Podcast appearances and mentions of tom tunguz

Show Notes: AI Gets Into PublishingOverviewThis newsletter issue brings together a diverse range of stories that center around how artificial intelligence is reshaping the technology, investment, legal, and media landscapes. While AI is fueling record-breaking funding rounds and accelerating product innovations, it is also stirring legal debates and forcing publishers and content creators to rethink their business models in a rapidly evolving digital ecosystem.Listeners can expect an engaging discussion on how advanced funding and interoperability trends are driving AI's integration into products and operations, alongside the challenges of copyright enforcement and digital disruption in media. The collection underscores the multifaceted impact of AI—from high-stakes investments and legal contestations to product innovations that bridge text and image, and even the transformation of publishing itself.Key Trend 1: Massive AI Funding and Investment TransformationsAcross several articles, the newsletter highlights how record-breaking funding rounds and strategic investments are accelerating AI development. Investors are betting big on AI innovations—from OpenAI's nearly $40 billion funding initiative to unicorn startups driven by healthcare, cybersecurity, and agentic AI applications.- Talking Point 1: The surge in capital backing AI ventures underscores the strategic importance of financial support for cutting-edge innovation.- For example, TechCrunch reported that OpenAI is close to closing a SoftBank-led $40 billion round, emphasizing that “substantial capital is becoming critical for scaling advanced AI research” ([TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/26/openai-will-reportedly-close-its-softbank-led-40-billion-round-soon/)).- Similarly, venture capital trends observed in the “Venture Beacon” report show improved fundraising conditions and fewer down rounds, signaling renewed investor confidence ([DEallawyers](https://www.deallawyers.com/blog/2025/03/survey-the-state-of-venture-capital.html)).- Talking Point 2: The evolving model of liquidity in venture-backed companies, where secondary transactions now dominate, marks a fundamental restructuring of investment dynamics.- As highlighted in “The Great Liquidity Shift,” 71% of exit dollars originated from secondary transactions rather than traditional IPOs or M&A, reflecting an adaptive strategy in turbulent markets ([Tom Tunguz](https://tomtunguz.com/the-exit-path-of-2024/)).- Unicorn reports from Crunchbase further illustrate how investments in sectors like healthcare and cybersecurity are reshaping the valuation landscape and fueling innovation ([Crunchbase](https://news.crunchbase.com/cybersecurity/healthcare-unicorns-ai-february-2025/)).Key Trend 2: Legal and Ethical Challenges in AI CommercializationThe newsletter also delves into the legal front where AI's rapid evolution collides with longstanding copyright and ethical concerns. Legal disputes and regulatory uncertainties are emerging as key hurdles that tech companies and publishers must navigate.- Talking Point 1: AI's use of copyrighted content is under intense legal scrutiny, as seen in the lawsuit against OpenAI.- A recent ruling allowed a copyright lawsuit, initiated by the New York Times, against OpenAI to proceed, highlighting the risks of using copyrighted materials without permission ([TheInformation](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/judge-allows-copyright-lawsuit-openai-proceed)).- This case opens the debate on balancing technological innovation with the protection of intellectual property rights—a challenge that is critical in shaping future AI training practices.- Talking Point 2: Traditional publishers are grappling with how AI-driven tools disrupt established economic models and audience engagement.- For instance, the World History Encyclopedia's dramatic 25% drop in traffic due to Google's AI Overviews demonstrates how AI-driven content summarization can undercut traditional revenue streams ([BigTechnology](https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/as-ai-takes-his-readers-a-leading?publication_id=46510&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=ktr9&utm_medium=email)).- This tension invites a broader discussion about reimagining compensation and support structures for content creators in the age of AI.Key Trend 3: Integration and Interoperability of AI Across TechnologiesA recurring theme is the drive toward openness and integration across AI platforms, which is transforming user experiences and broadening the capabilities of digital tools.- Talking Point 1: Open standards and interoperability are becoming essential as firms seek to integrate AI functions seamlessly into their products.- OpenAI's decision to adopt Anthropic's Model Context Protocol signals a commitment to interoperability—enabling better data integration and more scalable AI solutions ([TechCrunch](https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/26/openai-adopts-rival-anthropics-standard-for-connecting-ai-models-to-data/)).- This collaborative evolution between past rivals underlines the fact that open source solutions are a strategic lever for rapid innovation.- Talking Point 2: Technological breakthroughs in multimodal AI systems are setting new consumer expectations.- The introduction of GPT-4o's native image generation within ChatGPT marks a leap forward, merging text and visuals to deliver “a frightening degree of verisimilitude” ([TechJuice](https://www.techjuice.pk/openai-enhances-chatgpt-with-powerful-native-image-generation-using-gpt-4o/)).- Such advancements not only redefine creative workflows for digital artists but also raise important questions about ethical usage and intellectual property protections.Key Trend 4: The Evolving State of Digital Publishing and MediaDigital publishers are being forced to innovate as AI disrupts legacy models of content distribution and audience engagement. Traditional media outlets are exploring new strategies to sustain relevance and revenue.- Talking Point 1: AI-powered tools are reshaping how readers access and engage with content, challenging longstanding agreements between publishers and tech platforms.- The experience of the World History Encyclopedia, which lost 25% of its traffic to AI-generated summaries by Google, underscores the disruptive impact of AI in digital publishing ([BigTechnology](https://www.bigtechnology.com/p/as-ai-takes-his-readers-a-leading?publication_id=46510&utm_campaign=email-post-title&r=ktr9&utm_medium=email)).- This trend pushes publishers to reconsider their business models while also prompting questions about fairness and compensation.- Talking Point 2: In response, some traditional outlets are embracing change by integrating independent creator networks to diversify their content and engage newer audiences.- A notable example is Fast Company's launch of a creator network featuring independent writers, which aims to bridge the gap between conventional journalism and the digital content revolution ([TheInformation](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/30-year-old-magazine-embracing-creators)).- This approach not only rejuvenates content delivery but also serves as a model for how heritage media can adapt in a rapidly shifting digital ecosystem.Discussion Questions- How do the massive funding rounds for AI companies influence the pace of technological innovation, and what risks do these investments entail?- In what ways should legal frameworks evolve to address the challenges posed by AI's use of copyrighted content?- Can the integration of open standards in AI systems truly accelerate innovation, or does it create new vulnerabilities in an increasingly interconnected ecosystem?- How should traditional publishers rethink their revenue models when AI-driven content summarization threatens direct engagement?- What are the implications of shifting exit strategies in venture capital, particularly with the rise of secondary transactions over traditional IPOs?- Is the democratization of creative tools through multimodal AI a net positive for artistic communities, or does it risk eroding the value of human creativity?- How can media outlets balance the need for innovative content delivery with maintaining rigorous ethical and copyright standards?Closing SegmentThe discussion today underlines four fundamental trends: record-setting AI investments, mounting legal and ethical challenges, the push for interoperability and groundbreaking multimodal innovations, and the evolving landscape of digital publishing. Together, these trends highlight not only the transformative potential of AI but also the complex interplay of finance, law, and creative expression. As we consider the future of technology and media, it's clear that innovation must be balanced with responsibility—ensuring that the rapid pace of change benefits society as a whole.A compelling final thought: In an era defined by disruption, the true winners will be those who not only drive innovation but also establish ethical and robust frameworks that safeguard creativity, fairness, and integrity. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.thatwastheweek.com/subscribe

This week on Turpentine VC, we feature a compilation episode of our popular interviews with Tom Tunguz, General Partner at Theory Ventures who just announced a $450M second fund less than two years after launching. Over the course of the episode Tomasz explains their concentrated portfolio approach, and expands on their key theses in AI, decentralized infrastructure, and the future for data businesses (like Databricks and Snowflake). —

Tom shares further thoughts on financing AI tech venture capital and whether or not data centers pose a threat to the relevance of the Cloud, as well as his predictions for the future of GPUs and much more. Key Points From This Episode:Introducing Tomasz Tunguz, General Partner at Theory Ventures.What he is currently working on including AI research and growing the team at Theory.How he goes about researching the present to predict the future.Why professionals often work in both academia and the field of AI.What stands out to Tom when he is looking for companies to invest in.Varying applications where an 80% answer has differing relevance.The importance of being at the forefront of AI developments as a leader. Why the metrics of risk and success used in the past are no longer relevant.Tom's thoughts on whether or not Generative AI will replace search.Financing in the AI tech venture capital space.Differentiating between the Cloud and data centers.Predictions for the future of GPUs.Why ‘hello' is the best opener for a cold email.Quotes:“Innovation is happening at such a deep technological level and that is at the core of machine learning models.” — @tomastungusz [0:03:37]“Right now, we're looking at where [is] there rote work or human toil that can be repeated with AI? That's one big question where there's not a really big incumbent.” — @tomastungusz [0:05:51]“If you are the leader of a team or a department or a business unit or a company, you can not be in a position where you are caught off guard by AI. You need to be on the forefront.” — @tomastungusz [0:08:30]“The dominant dynamic within consumer products is the least friction in a user experience always wins.” — @tomastungusz [0:14:05]Links Mentioned in Today's Episode:Tomasz TunguzTomasz Tunguz on LinkedInTomasz Tunguz on XTheory VenturesHow AI HappensSama

Takeaways from this discussion include:There is a pendulum between governance and self-serve, and that swing is narrowing with developments like OmniThere's a dynamic with centralization and decentralization hybrid execution at the edge which allows super-interactive user experiences. As these experiences improve, the number of people who benefit and can access data in meaningful ways only increases.00:06 Introduction01:27 Being Chief Analytics Officer04:08 Evolution of BI08:23  Data Organization Structure10:53  Data Permissioning Philosophy14:12  Hybrid Execution17:36  BI Application Architecture19:36 Mitigating Buyer Fatigue21:20 BI & AI25:59 Semantic Layer27:12 Audience Question: Should AI Suggest Analyses?28:43 Embedded Analytics32:48 Will AI Automate BI Users Away?35:00 Summary 

00:06 Introduction 02:10 Arbitrum Statistics 02:47 Building Your Developer Community 09:08 Arbitrum One v. Arbitrum Nova 14:55 L3 & Customization 19:41 Arbitrum Orbit & Chain Clusters 24:39 Future Customizations for Developers 28:30 Accepting Developer Languages: To reduce barriers to entry 30:11 Accepting Developer Languages: To access legacy code 32:38 Accepting Developer Languages: To reduce fees 33:48 Convergence of Web2 and Web337:55 Community-Source-Software42:03 Summary

On this episode on Run the Numbers CJ and Erik Torenberg welcome Tomasz Tunguz from Theory Ventures for an in-depth conversation about building businesses, how CFOs can evolve with realtime needs of venture-backed companies, and an investor's lens on what makes a great CFO. If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics Tom Tunguz is the founder of Theory Ventures. Prior to that he was a GP at Redpoint for 14 years, and worked at Google prior to that. He is the author of long-running business newsletter found at www.tomtunguz.com --- SPONSORS: NetSuite provides financial software for all your business needs. More than thirty-six thousand companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics and defer payments of a FULL NetSuite implementation for six months. Tropic is the next-generation Procurement Platform that's helping modern CFOs take control of their budgets and bottom line. By combining approval workflows, supplier management, and pricing benchmarks all in one place, Tropic makes savings opportunities easy to find and act on.

0:00 Office Hours with Philip Zelitchenko 01:47 Q: How did you decide to structure your team like software engg? 05:07 Q: Determining the value of data 09:17 Structuring data teams: data PMs 10:47 Q: Same data team responsible for internal v. external PRDs? 11:14 Structuring data teams: data engineering 12:02 Q: What is a data product? 12:47 Structuring data teams: data analysts 13:22 Structuring data teams: data governance 13:37 Structuring data teams: data platform 14:18 Q: What distinguishes a DPRD from a PRD?17:33 Q: Role of the DPRD? 20:05 Q: DPRD v. TEP? 20:55 Demystifying data governance 23:22 Data alert management - internal team and customers 26:20 Q: Motivating ownership of data assets? 28:51 Defining value of a data asset 30:29 Measuring data usage 31:37 Q: Can tools today handle the stochastic nature of data? 33:28 Building a data team within the enterprise 35:42 Q: How to test data products prior to release? 40:00 Q: How do you use observability to manage diversity of alerts? 41:51 Summary

On this episode on Run the Numbers CJ and Erik Torenberg welcome Tomasz Tunguz from Theory Ventures for an in-depth conversation about building businesses, how CFOs can evolve with realtime needs of venture-backed companies, and an investor's lens on what makes a great CFO. If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics Tom Tunguz is the founder of Theory Ventures. Prior to that he was a GP at Redpoint for 14 years, and worked at Google prior to that. He is the author of long-running business newsletter found at www.tomtunguz.com --- SPONSORS: NetSuite provides financial software for all your business needs. More than thirty-six thousand companies have already upgraded to NetSuite, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ NetSuite: https://netsuite.com/metrics and defer payments of a FULL NetSuite implementation for six months. Tropic is the next-generation Procurement Platform that's helping modern CFOs take control of their budgets and bottom line. By combining approval workflows, supplier management, and pricing benchmarks all in one place, Tropic makes savings opportunities easy to find and act on.

00:11 Introduction 02:54 What is Outbound Fury (OBF)? 03:34 Inspiration for OBF 05:03 OBF Tactics 07:44 Determining the Line 11:22 The Challenger Sale 14:11 Personas & OBF 16:05 Product-Led Growth (PLG), ABM & Outbound Fury 19:35 Setting Up Your Team for Success 21:54 Managing Internal Stakeholders 25:28 Measuring Success 27:16 Brand & OBF Campaigns 29:25 Pricing in Marketing Considerations 31:47 Analyst Community (e.g. Gartner) & OBF33:43 Company Scale & OBF 36:23 Conclusions  Materials Mentioned in Today's Session: -- Raj Sarkar's Post: https://rajsarkar.substack.com/p/mark... -- Marc Benioff, Behind the Cloud https://www.amazon.com/Behind-Cloud-S... -- Matthew Dixon, The Challenger Sale https://www.amazon.com/The-Challenger...  

In this week's episode of Data Unlocked, Jason interviews Christopher Harrison, the CEO of FullContact.Christopher is an analytics and marketing expert with thirty years of experience in marketing technology. He has worked with hundreds of brands and worn several hats, from engineer to data architect, before landing his current CEO role.Today, he is at the head of FullContact, a company that specializes in identity resolution for marketing and advertising.An Inc. 5000 company, FullContact is a leader in the identity resolution and insights industry and has worked alongside others such as Epsilon, Hero Digital, Placekey, and more.Today, Christopher is here to discuss the role and future of identity in marketing, how identity resolution can help companies understand their customers better, their ongoing partnership with us, and more!Ready to learn?Let's dive in!Key Takeaways:Intro (00:00)Meet the CEO of FullContact (01:02)How can Identity help you build a better view of your customer (02:37)Some examples from Christopher (07:34)How identity resolution works (13:02)How FullContact and Simon Data work together (17:45)Additional Resources:Learn more about FullContact here.>>Listen to our episode with Bill Stratton and Tom Tunguz here.Read about Simon Data's announcement featuring Identity+ here.Learn more about us here.Follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.If you enjoyed this episode, please follow, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform!

The data supply chain as we know it is going to evolve over the next decade and then some. Our partners, Snowflake and Redpoint are driving this change.Find out more by listening to the latest episode of Data Unlocked featuring Bill Stratton, Head of Media and Advertising Vertical at Snowflake, and Tom Tunguz, Managing Director and Partner at Redpoint Ventures, as they share their valuable insights and perspective on the Decade of Data with Jason Davis.

In our second and final episode on the Bubble, we share what is happening in Venture Capital, on the exit - IPO, M&A, etc - front, as well as share clear “so-whats” for entrepreneurs and VCs. For in-depth views on the status of the economy, listen to our previous episode, episode 25. Navigation: Section 1: What is happening in VC? (02:05) Section 2: Exits are great, though, right?! (17:52) Section 3: So-what? Implications for entrepreneurs and VCs (25:57) Conclusion (43:49) Our co-hosts: Bertrand Schmitt, Tech Entrepreneur, business angel, advisor to startups and VC funds, co-founder at App Annie, @bschmitt Nuno Goncalves Pedro, Investor, Managing Partner, Founder at Chamaeleon, @ngpedro Our show:   Tech DECIPHERED brings you the Entrepreneur and Investor views on Big Tech, VC and Start-up news, opinion pieces and research. We decipher their meaning, and add inside knowledge and context. Being nerds, we also discuss the latest gadgets and pop culture news Subscribe To Our Podcast Intro (01:34) Nuno: Welcome to episode 26 of tech deciphered. This episode will conclude our two-part series on the bubble and why we actually believe there is one going on. In this episode, we will discuss the VC landscape and how it is evolving. We will talk about exits, not just IPOs, but also other types of exits like mergers and acquisitions and how that landscape is looking like. And finally, we will end up with something pragmatic, the "so what", the takeaways, the implications for both entrepreneurs and investors.  Section 1 - What is happening in Venture Capital? 
(02:05) Nuno: Moving to venture capital, there's a lot of interesting elements to talk about. Some really interesting analysis from our friend Tom Tunguz but also of what's happening in the macro space, some analysis of what we've seen from PitchBook and CB insights, it seems we're going to have an incredible year in venture capital. This is it. There's no crisis there's a ton of money, dry powder, there's new funds, I actually have a new fund going. So I'm very happy with that, but in some ways it's like, woh, this is all fantastic. Increasing everything, increasing everything, more deals, more money deployed. We're all great. We're going to have, a flagship year in venture capital. And somehow I'm like I like being in the market. We just closed our first deal, which is great. Thank you. So what's going to happen? In our micro world of startups and entrepreneurs and venture capital firms, 2021 is going to be an amazing year, but what's going to happen? Bertrand: Yeah. And to share some numbers it's pretty insane what we see. And for me, what's crazy is that it's at every range. So maybe it varies by country, by industry, but overall if I take Series A valuations, for instance, you have seen a jump from what? like more than 50% in two quarters this is the very definition of insanity. I'm not sure if we have ever seen that, and it's happening. At every level in the stack. So maybe early on in the pandemic, it was less true that it was at every level of the stack. Maybe, initially it was more: you are only investing in people you already knew, in companies you already knew, the first quarter or two. And because you are not used to work like this, you didn't know how long it would be like this. So you had a different approach that maybe favored existing companies bigger rounds, insider the rounds. But now I believe that we're at a stage where it's not at all about that anymore.  Or not just that anymore. It cannot be: to stay competitive you have to stay in the market, you have to invest. And maybe on that point maybe not every fund agree. We have a wide range from Tiger Global investing I forgot how many deals a day, actually 1.3 deals a day from Tiger global these days.  But at the other extreme in a global ranking I have not seen Sequoia U S in the top 10 investors. So I wonder if there is less investment from them and they decided that right now is n...

I was interviewed by Sai of Redpoint based on these blogposts: https://www.swyx.io/community-builder/ https://www.swyx.io/measuring-devrel/ The session was covered by Tom Tunguz, whose blog I love (https://tomtunguz.com/shawn-wang-offi...) and the feedback was wonderful!Full video on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guK1XiLQbH8Timestamps [00:01:42] What is DevRel?  [00:04:59] Where should DevRel report?  [00:06:57] Getting Started with Early Stage DevRel  [00:12:28] How to Structure DevRel Efforts  [00:16:02] When to Hire First DevRel  [00:18:23] Community and DevRel  [00:25:41] How to Start a Community  [00:29:47] Technical Community Builders  [00:31:04] Social Media Managers  [00:33:14] North Star Metric  [00:39:20] Product DevRel  [00:40:37] Finding Great DevRels  [00:43:47] DevRel for Dev Platforms of non-DevTools companies  [00:46:38] DevRel Tooling  Transcript [00:00:00] Sai Senthilkumar: My name is Sai and I'm at Redpoint investing primarily in B2B software with a focus on developer oriented business. I'm very excited to be chatting with Shawn Wang today about the importance of developer relations for any company selling to developers. You know, we find that several developer companies we work with today are hiring for diverse leaders and oftentimes it's function gets overlooked early. Or maybe not built out soon enough. So today we'll talk a little bit more about how to structure and measure our world-class Debra organization for any startup and why it's so important for a company's overall health. So I'm wanting you to be joined today by Shawn, who is the head of developer experience at Temporal. Shawn, do you want to briefly introduce yourself?  [00:00:39] swyx: Yeah. Hi everyone. I am Shawn Swyx online as well. I guess my dev role ex experience starts at Netlify where I was the second DevRel hire. And we grew from about 30 ish people when I joined to about 250. And. I think something like 300,000 developers to 1.5 million. And then we, and then I left in 2020 to go to Amazon where he spent a year working at amplify and thinking about AWS level or branded Daryl. And we can talk about what it's like to work at. You know, a series B to C stage company. The rail versus a big company devil. And then I joined Temporal this year in in February to head up developer experience. And we're a series, a company focused on microservice orchestration, which is a bundle of words, but basically we're reinventing asynchronous programming. And if that doesn't hook your interest, I don't know what will, so I'm happy to talk more about that. [00:01:42] What is DevRel?  [00:01:42] Sai Senthilkumar: Awesome. So is that Shawn is the, is the guy to speak with, in terms of structuring and starting out in Beverly also Shawn, I guess starting with the basics here, you know, many people wrote in asking for clarity around the devil row. So, so in your, in your mind, what is Deborah and the various roles and responsible. [00:02:04] swyx: In what is dev route and the various rules and responsibilities. Okay. There a very big question. So dev REL I think is essentially for a lot of people is essentially rebranded marketing. Developers. Don't like to be marketed to every time you hire a professional marketer and you get them to talk at developers, their eyes glaze over and they're turned off by your marketing buzzwords and your emphasis benefits over features because you refuse to talk about how things work because marketers don't know how things work. Cause they're not technical. You hire developer relations before. Developers want to be spoken to by other developers. And they want to be explained on how to use things, why, and not to be handheld too much to do some hand hand-holding, but not to do too much handholding that you restrict their creativity. Because I think some of the best DevRel programs have often just said, we can't wait to see what you build, which is a very cliched term in Debra. It's actually, it's pretty true. If you talk to the early Twilio, derails, they just held hackathons and they're like weird a communications layer. What can you come up with? And they are often impressed in a lot of their new products direction comes from the, the stuff that developers want to take their product in. And so Val is very much of a bottom line. Developer first marketing efforts. And I personally segments the growing sub specialties that devel into three set, three segments, which is community content and products. The reason I add products in there, which is not a very common thing to, to emphasize with Daryl is because developer relations has. Background or backstory as developer evangelism, which is kind of the old Microsoft slash Google name for it, which is essentially you hire professional influencers to travel the world and give talks. And it's very us to the rest of the world. Like I'm pre. The good word, which is very nice because a good talk and a good useful demo or a good you know, explanation is, is actually a very important, but there's not much of a two-way street. So, it's very, it's very like us coming out to them. And I think now people understand that they, once they're devils. Their PR company in front of developers. And they talked to them so much that we can actually use that product feedback to feedback into the development of the actual product itself. That's the vision. That's the, that's what a lot of people say that Debra is a two way street developer. Evangelism is a one-way street in practice. It's more like 99% outbound anyway. And 1% inbound. The reason being that no one has time for your product feedback. Everyone has their own product roadmap. You're not proud of the PM org. You're not part of the engineering org. Who are you that I have to listen to you. So people are still figuring this out, but I think the content and community pieces REL are a bit more developed. [00:04:59] Where should DevRel report?  [00:04:59] Sai Senthilkumar: Totally. 100% agree. And when you mentioned this in the beginning, but I think it's important to flush out the difference between. Developer advocacy and Deborah and for marketing, I think oftentimes those, those two those two topics get confused with each other. So, so yeah, I, yeah, I think that is that's important for any startup that starting out. And this is a separate organization,  [00:05:21] swyx: Hopefully, well, so there's there that kind of leads us into a natural segue of where does deferral report to, but you can have that conversation. I'm not sure that it's a solved question yet. I think a lot of people are converging on the consensus that dev roles should report into product. And I think that's fine, but I'm also, I don't judge people where dev REL reports into marketing. I don't judge people went there for all reports into engineering or, you know, at Netlify we were a separate org. We were separate from products, separate from engineering, separate from marketing. And we reported up to the CEO. Okay. It matters basically as a founder or, you know, or based on company direction, how important your dead relatives, your liver function is how senior you are a different leader is and also how you measure them because at the, at the end of the day, even if your dev REL team reports into product, but the way you measure. Is entirely marketing metrics. Like how many hits did you get to a front page? Then they are our marketing team. It walks like marketing talks about marketing, their marketing, even though they technically, you put them in your org chart under the product team. So be very careful about just play playing at like making your devil or you know, part of product, but not actually, because that leads to some interesting tensions between. What it means to be a representative for your company and how that actually leads to tangible impact for your business. So yeah, I'll leave it at that.  [00:06:57] Getting Started with Early Stage DevRel  [00:06:57] Sai Senthilkumar: And it, even before you get getting into building, you know, Deborah, I guess like what, what are some tips that, you know, any early stage startup or founder that's in that develop that is selling to develop. What are some tips that they should know when getting started? Yeah, I guess what are some lessons learned from, from your time of  [00:07:13] swyx: peripheral? How early stages are we talking? Let's say series  [00:07:18] Sai Senthilkumar: a, you know, you've just raised some capital, you know, you're scaling to the series B, you're selling to developers, developers, easy. These are core bread and butter, you know, I guess what are some.  [00:07:27] swyx: I think some amount of focus and regular cadence is important. So, so at, at a point of series, a like you have some form of products like your, you have been around enough that you, that you raise your seed and you, you convince people, okay. Invest in serious. Say. That's probably where you should start hiring you know, a different team like we hired to, to I, I came on in February and then we hired two DevRels this year and I think that's where you start trying to figure out what the public story is. You want to tell, because you have some core base of early adopters, but you need them to not just you know, not just grow into like, the early majority, which I love to use this model of crossing the chasm. And I like to say that my personal specialty is helping developer tools cross the chasm, which is a very. Profitable a specialty, if you can actually do that repeatedly. But yeah, so you need to start basically like kind of start building machine of like curious what here's a collateral that we here's the typical story, like our, our one sentence pitch, our five minute pitch, our 10 minute pitch. So 20 minutes a patient on a one hour pitch and you need to kind of market. Among different sets of audiences and figuring out what kinds of audiences like how to qualify these audiences immediately so that you can go down, you know, between two to three different talk tracks that are usually relevant. Because the reason I say two to three talk tracks is because I'm not a strong believer that there is one marketing message to rule them all. Because a lot of developers who was companies are horizontal companies and it can be used in multiple different ways. And the things, the words, the. Influencers, the concepts that appeal to different audiences vary based on their own background. So you need to figure out like what, what the, what that fit is. And then I think for me, like, the most important thing to establish at this early stage is the developer journey. Like what, yes, you probably have as CSA stage, you probably have a working products. You're probably building more features that are going to take you to the next level. And your products is pretty dense already. And probably a lot of people barely even scratched the surface. That's what everyone says, right? Like it's a little bit depressing as a deputy founder to build a bunch of features. And then like people just use you for like the bare minimum. That's, that's just how it is. A lot of people don't have time for anything more than the, the core. So first of all, your core value proposition needs to be really good, but second of all, you need to guide them through the rest of your product to see how awesome it is so that it can grow and usage. So that I termed the developer journey. What should people. Land on your landing page. And then they're like, okay, like my friend said, this is cool. I'm going to come check it out. But I only have five minutes. What are you going to give them in those five minutes? Are you going to dump your entire feature set? Are you going to give them a hello world that is trivial? That is that they could do in a weekend? Like what is the, what's the wow moment that you're really trying to deliver? And what's the open question that you're trying to leave in their minds. They're not happy with the five minutes and they want more. So I think that's something I think about a lot. And I, I draw a lot of inspiration from game design where it's a progressive review of features. And you don't give them that much apart from like, do this and then do that. And then, and then go here and then go there. And you have a very strong sense of like what level one level, two level three, it looks like. And so that's the journey throughout through to products for me, it's about what a core, what the core concept is. You know, doing a hello world or like, you know, deploying the, playing a basic app and then building, and then branching out into maybe like performance or security or deployments monitoring that kind of stuff. But that's for us, you know, and your, your message could be a bit different. Finally, I'll, I'll talk a little bit about specialties within the team. So , we are very focused on front end developers. So the way that. We'll thought our team was that we had different framework specialists. So I was the react specialist because I'm a well-known speaker in reacts. And we have view, we had angular, we had you know, sort of static site generators specialists for us at Temporal. We have SDKs in different languages. So we have a Java slash PHB guy, and then we have a gold person and I'm going to be the TypeScript person. And we'll, we'll have Python, ruby.net, whatever. You might want to split it up by, by that because there's a certain audience that each of these developer relations people speak to that maybe they're already known in the conference circuit. Like it's super easy for me to get into any JavaScript conference. And I think that's, that's a, that's a home ground or unfair advantage that you should play when building out a different team. It's a bit hard to hire like super well known people. So sometimes you need to have an eye for trajectory rather than. You know why rather than you know, where they are today because they Def Netlify definitely took a bet on me very early on when I was getting started my speaking career and it paid off for them. But sometimes it doesn't work out and sometimes you have developers where we kind of are not that productive, but I think that's where a really good dev manager can come in. And up-level your individual contributors. [00:12:28] How to Structure DevRel Efforts  [00:12:28] swyx: So. Yeah,  [00:12:30] Sai Senthilkumar: no, that's a great point. And I think you know, we'll get, we'll get into this later when we, when we discussed how to actually measure the ethicacy of if you done an organization, but you, you have a great way of thinking about it. You know, I think in the seminar we said something to the extent of there are four pillars of developer relations. And I think that is that's a company like Hashi Corp, where they have. You know, there, there are much later stage that they're not a series a or series B startup. And I think they bring it into education, community events and audience, but you know, that's just not realistic for a series a or series B startup. That's just starting out. And I think you just have a great framework for this by just asking what kind of Deborah are you? I think you get, as you mentioned, you have those three emerging subspecialties and Beverly the community focused upon think focusing product focus. Just asking that very basic question in the beginning. I think we'll go along with.  [00:13:18] swyx: I think so, too. So, I mean, since we're on zoom, can I screen share the visual? Just so we so that, so the audience members can actually see what we're talking about. So, what size talking about is this four pillars thing from the previous session with Adam Hashi Corp. And I mean, you know, there are a series what F or E company. And I w yeah, I would love to have an education team, you know, especially former teachers. A really good every time I see a former, you know, someone who actually has done teaching in like a public school setting or something crossover into developer education, they're amazing at it. A formal events team. Amazing, fantastic. You know, but I, you know, I think these require fairly large, large budgets and have a very long PR cycle. Whereas I think maybe a lot of earlier stage companies are more focused on community advocacy and audience, right. So my, the way I break it down is a little bit simpler. I and for the record, like I, I had seen this before, but like I just kinda made up, meet this up based on the people that I know. So like I have. Certain archetypes in my end, when I look at these things and that's kind of how I view it, right? Like at the end of the day, all everyone wants this monthly active developers. That's not screw around. Like that is the source of truth for where Deborah is going to feeds into the, the rest of the value equation for a startup. There are certain specialties for people. Like some people are not that great at content. You know, they, they, they don't produce like, especially inspiring blog posts or talks or anything, but look, they're charismatic as hell. You know, they, they, they just know everyone who's anyone. So their community devils, you know, whereas some people are just like thought leaders. They're just, you know, they just get chunk out like amazing and visually appealing and just like fantastic stuff. But then maybe, you know, and, and so maybe it should be applied. And then others, like they can, they're, they're sort of more quiet, but they are very inside. The understand the core user insight that like people, you know, when they aggregated a lot of feedback from people, they can really sort of channel that into a very strong sense of product feedback. So I liked this and I liked that for me, the most impactful time as a dev REL on. Was on product launches. So really focusing on making a launch successful by being the first beta user internally within the company RV products and just being brutally honest, like if you cannot pay someone to be brutally honest at you, then you don't have an intellectually honest culture. And then, but then also like making the demos and making the the collateral and the, the storytelling that will make your launch successful and a really good launch. You can't really emphasize it enough to, to really help you. So I'll, I'll leave it there. I don't want to like spam people with, with too much, but I can, I can talk a bit about intern about each of these specialties and we'll get  [00:16:02] Sai Senthilkumar: him.   [00:16:02] When to Hire First DevRel  [00:16:02] Sai Senthilkumar: We'll get more into that when we, when we get into measuring measuring the ethicacy. You know, you mentioned you know, after series a maybe even after your seed, but it seems that there isn't a black and white answer in terms of, at what stage in a company's growth earnings, should it consider building a debt relative? But it, it, it seems that you know, it may where it may be different from company to company, but generally it's when you, you're starting, you have a product out in market and you're starting to get developers to start paying for it. [00:16:30] swyx: Was there a question in there? I mean, I agree,  [00:16:33] Sai Senthilkumar: I guess for Temporal, when did, when did they hire you? And then when did you know, when did they start thinking about it? Was it after this year?  [00:16:42] swyx: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Right after series a, they they started reaching out to me and I, I said, no, at first. And then I said, yes. So that's the short history. Cause like I just joined Amazon and I was like, I was very, very ready to rest, invest for four years essentially. But like, you know, I think when you, when a rocket ship comes along and something that. Fundamentally feel at your core has been missing all this? Well, I think we should take the totally. [00:17:10] Sai Senthilkumar: And you were getting into this earlier before, but the question of who should that role report up there? It, I mean, ultimately it touches multiple facets of the business, product marketing, customer success. So I guess there isn't a black and white answer there as well.  [00:17:24] swyx: There's no black and white, but I think most people agree on products. They just don't. You know, it's one thing to like, all right, move some people around on your org chart and just say, okay, you're under products now. And then job done. Right. But then your metrics haven't changed. You. Okay. Ours are all marketing. So what does it mean to belong in products, but then you measure them like, That you just, you're just treating them like a marketing team. And they're a very expensive affiliate marketing team for a lot of people. That's how it is like at you know, at, you know, Phil in previous company, we counted our Google UTM tag attribution, right? Like, oh, I drove 10,000 visits to our blog this month. And you can pay for that way, cheaper, elsewhere. You can pay for inorganic surge. You can pay for like, you know, there has to be something else that your devils are giving you because otherwise they're just very, very expensive affiliations.  [00:18:23] Community and DevRel  [00:18:23] Sai Senthilkumar: Yeah, that's a great way of putting it. Awesome. You know, I, I want to make sure we hit on community, the importance of community here, a strong developer relations or John UI communities on the side. You also have a community at Temporal, I guess. Why, why invest in community, you know, in the first place you have a great post here, but I, you know, the audience would love  [00:18:41] swyx: to hear. So I guess someone will share it. The post. So I'll give, I'll give my community credentials for people who don't know. So I got started in the New York tech scene where I was very much, in-person just getting to know everybody at every single meetup. And then I moved online where I was the moderator for the R slash react to a subreddit. And we grew that subreddit from 20,000, 30,000 people to 220,000 people before I left. And then I started small society from scratch. And now that was about. A year and a half ago, and now we're at about 11,000 people. And then I wrote a book where I run a paid community for the book. That's about 2000 people. And then for Temporal, I run the community events, forums and stuff like that. And when I say I run, I mean, with a lot of help from actual other people who actually know way more than me. So, I've just like kind of the coordinator it's, it's pretty funny. Cause like at Temporal. One of the least technical people there. It's just very unusual position for me anyway. So that's my community backgrounds. And obviously I, I have a lot of friends in the community manager space Rosie, Sherry, or the orbit, love people comScore and yeah, Mac written from from, from all these, all these community funders. Like it's a very hot topic right now. Okay. Why community? Basically it's the. It's the, it's your users that are identifying with your company and a lot of community forums, a lot of company, community forums, like glorified support channels, right? Like, it's just, Hey you know, you don't like answering questions on stack overflow. All right. I'll come to your custom discourse deployments and ask questions to you, but it's basically stack overflow. And what you really want is your users talking to each other, what you really want is your users hiring each other where you really want is your users building on top of you because they believe that you're, you're here to stay and they expect that their association with you will outlast their current employment. The problem with this is good luck fitting any of this in an OKR that is measured quarterly because community is a relationship based. Long-term goal rather than a short term transaction. But I mean, I think people are understanding that at least for developer tools, that's the strength of the community is very important for crossing the chasm. And I think a lot of people realize that when they cross the castle. Early adopters don't need community. They just need the tool to work. They just need to, like, they don't even need like that great of a docs. They don't need like a functioning, a vibrant job market for that technology. They just need to understand that the tool works and they can use it to solve problems that they have. But once you get into the mass market, the majority, then people start deciding on like, Hey, I picked a. The TensorFlow community, because that community is really great at helping beginners. And it's got, it's got plugins and resources for everything that I could possibly want, that those are not core to the technology, but there are a lot of the reasons why people pick technologies, which is there, there's a strong community. And I think to invest in that is a very, very long-term game, but it's a moat as well because everything else about your technology can be cloned or out competed, but a community is very, very hard to.  Yeah,  [00:21:50] Sai Senthilkumar: and I think you, you have a great point there. That community is, is a feature that cannot be copied and it itself is a moat for you and helps you gain these network economies. I think you elegantly structure that in your, in your post.  [00:22:03] swyx: There is a, there's a VC out there. I'm, I'm really, I'm really sad that I'm blanking on her name because she wrote a really great book. I refer to her in my own blog posts on technical community builders. So, so please go check her out, but I'll give you the thesis of the blog post, which is previously. Traditionally community. It was like the community manager at now. The five was kind of like Lewis on the totem pole. You know what I mean? Like, they would be going through the forums and seeing like, okay, like this person asked the question three days ago, it hasn't been answered. Please can anyone in the company help answer this question? That is such a pathetic, like, I mean, you know, they were great, but like that, that just shows that the company. Value community, right? It went when, when that is, that kind of behavior is, is around. But then also the community experience or someone's interaction with a company is very fragmented. Like on the forums, I'll be interacting with the support team. In, in, in conferences, I'll be interacting with the dev team in webinars. I'd be interacting with the marketing team in sales conversations. I'll be interacting with. It's very disparate thing and there's no sort of central. I guess CRM to manage like the interactions, but also I think more, more, more, more to the point who in the C-suite or who in the VP suite is responsible for community and who's managing that journey through, you know, through your company. I think as I think. The community goes from periphery to core. Then a lot of things start deriving their insights from community. Like instead of having community be the afterthought of like, Hey, we launched this product from that's now go support it in the community forums, like actually go engage community users in the forums and help to drive product insights. Or, you know, or beta test with like a super user community where there's just some, which is a topic I really like as well. Like the, the idea that every, every company, like I'm, I'm a part of a few super-user programs like GitHub stars Stripe community experts. I am blanking on some of the others, but we're looking into establishing our own as well, because it was very, very helpful for basically not just like recognizing some experts within the community, but also giving them preferential access. As a ways to say thank you. And, and I think, I think it's just a very, it's a win-win proposition all around for your most engaged users. Yeah.  [00:24:26] Sai Senthilkumar: And Shawn, you're wearing multiple hats control your community, fellow Corps experience this, this community eventually become a separate role within, within Deborah. Let's say you get to that stage on that.  [00:24:38] swyx: I haven't seen it personally myself. But yeah, I've, I've seen some companies basically have a head of community or VP of community or chief chief community officer is also a title that I've seen thrown around. But it takes time, you know, it takes it takes the right person to lead that. And so I don't have a. Either way of like when the right time is, cause I haven't been through that myself. But I would love to see it. I would love someone at the highest level to say I represent the user and, and not, and this is very, by the way, this is very true for open source dev tools. I represent the. Who never pays us a single cent, but contributes so much in tangible value in terms of code in terms of content and sort of like just buzz around the tool. And sometimes that, that person is just not represented in meetings, you know, that, that free user. So, yeah. I love, I love for that to happen right now. A lot of that falls on their roles laps and that's a, that's a job that we need to just formally recognize that we do. And I think that's. Yeah. Awesome.  [00:25:41] How to Start a Community  [00:25:41] Sai Senthilkumar: So the, the $1 million question here, I guess, what are your recommendations for kick-starting a community, especially you guys have done a great job, you know, and you just pay in a year or so. Like what  [00:25:54] swyx: are some recommended. So, first of all, I don't think we've, I think we can do better. Let's just leave it at that. I, you know, I'm sorry that it's just never happy. And I want to acknowledge so many in the Q and a James light. Yes. I think that's Lisa. She I haven't personally connected with her, but I have, I think, I think her posts for like drawing, like sort of community led growth, I think is a, is a very core insight that I think a lot of founders should have a good think about if not actually implement. So. So recommendations, you said, right? Two things, like, I think obviously there's, there's this, there's this standard stuff, like have a slack, have a discord by the way, slack versus discord. If you're open source and maybe sort of more Indy go discord, if you're more enterprise Eagle slack, that's just how it is. I don't love slack either, but that's just how it is. And then So the two recommendations are this like one. Events are underrated for community. So you saw how into Hashi court, four pillar thing events where different team and community. But I think at a smaller stage, those are the same thing. People need gathering points, and this is about the temperature of. Your community as well. You need to manage your temperature. It's not always hot, but there's hot and cold and you need to make sure that the hot wet hot moments are really good. And when I'm not kidding around when I talk about temperature, so, for the sort of communication, immediate theorists in the room, you should refer to Marshall McLuhan who talks about hot media and cold media. And I think it's very, very true that there, there are a lot of community and. Forums which are cold. And then there is some community community engagement methods that are hot and you probably want a variation of these things. So slack, so slack is one of those interesting ways in which a cold can sort of upgrade to a warm, but a hot you know, event would be a, would be a meetup, right? Like a conference. And that's something that I think really helps. Netlify kicked it up, kick it off. Like we launched the conference where we weren't sure if we could sell up, sell up the seats. But we did. And then, you know, we went from one conference a year, it's a three conferences a year and that just really helps kick it off because once people have shown up and they start talking to each other and they have no choice, but they're kind of, they, they're kind of committed to like being in a room with you. One to two days and like sitting through a bunch of vendor presentations it's such a really powerful thing. And, and, oh, by the way, getting your users onstage to talk about how proud they are of using your product. Amazing. Right? So events are super under four, and you want to, if you want to get good at community and get good at events, because then people have a reason to, to come show up and join you. But also there there's a bunch of people who are just. Participate. So you need to be decent at a cold outreach as well. What is cold or what is you know, basically building an issue, distribution channel it's basically the stuff that you, you imagine like a mailing list like a Twitter presence, like a YouTube presence. I think those are the main channels that I focus on. And obviously blog posts that, that drive. The second part, which I really like to talk about community, which is underrated, I think is content content is the minimum viable community in the sense that all right, you know, you have your products and it's kind of like it exists and people can use it, but really good blog posts would drive people from hacker news straight onto your community. And they want to talk about your blog posts and give them a place to talk about it. Right. So, that's kind of how I drive my own. Writing community. That's how I think if you look at like basically the playbooks of the independent creators out there, they're writers for. Or there a YouTuber service, and then you have a community attached to them and the community aggregates around their writing or a content, but then they spread out from there. But at least it's a reason to show up that is not about asking for support. And once, once they see a place to promote themselves or actually, you know, get into related conversations that are about what you stand for, rather than just about using you then you have. Vibrant like a self-sustaining community where people just show up because they know that's where they're going to get good feedback or responses. [00:29:47] Technical Community Builders  [00:29:47] Sai Senthilkumar: Yeah, that's awesome. And I guess the point here, in terms of finding someone to drive your community, you have a great post you're on, on that technical community builder would love to just double click there and what you mean by that  [00:30:04] swyx: finding content, right. I mean, you know, at a bare minimum, just curation is really nice. So if you think about like the big newsletters in the tech industry, like software lead weekly you know, pointer there, there's a bunch of these like basically aggregation blog posts, but curated by someone fairly knowledgeable. And that can be enough. Like you don't have to write the content, you can just aggregate it and that's, that's still a form of content creation. So maybe someone to start there is, is good enough because writing original content that that's a hit after hit is, is a fairly tall ask. Like I write a blog post a week and I only get one hit a year. That's how bad it is. Right? Like that's how bad I am. But, but also like, that's just how brutal the content industry is. And at the end, at the end of the day, like what all you're trying to do is provide a space for people to come to, to connect with other professionals who are solving the same. That's right. Like, Yeah, we  [00:31:00] Sai Senthilkumar: had a question come in here. I'm going to weave it in because it's relevant to the community section. It goes. [00:31:04] Social Media Managers  [00:31:04] Sai Senthilkumar: What, what if you have a great team of devs and Deborah ELLs, but they don't necessarily want to run social for the company. So the company developer handle is run by an actual social team that doesn't necessarily have the developer chops. And so any, any tips for the not dev teams per se, the social teams running dev communities, or should you just, you know, maybe look otherwise elsewhere and get a technical community builder? [00:31:31] swyx: Oh, okay. Social. I think it's okay. So, by the way, for those who don't know, like the post for my, my block wasn't think community building was actually making a case for why your community managers should be technical rather than non-technical obviously that's a. More expensive, higher, but I think it does pay off because people, it really helps when developers understand that the person they're sitting across from actually gets what they're trying to do and can connect them with the resources or the people that they need to get stuff done, or, you know, just have mutual shared interest in. But social media, if you have a social professional, a professional social person I haven't worked with those. I'll be honest. So I don't know what it's like. I mean, I know I'm, I'm friends with Rob or gala boob as he, as he's known on Reddit and Twitter. And he's a professional social media guy, and he's funny as hell. And people follow him for that. If that's the brand that you're building more power to you, but sometimes that's not the brand of your building. And. And you need to make a conscious choice of like, is this, is this like, yeah, you're getting a lot of internet points for your social media person's output, but is there anything relevant to what you're trying to build as a business? And if it's not, you gotta cut it. If it is then great. So I, I don't want to say like, so, I'm, I'm an investor in a company called Swyx. And they're amazing at me marketing but that's just the founders who love developer memes. It's not a separate social team. So I, I, haven't worked with a separate social team to, to understand how to work best with them to, to really give you a good feedback there. [00:32:55] Sai Senthilkumar: Super base is great. I love that. I love it reads as well. I guess. Okay. So let's say you have a couple of folks in your Deborah or, you know, you're starting to build a community you're, you're driving that forward. The question that we, that that was most asked, you know, before the seminar is just measuring your devil efforts and then your, you already flopped that slide,  [00:33:14] North Star Metric  [00:33:14] Sai Senthilkumar: Shawn, and you, you shared your north star metric, but now people continue to talk about how hard it is to measure Deborah also, you know, would love to hammer. The point of just why, you know, monthly active developers is, should be your north star metric. We would love and will.  [00:33:28] swyx: It's it's, it's the one that keeps you honest, right? Because your usage at the end of the day, and there's, you know, you couldn't men measure monthly active deployments or monthly active cluster. And by the way, if you're hosting platforms this is a very relevant question. If someone deploys on you and just hosts on you and, but never touches, never logs in. But you know, they're, they're still getting value from your site. They're still paying you is that a monthly active developer? Right. But the definition of monthly active developer is up for grabs as well. What most people who I talk to who are in the hosting business agree on is that if they're not developing their sites then they're not active. So, so be more brutally honest with yourself. Like, are you delivering enough features or are you getting the kind of developers who are growing usage and if they are, they should be constantly in your dashboard kind of tweaking stuff. Like it's kind of like in how, in how consumer apps, like, you know, the people want. To build a recurring habit of coming back to you at least once a week, if not daily. And for developers that small, probably like at least monthly, if not weekly. So there should be some kind of recurring behavior, but monthly active developers, basically, you want to land within more and more different logos, and then you want to expand within those different logos and monthly active offers is like the one metric that kind of covers that, right? So you're not, you don't just want to do evangelism, but then you also want that. W make sure that people don't turn off and you also want to make sure that people are growing within within the, within the companies that they landed. So, I think that kind of covers all of it, you know? It's especially hard, especially for open source because developers are very touchy about telemetry. Yeah. As long as the contract is clear and you're, you were steadfastly just only measuring activity and not identity. I think people are fine with that. Okay. So, the one thing, one thing I will say as well, is that like, that, that is obviously the, the point where you know, sales can take over and, and start looking for leads and, and, and all that. So that most directly translates to money. The reason I do not. Stare at like, I don't know what my med is on a month to month or even a quarterly to quality basis. I just, I just need to know if it's like up. So it's just like up, it's fine. Like I will have good bites. I'll have bad months. Some of it will be driven by product launches. Just by the seasonality or whatever. It's very hard to control. It's a lagging indicator. And so you need to compliment it with a leading indicator. In fact, a bunch of leading indicators, and that's the way I set it up. Right. You have one lagging indicator, that's the source of truth. And then a bunch of leading indicators that should correlate in the long run with the lagging indicator. So the leading indicators depend on your. You're a devil efforts ranging from community activity to your contents, you know, views and your, your distribution channel growth, like emails, subscribers, subscriptions, and YouTube, and all that. So your product metrics on bunch days and and NPS scores. Well, and I, and I guess  [00:36:22] Sai Senthilkumar: the point of what are some metrics that you shouldn't necessarily care about as much the vanity metrics, the bad metrics per se.  [00:36:30] swyx: Yeah, I have a, I think I might get in trouble for saying some of this cause officially I'll get up. Stars is one of our cars for as many for Temporal, but I don't like it. It's it's so it looks so sad to beg for a star. Like people should want to start you anyway. And then when people start you, they don't, they're not using you at all. They're just starting you cause they're throwing you a bone. So it's just so meaningless that. Basically the only time get off stars convert into real value is when someone is just completely naive about how this works. And they're just like, wow, it's 20,000 stars. It looks amazing. And, and also there's also like the trending page, right? Like if you get on there, some people do discover projects through the trending page and get up. What else have I said, oh, I have. At conferences to scan badges we're going to cube con and like you have to pay for like the device thingy to like scan a badge for customers. I don't think those ever work. First of all, it's like cheapens the interaction between you and them. They're just like, okay, I'm just a business card or to you. And then second of all falling up is super hard and very leaky. And those aren't good leads, you know, maybe the leads a week, maybe I'm weak, you know, And if we can, we can do all Glinka Glengarry Glen Ross there, but. I, I don't, I don't think, I don't think the transactional interaction of like, let me scan into a database on my first interaction with you works very well. So I'll just, I'll just put it as my 2 cents. I, I did at one time and I have a permanently negative impression of it. What else did I say? Oh, GitHub Google analytics, UTM tag. Yeah. So that one, that one I have been measured by as well. And I mean, yeah, I, I, the, the problem with that one is that it, it biases you towards writing a superficial Papa fund, like super top of funnel that may not have content that may not actually have anything to do with the business itself. Like as long as it's funny, as long as it's controversial, as long as it's It buys you spices, you twist the wrong thing, like in the worst ways of like how it, how the Twitter algorithm or the Facebook algorithm biases you towards clickbait. And then finally NPS I don't love MPS, even though I did mention NPS just now. I know, I understand that it's an industry standard and understand that you know, everyone understands that it's a flood metric, but it's so flawed and particularly developers. Implement NPS. Like I've been on the side where I've been asked to implement an APSI. Everyone knows how this works, and everybody knows that you don't care. You throw out the seven, you count the eight nines and tens and you, you know, so like what are you really measuring? What insights are you really getting? Like, I much rather have narrative insight rather than an arm's length. Like, am I doing, you know, approval rating essentially, of, of my, of my job, because I don't think that actually gives me much actionable insight apart from things that trending up or down, which I already have with my reactive. [00:39:20] Product DevRel  [00:39:20] swyx: Yeah, did, this  is  [00:39:22] Sai Senthilkumar: a question that came in by the way, next it's relevant from an average conversation, but let's say you're never out several reports up to product. What are, what are some good metrics there that you should, that you should care about?  [00:39:33] swyx: Okay. Yeah. So this is this is the thing I haven't personally figured out that much. So what, what I wrote is. If I that makes sense for running devel, which is coming community content, and then product is like a third wheel. Product is one of the things that we're still figuring it out. How do you think products should be measured? [00:40:00] Sai Senthilkumar: I think.   [00:40:03] swyx: So there's a lot of philosophy of what product is, which varies from company to company. And that's an unsolved question. And then there's the philosophy of metrics, how you think you should measure the thing. And then we're, we're doing so many bad shots here then, then you're like, how should reporting into product should, should be measured, right? Like this is like three tiers down of unexamined core beliefs that you, that we haven't really figured out yet. So, that's why I keep it to tangible. Related to the activities that we're doing feeding into the, the one lagging metrics, which keeps us honest because we can monetize it.  [00:40:37] Sai Senthilkumar: Awesome.  [00:40:37] Finding Great DevRels  [00:40:37] Sai Senthilkumar: You know, I, and I know we only have 10 minutes left here. I do want to touch on the last point, which is just hiring you know, Temporal, they locked out on, on finding you what were some other folks like you, you know, if you were, you were just starting to hire folks for your devil organization, where would you say. [00:40:54] swyx: Yeah, this is a tough one. So yeah. By the way, I get maybe three calls a week from founders asking about how to hire differs DevRel which is like, it's so amazing to me cause I, I kind of lucked into the job and then, you know, I randomly now have a reputation for it, but it's so amazing to me that this is something that's in demand because like, it seems like a fun job that everyone should want. What I usually say is true. Think of the ideal user that you have, that you would most like to clone and hire that person? Because what a devil is essentially going to end up doing is cloning themselves by everything that they do in their community and the, every content that they write. They're essentially going to put out signals that, Hey, this is a place that I believe in. And if you're like me, you should join me. And that's obviously, you know, had its problems with diversity, but it was a little we'll, we'll sort of leave that as a separate topic. It's hard because when I say. Typically you're the users that you would most like to clone is also your most ideal customer. So you don't want to poach your Deno from your customer? Sometimes oftentimes that ends up happening anyway, because usually the customer, you know, the person is a champion at the customer they implemented successfully and they're off to the races and then customer. The person probably believes in your company more than they believe in the company that they work at. So they leave to join you. That's how this all happened for us. And for offers there for hire. So yeah, I mean, that's very natural and very organic and if it happens great for you if you have, if you're struggling to get that, and I completely understand, one thing I like to say actually is maybe you don't like, especially if you're like pre series a. So I talked to a lot of like seed stage founders, cause I'm an angel investor. If you're pre series a like. You may want to make sure that at least your founder you know, your CEO CTO can be effective. . If you can't do it, why you, what do you expect that? So you can hire someone else who, who, who can do as good a job or better like yesterday, because they could probably do a better job if they're like an experienced speaker, expensed their phone or whatever. But if you can not be a PR, if you personally, as the founder, as, as like someone in the C suite, Can I do a good job of evangelizing for your company, then you haven't figured it out. You'd, haven't figured out like the, the core message to pass on to your detriment, to, to execute on. So make sure that you you've, you've done the job first because you're also part of the default team as a founder, like it or not. Right. You're the most credible one too. And the one with the most power to fix anything that comes up. So, maybe don't like, if you're struggling to hire your first role, maybe don't hire like someone who's already an established level who comes from a different community, because if you try that and expect them to transfer their audience to you, like NPM installed. It may not work because they don't come from that same mindset. They don't have, they haven't experienced the same problems as you. I much rather take an existing engineer who you know, has some skill that at writing posts and stuff and, and train them up because I think that their roles are more made than bored. And that's, that's kind of, I.  [00:43:47] DevRel for Dev Platforms of non-DevTools companies  [00:43:47] Sai Senthilkumar: Awesome. Well, Shawn, I know we have like another five or six minutes. I want to hit on some questions that came in through the audience. There, there was a good one here about how deck row is different when the product is not specifically for developers like Salesforce, HubSpot, or where it's enterprise stats, but you still want a developer community using the APX. How, how is demo different there? How would you think.  [00:44:12] swyx: I haven't worked on that stuff. So please, please take this with a grain of salt. I've seen Spotify DevRels at work, which is fun. Did you know Spotify has their roads? And yeah, I, I understand that. Sometimes you just have a developer that notion has a devil. Yeah, there, there, sometimes it's not the core thrust, but you're still in developer community. I think that this one is more straightforward in the sense that like, Hey, come build a business on top of us, right? Like here are the existing users, here's the monetization. Hopefully there is monetization. Usually a lot of platforms develop a preference when they launched. They don't have any money to division figured out, which is super annoying. That's what happened to the Alexa by the way. A ton of crap because they never figured out monetization. And and yeah, I mean, basically sell it as a way to. An audience that a captive audience that is behind a walled garden that they could not reach otherwise. And here are all the APIs. Here's how seriously we support it. You know, you don't want to be Twitter where you deprecate APS every so often so that no one believes in you anymore. And you know, you want to host hackathons. You want to, you want to show examples of early success. You want to show, you want to give your developers. An idea of what is most demanded by your community of of your non-technical users. And then, you know, you want to show the re the revenue potential. Honestly, I think Shopify does an amazing job at this, right? You don't, you don't think of, I mean, I think more Shopify has like a dev focused company, but actually they're not like they're selling it. They're selling. It basically rails e-commerce rails to non-technical e-commerce users and the developers come along for the ride and build out the Shopify ecosystem. Right. That's a very successful dev ecosystem because Shopify has monetization figured out. So people gravitate to where the money is, which is why, you know, all right, let's apply this to the very app that we're sitting in right now. Zoom launched a dev community with no monetization, right? There's a whole, there's a bunch of plugins. Maybe you can use them. No one, no one has any idea. What they are you know, that's, that's not going to be that successful, even though zoom has a massive, like billions of users, audience it's hard to build a company on top of it, like slack launch the fund Companies when there are certain sizes, they launched like a creator fund or like a startup funds. So the cave come build on top of us, we'll fund you. And like, you know, we'll turn you into like a legit startup. I don't think there's, there's been like maybe one successful slack based startup, but that's it, you know? So yeah, you gotta really figure out monetization built into the. Yeah, totally.  [00:46:38] DevRel Tooling  [00:46:38] Sai Senthilkumar: Another good question that came through with some of the tool recommendations here technology that devil's stack, I we've actually been following a company called orbit.love that I believe you're familiar with as well. And you know, we're, we're calling it almost a deck as a Debra L CRM that effectively acts as the operating system that rolls in from agents and any other good ones or is orbit the one like, yeah. Well, what were your tool stack be if you were to recommend that.  [00:47:03] swyx: So it's funny. Cause basically I knew Josh before he started, orbit. And so I'm reasonably friendly with them and recently actually sat them down for like an hour and just. Just like unloaded on them on like, all the ways that I don't think their product is good enough. So it's, it's so fun because like, when you have to actually use the thing versus like show a pretty dashboard, like it's, it's a world of difference. So orbits orbits at the pretty dashboard stage right now they need to basically become the definitive source of how every Silicon valley company measures their developer community. They're not there yet because they present with too many numbers. Okay. So, common room is the other one. Have you seen it? Have you seen anybody?  [00:47:41] Sai Senthilkumar: That's   [00:47:41] swyx: a good one. They seem neck and neck. I think common room has has more focus on the integrations aspects. Whereas orbit is maybe more on just general open-source community. I'm not sure. I mean, in the common room seems to have very good enterprise sales for whatever reason. It's super weird. I don't, I don't understand it, but yeah, both of these things are okay or good. Like, I don't think they're amazing because they haven't changed my life as a dev community person. Yeah, that's kind of what it's kind of where I leave it, you know, and I don't, I don't have a formal system, I think for, for sure other people are going to have a formalized CRM. We run ours in notion. It's, it's manually attracts not automatically integrated. I would love for it to be automatically integrated, but also it's not going to materially change my life because I know who my most active users are. I know, you know, I know, I know who is like, you know, super active and I know who's falling off, like, I don't need a machine to tell me that yet. When I may be you know, a much bigger company, maybe like C stage S a CVC probably I'll want to have that so that I can at least have a shared understanding of reality with my team. But right now, you know, there's three of us. It's fine. You guys are doing  [00:48:49] Sai Senthilkumar: an awesome job and, and, you know, we're, we're big fans of what you're building over there and the community you're building over there. I think we're coming up on time, Sean. Unfortunately, I I'm gonna, I'm gonna kick it off. It's obvious.  [00:49:01] Travis Bryant: Shawn we've been running these COVID office hour sessions for since we all went into lockdown and I think this was the most engaged audience. We've had of any one of these. And it was the first time we had in the Q and a, a request for how to reach out to you directly. So what's the best way to to connect with.  [00:49:19] swyx: Oh, sure. You can find me on Twitter at Swyx. I'll drop it in the chat and you can find my sites where I have like a newsletter and more blog posts, all the blog posts you could possibly want. And Swyx.  [00:49:31] Travis Bryant: Yeah, great. And what we'll be doing in the recap of this, along with the recording, number of you asked for that, and we'll be publishing that in our recap blog post, as well as we'll just make it an index of all of Shawn's blog posts so that you have an easy way to pop to those are the ones that he referenced as well as the the graphic that he put up there.

Ajit Ghuman is the Product Marketing Head at Narvar, a customer engagement platform that helps retailers inspire loyalty by enabling post-purchase experiences at an enterprise-grade. Ajit is known as a SaaS Product and Pricing Veteran, helping many companies such as Medallia, Helpshift & Feedzai differentiate their competitive products, to grow their revenue. During this interview we cover: 00:00 Contentfy, Your On-Demand Content Team (Sponsor) 01:58 - Ajit's  Background, Past Positions & Ventures 03:29 - How to be Effective as a Product & Marketing Professional in the SaaS Space? 05:12 -  What Software Companies get Wrong About Pricing  08:44 - How to Think Logically & Systematically About SaaS Pricing 13:21 - How to Effectively Adjust & Increase their Pricing & Based on What Key Points or Metrics? 16:59 -  Segment-Centric vs Offer-Centric Thinking 19:47 - Different offer for Segments & Allocating on a MRR Model 22:54 - Most Common Mistakes SaaS Startups Make  on Positioning & Messaging  26:02 - Borrowing Lessons from Politics to Software 30:18 - Advice Ajit Would Give His 25 Years Old Self 31:35 - Biggest Challenges Ajit is Facing Right now 33:19 - Instrumental Resources for Ajit's Success 36:25 - What does Success Mean to Michael Today 37:21 - Get in Touch With Michael Mentions: https://ajitghuman.com/ (Ajit Ghuman) https://www.revenuecollective.com/ (Revenue Collective) People: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasztunguz/ (Tom Tunguz) https://www.linkedin.com/in/keninger/ (Sam Keninger) Get In Touch With Ajit: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajitpalghuman/ (Ajit's Linkedin) Tag us & follow: https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ (Facebook)  https://www.facebook.com/HorizenCapitalOfficial/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital (LinkedIn)  https://www.linkedin.com/company/horizen-capital https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (Instagram)  https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/ (https://www.instagram.com/saasdistrict/) More about Akeel: Twitter - https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber (https://twitter.com/AkeelJabber) LinkedIn - https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar (https://linkedin.com/in/akeel-jabbar) More Podcast Sessions - https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast (https://horizencapital.com/saas-podcast) 

El reto gigante de un CEO es crear una cultura tan irresistible para él que a su equipo le resulte natural seguirla. Un equipo busca en el CEO valores que los definan como grupo. Un SaaS necesita el equipo de fundadores correcto para hacer realidad la idea y que todos tengan la motivación plena para trabajar en esa idea. En esta ocasión nos detenemos a analizar uno de los posts del blog de Tom Tunguz, inversionista socio de Redpoint Ventures, que trata sobre estructura de equipos en SaaS con alta escalabilidad. Hablamos de cómo los equipos en empresas SaaS se reestructuran cuando empiezan a agarrar tracción y escalar. No son respuestas absolutas, sino un análisis de cómo se adaptan al crecimiento estas compañías saas de alta escalabilidad respecto a la estructura de sus equipos.Estos son los enlaces a los temas de los que hemos hablado:Tomasz Tunguz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasztunguz/Portafolio de Redpoint: https://redpoint.com/companies/Artículo de Tom Tunguz: https://tomtunguz.com/structure-typical-saas-startup/VPE y CTO: https://www.kartar.net/2020/07/vpe-and-cto-the-first-90-days/Respuesta de Quora: https://www.quora.com/How-is-a-typical-Series-A-B2B-SaaS-startup-structured-organizationally-e-g-what-are-the-typical-teams-and-titles/answer/Jeff-BussgangArtículo de Medium: https://medium.com/senovovc/b2b-saas-the-right-organization-structure-at-the-right-stage-727c01e06996High Growth Handbook: http://growth.eladgil.com/Responsabilidades del CPO: https://www.productboard.com/blog/rise-of-chief-product-officer/Artículo de Amplitude:Síguenos en Twitter:Danny Prol: https://twitter.com/DannyProl/Claudio Cossio: https://twitter.com/ccossioEstamos en todas estas plataformas:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/saas-product-chat/id1435000409ListenNotes: https://www.listennotes.com/podcasts/saas-product-chat-daniel-prol-y-claudio-CABZRIjGVdP/Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36KIhM0DM7nwRLuZ1fVQy3Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/?feed=aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS8zN3N0Mzg2dg%3D%3D&hl=esBreaker: https://www.breaker.audio/saas-product-chatWeb: https://saasproductchat.com/

Acquiring new customers is one thing, but keeping them is entirely another. Today we have Sunil Thomas on the show to speak about his company, CleverTap, a leading customer engagement and retention platform that helps brands maximize user time value. CleverTap tracks groups, segments, and data, and helps brands use it to market to their customers. For Sunil, what makes CleverTap unique is that they take a holistic view of customer retention by serving four categories: behavior analytics, segmentation, marketing automation, and individualization, using a mixture of manual and automated approaches to service delivery in each. Sunil shares details about some of CleverTap’s main clients and the verticals they occupy, before weighing in on why their customers who offer subscription models get the best out of their offering. We talk pricing structures and growth metrics for CleverTap and hear more on what their journey from idea to evangelization and product-market fit looked like. Our exchange covers the user experience of CleverTap too, and Sunil shares insights into the growth customers have experienced after adopting their platform as well as how open and compatible it is. We wrap up this great chat hearing bout Sunil’s favorite books and tools, so for all this and more, be sure to tune in!   TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES:   [00:41] Before we jump into today’s interview, please rate, review, and subscribe to the Leveling Up Podcast! [00:45] Where Sunil got his surname from considering he was born in India. [01:21] CleverTap’s main service helping brands with retention and conversion rates.  [02:14] Metrics for clients, client success, and verticals CleverTap serves. [04:15] Four user retention categories and how CleverTap catapulted their growth. [05:18] Using manual and AI-assisted automation to help retain users in four categories. [06:32] Whether CleverTap best serves clients with mobile or web-based businesses. [08:14] CleverTap’s pricing structures based on user volume and add-on features. [10:30] Challenges educating buyers that solving user retention is important.  [12:28] The two and a half year journey to first payment and product-market fit. [14:13] Growth metrics for CleverTap and how they have more than doubled revenue each year.  [15:21] The difference between CleverTap and HubSpot: B2B versus B2C. [15:53] Favorite books of Sunil’s and why he loves Patrick Lencioni’s fable style. [16:32] Getting things done and why Sunil’s favorite business tool is Microsoft OneNote. [18:00] How to get in touch with Sunil and learn more about CleverTap.   Resources From The Interview:   Sunil Thomas on LinkedIn Sunil Thomas on Twitter CleverTap Domino’s Fandango  The Discovery Group BookMyShow Nathan Latka with Sunil Thomas HubSpot NetSuite Yelp Patrick Lencioni   The Five Dysfunctions The Ideal Team Player   Microsoft OneNote Notion Roam David Allen   Getting Things Done   Leveling Up with David Allen TechCrunch Tom Tunguz Growth Everywhere Episode 96: Tom Tunguz   Must read book: Death By Meeting, The Advantage     Leave Some Feedback:     What should I talk about next? Who should I interview? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review here Subscribe to Leveling Up on iTunes Get the non-iTunes RSS Feed     Connect with Eric Siu:      Growth Everywhere Single Grain Eric Siu on Twitter    

Ash Fontana of Zetta Venture Partners joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss The AI Investing Playbook; Why "Dev Tools" for Data Scientists is the Next Great Opportunity; When Fund Returns Don't Fit the Power Law; and Ash's Favorite Investment Heuristic from Naval Ravikant. In this episode, we cover: Zetta III was announced recently, a $180M fund for founders building AI-first companies. You went from $60M -> $125M -> $180M... how was the fundraise different this time around? Quickly can you give us your definition of an AI-first company? What will you be doing differently with the new fund and how does the pandemic affect your approach? Tom Tunguz just mentioned that in the data they're analyzing they are seeing a drop in spend on Machine Learning Infrastructure.  How much of a concern is this to you and your portfolio companies? With the launch of the new fund, you outline focus areas both Applications as well as infrastructure and tools...Is the application-layer ready to leverage AI in a significant way or is there still a lot headway that needs to be made at the infrastructure level first? Carlota Perez has written about technology cycles and how new technologies typically go through this installment phase, w/ rapid development and heavy investment, followed by crash and subsequent recovery leading to the deployment phase...  in your estimation where are we in the tech life cycle of AI and is it really ready (or will it be ready over the next 3-7 years) for mass deployment? How effective are the AI models today when much of the input data, generally speaking, is flawed? Talk about the next 3-5 years for Data Science... we've seen significant advances in developer tools and systems for software but I still feel like we're at very early stages in evolution, efficiency and scalability of data science tools/fundamentals. Does your fund returns follow the power law? Part of the advantage to AI-first startups is the supreme data moat that they can build, preventing others from gaining traction w/ competitive solutions. While this is an advantage for the startups that get a head start (and their investors) is there an adverse impact on other startups that are founded later and don't have the extensive data sets? Many of the startups you invest in are "deep-tech" and will not monetize and grow ARR the same way many familiar SaaS or transactional businesses will.  What are the major gating factors to raise each of a Seed Round, a Series A and a Series B, in these longer cycle tech-first approaches? You've create a Playbook on how to build an AI-first company.  It's evergreen with plans to update regularly as you work w/ companies...  I wonder if you might give us the basics... What do AI-First companies have in their DNA and when building a company, what's the sequence and major building blocks required at the early stages? Last time you were on the show you mentioned you learned a lot of great heuristics and mental models from Naval Ravikant. Can you give us a couple of these that have been really valuable in helping you quickly frame startup investment potential? 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.

This interview originally aired as Episode 213 on February 26, 2019. Tom Tunguz is General Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, the venture fund with a portfolio including the likes of Stripe, Netflix, Zuora, Hashicorp and Juniper Networks just to name a few. As for Tom, he joined Redpoint in 2008 and has since led investments in Kustomer, Looker, Expensify and Gremlin all prior guests on the show I hasten to add. He is also the co-author of Winning with Data: exploring the cultural changes big data brings to business. Tom has also been named on the Forbes Midas Brink list. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Tom made his way from creating software with his father in Brazil to being GP and forefront figure in the SaaS investment community as a GP at Redpoint today? Annual contracts: To what extent do annual contracts dominate today? How does this differ when comparing enterprise to SMB? Why does Tom think in the early days one should be wary of signing too many multi-year contracts? What are the dangers there? How does Tom think about calculating churn when it comes to multi-year contracts? What were the findings on what good looks like when it comes to logo retention? How does this differ when comparing SMB to enterprise? What were the commonalities of leading indicators of churn? Is it fair to always surmise that when serving SMB one will always have a higher rate of churn? What is the right way to conduct a churn analysis? Assisted vs unassisted: What does Tom believe are the leading benchmarks for both? How does this differ when comparing SMB to enterprise? How does the impact of a salesperson change the conversion rate? What time frame from SAL to closed lead suggests product market fit? What one question must all founders be asking in the sales process?  How does Tom think about constructing comp plans the right way today? How should comp plans differ when comparing AEs to customer success? Where should the responsibility for upsell lie, customer success or sales? Should sales commission be paid on renewals?   Tom’s 60 Second SaaStr: What does Tom know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What is Tom’s favourite book and why? What is Tom’s most recent investment and why did he say yes? Read the transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Tom Tunguz  

Alex Clayton is a Partner @ Spark Capital, one of the leading firms of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Slack, Postmates, Oculus, Cruise, Twitter, the list goes on. As for Alex, he co-led Spark's investments in Pendo and Outreach and then led Spark's investments in Justworks, Braze (Appboy) and JFrog. Before Spark, Alex spent three years at Redpoint Ventures as a senior associate where he sourced or was actively involved in the firm's investments in Duo Security, JustWorks, RelateIQ (Salesforce.com), Infer, Lifesize and Sourcegraph. Prior to joining Redpoint, Alex was in the TMT investment-banking division of Goldman Sachs where he worked with Intuit, Yelp, SanDisk, and others. Fun fact, in the past Alex played on the ATP World Tennis Tour, competing in the U.S. Open and many other ATP events. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Alex made his way from the world of investment banking with Goldman Sachs to one of the valley rising stars in the world of enterprise investing? What were Alex's biggest takeaways from his time at Redpoint and working with Tom Tunguz? 2.) How does Alex think about and approach sourcing today? How does Alex find most of his deals? How does Alex breakdown both thesis and network driven sourcing? How does sourcing at growth differ to sourcing at the early stage? If Alex has to meet founders when they are not raising, what does Alex advise founders who are told that you should not "always be raising"? 3.) How does Alex think about market sizing and evaluation today? What does he mean when he says he closely examines "market depth"? How does Alex determine whether a company has the ability to scale from a niche into a much larger TAM? What are the risks Alex is willing vs not willing to take when it comes to market? 4.) How does Alex think about competitor analysis when evaluating an opportunity today? In a world of almost infinite capital, does Alex believe that cash alone is a significant moat for competition? In customer calls when they discuss competition, what excites Alex to hear? How does Alex structure those customer reference calls? 5.) Alex has studied some of the best in class when it comes to SaaS, what do the best in class look like when it comes to: 1.) Quota attainment. 2.) Payback period. 3.) Net dollar retention and churn? 4.) Capital efficiency? Growth rate? Ultimately, what does Alex believe that it takes to go public having studied so many S1s? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Alex’s Fave Book: Zero to One by Peter Thiel Alex’s Most Recent Investment: Braze As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Alex on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.

Tom Tunguz is General Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, the venture fund with a portfolio including the likes of Stripe, Netflix, Zuora, Hashicorp and Juniper Networks just to name a few. As for Tom, he joined Redpoint in 2008 and has since led investments in Kustomer, Looker, Expensify and Gremlin all prior guests on the show I hasten to add. He is also the co-author of Winning with Data: exploring the cultural changes big data brings to business. Tom has also been named on the Forbes Midas Brink list. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. In Today’s Episode We Discuss: How Tom made his way from creating software with his father in Brazil to being GP and forefront figure in the SaaS investment community as a GP at Redpoint today? Annual contracts: To what extent do annual contracts dominate today? How does this differ when comparing enterprise to SMB? Why does Tom think in the early days one should be wary of signing too many multi-year contracts? What are the dangers there? How does Tom think about calculating churn when it comes to multi-year contracts? What were the findings on what good looks like when it comes to logo retention? How does this differ when comparing SMB to enterprise? What were the commonalities of leading indicators of churn? Is it fair to always surmise that when serving SMB one will always have a higher rate of churn? What is the right way to conduct a churn analysis? Assisted vs unassisted: What does Tom believe are the leading benchmarks for both? How does this differ when comparing SMB to enterprise? How does the impact of a salesperson change the conversion rate? What time frame from SAL to closed lead suggests product market fit? What one question must all founders be asking in the sales process? How does Tom think about constructing comp plans the right way today? How should comp plans differ when comparing AEs to customer success? Where should the responsibility for upsell lie, customer success or sales? Should sales commission be paid on renewals?   Tom’s 60 Second SaaStr: What does Tom know now that he wishes he had known at the beginning? What is Tom’s favourite book and why? What is Tom’s most recent investment and why did he say yes? Read the full transcript on our blog. If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Tom Tunguz

Hi everyone, today we're talking to Tom Tunguz, a Venture Capitalist at Redpoint Ventures whose got seven years of experience evaluating startups. Tom primarily works on Series A funding and has some interesting insights on keeping churn rate incredibly low and profitable trends he's noticing in the market. Click here for show notes.  Leave some feedback: What should I talk about next? Please let me know on Twitter or in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, leave a short review here. Subscribe to Growth Everywhere on iTunes. Get the non-iTunes RSS feed Connect with Eric Siu: Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @ericosiu

Greg Sands is the Founder & Managing Partner @ Costanoa Ventures, one of the leading early stage enterprise funds on the West Coast with their latest $175m fund, raised earlier this year. At Costanoa, Greg has made investments in the likes of Intacct (acquired by Sage for $800m), Quizlet, DemandBase and previous guest, Grovo, just to name a few. Prior to founding Costanoa, Greg was a Managing Director at Sutter Hill, where he was an early investor in the likes of Feedburner, AllBusiness, and Return Path. Before Sutter Hill, Greg was on the other side of the table as the first hire at Netscape after its founding engineering team. As Netscape’s 1st Product Manager, Greg wrote the initial business plan, coined the name Netscape, and created the SuiteSpot Business Unit, which he grew from zero to $150m in revenue. He also served as Manager of Business Development at Cisco where he architected a global channel management plan. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: How did Greg make his way into the world of SaaS as the first non-engineering hire at Netscape and then make his way into the world of SaaS investing, subsequently?   Why does Greg completely disagree with the hailed notion of, “The Rule of 40”? Why does Greg believe it has achieved such status and recognition in market today? Where are the large nuances? If not the rule of 40, what metrics and benchmarks should early stage SaaS founders be focussing on? If we disregard “The Rule of 40”, how does that impact the emphasis that should be placed on profitability? Tom Tunguz stated on the show, ““growth is the largest determinant of value at IPO, not profitability”. What are Greg’s thoughts on this? In that scaling process, Greg has said to me before, “the first hire in every function should be a Swiss army knife hire and most people go wrong”. What does Greg mean when he says a Swiss Army Knife, how does that change in marketing vs sales? Where do most people go wrong within this? How does Greg define the different phases of product market fit? Why does Greg advocate that all founders approach product market fit with a “crawl, walk, run” approach? What examples does Greg have where this has worked and what specifically about this allowed it to work so well? 60 Second SaaStr Logos or expansion? Pros and cons of usage based pricing? What does Greg know now that he wishes he had known in the beginning? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Greg Sands

Nicolas Dessaigne is the Founder & CEO @ Algolia, the most reliable platform for building search into your business. Just last week they raised $53m in funding led by Accel with participation from Jason Lemkin @ SaaStr, Point Nine Capital, AppDynamic’s Jyoti Bansal, Intercom’s Des Traynor and InVision’s Clark Valberg and more incredible investors.   In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Nicolas made his way from Paris to YC to founding one of the hottest SaaS startups of the day in Algolia? 2.) Tom Tunguz has said before that the Series B is the hardest to raise, having just raised his, does Nicolas agree with this? How did this round differ from others? How can founders know what is the right amount to raise? Is 18 months still the desired runway? 3.) Does Nicolas think he made the move to the US at the right time? Too early or too late? What advice would Nicolas give to founders making or thinking about making this move? What areas are Europe and vice versa the US better at hiring for? 4.) Which functional areas do both Europe and the US lead in their respective fields? Why does Nicolas think that it is harder to hire well in the US? Does Europe still have a fundamental lack of experienced sales and marketing professionals? 5.) How did Jason Lemkin train Nicolas to approach the fundraising process? What other than funds can founders gain from the process? How can these conversations be initiated?  As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Nicolas on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Zoom is the No 1 Video and WebConferencing Service, providing one consistent enterprise experience that allows you to engage in an array of activities including online meetings, video webinars, collaboration-enabled conference rooms and business instant messaging. Plus, it is the easiest solution to use, buy and scale with the most straightforward pricing. Do not take our word for it, Zoom’s their partnership with Sequoia in their latest 100m funding round says it all. Zoom is a must for your business. ViewedIt is a free video-recording tool that makes it easy for organizations to embrace the power of video for personalized communications. ViewedIt enables sales professionals, executive leaders and customer support teams to easily record personalized videos and add them to their email conversations. Plus, with built-in tracking powered by the Vidyard platform, video creators will know who is watching what, and which video messages resonate with viewers. They’ll receive immediate playback notifications that will eliminate the wondering of whether the recipient received or watched their content. Find out more and download ViewedIt for free at vidyard.com/viewedit.

Tom Tunguz is a Partner at Redpoint Ventures and one of the pre-eminent thought leaders in the rise of SaaS. Tom has made investments in the likes of Demio, Axial, Chorus.ai and more incredible companies. Tomasz is also the co-author of Winning with Data: which explores the cultural changes big data brings to business, and shows you how to adapt your organization to leverage data to maximum effect. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. If you have not checked out Tom’s blog that is a must and can be found here. In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: What are the 4 dominant ways startups are incorporating machine learning into their feature set? Why does Tom not believe in AI and discuss prefers to discuss machine learning? What 3 things have caused the rise of machine learning? Why now will machine learning happen in core categories in SaaS? What role does deep learning play in this rise? What are the 5 precepts of the type of companies that Tom wants to invest in using ML in SaaS? Why should startups discuss their value proposition over their technology? How does Tom advise startups can gain access to proprietary datasets? How would Tom like to see data access change in the coming years? How does Tom approach the aspect of building out a team of experts in machine learning for your startup? What should founders look for? If you would like to find out more about the show and the guests presented, you can follow us on Twitter here: Jason Lemkin Harry Stebbings SaaStr Tomasz Tunguz

Tom Tunguz is a Partner @ Redpoint Ventures, where he has invested in the likes of Axial, Dremio, Expensify, Electric Imp, Looker, and ThredUP. Tomasz is also the co-author of Winning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future, which explores the cultural changes big data brings to business, and shows you how to adapt your organization to leverage data to maximum effect. Before joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google’s AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization.   In Today’s Episode You Will Learn: 1.) When did Tom perceive the true power of data for the first time? 2.) What is the biggest difference between a company that is data driven and one that is not? What are the inherent benefits and how can non data driven businesses become data driven? 3.) What are the best data driven teams doing to operationalise their data today? 4.) Adam Grant: 8% of job interviews are productive. So what structure can management use to ensure higher efficiency in the hiring process? 5.) What are the complexities and skills required for strong data analysis in today's environment? 6.) Data often leads to over confidence in decision making, how do you prevent illusion bias once data has been obtained? Items Mentioned In Today’s Show: Tom’s Most Recent Investment: Dremio As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Tom on Twitter here! Likewise, you can follow Harry on Snapchat here for mojito madness and all things 20VC. Eve make 1 perfect mattress – made with 3 layer technology and next generation memory foam. It comes packaged in a beautiful box and arrives the day after you order. You get 100 nights to try it with free return pick-up – it really is the perfect mattress for everyone. Just go online to evemattress.co.uk and enter the code 20VC for £50 off. Everybody deserves the perfect start with Eve.   Cooley are the global law firm built around startups and venture capital. Since forming the first venture fund in Silicon Valley, Cooley has formed more venture capital funds than any other law firm in the world, with 50+ years working with VCs. They help VCs form and manage funds, make investments and handle the myriad issues that arise through a fund’s lifetime. So to learn more about the #1 most active law firm representing VC-backed companies going public. Head over to cooley.com and also at cooleygo.com.

Michael Litt started his first video company, Redwoods Media, as his undergraduate thesis project. He then evolved with his partner to create another successful video software company, Vidyard. He has learned the value of supportive family and friends throughout his life as an entrepreneur. Famous Five: Favorite Book? – Behind the Cloud What CEO do you follow? — Mark Benioff Favorite online tool? — Gmail Do you get 8 hours of sleep? — I try to. If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – If you want to be an entrepreneur, surround yourself with people who love and support you. Focus on those relationships. Time Stamped Show Notes: 01:40 – Nathan introduces Michael 02:15 – He started at the University of Waterloo and Research in Motion 03:00 – He graduated at 25, and the Redwoods Media was built as his undergraduate thesis project 03:50 – He contracted businesses to sponsor their company 04:50 – They were passionate about the video company, and turned down jobs at places like Google 05:30 – Vidyard is a video platform for business 05:50 – They sell that technology to businesses on a monthly basis 06:10 – Average revenue per customer is about $30k 06:35 – They have an inside sales team 07:25 – Four categories of businesses and sales teams 07:50 – 132 people on their team, and they have almost doubled in the last year 08:15 – Growth pains are opportunities to learn 08:55 – Looking at retention instead of churn 09:25 – Gross retention is 95% 09:45 – Net retention is 135% 10:47 – They have raised $70 million in funding 11:00 – Customer acquisition cost is paid back in 1.5 years 11:15 – Average customer acquisition is $40000 11:45 – Customers stay for quite a long time, according to the numbers 13:27 – Why lifetime value is tricky 13:45 – They focus on payback period for their customers 14:25 – Being honest about their business and their numbers for customer acquisition costs 15:10 – They include hard costs, like any work supplies 15:40 – Total customers is private 16:05 – They are looking to triple the business for two years, and then double the business for the next three years 16:40 – It would show their potential to go public 17:00 – Building a fast growing, high-value business 17:25 – Tom Tunguz’s Blog 17:45 – Revenue is private. 18:15 – They broke through $1 million for their first full year of sales 18:45 – Michael has a holiday party every year at his office. 19:00 – Project Christmas has carried throughout their business 19:28 – The Fall is a great time to raise money 19:55 – Connect with Michael at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn 22:20 – The Famous Five 3 Key Points: Your first business ideas will develop into bigger, better projects. Be honest about your company and spending. Surround yourself with people who love and support you as you pursue your entrepreneurial dreams. Resources Mentioned: Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible. Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he's driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books. Toptal – Great for business people to start building their app Behind the Cloud - Michael’s favorite business book Gmail – His favorite tool, besides his own Tom Tunguz’s Blog – Learn about the best models that public companies use Connect with Michael at Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives

In this episode of the Subscribed Podcast, hosts Tom Krackeler and Rachel English talk about pricing strategies with Tom Tunguz, partner at Redpoint Ventures. Tunguz also writes daily, data-driven blog posts about key questions facing startups including how to fundraise, startup benchmarks, management best practices and team building. More on succeeding in the Subscription Economy at https://www.zuora.com/academy/

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

Tom Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures joins Nick to cover The Must-Have Characteristics of Successful SaaS Startups. We will address questions including: Can you talk about your decision to blog, selling your partners at Redpoint, how it went in the early going and what results it's created for yourself and Redpoint?...   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.