Outlier Academy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/outlieracademy. If you loved this episode, please share a quick review on Apple Podcasts.
“I do believe in direct feedback and specifically from a good place where you want the person to improve, it is one of the most helpful things you can do for someone.” – Dave Eisenberg Dave Eisenberg (@Eisenberg) is Founding Partner at Zigg Capital, a venture capital firm investing in real estate and construction technology. Before founding Zigg, Dave spent twelve years as an operator at Bonobos, TellApart, Floored, and CBRE. He started his career at Bain & Company, then moved on to found Red Swan Ventures. Show notes with links, quotes, and a transcript of the episode: https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/dave-eisenberg2-outlier-academy-show-notes Chapters in this interview: Daily family time as an important habit Favorite tools including Twitter, Superhuman, and Peloton Dave's superpowers, inspirations, and favorite books On failure and success Sign up here for Outlier Debrief, our weekly newsletter that highlights the latest episode, expands on important business and investing concepts, and contains the best of what we read each week. Follow Outlier Academy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/outlieracademy. If you loved this episode, please share a quick review on Apple Podcasts.
“Great founders never stop recruiting.” — Dave Eisenberg Dave Eisenberg (@Eisenberg) is Founding Partner at Zigg Capital, a venture capital firm investing in real estate and construction technology. Before founding Zigg, Dave spent twelve years as an operator at Bonobos, TellApart, Floored, and CBRE. He started his career at Bain & Company, then moved on to found Red Swan Ventures. Show notes with links, quotes, and a transcript of the episode: https://www.danielscrivner.com/notes/dave-eisenberg1-outlier-academy-show-notes Chapters in this interview: Dave's background and founding Zigg Capital Lessons about the Chief of Staff role A long-term view of early investments Investing in talent Considerations when creating the cap table Innovations in technology for real estate, retail, and healthcare The future of physical retail Investing in automation Sign up here for Outlier Debrief, our weekly newsletter that highlights the latest episode, expands on important business and investing concepts, and contains the best of what we read each week. Follow Outlier Academy on Twitter: https://twitter.com/outlieracademy. If you loved this episode, please share a quick review on Apple Podcasts.
Ben Narasin is the Founder and General Partner of Tenacity Venture Capital, a pre-Series A venture fund. Immediately previously, Narasin wes a full time investor and Venture Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), one of the worlds largest and oldest traditional venture firms. A prolific entrepreneur and highly regarded early-stage investor with three decades of company-building expertise, Narasin has focused on emerging technologies and new markets throughout his investment career. With a portfolio comprising key early successes in some of today's fastest growing sectors, such as fintech, digital marketplaces, mobile and connected devices. His overarching focus in seeking new investments is, in his words, “to find founders whho make me say wow.” Narasin is a 25-year entrepreneur and 10-year early-stage investor. His knack for spotting emerging trends led him to make seed investments in companies like Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. Before NEA, Narasin served as a General Partner at Canvas Ventures, and was prior to that was President of TriplePoint Ventures, the equity arm of TriplePoint Capital, where he oversaw the firm's seed funding investment activities. Narasin's path to investing is rooted in entrepreneurship. He founded several consumer companies before launching his investing career, including Fashionmall.com, one of the first e-commerce companies, which he founded in 1993 and led to a successful IPO in 1999. Narasin frequently writes and speaks about technology and investing, as well as food and wine, a lifelong passion. He holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennarasin/ Website: https://pitch-ben.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BNarasin --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/geeksofthevalley/support
Today, Shimon and Alex welcome famed entrepreneur and star VC – Ben Narasin of NEA. We discuss what founders should look for in VCs, where pockets of opportunity are in the market, how to think about innovation, the Biden proposed Capital Gains Tax increases, and even Bitcoin and crypto. -------------------NEA is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses with nearly $24 billion in cumulative committed capital. NEA focuses on tech and healthcare companies. Ben is a prolific entrepreneur and a highly regarded early-stage investor with mega hits such as: Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. And his own IPO of Fashionmall.com in 1999. http://hardcorefinance.com@ShimonLazarov@MrEBITDA@BNarasinPitch-ben.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennarasin/Support the show (https://www.hardcorefinance.com/donate)
On Wednesday, May 5th, on the Hardcore Finance Show (http://hardcorefinance.com), Shimon and Alex welcome famed entrepreneur and star VC – Ben Narasin of NEA. We discuss what founders should look for in VCs, where pockets of opportunity are in the market, how to think about innovation, the Biden proposed Capital Gains Tax increases, and even Bitcoin and crypto. -------------------NEA is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses with nearly $24 billion in cumulative committed capital. NEA focuses on tech and healthcare companies. Ben is a prolific entrepreneur and a highly regarded early-stage investor with mega hits such as: Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. And his own IPO of Fashionmall.com in 1999. http://hardcorefinance.com@ShimonLazarov@MrEBITDA@BNarasinPitch-ben.com https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennarasin/Support the show (https://www.hardcorefinance.com/donate)
Garage to Global – Pitch Your Startup: Highly regarded early-stage investor Ben Narasin, a Venture Partner at NEA, a global venture capital firm, joins co-hosts Richard Levick of LEVICK and Louis Lehot, a partner with Foley & Lardner, on the latest episode of Garage to Global. Ben, who successfully spotted trends leading him to make seed investments in companies such as Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits, discusses what moves him to invest and why he is looking for “founders who make me say wow.” Pitch Ben: https://pitch-ben.com/
Ben Narasin is a Venture Partner at NEA. A prolific entrepreneur and highly regarded early-stage investor with three decades of company-building expertise, Narasin has focused on emerging technologies and new markets throughout his investment career. With a portfolio comprising key early successes in some of today’s fastest growing sectors, such as fintech, digital marketplaces, mobile and connected devices. His overarching focus in seeking new investments is, in his words, “to find founders who make me say wow.” Narasin is a 25-year entrepreneur and 10-year early-stage investor. His knack for spotting emerging trends led him to make seed investments in companies like Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. Before NEA, Narasin most recently served as a General Partner at Canvas Ventures, and was previously with TriplePoint Capital, where he oversaw the firm’s seed funding investment activities. Like many of NEA’s partners, Narasin’s path to investing is rooted in entrepreneurship. He founded several consumer companies before launching his investing career, including Fashionmall.com, one of the first e-commerce companies, which he founded in 1993 and led to a successful IPO in 1999. Narasin frequently writes and speaks about technology and investing, as well as food and wine, a lifelong passion. He holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bennarasin/ Website: https://pitch-ben.com/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/BNarasin
Miguel Armaza sits down with the fascinating Ben Narasin, Venture Partner at New Enterprise Associates (NEA), a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors, and geographies. Founded in 1977, NEA has received nearly $24 billion in cumulative committed capital since day one. Ben is not only a prolific investor but also a celebrated founder who launched fashionmall.com in 1993 and took the company public six years later. We talked about - Ben’s journey and entrepreneurial ambitions - A deep dive into his experience taking FashionMall public via IPO and the challenges it entails - The transition from entrepreneur to investor - The elements he looks for in every founder and how COVID has influenced his investment process - And plenty of stories and anecdotes from his exciting journey! Ben Narasin Ben Narasin is a Venture Partner at NEA. A prolific entrepreneur and highly regarded early-stage investor with three decades of company-building expertise, Narasin has focused on emerging technologies and new markets throughout his investment career. With a portfolio comprising key early successes in some of today’s fastest-growing sectors, such as fintech, digital marketplaces, mobile and connected devices. His overarching focus in seeking new investments is, in his words, “to find founders who make me say wow.” Narasin is a 25-year entrepreneur and 10-year early-stage investor. His knack for spotting emerging trends led him to make seed investments in companies like Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. Before NEA, Narasin most recently served as a General Partner at Canvas Ventures, and was previously with TriplePoint Capital, where he oversaw the firm’s seed funding investment activities. Like many of NEA’s partners, Narasin’s path to investing is rooted in entrepreneurship. He founded several consumer companies before launching his investing career, including Fashionmall.com, one of the first e-commerce companies, which he founded in 1993 and led to a successful IPO in 1999. Narasin frequently writes and speaks about technology and investing, as well as food and wine, a lifelong passion. He holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College. About NEA New Enterprise Associates, Inc. (NEA) is a global venture capital firm focused on helping entrepreneurs build transformational businesses across multiple stages, sectors and geographies. With nearly $24 billion in cumulative committed capital since the firm's founding in 1977, NEA invests in technology and healthcare companies at all stages in a company's lifecycle, from seed stage through IPO. The firm's long track record of successful investing includes more than 230 portfolio company IPOs and more than 390 mergers and acquisitions. www.nea.com.
Oops, it happened again. A company we follow closely on The Razor's Edge reported earnings, met or beat expectations, and then sold off heavily along with a major market sell-off. Last time it was PagerDuty, this time it's Twitter. To work through the quarter and perhaps the angst and anxiety around it, we speak with Rajiv Sud. Rajiv is a Silicon Valley veteran, with time logged at Google, AdMob – which was bought out by Google while he was there, at TellApart, and then at Twitter after Twitter bought TellApart. He's been out of Twitter for about two years but as a shareholder and a frequent tweeter, he still follows the company closely. We break down the company's ad server issues and why they may be in the past, the deliberate approach the company takes to product releases, and why Jack Dorsey is maybe fine as Twitter's CEO. Topics Covered 4:45 minute mark – Q3 Reaction 8:00 – One-off effects of a weird 2020 for comparison's sake 14:30 – The challenges with the ad server and what changed 19:30 – The Jack Dorsey question 24:30 – The stand-alone nature of each company's ad stack 28:30 – The ad-tech graveyard 30:30 – The MAP delay 36:30 – How Twitter engages users, and the step-up from occasional to active 41:30 – When does this scale, or the rising expenses 53:30 – Differences between Google and Twitter from an insider's perspective 58:30 – Twitter's engagement and the upside or money left on the table in the subscription ecosystem 1:01:30 – Controlling the narrative
Meet: Jeshua Bratman is an expert in building technology products powered by artificial intelligence. He's a founding member of Abnormal Security and head of machine learning. Prior to joining Abnormal, Jeshua played a critical role in building Twitter's machine learning platform and detecting and preventing abusive behavior on the Twitter product. Prior to Twitter, Jeshua built the AI engine that powered TellApart's advertising product and bringing it to over $100 million ARR and acquisition by Twitter and integration. His academic experience is in theoretical reinforcement learning and deep learning at the University of Michigan. What you'll learn: Machine learning driving business value Email hackers against machine learning models - the chess match Advice on how to find your next machine learning position If you would like to reach out to Jesh about anything he discussed on the podcast, please reach out to him via his LinkedIn or Twitter: https://twitter.com/nojeshua linkedin.com/in/jeshuabratman/
Your job as an engineering leader is to win and increase your capacity to win. In Part 2, Wade Chambers discusses how to measure success for engineering leaders, what great looks like, AND how to increase your team’s performance and improve their potential! You’ll also hear how to get unstuck and move your career forward. "And the more that you can come up with, well, what does it mean to be a great manager? Or what does it mean to be a great leader? Answering those questions for yourself and actually getting to the point where you have confidence and are willing to stand behind it because it's well-reasoned and like it's a principled point of view... will help you improve" - Wade Chambers Wade oversees all aspects of engineering and technology innovation as the CTO & SVP of Engineering at Grand Rounds. With more than 25 years of engineering leadership experience, he has deep technical domain expertise and a successful track record of scaling teams and leaders, market-defining technology innovations, and business growth for companies of all sizes including Twitter, TellApart, Yahoo, and Opsware. Before Silicon Valley, Wade served in the military and the White House Situation Room. SHOWNOTES How to measure success, “win, and increase your capacity to win” (2:32) How to increase the potential of people on your team (8:24) How to get unstuck in your career (12:31) The 3 “buckets” to help identify where your career growth is stuck (16:53) How to maximize learning and growth from the books you read (21:23) How to get to the core principles that drive your behavior (25:52) Wade’s final thoughts on closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be (29:38) Takeaways (31:41) ANNOUNCEMENT Nominations for the 2020 Inspiring Leadership Award are now open! We created this award to recognize role models of engineering leadership, for the work they do every day to make a difference in their teams and organizations. Share their story with us and submit a nomination at: SFELC.COM/SUMMIT2020/AWARD Join our community of software engineering leaders @ https://sfelc.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message
Wade Chambers discusses how to learn anything by applying “conscious growth” and neuroplasticity to your career. You’ll learn how to get unstuck, and move your career forward. Plus Wade also shares stories about his early failures as an engineering manager, and what he wished he knew when he first became a manager. "The more that you can recognize that, ‘Oh, I feel uncomfortable’ and you can just sit with it a minute. As opposed to react to it. There's always a feedback mechanism in that. That willingness to be in the discomfort a little bit longer. You're actually going to learn so much about yourself in that moment. And if you can act on that, that's what unlocks you to move forward." - Wade Chambers Wade oversees all aspects of engineering and technology innovation as the CTO & SVP of Engineering at Grand Rounds. With more than 25 years of engineering leadership experience, he has deep technical domain expertise and a successful track record of scaling teams and leaders, market-defining technology innovations, and business growth for companies of all sizes including Twitter, TellApart, Yahoo, and Opsware. Before Silicon Valley, Wade served in the military and the White House Situation Room. SHOWNOTES How Wade formed the habit of being conscious, thoughtful and digging deeper (4:37) Wade’s early failure as a first-time manager (8:25) Neuroplasticity as the foundation for conscious growth and getting unstuck in your career (15:01) How to learn and become competent in almost anything with conscious growth (23:06) How to align your growth to both impact your company AND move your career forward (28:54) How to predict your company’s needs by applying an anthropological perspective (36:06) Takeaways (41:12) ANNOUNCEMENT Nominations for the 2020 Inspiring Leadership Award are now open! We created this award to recognize role models of engineering leadership, for the work they do every day to make a difference in their teams and organizations. Share their story with us and submit a nomination at: SFELC.COM/SUMMIT2020/AWARD Join our community of software engineering leaders @ https://sfelc.com --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message
Ben Narasin is a prolific entrepreneur and early-stage investor with three decades of company-building expertise. His portfolio comprises of key early successes in fintech, digital marketplaces, mobile and connected devices. His seed investments include Dropcam, Lending Club, TellApart, Kabbage and Zenefits. Before NEA, Narasin most recently served as a General Partner at Canvas Ventures, and was previously with TriplePoint Capital, where he oversaw the firm’s seed funding investment activities. He founded several consumer companies before launching his investing career, including Fashionmall.com which led to a successful IPO. He holds a B.A. in Entrepreneurial Studies from Babson College.
In episode three of Superpowers, Bill and Chris share the mic with a Silicon Valley veteran turned venture capitalist. From founding startups to holding leadership positions at giants like Google and Twitter, Josh McFarland has navigated the full gamut of the tech sector’s fast-paced product development ecosystem. Through it all, Josh has consistently managed to steer his way toward success thanks to his ability to maintain product discipline. He can identify what products and services are effective and useful, and has approached his career with discipline and decisiveness that has always served him well. Now a Partner at venture capital firm Greylock Partners, Josh shared his winding journey with Bill and Chris, starting with his upbringing in a small Wyoming town and his college experience at Stanford University, followed by the intensity of a career developing products in Silicon Valley and how it led him to his current position. “I was so burned out on operating, like PTSD level,” Josh said of his time co-founding and running TellApart. That’s when he decided to make the jump to Greylock. For the past two years, Josh has leveraged his exceptional attention to detail and innate ability to identify game-changing companies while overseeing a $1 billion fund. He shared some of the keys to his success with Bill and Chris. “The best venture capitalists have one thing in common: Luck,” said Josh. “The more open you can be to be holding your arms wide open and seeing what the universe is handing to you, [the better]. If you’re just putting together your spreadsheet and dumping your numbers in, you’re going to miss those rare, awesome opportunities.”
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Phil Libin is the Co-Founder & CEO @ All Turtles, the startup that believes they have a better way to make technology products, placing products first and companies later. Today they are building AI products in San Francisco, Paris and Tokyo. As for Phil, prior to All Turtles he was a Managing Director @ General Catalyst. Before that he spent 23 years founding different companies including founding Evernote, taking it from idea generation to productivity powerhouse raising over $160m in VC funding in the process, from some of the very best including Sequoia Capital. Phil is also an extremely successful angel with a portfolio including Gusto, TellApart and Binary Thumb just to name a few. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Phil made his way into the world of tech startups many years ago, how that led to his entering VC with General Catalyst and to now, founding All Turtles? 2.) How does Phil assess the state of Silicon Valley today? Why does Phil believe that Silicon Valley has been becoming increasingly redundant over the last 20 years? Why does Phil argue that the VC Silicon Valley model has been primarily effective at serving it's own needs? What needs to occur for this to change? 3.) Why does Phil argue that the balance of power between startups and incumbents is shifting for 5 core reasons? Why does Phil believe that the data incumbency argument with AI startups is largely overstated and a fear tactic? How does Phil believe people's attitude toward working for incumbents has been shifting over the last few years? 4.) Why does Phil believe that the concept of a "company" is fundamentally outdated? What is so broken about this model? What does Phil believe will be the model of the future for the world's best product creators? Why does the idea of a generalist VC in this model largely not make logical sense to Phil? What does Phil believe the future of VC is? 5.) Why does Phil believe that his time in VC has made him a better CEO than even his time in operations? What have been his core learnings? How has his operating mindset fundamentally shifted? Why does Phil argue the core role of the CEO is not management upscaling? Why does Phil argue it is wrong to assume the only mindset is growth? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Phil’s Fave Book: Clock of The Long Now As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Phil on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
The lessons of blitzscaling to achieve market dominance are counterintuitive. The strategy requires a shift from the traditional thinking of growth to a prioritization of speed over anything else. Greylock Partner Josh McFarland founded and scaled TellApart (which was acquired by Twitter in 2015), and he will be the first to tell you the risks and rewards of blitzscaling. In this discussion with Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh, Josh encourages founders to throw out the conventional approach of decision making and embrace the art of fast decision making and willingness to experiment.
How do you know when it's time to start a company? Or when to begin fundraising, and how much? And, as you grow, how do you recruit the best executives and build a culture centered on employees? Venture capitalist Josh McFarland of the firm Greylock Partners answers these questions and more through his experiences as founder and CEO of tech startup TellApart, which Twitter acquired for nearly half a billion dollars.
How do you know when it’s time to start a company? Or when to begin fundraising, and how much? And, as you grow, how do you recruit the best executives and build a culture centered on employees? Venture capitalist Josh McFarland of the firm Greylock Partners answers these questions and more through his experiences as founder and CEO of tech startup TellApart, which Twitter acquired for nearly half a billion dollars.
This episode of Greymatter comes from Stanford University's Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series podcast. Greylock Partner Josh McFarland shared with students his presentation The First Derivative of Startup Life. In this lecture at Stanford, Josh charts the ups and downs of entrepreneurship through his personal story with TellApart. He opens up about the lessons he learned as a founder and CEO, offers fundraising advice for startups, and shares the untold story of TellApart's acquisition by Twitter, which was the largest acquisition in Twitter history. Greymatter is produced by Greylock Partners and offers perspectives and lessons from some of the world's top technology entrepreneurs and business leaders.
How do you know when it’s time to start a company? Or when to begin fundraising, and how much? And, as you grow, how do you recruit the best executives and build a culture centered on employees? Venture capitalist Josh McFarland of the firm Greylock Partners answers these questions and more through his experiences as founder and CEO of tech startup TellApart, which Twitter acquired for nearly half a billion dollars.
In the latest Greymatter episode, we welcome back Twitter’s former Head of Revenue Engineering, now Greylock Executive In Residence, Wade Chambers. He sits down with Greylock partner Josh McFarland to discuss what characteristics make a great engineering leader and the best environment to foster leadership. Wade helped scale product and build out TellApart’s engineering, product, and services team at a time when the company was on track to almost triple revenue to over $50M. The two startup veterans share lessons learned from building TellApart, how founders can create a culture built on honest conversations, and advice for coaching up great engineering leaders. To hear more from Wade, listen to his previous Greymatter podcasts on Increasing Your Team’s Capacity to Win and the follow-up discussion on the Art of Hiring 10x Engineers.
Part 1 of 3 of our Veteran Operators Series. Robby Kwok, Slack's Head of Corporate Operations and Strategy shares how the strength of network has guided his career in Yahoo, Linkedin, Tellapart, and Twitter. Also, we learn what makes a great manager.
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Rishi Garg is a General Partner @ Mayfield Fund, where he focuses on new media platforms, disruptive financial services and new marketplaces. Prior to joining Mayfield, Rishi was as Vice President of Corporate Development and Strategy at Twitter where he led the company’s most active M&A program, including the acquisitions of Periscope, TellApart, TapCommerce, and many others. Prior to Twitter, Rishi was the first Head of Corporate Development at Square. Rishi was also the Founder of a leading venture-backed startup, FanSnap and has also held roles at Google, Highland Capital Partners and Morgan Stanley. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Rishi made his way into VC following time at Twitter and Square? 2.) How does Rishi look to analyse the state of co-founder relationships? What questions get to the core issues? What are the signs that encourage and worry Rishi? 3.) To what extent does a co-founder leaving the company concern Rishi? In what circumstance is this understandable? How should this process be played out? 4.) How much of a role should VCs play post-investment in the relationship of the founders? What are the dangers of this? How should VCs balance helpful and over involved? 5.) Why is Rishi anti the rise of the very large Series? What are the inherent dangers of this? How does he convey this concern to founders? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Rishi’s Fave Book: The Tibetan Book of Living & Dying, Malcolm X Rishi's Fave Blog or Newsletter: Wait But Why As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC, Rishi on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner’s sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook. It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don’t have to. It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC
The Twenty Minute VC: Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
Phil Libin is Managing Director @ General Catalyst and Founder and Executive Chairman @ Evernote. At Evernote, Phil took the company from idea generation to productivity powerhouse allowing millions of users around the world to remember everything and in the meantime, providing Evernote with over $160m in VC funding from some of the very best including Sequoia Capital. Now in the world of VC, Phil has a particularly fondness towards all things bots, a theme we discuss heavily today. Phil has also made several angel investments in the likes of Gusto, TellApart and Binary Thumb just to name a few. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Phil made his way from Founder @ Evernote to Managing Director @ General Catalyst? 2.) Niko Bonatsos, Managing Director @ General Catalyst asks: What were your biggest takeaways from your time with Evernote that lend to you being a better investor? What are the biggest surprises about the move into VC? 3.) Why have we seen an explosion of hype and excitement around the bot space over the past year? What was the catalyst for the rise of the bot? 4.) Why are we not there yet with bots? Should all be conversational? How does the infancy of messaging platforms affect the rise of bots? What unsolved technical challenges remain? 5.) Will the transition to bots and conversational interfaces represent a major point of disruption or more of an evolution in the interface paradigm? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Phil’s Fave Blog: The Economist Phil’s Fave Book: The Three Body Problem Phil’s Most Recent Investment: Sunflower Labs As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Phil on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. The Simba Hybrid. The most advanced mattress in the world. With a unique combination of two thousand five hundred conical pocket springs and responsive memory foam, it offers the perfect support for two people. A mattress that responds to you and your partner’s sleeping patterns. Delivered free, with a one hundred night sleep trial, free returns and a ten year guarantee. Start your free trial at simbasleep.com Cirrus Insight is a plugin for sales pros who use Gmail and Outlook. It automatically updates activities in Salesforce so you don’t have to. It was named #41 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing companies, and it has more than 1,700 customer reviews on the Salesforce AppExchange. Today, it serves over 150,000 sales people across 5,000 organizations using Gmail, Outlook, iPhone, iPad, and Android. Cirrus Insight is perfect for sales, support, and success teams who want to save time, schedule 3x more appointments, track email opens and much more with Salesforce information at their fingertips in the inbox. www.cirrusinsight.com/20VC
Following their podcast on managing technical teams, Greylock Talent Partner Dan Portillo and Twitter Head of Revenue Engineering Wade Chambers pair up for another podcast on recruiting and interviewing engineers. Wade outlines the processes he’s developed through years of management and building out teams at Yahoo, Proofpoint, TellApart and now Twitter.
SPONSOR See cote.io/promos (http://cote.io/promos) for a full list of all the deals "mid-roll" stuff currently going on. Get $50 off DevOpsDays Minneapolis, July 20th and 21st, with the code SDT2016. I’ll be getting some for Chicago and Seattle sometime too. August 1st to 4th, SpringOne Platform (https://springoneplatform.io/) – I’ll be talking on DevOps and generally hanging out with the cloud native folks. You can get $300 off registration when you use the code pivotal-cote-300 (https://2016.event.springoneplatform.io/register). Show notes If you like video, see this episodes’ video recording (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLk_5VqpWEtiWnQ7od08nzkB32oT4gnDiP). Father’s Day It’s coming, June 19th (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Father%27s_Day_(United_States)). What should fathers be asking for? Time alone a la Nathaniel Fisher (http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2013/08/20/six_feet_under_best_episode_to_watch_first_is_the_room.html). The Buff (http://buffusa.com/), neck-ware thing: be like Kevin Rayburn (http://www.imdb.com/media/rm1500704768/ch0507670?ref_=chmd_md_nxt). Aerobie AeroPress Coffee Maker with Tote Bag (http://amzn.to/1syP13i) Tortuga one-bag backpack (http://amzn.to/1PPy66N) MesosCon Platform Infrastructure at Twitter: The Past, Present and - Future - Chris Pinkham, VP of Engineering, Twitter Forgot to talk about this, but here are my notes from the MesosCon presentation by Twitter Former Nimbula founder (Oracle acquisition), early AWS founder. Twitter's kinda big deal, maybe you've heard of them. Over 1000 services manage Twitter, over 1,000,000 cores. http://twitter.github.io (http://twitter.github.io) Heron is a newly open-sourced replacement for Storm. Supporting all of our own code isn't sustainable, need an open source community. The Ellen Degeneres photo tweet from the 2015 Academy Awards knocked a couple of services over. 25% traffic spike, hit 255k/tweets per second. 2016 Academy Awards had 2x the traffic, no failures. 30,000 node Mesos cluster (probably largest). "We don't like being the biggest of anything, we find the edge cases." 130,000,000 containers launched daily. Some of their acquisitions were in public cloud, they don't move them in-house. They're actually pushing new services out to AWS where they can. Vine, TellApart, Crashlytics, MoPub, BlueFin, etc. Ad-serving is mostly in AWS. Users: Time Warner, Twitter (30,000 host deployment), Apple Siri. What exactly is scheduling? BMC CONTROL-M (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BMC_Control-M) Coté gets Matt to "checks out" his crudes understanding. (Spoiler: Checks out.) Serverless, what’s the deal? Wardly hitches it to Cloud Foundry (http://blog.gardeviance.org/2016/06/how-cloud-foundry-will-save-world-from.html) Mid-roll SpringOne Platform (https://springoneplatform.io/) – get $300 off your registration with the code pivotal-cote-300! Discounts to DevOpsDays: Get $50 off DevOpsDays Minneapolis (http://www.devopsdays.org/events/2016-minneapolis/), July 20th and 21st, with the code SDT2016. Cloud Native Roadshows (http://pivotal.io/event/pivotal-cloud-native-roadshow) - all year long, in many cities globally. Check 'em out (http://pivotal.io/event/pivotal-cloud-native-roadshow) and come learn about Pivotal and Cloud Foundry for free, including some lunch. As always, see Crazy Coté’s Discount Codes and Special Promotions (https://cote.io/promos/) Big News From Chef (https://bignews.chef.io) Matt’s presenting at the Austin Cloud User Group (http://www.meetup.com/CloudAustin/events/228918510/) Chef’s got a sales event on the 16th in Austin (https://pages.chef.io/201606-Pop-upAustin-WholeFoods_RSVP.html) Leave us some comments and reviews in iTunes (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/software-defined-talk-podcast/id893738521?mt=2), or just tell your friends to listen. Also, talking to us in Twitter is better than all these things! (We just want to be loved.) BONUS LINKS! Not covered in show: Somebody’s using Kubernetes Hear the tale (http://searchitoperations.techtarget.com/news/450297178/Tech-firms-roll-out-Kubernetes-in-production)! Concur & Barkly Protects Both shops did customizations to the codebase (AWS AZ & ELB support, Prometheus) AWS & Australia News It went down (http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/web-chaos-mostly-over-after-amazon-web-services-hit-by-power-outage-during-sydney-storm-20160605-gpc707.html) Message from Amazon (http://aws.amazon.com/message/4372T8/) Coté’s revamped Pivotal Conversations Podcast First episode (https://blog.pivotal.io/pivotal-conversations/features/21-pivotal-conversations-podcast) One in the can; iTunes feed (https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/all-things-pivotal/id923143430?mt=2) Going to use SoundCloud. Let’s see how this goes! Typosquatting Package Managers Seriously messed up (http://incolumitas.com/2016/06/08/typosquatting-package-managers/). “In the thesis itself, several powerful methods to defend against typo squatting attacks are discussed. Therefore they are not included in this blog post.” A Docker on every HPE Server Running on HPE (https://blog.docker.com/2016/06/docker-enterprise-hpe/) Reference Architectures! HPE 3PAR and SiteScope plugins! Maybe Brandon can regale us with some history: tales of The Mercury Wars! Also, some ALM stuff (https://www.hpe.com/us/en/newsroom/news-archive/press-release/2016/06/1262106-hewlett-packard-enterprise-introduces-new-application-lifecycle-management-software-for-devops-and-agile-environments.html?es_p=1926232). Sadly, I don’t have access to the IDC reports on this (http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=US40818015), however, they’re expecting big things: “IDC's analysis of this market resulted in worldwide agile application life-cycle management software 2014 revenue of $450.3 million, up 30.5% from the 2013 revenue of $345 million. IDC expects very strong growth for agile ALM software for the 2014–2019 time frame, with growth to $1.8 billion by 2019 and a high CAGR of 32%” erry-one doin’ it! What’s up with Chef’s ALM/CD stuff? Pivotal circle of code vision (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7APZD0me1nU), with ConcourseCI. Recommendations Brandon: (1.) Listener Feedback: Amazon does let you have addenda, from Josh Hoover](https://twitter.com/joshuahoover/status/728921712486572032 ); (2.) App Store Announcements overview (https://www.relay.fm/radar/31); (3.) Ben Thompson on how to make it in the media in 2016 (http://www.vox.com/technology/2016/4/21/11464604/ben-thompson-ezra-klein-show) Matt: Diaspora (http://amzn.to/1UHpLy3) Coté: Follow-up: that machette (http://amzn.to/20XxoVR) works, but watch out for poison ivy. Also, try out @WuTangFinance (https://twitter.com/Wu_Tang_Finance/status/741292651614326786) to really freak 'em.