Podcast appearances and mentions of tomasz tunguz

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.Had a great conversation recently with Tomasz Tunguz Founder and General Partner at Theory Ventures. We dug into how AI is reshaping venture capital and everyday life, from the rapid advancements in the space to what it all means for startups and the broader market. We covered everything from the declining cost of training AI models to the open vs. closed-source debate and how enterprises are starting to adopt AI in real ways. A really insightful discussion—hope you enjoy it.About Tomasz TunguzTomasz Tunguz is the Founder of Theory Ventures, where he invests in early-stage technology companies with a focus on SaaS, data infrastructure, and machine learning. Renowned for his deep analytical insights and data-driven approach to venture capital, Tomasz helps founders navigate growth, product-market fit, and scaling challenges.Prior to founding Theory Ventures, Tomasz was a Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, where he led investments in several high-growth software companies. He is widely recognized for his blog on SaaS metrics, startups, and venture capital, which serves as a valuable resource for entrepreneurs and investors alike.Tomasz holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering and Economics from Dartmouth College. His passion for technology, strategy, and helping companies succeed has made him a respected voice in the venture capital community.Theory Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm focused on investing in transformative technology companies across sectors like SaaS, data infrastructure, AI, and machine learning. Founded by Tomasz Tunguz, Theory Ventures combines deep analytical expertise with a founder-first approach, providing hands-on support to help startups achieve product-market fit, scale operations, and drive long-term growth. The firm is committed to backing visionary entrepreneurs who are building the next generation of technology solutions, offering both capital and strategic guidance to turn bold ideas into successful businesses.Timestamps:In this episode, we discuss:* AI's Impact (1:18)* Cost Reduction in AI Training (2:18)* Impact of DeepSeek on Market Dynamics (5:01)* Open Source vs. Closed Source AI (10:57)* Enterprise Decision-Making in AI (13:19)* Defensibility of AI Applications (17:27)* Efficiency in Growing Companies (21:01)* The Path to AGI (25:46)* Impact of AI on Labor Market (28:58)* Excitement and Concerns About AI (30:55)* Non-Consensus Views on AI and Final Thoughts (33:29)I'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with Tomasz Tunguz.Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on X. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

Send us a textHey, welcome to another episode of Making Billions, I'm your host, Ryan Miller and today I have my dear friend Tomasz Tunguz. Tomasz is the managing general partner at Theory Ventures, a $700 million AUM venture fund that focuses on one to $25 million investments in software companies. He's invested in companies such as Looker, which was acquired by Google for get this $2.6 billion software company called Kustomer, which was acquired by Meta for a billion dollars. Data observability pioneer Monte Carlo last valued at 1.6 billion and several other unicorns. So what does this mean? Well, it just means that Tomasz understands how to find the best deals, raise capital and exit for eye popping returns. Subscribe on YouTube:https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTOe79EXLDsROQ0z3YLnu1QQConnect with Ryan Miller:Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rcmiller1/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/makingbillionspodcast/Twitter: https://twitter.com/_MakingBillonsWebsite: https://making-billions.com/[THE GUEST]: Everyday AI: Your daily guide to grown with Generative AICan't keep up with AI? We've got you. Everyday AI helps you keep up and get ahead.Listen on: Apple Podcasts SpotifySupport the showDISCLAIMER: The information in every podcast episode “episode” is provided for general informational purposes only and may not reflect the current law in your jurisdiction. By listening or viewing our episodes, you understand that no information contained in the episodes should be construed as legal or financial advice from the individual author, hosts, or guests, nor is it intended to be a substitute for legal, financial, or tax counsel on any subject matter. No listener of the episodes should act or refrain from acting on the basis of any information included in, or accessible through, the episodes without seeking the appropriate legal or other professional advice on the particular facts and circumstances at issue from a lawyer, finance, tax, or other licensed person in the recipient's state, country, or other appropriate licensing jurisdiction. No part of the show, its guests, host, content, or otherwise should be considered a solicitation for investment in any way. All views expressed in any way by guests are their own opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the show or its host(s). The host and/or its guests may own some of the assets discussed in this or other episodes, including compensation for advertisements, sponsorships, and/or endorsements. This show is for entertainment purposes only and should not be used as financial, tax, legal, or any advice whatsoever.

Investor and AI power user Tomasz Tunguz joins the show to break down his bold predictions for 2025. From startups with 30 employees hitting $100M ARR to the explosive productivity gains driven by AI, Tomasz explains how automation is reshaping the tech landscape. Tomasz, Sam, AJ, and Asad dive into his personal AI-driven workflows, the future of SaaS, why big enterprises might benefit from AI before startups disrupt them, and more.   Topline by Pavilion is also proud to debut The Revenue Leadership Podcast with Kyle Norton. Listen now.   Attention CEOs and Founders! Join Pavilion at the CEO Summit on January 23rd in vibrant New Orleans. Don't miss out—reserve your spot today!   Want more Topline? Join the Topline Slack channel to engage with hosts, guests, and other listeners and subscribe to Topline Newsletter.  

SaaStr 769: The State of SaaS Go-to-Market with Theory Ventures General Partner Tomasz Tunguz Join us in this insightful episode as seasoned venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz, General Partner at Theory Ventures shares transformative insights on the current landscape of SaaS Go-To-Market. Six months ago, security was the number one prohibition preventing businesses and software companies from buying AI. Today it's ROI. In this episode, Tomasz shares nine observations from a Go-To-Market survey Theory Ventures did with hundreds of startups, 68% of them early-stage, well-funded, mostly mid-market ACV, and 25% remote. Here's what they found: We've noticed founders are more positive despite sales cycles being 12% longer The lengthening sales cycle increases the payback period to offset it Startup founders and CEOs have increased their sales team quotas linearly AI today has no impact on conversion rate AI does not impact ARR growth, even though people who buy AI perceive it as meaningfully contributing to overall efficiency gains If you're considering changing your pricing model, consider creating a hybrid or matrix pricing model. You'll have six percentage points more of net dollar retention. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SaaStr hosts the largest SaaS community events on the planet. Hey everybody - thanks to the 10,000 of you who came out to SaaStr Annual. We had a blast and big news -- we'll be back in MAY of 2025. That's right, the SaaStr Annual will be a bit earlier next year, May 13-15 2025. We'll still be back in the same venue, in the SF bay area at the 40+ acre sprawling san mateo county events center. Grab your tickets at saastrannual.com with code jason50 for an extra discount on our very best pricing. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This episode is sponsored by: remote.com When the right person for the job is a world away, Remote Talent brings the world to you. As the top job board for remote-first companies, we give you powerful tools to post your listings and reach the world's top candidates and remote professionals. Start building your dream team from anywhere—visit Remote.com/jobs today. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This episode is sponsored by: Anrok A question for SaaS finance leaders, do you know where your customers are? Anrok tracks where your sales are creating exposure, and automates tax calculation and filing worldwide. Built for high-growth software companies, Anrok protects your revenue and saves you time. Visit anrok.com/saastr to learn more.

A founding engineer on Google BigQuery and now at the helm of MotherDuck, Jordan Tigani challenges the decade-long dominance of Big Data and introduces a compelling alternative that could change how companies handle data. Jordan discusses why Big Data technologies are an overkill for most companies, how MotherDuck and DuckDB offer fast analytical queries, and lessons learned as a technical founder building his first startup. Watch the episode with Tomasz Tunguz: https://youtu.be/gU6dGmZzmvI Website - https://motherduck.com Twitter - https://x.com/motherduck Jordan Tigani LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordantigani Twitter - https://x.com/jrdntgn FIRSTMARK Website - https://firstmark.com Twitter - https://twitter.com/FirstMarkCap Matt Turck (Managing Director) LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/turck/ Twitter - https://twitter.com/mattturck (00:00) Intro (00:56) What is the Small Data? (06:56) Marketing strategy of MotherDuck (08:39) Processing Small Data with Big Data stack (15:30) DuckDB (17:21) Creation of DuckDB (18:48) Founding story of MotherDuck (24:08) MotherDuck's community (25:25) MotherDuck of today ($100M raised) (33:15) Why MotherDuck and DuckDB are so fast? (39:08) The limitations and the future of MotherDuck's platform (39:49) Small Models (42:37) Small Data and the Modern Data Stack (46:47) Making things simpler with a shift from Big Data to Small Data (50:04) Jordan Tigani's entrepreneurial journey (58:31) Outro

In this episode of the SaaS Revolution Show our host Alex Theuma is joined by Tomasz Tunguz, General Partner at Theory Ventures and SaaStock Europe 2024 speaker, who shares how AI is changing the future of SaaS. "AI will be a key part of the product. I would characterise the last two years as adding AI features on top of existing platforms, and I think we're starting to see humans adjust, and when humans adjust, the workflows will change, and when the workflows change, there'll be an opportunity to un-see the big systems of record." Tomasz shares: • What makes a founder investable, from Einstein's compounding interest to selling a market • Where we'll see greater and greater efficiency gains businesses at scale • Why upcoming workflows changes lend to unseating the biggest systems of record • The future of AI and how it'll change SaaS architecture and positioning • The significant pressure that horizontal SaaS is facing, and what companies like Salesforce, Glean and Klarna are doing as a result • How to ensure that the AI brought into your SaaS gives you an edge and is not just commoditisation and more.Check out the other ways SaaStock is serving SaaS founders

The promise of blockchain to change the world hasn't materialized. For the most part, the technology has instead enabled people to speculate on a new asset class. A big hurdle to realizing blockchain's full potential, web3 proponents argue, is that decentralized services are incredibly hard to build. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

In this episode of Turpentine VC, Erik Torenberg welcomes back Tomasz Tunguz, GP of Theory Ventures. They dissect the investment landscape of data businesses through the lens of Databricks. They analyze the company's growth trajectory, competition with Snowflake, and its potential in the AI era. Tom presents bull and bear investment cases, discusses valuation metrics, and explores the strategic importance of data catalogs. They also cover the emerging trends in the modern data stack, potential market consolidation, and the impact of AI on investment opportunities.

The journey to a calm, profitable business in the AI age We're building a mini-AI media and software empire at Every.  Today on AI & I, Brandon Gell joins the show to turn the tables on me and act as podcast host to explore what we're doing as a company, how we got here, and where we're going. Brandon is Every's first entrepreneur in residence, and he was the perfect person to host, because he's one of the key reasons for our recent acceleration. Before joining Every, Brandon was the cofounder and CEO of Clyde, a startup that helped brands launch their own insurance and warranty programs, where he raised $50 million and led a team of 100 before selling it to global insurance tech company Cover Genius in early 2023. In this episode, he interviews me about how I learned to code in middle school, how I built and sold my first startup coming out of college, and how it all led to Every. We also talk about Brandon's story. He joined Every just four months ago—and it feels like we've done the work of years since. We've launched two new AI products, an incredible amount of great writing, a new course, and more. We get into: My candid thoughts on entrepreneurship in the AI age—including why you should ship fast, and how not to be misled by metrics like TAM  How AI startups can find valuable niches—and live demos of our apps Spiral and Sparkle Brandon's hard-earned lessons from running a insuretech business for seven years The confusing realities of being an exited founder, and how we navigated through those times What brought Brandon to Every—including the email he sent me before joining Every's master plan and what we hope to build over the next few months and years This is a must-watch for anyone interested in building a calm, profitable business empire in the age of AI.  If you found this episode interesting, please like, subscribe, comment, and share!  Want even more? Sign up for Every to unlock our ultimate guide to prompting ChatGPT here: https://every.ck.page/ultimate-guide-to-prompting-chatgpt. It's usually only for paying subscribers, but you can get it here for free. To hear more from Dan Shipper: Subscribe to Every: https://every.to/subscribe  Follow him on X: https://twitter.com/danshipper  Timestamps: Introduction: 00:00:56 Dan's childhood dream—to build a Microsoft competitor: 00:03:36 The first app Dan built in middle school: 00:07:07 The story of Dan's first company that he sold in college: 00:18:52 How Every came to be: 00:33:56 The start of Brandon's journey as a builder: 00:49:15 Brandon's first software app—and why you should launch first, and iterate later: 00:57:05 Everything Brandon learned from running a B2B business for seven years: 01:08:49 What brought Brandon to Every—and the email he sent Dan before joining: 01:18:00 Every's master plan to be a successful creator-run business: 01:29:15  Live demo of Spiral, the app that automates 80 percent of repetitive creative work: 01:38:11 Brandon and Dan's take on how AI startups can find a valuable niche: 01:44:00 Live demo of Sparkle, the app that organizes your files for you: 01:50:52 Links to resources mentioned in the episode: Brandon Gell: https://twitter.com/bran_don_gell The piece Dan recently published about Every's master plan: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/every-s-master-plan  Dan's piece about the unbundling of Excel, and why it serves as an important story in the age of AI: https://every.to/chain-of-thought/the-great-ai-unbundling  Tomasz Tunguz, the VC who has also written about Excel: https://tomtunguz.com/  Every cofounder Nathan's word processor, Lex: https://lex.page/  Spiral, the app that automates 80 percent of repetitive creative work: https://spiral.computer/  Sparkle, the app that automatically organizes your files: https://makeitsparkle.co/

Steven Forth is Ibbaka's Co-Founder, CEO, and Partner. Ibbaka is a strategic pricing advisory firm. He was CEO of LeveragePoint Innovations Inc., a SaaS business. In this episode, Steven explains how AI can significantly enhance software customization and pricing, enabling more precise value delivery for each customer. He emphasizes that while AI introduces new capabilities, it does not fundamentally change the core principles of pricing.    Why you have to check out today's podcast: Dive deep into the comparison between AI and the transformative impact of SaaS, providing valuable insights into the future of software pricing and delivery Understand value models and how AI can optimize pricing strategies Explore how AI can enable highly customized software configurations and pricing, making it easier to deliver and capture value tailored to individual customers   "Before they invest a lot of time and effort in developing or pricing their own AI, find out what their customers are already doing and how they're thinking about the problems." - Steven Forth   Topics Covered: 00:47 - Skepticism as well as optimism regarding AI and addressing the hype surrounding AI 04:15 - Exploring how AI might impact software pricing compared to the changes brought about by cloud-based SaaS. 07:05 - The way AI can optimize software configurations and pricing based on individual value drivers for each customer 10:44 - Discussing how SaaS fundamentally changed software pricing compared to AI 14:11 - How AI, while it enhances capabilities and user experiences, does not fundamentally change the underlying principles of pricing 16:31 - What is a value model? 18:15 - Pricing being tied more closely to value with the rise of AI 23:27 - Steven's best pricing advice   Key Takeaways: "The underlying ways that we think about pricing have not changed because of generative AI and will not change, but some of them we'll be able to execute on much, much more effectively." - Steven Forth "I think of pricing not as being something that is data-driven, but something that is model-driven." - Steven Forth "AI is changing how we build, deliver, and experience the functionality that software and data can bring. But as it does that, it also opens new ways for us to think about the pricing of the applications and the data." - Steven Forth   People/Resources Mentioned: Pros: https://pros.com Microsoft: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ph/Don Norman: https://www.nngroup.com/people/don-norman/ Jacob Nielsen: https://www.nngroup.com/people/don-norman/ Totogi: https://www.totogi.com McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com Tom Nagle: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-tom-nagle-2bb2288/ Zilliant: https://zilliant.com Pricefx: https://www.pricefx.com Vendavo: https://www.vendavo.com Tomasz Tunguz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasztunguz/   Connect with Steven Forth: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stevenforth/ Email: steven@ibbaka.com   Connect with Mark Stiving: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stiving/ Email: mark@impactpricing.com  

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

In this episode, we sat down with Tomasz Tunguz (https://twitter.com/ttunguz), the founder of Theory Ventures and a leading voice in the tech investment space. We discussed the transformative potential of Ethereum as a database company, the importance of data security in a decentralized world, and the evolving landscape of AI technologies from foundational models to AI-native applications.

Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures joins Nick to discuss Web 3.0 Database Dominance, How to Trust Black-Box ML Models, Google's Ad Business in an LLM-First Search World, and Lessons from Looker, Monte Carlo, and MotherDuck. In this episode we cover: Blockchain and Web3 Databases, with a Focus on Ethereum and Its Potential Dominance AI, Data Analytics, and Their Applications in Business Machine Learning Challenges and Opportunities, AI Innovations in Robotics, Self-Driving Cars, and Programming Using AI to Personalize Sales Pitches and Improve Response Rates AI's Impact on GDP Growth, Productivity, and Profitability Guest Links: LinkedIn X Theory Ventures The hosts of The Full Ratchet are Nick Moran and Nate Pierotti of New Stack Ventures, a venture capital firm committed to investing in founders outside of the Bay Area. Want to keep up to date with The Full Ratchet? Follow us on social. You can learn more about New Stack Ventures by visiting our LinkedIn and Twitter. Are you a founder looking for your next investor? Visit our free tool VC-Rank and we'll send a list of potential investors right to your inbox!

This Week in Startups is brought to you by… Squarespace. Turn your idea into a new website! Go to http://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. OpenPhone. Create business phone numbers for you and your team that work through an app on your smartphone or desktop. TWiST listeners can get an extra 20% off any plan for your first 6 months at http://www.openphone.com/twist CLA. Innovation takes balance. CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors can help you get from startup to where you want to end up. Get started now at CLAconnect.com/tech Todays show: David Weisburd hosts David Clark, Tomasz Tunguz, and Jason Calacanis to discuss the new YC class (1:59), startup valuations (19:34), the investment landscape (30:17), and more! * Timestamps: (00:00) David Weisburd intros David Clark, Tomasz Tunguz, and Jason Calacanis (1:59) The latest YC class and rise of AI startups (9:36) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at http://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST (10:55) Role of the founding team in AI startups (19:34) Startup valuations and the changing landscape of seed deals and Series A rounds (29:01) OpenPhone - Get 20% off your first six months at http://www.openphone.com/twist (30:17) Tomasz Tunguz's journey to raising his fund and the challenges of the VC industry (37:32) Personality types in venture capital and handling company wind downs (39:20) CLA - Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at https://claconnect.com/tech (40:52) VC's moving out and the challenge of picking the right company to invest in (59:27) Active reserves management (1:09:00) Lightning round: Top 3 investments * Mentioned on show: https://motherduck.com https://arbitrum.io https://www.omni.co https://www.podengine.ai https://www.getrecall.ai https://newcomergames.com * Follow David Clark: X: https://twitter.com/daveclark85 LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/david-clark-6678b6b/ Check out VenCap: https://www.vencap.com/ * Follow Tomasz Tunguz: X: https://twitter.com/ttunguz LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasztunguz Check out Theory Ventures: https://theory.ventures * Follow Jason: X: https://twitter.com/Jason LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasoncalacanis * Subscribe to This Week in Startups on Apple: https://rb.gy/v19fcp * Thank you to our partners: (9:36) Squarespace - Use offer code TWIST to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain at http://www.Squarespace.com/TWIST (29:01) OpenPhone - Get 20% off your first six months at http://www.openphone.com/twist (39:20) CLA - Get started with CLA's CPAs, consultants, and wealth advisors now at https://claconnect.com/tech * Great 2023 interviews: Steve Huffman, Brian Chesky, Aaron Levie, Sophia Amoruso, Reid Hoffman, Frank Slootman, Billy McFarland * Check out Jason's suite of newsletters: https://substack.com/@calacanis * Follow TWiST: Substack: https://twistartups.substack.com Twitter: https://twitter.com/TWiStartups YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/thisweekin Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thisweekinstartups TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@thisweekinstartups * Subscribe to the Founder University Podcast: https://www.founder.university/podcast

ContentsEditorial: When is a Bubble not a Bubble?Essays of the WeekThe great rewiring: is social media really behind an epidemic of teenage mental illness?The Day the Music LiedWeapons of Mass ProductionChina's future economyThis Message Will Self-Destruct in 33 Seconds1 in 6 People Will Be Aged 65+ by 2050Venture Investing This WeekGlobal Venture Funding In Q1 2024 Shows Startup Investors Remain CautiousFirst Cut - State of Private Markets: Q4 2023The Investments Where I'm Going to Lose All My MoneyQuant VC and What it Means for Startup InvestingVideo of the WeekNew Apple Vision Pro PersonasAI of the WeekMeet the YC Winter 2024 BatchThe 18 most interesting startups from YC's Demo Day show we're in an AI bubbleYCombinator's AI boom is still going strong (W24)Bubble TroubleBig Tech companies form new consortium to allay fears of AI job takeoversNews Of the WeekApple Vision Pro's Persona feature gets collaborativeJon Stewart Plunges the Knife into AppleStartup of the WeekRubrik's IPO filing hints at thawing public markets for tech companiesX of the WeekMike Maples on Y CombinatorEditorialI've taken to writing this on Friday morning. I put the curated content together Thursday evening, which gives me overnight to reflect. Usually, the title comes first and is somehow correlated to the content below.This week, there is a lot about AI. The Y Combinator story in AI of the week is the story that the “bubble” will be challenged due to a lack of training data. In contrast, the story is that AI will remove so many jobs that the larger companies have formed a consortium to allay fears.I also created a new section separating out Venture Capital. This is the week of quarterly updates from Q1. They suggest there is no bubble at all. Only Amazon's multi-billion dollar investment in Anthropic stands out.But for me, the question posed in the title is - When is a Bubble not a Bubble? - is not triggered by the AI stories. The Economist's Simon Cox writes about China and its future in a newsletter and the linked article. He frames it well:In 2006, for example, China's leaders declared the need to “rely more than ever on scientific and technological progress and innovation to drive a qualitative leap in productivity”. Science and technology, they added, are “the concentrated embodiment…of advanced productive forces”. That ambition, and indeed that diction, sound very similar to the slogans emanating from Beijing today. Xi Jinping, China's leader, has, for example, urged provincial governments to cultivate “new productive forces”, based on science and technology. In this week's issue I explore what those words might mean.As Simon points out, “productive forces” is a formulation derived from Hegel and Marx. It combines technology and human beings into a duality that expresses how we produce things. Indeed, there is no pure “technology” separate from human beings and the division of labor. Productivity is the expression of both and the measurable thing.In the Western enlightenment tradition, we use the word progress to mean the same thing.All progress requires humans to invent time-saving methods to reduce the effort involved in making and doing things.China's discussion (especially if you remove the word China) is about building the future through innovation. It stands in contrast to the dominant discussions here in the US - Regulation, the dangers of Social Media, Immigration, Women's Right to Choose, Guns, and even Climate. And a lot of pessimism around technology and science.That is except for in the startup ecosystem. The dominant Silicon Valley belief system is similar to Simon Cox's description of China's goals.Accelerated Innovation dominates the set of assumptions in the Bay Area. Why? Because AI, Nuclear Fusion, Decentralized Networks, Global Ambition, and the skills and money they require all live here. And their potential is real. And the timing of the potential is near-term (several years).Strangely, the US Government seems to consider innovation, especially “Big Tech,” a problem. China and Silicon Valley seem to consider it a solution. And by “Silicon Valley,” I do not only mean geographically but also as a way of thinking.That bifurcation of optimism and pessimism, enshrined in a Government that wants to restrict tech company power, has led many in the Valley to abandon traditional two-party politics and increasingly articulate agendas that are both optimistic and independent of Government. Government is perceived as a cost of doing business, not a benefit.So, the innovation that comes out of Silicon Valley and the money it attracts are often scorned by those who are not part of it. The word “Bubble” is heavily laden and used to imply that there is nothing valid, real, or transformational. The money is simply irrational.“Bubble” is a pessimists word for “fake”.It goes alongside other narratives that cast doubt on innovation. In some ways, Tomasz Tunguz's piece on the shrinking attention span implies a problem caused by the abundance of content and limited time to read it. Although one might consider the ability to parse information and determine whether it is attention-worthy and do it quickly would be a good thing.The idea that teens commit suicide and get depressed due to alienating social media comes to mind as another anti-technology narrative. The first ‘Essay of the Week' from Nature magazine presents a strong case that this is bogus.Rex Woodbury's “Weapons of Mass Production” and Michael Spencer and Chris Dalla Riva's “AI and the Future of Music Production and Creation” (The Day the Music Lied) point to the explosion of production and creative production that AI will trigger.Rex:Spotify reinvented music distribution. It put 100 million songs in your pocket. Generative AI will reinvent music production. There are a number of early-stage startups that let you toggle artist, genre, and ~vibe~ to create a wholly new work—e.g., “Create a Miley Cyrus breakup song with a sad, wistful feeling to it.” Of course, these companies will need to navigate the labyrinth of music rights, but some version of these tools feels inevitable.This example embodies a broader shift we're seeing from distribution ➡️ production.Michael Spencer and Chris Dalla Riva:In summary, the music industry will likely come to embrace much of this technology as long as AI firms properly license the music catalogs necessary to train their models. This still begs one final question: Is any of this good for music?It's important to unpack words like Bubble. They live in a context. As Simon Cox discusses, the future depends on progress, innovation, or “productive forces.” So, this “Bubble” is not a bubble. 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

In this podcast interview, Allan Wille and Lauren Thibodeau discuss tech company valuations with Ed Bryant, President and CEO of Sampford Advisors. Ed defines valuation as the price a buyer will pay for your business either by purchasing it outright or as part of a merger and acquisition transaction. He suggests the only way to learn the true value of your company is to actually go to market and get bids from potential buyers. He distinguishes between financial buyers (private equity, venture capitalists) and strategic buyers (companies acquiring other companies), noting that the lines between them are blurring due to strategic buyers often being backed by financial players.We look at factors that influence valuation (scale, growth, profitability, and retention), with Ed stressing the importance of profitability for later-stage investors and acquirers. The conversation touches on the cyclical nature of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) and how market conditions significantly impact the valuation environment. Ed also describes some common mistakes founders make, such as being overly focused on technology and not paying enough attention to key business metrics like growth and customer retention.The interview concludes with Ed sharing his perspective on the current state of the market, describing it as a bifurcated market with healthy businesses receiving strong valuations while others face challenges. He predicts a recovery in 2024, anticipating increased activity and a positive market for software M&A transactions.For those interested in current valuation trends, Ed suggests resources like Sampford Advisors' monthly market report, content from venture capitalists like Tomasz Tunguz, and content generated by the broader VC, private equity, and M&A communities.

Jason Lemkin created and runs SaaStr, the world's largest community for B2B/SaaS founders, and is the managing director of SaaStr Fund, a $90 million venture capital firm specializing in early-stage enterprise investments. He is also the mastermind behind two major tech conferences each year—one in the Bay Area, drawing in over 15,000 people, and another in Europe, with a crowd of more than 3,000 SaaS executives, founders, and entrepreneurs. Before SaaStr, Jason wore many hats: CEO and co-founder of EchoSign (later bought by Adobe), vice president at Adobe Systems, co-founder and president of NanoGram Devices Corp., vice president of NeoPhotonics, and a senior director at BabyCenter. In our conversation, we discuss:• How far you should go without a salesperson• Signs it's time to hire salespeople• Why you need to hire two salespeople• How to compensate your salespeople• How to interview salespeople• When to hire a VP of Sales• How to prevent their flaming out• How to scale your sales org• How to improve the relationship between your sales and product teams• Much more—Brought to you by:• CommandBar—AI-powered user assistance for modern products and impatient users• Vanta—Automate compliance. Simplify security.• LinkedIn Ads—Reach professionals and drive results for your business—Find the full transcript at: https://www.lennyspodcast.com/building-a-world-class-sales-org-jason-lemkin-saastr/—Where to find Jason Lemkin:• X: https://twitter.com/jasonlk• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmlemkin/• Website: https://www.saastr.com/—Where to find Lenny:• Newsletter: https://www.lennysnewsletter.com• X: https://twitter.com/lennysan• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lennyrachitsky/—In this episode, we cover:(00:00) Jason's background(06:18) The importance of sales in B2B businesses(11:23) Signs that you should start hiring salespeople(14:19) Attributes to look for in early sales reps(19:08) Hiring a VP of Sales(26:43) The role of a VP of Sales(30:06) Interviewing salespeople(45:16) Determining sales compensation and quota(53:34) Transitioning from 100% commission to a smaller percentage(56:58) Indicators of a hard-to-sell product(59:39) Scaling the sales organization(01:05:26) Understanding sales roles and titles(01:10:02) Product involvement in sales, and vice versa(01:20:32) Thoughts on product teams taking on P&L responsibilities(01:27:23) One thing founders can do to become better at sales(01:31:02) The ideal trial length for a free trial sales team(01:39:50) Closing thoughts(01:41:43) Lightning round—Referenced:• Marc Benioff on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcbenioff/• Snowflake: https://www.snowflake.com/en/• Yamini Rangan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yaminirangan/• Salesforce: https://www.salesforce.com/• HubSpot: https://www.hubspot.com/• Twilio: https://www.twilio.com/• Cloudflare: https://www.cloudflare.com/• GitHub: https://github.com/• Columbo: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1466074/• What is Davos and why is it important? Your guide to the World Economic Forum's annual meeting: https://www.euronews.com/next/2024/01/15/what-is-davos-and-why-is-it-important-your-guide-to-the-world-economic-forums-annual-meeti• Adobe: https://www.adobe.com/• Satya Nadella on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satyanadella/• Glengarry Glen Ross on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Glengarry-Glen-Ross-James-Foley/dp/B002NN5F7A• The Wolf of Wall Street on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/Wolf-Wall-Street-Leonardo-DiCaprio/dp/B00IIU9FQY• A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins | April Dunford (author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/a-step-by-step-guide-to-crafting-a-sales-pitch-that-wins-april-dunford-author-of-obviously-awesom/• Pipedrive: https://www.pipedrive.com/• Sam Blond on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-blond-791026b/• Gong: https://www.gong.io/• Zendesk: https://www.zendesk.com/• ZoomInfo: https://www.zoominfo.com/• Apollo: https://www.apollo.io/• Daniel Chait on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dhchait/• SAP: https://www.sap.com/• Lessons on building product sense, navigating AI, optimizing the first mile, and making it through the messy middle | Scott Belsky (Adobe, Behance): https://www.lennyspodcast.com/lessons-on-building-product-sense-navigating-ai-optimizing-the-first-mile-and-making-it-through-t/• VistaPrint: https://www.vistaprint.com/• Procore: https://www.procore.com/• Matt Mullenweg on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattm/• Wordpress: https://wordpress.com/• SaaStr University: https://app.saastruniversity.com/collections/20252• From Impossible to Inevitable: How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue: https://www.amazon.com/Impossible-Inevitable-Hyper-Growth-Companies-Predictable/dp/1119531691• Pavilion: https://www.joinpavilion.com/• Top 10 Learnings about Free Trials with Tomasz Tunguz: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfQNJpnxmMw• The Terminal List on Prime Video: https://www.amazon.com/The-Terminal-List-Season-1/dp/B09HYNH8TK• Top Gun: Maverick on Paramount: https://www.paramountmovies.com/movies/top-gun-maverick• OpusClip app: https://www.opus.pro/• OnePlus Open smartphone: https://www.amazon.com/OnePlus-Dual-SIM-Unlocked-Smartphone-Hasselblad/dp/B0CHN7M531/• SaaStr conferences: https://www.saastr.com/events/• Marketo: https://go.marketo.com/about-marketo-landingpage-emea.html• Zoomtopia: https://zoomtopia.com/• Money20/20: https://us.money2020.com/• Shoptalk: https://shoptalk.com/• Jeff Lawson on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffiel/• Eric Kwan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erickwan/—Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email podcast@lennyrachitsky.com.—Lenny may be an investor in the companies discussed. Get full access to Lenny's Newsletter at www.lennysnewsletter.com/subscribe

In this episode of Turpentine VC, Tomasz Tunguz, General Partner at Theory Ventures, joins Erik Torenberg to discuss the Theory Ventures model, the coming contraction in investable VC dollars, the parallels between PE and VC, and much more. If you're looking for an ERP platform, check out our sponsor, NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/turpentine --- Check out Erik's new show Request for Startups featuring a rotating cast of founders and investors (including Dan) sharing their requests for startups they want to exist in the world, and also their stories of navigating the idea maze in different sectors so founders don't have to reinvent the wheel anymore. The first episode is out now - we over better dating apps, references as a service, and WeWork for productivity Watch and Subscribe on Substack: https://requestforstartups.substack.com/p/receipt-based-dating-reference-checks Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/request-for-startups-with-erik-torenberg/id1728659822 Spotify:https://open.spotify.com/show/739L1LR32QI2XyoZlRh5nv --- We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. --- SPONSOR: NETSUITE | SHOPIFY NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform head to NetSuite http://netsuite.com/turpentine and download your own customized KPI checklist. Shopify is the global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. Shopify powers 10% of ALL eCommerce in the US. And Shopify's the global force behind Allbirds, Rothy's, and Brooklinen, and 1,000,000s of other entrepreneurs across 175 countries.From their all-in-one e-commerce platform, to their in-person POS system – wherever and whatever you're selling, Shopify's got you covered. With free Shopify Magic, sell more with less effort by whipping up captivating content that converts – from blog posts to product descriptions using AI. Sign up for $1/month trial period: https://shopify.com/momentofzen --- Join our free newsletter to get Erik's top 3 insights from each episode: https://turpentinevc.substack.com/ --- RELATED SHOWS: The Limited Partner If you like Turpentine VC, check out our show The Limited Partner with David Weisburd, where David talks to the investors behind the investors: https://link.chtbl.com/thelimitedpartner --- X / TWITTER: @ttunguz (Tom) @Theoryvc (Theory Ventures) @eriktorenberg (Erik) @cjgustafson222 (CJ) @TurpentineVC --- TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode Preview (01:02) The Theory Behind Theory Ventures (03:14) The Coming Drop in VC Dollars (05:23) Advice for Emerging Managers (07:06) VC Differentation (08:29) How to Play AI as a VC (11:02) Sectors/Technologies Tom Finds Appealing (12:47) Biggest Data Trends in VC (16:59) How Theory Ventures Differentiates Itself (18:13) Replacing Founders (22:54) The Journey of a Founder to IPO (25:12) Planning for Future Business Needs (26:56) When to Hire a VP of Finance or CFO (28:15) Qualities of a Great CFO (31:14) Sponsor - Netsuite and Shopify (34:13) The Universe of LPs (36:56) The Future of Multi-Stage Venture Firms (39:02) The Future of Venture Capital Industry (41:45) Tom's Economic Outlook (43:56) Multiple Contraction in SaaS and FinTech (46:45) Incredible Time for Young, Ambitious People (48:23) The Future of Theory Ventures (51:12) The Future of Accelerators ---

Founder and General Partner of Theory Ventures, Tomasz Tunguz, shares his founder story, his predictions for 2024, and his point of view on artificial intelligence from the changing landscape of AI to Microsoft's leadership in the AI race. He also shares insights on the impact of inflation and interest rates on the tech industry, concerns about the size of the venture capital industry, and the metrics that matter for seed and Series A companies. Want more TOPLINE? Read the recaps.

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.

Des Traynor is a Co-Founder of Intercom, and has built and led many teams within the company, including Product, Marketing, and Customer Support. Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Silver Professor at NYU affiliated with the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences & the Center for Data Science. He was the founding Director of FAIR and of the NYU Center for Data Science.  Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity's potential. Jeff Seibert is the Founder & CEO @ Digits, building the future of AI-powered accounting. Digits have raised funding from the likes of Peter Fenton @ Benchmark and 20VC. Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages. Douwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses. Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation.  Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce. Before that, Richard was the CEO/CTO of AI startup MetaMind, acquired by Salesforce in 2016. In Today's Episode We Discuss: Foundational Models: Analysis Will foundational models become commoditized? Who are the major players? What are their different strengths? Who will win? Who will lose? How important is the size of the model vs the quality of the data? 2. Open vs Closed: What are the biggest pros and cons of an open ecosystem for LLMs? Why is it naive to think that open-source LLMs will prevail? What will determine which method wins? 3. An Analysis of the Incumbents: Why is Google the most vulnerable? What can they do to regain ground? Why is Apple the sleeping giant? How could they win the next wave of AI? What should Amazon do today to compete with Microsoft? 4. The Future: Doom and Gloom? Why is it ridiculous to assume AI systems want to dominate? Why will AI create a renaissance of creativity and human freedom? What role should regulation play in the advancement and progression of AI?

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.

Episode SummaryIn this episode, Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures discusses the intersection of AI, technology, and security. We explore how AI is revolutionizing software development, data management challenges, and security's vital role in this dynamic landscape. Show NotesIn this episode of The Secure Developer, Guy Podjarny engages in a deep and insightful conversation with Tomasz Tunguz, founding partner of Theory Ventures. They delve into the fascinating world of AI security and its burgeoning impact on the software development landscape. Tomasz brings a unique investor's lens to the discussion, shedding light on how early-stage software companies are leveraging AI to revolutionize market strategies.The conversation navigates through the complexities of AI in the realm of security. Tomasz highlights key trends such as data loss prevention, categorization of AI-related companies, and the significant security challenges in this dynamic space. The episode also touches on the critical role of data governance and compliance in the age of AI, exploring how these elements are becoming increasingly intertwined with security concerns.A significant part of the discussion is dedicated to the future of AI-powered software development. Guy and Tomasz ponder the evolution of coding, predicting a shift towards higher levels of abstraction and the potential challenges this may pose for security. They speculate on the profound changes AI could bring, transforming how software is developed and the implications for developers and security professionals.This episode provides a comprehensive look into the intersection of AI, technology, and security. It's a must-listen for anyone interested in understanding AI's current and future landscape in the tech world, especially from a security standpoint. The insights and predictions offered by Tomasz Tunguz make it an engaging and informative session, perfect for professionals and enthusiasts alike who are keen to stay ahead.LinksTheory VenturesOpenAIGitHubAmazon Web Services (AWS)Google CloudMicrosoft AzureMonte CarloGableSnyk - The Developer Security CompanyFollow UsOur WebsiteOur LinkedIn

Tomasz Tunguz is a General Partner at Theory Ventures and the writer of one of the best blog/newsletters in tech. Tom joins Kelli Dragovich and Nolan Church to discuss the relationship between boards, founders and People leaders, and how HR strategies interact with boards in key moments of a company's history, including M&A. If you're looking for HR software that drives performance, check out Lattice https://www.lattice.com/hrheretics After the interview, Nolan and Kelli discuss the dynamics of navigating politics at work in your companies. – SPONSORS: Lattice | Continuum ✅ Discover HR software that drives performance with Lattice: https://www.lattice.com/hrheretics High performance and great culture should never be at odds; they're better together. With Lattice People Management Platform, companies efficiently run people programs that create enviable cultures where employees want to do their best work. Serving 1000s of customers of all sizes. Learn why companies from Slack to the LA Dodgers choose Lattice. https://www.lattice.com/hrheretics ✅ Hire Fractional Executives with Continuum: https://bit.ly/40hlRa9 Have you ever had a negative experience hiring executives? Continuum connects executives and senior operators to venture backed tech companies for fractional and full-time roles. You can post any executive-level role to Continuum's marketplace and search through our database of world-class, vetted leaders. There is no hidden cost, you only pay the person you hire. And you can cancel at any time. – KEEP UP WITH TOMASZ, NOLAN, + KELLI ON LINKEDIN Tomasz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasztunguz/ Nolan: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nolan-church/ Kelli: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellidragovich/  – LINKS: Tomasz Tunguz' Blog: https://tomtunguz.com/ Theory Ventures: https://theory.ventures/ Tom on Span of Control: https://tomtunguz.com/span-of-control/ – TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Episode preview (02:40) Span of Control: eliminating middle management (04:19) Tom's take on the ratio of managers to doers (06:19) What should ARR per employee be? (07:19) Talent today vs 5 years ago (08:30) Tom's view on exec searches (11:45) Evaluating the decision for a down round (13:15) Sponsors: Lattice | Continuum (15:00) Opportunities for new talent (16:45) Flexibility of Mind (19:15) Hiring: Getting it Right and Changing When It Goes Wrong (20:40) How should departures be communicated to boards? (21:00) Life cycle of an executive (22:49) On interim roles (25:15) How Tom diligences people (26:20) What makes a great head of people (30:30) Google's acquisition of Looker from Tom and Kelli's perspective (31:00) How does a Mergers and Acquisition process work? (37:00) The 3 kinds of Acquisitions (39:15) Where the puck is going for venture-backed tech companies (41:25) Predictions for AI (43:55) HR Folks and founders should get back on the offense in 2024 (45:00) Kelli and Nolan on navigating politics at work – HR Heretics is brought to you by Turpentine www.turpentine.co Producer: Natalie Toren  Production: Graham Bessellieu, Michelle Poreh  For inquiries about guests or sponsoring the podcast, email Natalie@turpentine.co

Hello, and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines.This is our Wednesday show, where we sit down with a guest, talk about their work and dive deep into the rest. This week, we had Theory Ventures founder Tomasz Tunguz on the show. As long-time readers of his work, having the former Redpoint investor on the show was a no-brainer.While it would have been fun to spend our time chatting about the ups and down of writing or the Internet, we instead explored a wide range of topics: Why Tunguz left Redpoint and started his own fund;Why seed deals do not get smaller over time;The thesis that underpins Theory Ventures' investments and the future of machine learning;Why Tunguz is bullish on Ethereum;The value of software, the health of software companies, and why venture math still holds up at lower valuation multiples.And more! It was a great chat; Equity will be back on Friday!For episode transcripts and more, head to Equity's Simplecast website.Equity drops at 7 a.m. PT every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has a great show on crypto, a show that interviews founders and more!

As our host, Fundrise CEO Ben Miller, observes in this latest episode of Onward, the amount of hype surrounding AI has become extraordinary… to the point that it's become difficult for many people to distinguish the reality of its potential from vaporware. Luckily, coinciding with the Fundrise Innovation Fund's investment in Theory Ventures, we have the opportunity to chat with Tomasz Tunguz, Theory Ventures General Partner, whose experience provides a critical perspective in analyzing how new technological paradigms become drivers for change, productivity, profitability, and growth. Ben and Tomasz's conversation touches on structured vs. unstructured data, how technology development moves between infrastructure and software, and why tech incumbents have such a hard start with AI. This episode is a key introduction to the kinds of systems theory governing the thinking in AI today and the economic analysis that will guide how it eventually winds up in everyday application, in all consumers' lives. No matter how tremendous the hype behind AI becomes, this conversation makes one thing clear: we're witnessing the beginning of a new era for tech. Have questions or feedback about this episode? Drop us a note at Onward@Fundrise.com. Onward is hosted by Ben Miller, co-founder and CEO of Fundrise, and Cardiff Garcia, co-founder of Bazaar Audio and host of the economics-focused podcast The New Bazaar (after spending many years as the co-creator and co-host of NPR's The Indicator podcast). Podcast production by The Podcast Consultant. Music by Seaplane Armada. About Fundrise With over 1 million users, Fundrise is America's largest direct-to-investor alternative asset investment platform. Since 2012, our mission has been to build a better financial system by empowering the individual. We make it easier and more efficient than ever for anyone to invest in institutional-quality private alternative assets — all at the touch of a button.   Please see fundrise.com/oc for more information on all of the Fundrise-sponsored investment funds and products, including each fund's offering document(s). Want to see the specific properties that make up and power Fundrise portfolios? Check out our active and past projects at www.fundrise.com/assets. 

00:00 Introduction to Tom and Oliver03:07 Overview of PLG at Dropbox05:30 Overview of PLG at Asana06:07 How to succeed in PLG end user acquisition phase09:15 Tactics for Generating Awareness10:17 Customer Expansion Phase13:15  When Tension Arises Between PLG & Enterprise Security Needs15:24 Security is an All Consuming Roadmap, not a Feature18:35 How the Organization Shifts during the Transition from PLG to SLG20:48 How Pricing Changes from PLG to SLG26:22 The PLG Trap28:03 Avoiding the PLG Trap31:55 Value-Based Selling: Generalizable or Vertical/Use-Case Specific?35:35 Atlassian v. Asana's Approaches37:11 Advice for New Startups Pursuing PLG38:22 Navigating from SLG to PLG42:19 Resources for Founders43:06 PLG, SLG & AI

Richard Socher is the founder and CEO of You.com. Richard previously served as the Chief Scientist and EVP at Salesforce. Douwe Kiela is the CEO of Contextual AI, building the contextual language model to power the future of businesses. Previously, he was the Head of Research at Hugging Face, and before that a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research. Alex Lebrun is the Co-Founder and CEO of Nabla, an AI assistant for doctors. Prior to Nabla, he led engineering at Facebook AI Research. Alex founded Wit.ai, acquired by Facebook in 2015.  Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages. Sarah Guo is the Founding Partner @ Conviction Capital, a $100M first fund purpose-built to serve “Software 3.0” companies. Prior to founding Conviction, Sarah was a General Partner at Greylock where she made investments in the likes of Figma, Coda and Neeva. Emad Mostaque is the Co-Founder and CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. Stability are building the foundation to activate humanity's potential. To date, Emad has raised over $110M with Stability with the latest round reportedly pricing the company at $4BN.  Clem Delangue is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Hugging Face, the AI community building the future. To date, Clem has raised over $160M from the likes of Sequoia, Coatue, Addition and Lux Capital to name a few. Cris Valenzuela is the CEO and co-founder of Runway, the company that trains and builds generative AI models for content creation. To date, Cris has raised over $285M for the company from the likes of Lux Capital, Felicis, Coatue, Amplify, and Nvidia to name a few. Noam Shazeer is the co-founder and CEO of Character.AI. A renowned computer scientist and researcher, Shazeer is one of the foremost experts in artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language processing (NLP).  The Two Most Pressing Questions in AI: What matters more the size of the model or the size of the data? Where does the value accrue in the next 5-10 years; to startups or to incumbents?

Featured Guest: Tomasz Tunguz, general partner, Theory Ventures Is the U.S. falling behind China in the AI arms race? Some believe the lack of regulation from the U.S. government is hindering its ability to keep up. We sat down for an extended interview with veteran venture capitalist, Tomasz Tunguz.

Follow me @samirkaji for my thoughts on the venture market, with a focus on the continued evolution of the VC landscape.On this week's show we're excited to have Tomasz Tunguz, Founder of newly formed Theory Ventures. Tomasz spent nearly 15 years at Redpoint Ventures, before recently spinning out to start Theory Ventures. Earlier this year, Theory closed a $230MM fund to back early stage entrepreneurs. Those who have followed Tomasz's writing, know that he is incredibly analytical and thoughtful in his approach to business. This conversation was no different as we went deep into topics such as portfolio construction theory, business models in VC, and how to be strategic in raising a VC fund. About Tomas Tunguz:Tomasz Tunguz is a Founder and Managing Director at Theory Ventures. He is an active blogger at tomtunguz.com and is 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 founding Theory, Tomasz was Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures, where he backed many early-stage SaaS, data, and infrastructure founders in his 14-year tenure. He began his career as the product manager for Google's AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization.Tomasz attended Dartmouth College and graduated with a BA in mechanical engineering, a BE in machine learning, and a master's degree in engineering management.In this episode we discuss:(01:42) Why Tomasz joined Redpoint(03:01) The decision to start Theory Ventures (06:32) Raising his first fund during one of the most difficult raise environments in recent history(07:45) What his plan was with the raise(10:47) How Tomasz created and sustained momentum during his raise(16:12) Common objections from LPs and how he overcame them(19:49) What it means for a venture firm to have a business model(23:00) How Theory's thesis addresses the problem of multiples in the venture market(24:59) Winning deals without paying premiums(26:13) Why the 3x net returns on venture needs to increase to be competitive(27:40) Getting comfortable with a smaller portfolio(31:29) Tomasz's mental model of picking and diligence with a smaller portfolio(34:30) Qualitative signs he looks for in founders and companies(38:19) Why Tomasz embraces the emerging manager label(39:30) What the next decade of venture looks like(42:07) The best career advice he's receivedI'd love to know what you took away from this conversation with Tomasz. Follow me @SamirKaji and give me your insights and questions with the hashtag #ventureunlocked. If you'd like to be considered as a guest or have someone you'd like to hear from (GP or LP), drop me a direct message on Twitter.Podcast Production support provided by Agent Bee This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit ventureunlocked.substack.com

One of the core questions in AI and investing today; who wins, startups or incumbents? Startups have speed and innovation but incumbents have scale, resources, and distribution? Today we hear from 6 leading investors and founders discussing where they place their bets who has the advantage; startups or incumbents? Emad Mostaque is CEO @ StabilityAI, the parent company of Stable Diffusion. To date, Emad has raised over $110M with Stability with the latest round reportedly pricing the company at $4BN.  Yann LeCun is VP & Chief AI Scientist at Meta and Professor at NYU. He was the founding Director of FAIR and of the NYU Center for Data Science. Clem Delangue is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Hugging Face, the AI community building the future. Clem has raised over $160M from the likes of Sequoia, Coatue, Addition and Lux Capital to name a few. Sarah Guo is the Founding Partner @ Conviction Capital, a $100M first fund purpose-built to serve “Software 3.0” companies. Prior to founding Conviction, Sarah was a General Partner at Greylock. Vince Hankes is a Partner @ Thrive Capital where he has led the firm's investments in OpenAI, Melio, and Airplane.dev. Prior to Thrive, Vince learned the craft of venture from Lee Fixel @ Tiger. Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages. The Question of the Day: Who wins? Startups or Incumbents?

Tunguz's firm Theory Ventures has a new $230 million fund. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Tomasz Tunguz is the Founder and General Partner @ Theory Ventures, just announced last week, Theory is a $230M fund that invests $1-25m in early-stage companies that leverage technology discontinuities into go-to-market advantages. Prior to founding Theory, Tom spent 14 years at Redpoint as a General Partner where he made investments in the likes of Looker, Expensify, Monte Carlo, Dune Analytics, and Kustomer to name a few. Tom also writes one of the best blogs and newsletters in the business which can be found here. In Today's Episode with Tomasz Tunguz We Discuss: Founding a Firm: The Start of Theory: Why did Tom decide to leave Redpoint after 14 years to found Theory? What are 1-2 of his biggest lessons from Redpoint that he has taken with him to his building of Theory? What does Tom know now that he wishes he had known when he started investing? 2. From 150 LP Meetings to Closing $230M: Raising a Fund I How would Tom describe the fundraising process? How many meetings with LPs did he have? How many did he know previously? What documents did he share with LPs? Did he have a dataroom? How did he use it? How did Tom create a sense of urgency to compel LPs to come into the fund? How does Tom feel about the debate between one close and multiple closes? What was the #1 reason LPs said no to investing? What worked and Tom would do again for the next raise? What did not work and he would change for the next raise? 3. Where Will Value Accrue in the Next Decade of AI: Startup vs Incumbent: Will incumbents embrace AI before startups are able to acquire distribution? Infrastructure vs Application Layer: Where will the majority of value accrue in the next decade; infrastructure or application layer? Bundled or Unbundled: Will bundled services be the dominant consumer and enterprise choice or will unbundled specialized solutions win? 4. AI and The World Around It: How does Tom believe AI could save the US economy? Why does Tom believe Google are the losers in the AI race? Which incumbents have responded best to AI? Why does Tom believe we will be in a worse macro place at the end of the year than we are now?

Content this week from: @jonfingas, @harrymccracken, @TurnerNovak, @fredwilson, @kwharrison13, @ballmatthew, @ttunguz, @timoreilly, @davidcummings, @NeilThanedar Netflix will shut down its DVD rental business in September The End of Computer Magazines in America Shuttering of BuzzFeed News Signals Shift to Survival Mode Can Substack Save the Social Network? What Is A Protocol And Why Does It Matter? Building an Actual Unicorn 2023 Private SaaS Company Valuations Is Twitter finally dying? Why Every Startup Needs an AI Strategy Sam Altman: Size of LLMs won't matter as much moving forward You Can't Regulate What You Don't Understand China's new GDP figures may restore faith in its economy Elon Musk wants to develop TruthGPT, ‘a maximum truth-seeking AI' Google Looks to Turbocharge AI Efforts With Combined Brain, DeepMind Unit VCs Challenged by the Downturn Tiger Global Management's $12.7 Billion Venture Fund Records 20% Loss Apple launches Apple Card's savings accounts with 4.15% interest rate SeetGeek @NeilThanedar This week's headline is “Gone.” Specifically, Nexflix's DVD service, Maximum PC and MacLife Magazines, and BuzzFeed News. The latter was “shuttered” today. We could extend the meaning to include unicorns, later-stage venture funding, and Elon Musk's first Starship. In the case of the first three, it is surprising that they survived this long. But I think these closures are a moment to acknowledge and mark. They have already been replaced long ago, and their passing is a testament to the work Netflix has done with streaming, the emergence of the newsletter and blog, and the frustrations we all have with headline writers seeking clickbait. The downbeat tone continues with a Vox piece asking (with an implied answer) Is Twitter finally dying? Vox is no longer a news publication when it comes to Twitter, it has become a rag with a campaign seeking to fight against the company's very existence. It is the Fox News of Twitter coverage. A more thoughtful piece from Kyle Harrison is still, however, downbeat. It asks why almost all unicorns have never made a profit but overlook that many have enormous free cash flow that they decided to spend on growth as a conscious strategy. Spending profits (thus removing them as profits) is what startups should be doing. Amazon has done so for decades successfully. Turner Novak writes about Substack, one of the emergent platforms, and asks the question, “Can Substack Save the Social Network?” He tracks the history of Substack, increasing the tools that enable its writers, creators, and consumers to discover and recommend each other and the impact on subscriber growth. Meanwhile, Tomasz Tunguz of Theory VC states that all startups must have an AI strategy. Fred Wilson says protocols are important but are not well understood. These articles and others focus on what is new and what comes next. As Leonard Cohen famously wrote, “that's how the light gets in.” In Silicon Valley, over $11.5 billion was invested in AI startups in the past three months. Web 3 funding has slowed to a crawl but has not disappeared. And biotech funding remains vibrant, along with new energy startups. We are entering a phase where a new cohort of companies, funded since the middle of 2022, is attracting capital because of the scale of their ambition and the opportunity it represents. The number of funding rounds at the seed and early stage is declining, but the quality of the investments and the amounts raised are both strong. 2023 will be a big year for the next generation of successful startups, and I can't wait to see what they bring to the table. --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thatwastheweek/message

Introduction: Welcome to Five & Thrive: a weekly podcast highlighting the Southeast's most interesting news, entrepreneurs, and information of the week, all under 5 minutes.  My name is Jon Birdsong and I'm with Atlanta Ventures.  Products of the Week: This product of the week comes out of Charlotte, NC and it is called MakeMine. It has become increasingly difficult to manage supplychain especially if you are a popular Direct to Consumer brand or Wholesale brand. Keeping up with the emails, PDF's, calls, and more with customers is overwhelming, not to mention the lack of visibility into where the product stands in the process. Well, MakeMine is a one-stop platform that allows brands to build, manage, and scale their supply chain without increasing operational overhead. This is done with MakeMine's software which syncs products, onboards all your manufacturers, and monitors production cycles all in an effort to streamline efficiency. I came across another fascinating product recently called Novel. We all know and likely spend time looking at short term videos via Instagram, Youtube, or TikTok. Well this company is bringing the experience of short-form, shoppable video to the ecommerce world. Grant Kerwit is the co-Founder and COO and they have built a product that integrates into your Shopify store and allows you to connect with your Instagram, TikTok, or Youtube short to the front page of your website. This extends your content ROI, improves site conversion by 63%. They have freemium models and scales upwards from there. If you're looking to leverage short-term  Job Change Alert: Big news this week on the Gimme CEO front. After 8 years, Cory Hewett, Founder and CEO is transitioning from CEO. Long time friend and co-Founder, Evan Jareki taking the CEO reigns from this point on. Cory is pursuing new opportunities in electrification initiatives, emerging tech (like AI and computer vision), and community development. He's looking to connect with companies and founders in those industries so reach out to him! LinkedIN is in bio.  Congratulations to a great Cory on an amazing run and best of luck to Evan as he continues to push the business forward!  Keynote of the Week: This past week, we had our first Atlanta AI Meetup with much success. One of the keynotes we highlighted came from Tomasz Tunguz of Theory Ventures. Some of the highlights include a Goldman Sachs report that AI will increase GDP 300x more than that PC. So the importance of AI and its projected impact is nothing to ignore. Then Tunguz goes into a compelling framework that had me contemplating several aspects to this iPhone-like innovation. The four areas of focus for startups include: layer, markets, moats, and AI depth. The layer revolves around how your AI startup approaches AI: is it an application, a platform, or infrastructure? Each one of these could be a whole presentation within itself. The second area of focus is the market. With all of the major players: Salesforce, Adobe, and Microsoft launching AI products weekly, time is of the essence. The third area of focus revolves around your moat and the competitive advantage one is able to create. Examples include access to proprietary data, a better algorithm, distribution (although that is tough against the incumbents). I believe an early MOAT can be around focus. There are so many applications and avenues that companies can take on AI, if you are the best at one thing and iterate on it better than anyone else, a tremendous advantage will be had. Lastly, the final area of focus revolves around the depth of technology you bring to the problem being solved. From plug-ins to agents to your model on top of other models, exploring the technical depth of an AI solution is essential to how disruptive a startup can be. There is going to be so much tire kicking with the latest AI plug-in or prompt over the next decade and we've already seen so much of it already, yet a product with strong technical depth in conjunction with a deep product-market fit, well that is where the real GDP gains will occur.     Raise a Glass: Big news out of the Triangle from Teamworks led by Zach Maurdies. Teamworks is an enterprise SaaS provider for collegiate and professional sports organizations, has raised an oversubscribed $65M Series E funding round led by investment firm Dragoneer Investment Group. Congratulations on the raise the increased the fuel to go even faster!   Annnnnnnd that's 5 minutes!  Product of the Week: MakeMine, BeNovel Job Change Alert:  Cory Hewett of Gimme Keynote of the Week: Four Questions for Startups Building in Generative AI - Tomaz Tunguz Raise a Glass: Teamworks raises their Series E

Generative AI has taken the world by storm, and VCs and SaaS founders are looking at new opportunities it can bring. Even considering the more conservative fundraising market in 2023, there are opportunities for startups to get investor attention with AI. Tomasz Tunguz, Founder & General Partner at Theory Ventures, believes that with the right GTM plan and capital efficiency, it is still possible to get funding. It's simply a matter of watching your burn: “The main difference in the market between 2021 and today is that efficiency matters more than growth.”   Full video with Q&A: https://youtube.com/live/xiYzzLe9BAs ***** Sage Intacct is a powerful cloud-based financial management system that delivers automation around billing, accounting, and reporting. Voted market leaders by G2, Sage Intacct is the ideal Finance Solution to scale your business. Visit us at sage.com/uk/intacct.   What if you could prospect in a single click? And what if that click came with accurate, intent data you need to meet your goals? Meet Klarity with One-Click Prospecting by DemandScience. Let's make your job easier. Visit demandscience.com.   SaaStr Europa is back! And this time, we're heading to London for 2 fun-filled days of content, networking, and SaaS. Join us June 6th and 7th for SaaStr Europa 2023. Use code FAVE100 for $100 off tickets at saastrlondon.com.   Want to join the SaaStr community? We're the

Discussing weekly tech news w/ experienced venture founders. No investors. Guest - @blader (Runway, Sandbox VR, Postmates, Hey) @julien (Breather, Practice) @kevingibbon (Shyp, Airhouse) @berman66 (Nanit, Vowel) Fred Wilsons post discussed - https://avc.com/2023/01/what-will-happen-in-2023/ Tomasz Tunguz post discussed - https://tomtunguz.com/sizing-web3-b2b-market/

On November 29th at 9am Pacific Time, Office Hours hosted Fredrik Haga, founder & CEO of Dune. Dune is the authoritative source of web3 data. For information on Decentralized Exchange activity, lending volumes, or even the current FTX account balances. I used Dune to make the State of Web3 Presentation. During this Office Hours, Fredrik & I will talked about - the importance of data in a decentralized world - the impact of the three major collapses this year: FTX, Luna, & ThreeArrows on the ecosystem - the evolution of web3 in 2022 - building a startup through tough market conditions Thanks to Fredrik for the great session.

On October 18th at 10am Pacific, Office Hours will host Carilu Dietrich. Carilu headed corporate marketing for Atlassian from $150m to $450m in revenue & through their massively successful IPO. Since then, she's advised Segment, Kong, Miro, Bill.com & 1Password, among many others. Needless to say, her vista across many leading SaaS companies marketing practices is exceptional. During the Office Hours, we'll discuss: the role of marketing in PLG motions. debate the two different ways of trimming marketing spend : better to cut people or programs? how to develop excellent positioning for a business. When to rebrand a company? If you're interested to attend, please register here. As always, we will collect questions from participants before the event, weave them into the conversation, and answer live questions at the end of the session. I look forward to welcoming Carilu to Office Hours!

On this episode, Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures discusses fundraising in today's environment, which is radically different from his past 14-year experience in venture capital.    Before joining Redpoint Ventures, Tomasz was the product manager for Google's AdSense social-media products and AdSense internationalization. In total, he's worked with six unicorns from when they were very small till they became massive.   Specifically, Tomasz covers: How public and private markets are changing and how founders perceive these changes. How software companies today are valued in the public markets. Why private markets are slowing down, and what will give private markets a boost over the next four years. Learn more at https://tractionconf.io   Connect with Tomasz Tunguz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasztunguz   Learn more about Redpoint Ventures at https://www.redpoint.com/   This episode is brought to you by:   Zendesk makes it easier to support your customers with customer service, engagement, and sales CRM solutions. Qualifying early-stage startups can get 6 months free of Zendesk Suite and Zendesk Sales CRM. Go to zendesk.com/startups to apply now.   Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses. But the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process, enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don't get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI.   Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6,000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa, visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca    Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline its podcast production. Learn more at https://contentallies.com   #product #marketing #innovation #fundraising #fintech

It's time to talk about venture capital in a bear market.Check The Lead-Lag Report on your favorite social networks.Twitter: https://twitter.com/leadlagreportYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/theleadlagreportFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/leadlagreportInstagram: https://instagram.com/leadlagreport                 Sign up for The Lead-Lag Report at www.leadlagreport.com and use promo code PODCAST30 for 2 weeks free and 30% off.                 Nothing on this channel should be considered as personalized financial advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any securities.                 The content in this program is for informational purposes only. You should not construe any information or other material as investment, financial, tax, or other advice. The views expressed by the participants are solely their own. A participant may have taken or recommended any investment position discussed, but may close such position or alter its recommendation at any time without notice. Nothing contained in this program constitutes a solicitation, recommendation, endorsement, or offer to buy or sell any securities or other financial instruments in any jurisdiction. Please consult your own investment or financial advisor for advice related to all investment decisions.See disclosures for The Lead-Lag Report here: The Lead-Lag Report (leadlagreport.com)The Future Is FreelanceThis show is for freelancers, sole traders, solopreneurs, digital nomads, consultants,...Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify UNBOUND: Saybrook Insights with President Nathan LongSaybrook Insights is a podcast featuring education & community innovators! Listen on: Apple Podcasts Spotify

In this episode of Empire's Weekly Roundup, Jason and Santi discuss the upcoming Ethereum merge and how to maximize your profit opportunity (warning: this is not financial advice). We also explore Coinbase's $1.6B Maker DAO proposal, Binance's BUSD announcement, value accrual frameworks, and more! - - (00:00) Intro (02:23) A Web3 CRM (04:48) How to Prep for the ETH merge (19:30) MakerDAO Proposal To Send $1.6B USDC to Coinbase Prime (27:24) Avalanche Ad (28:50) Coinbase Deal (36:16) Coinbase Backs Tornado Lawsuit Against the Treasury Department (40:45) Binance BUSD Announcement (46:02) Where Will Value Accrue In Crypto? (53:15) Chaos Labs, Mysten Labs & Fund Raises (59:20) Podcast & Book Recommendations - - Follow Santi: https://twitter.com/santiagoroel Follow Jason: https://twitter.com/JasonYanowitz Follow Empire: https://twitter.com/theempirepod Subscribe on YouTube: https://tinyurl.com/4fdhhb2j Subscribe on Apple: https://tinyurl.com/mv4frfv7 Subscribe on Spotify: https://tinyurl.com/wbaypprw - - Referenced in the show: Tomasz Tunguz articles https://tomtunguz.com/ Robert Leshner's tweet thread on the merge https://twitter.com/rleshner/status/1559727104903757826 Katie Haun - Tornado Cash: What web3 Needs to Know https://bit.ly/3x9w4b8 Doug Colkitt blockspace fee tweet thread https://twitter.com/0xdoug/status/1566491825942237184 Bell Curve podcast https://spoti.fi/3DbPpwm Take Notes podcast https://spoti.fi/3Qow1yY Matthew Ball's new Metaverse book https://www.matthewball.vc/metaversebook -- Get top market insights and the latest in crypto news. Subscribe to Blockworks Daily Newsletter: https://blockworks.co/newsletter/ - - Disclaimer: Nothing said on Empire is a recommendation to buy or sell securities or tokens. This podcast is for informational purposes only, and any views expressed by anyone on the show are solely our opinions, not financial advice. Santiago, Jason, and our guests may hold positions in the companies, funds, or projects discussed.

Show Notes(01:45) Gary walked through his academic experience getting a Bachelor's degree in Business Administration at Arizona State University and an MBA in Finance at USC — Marshall School of Business.(04:52) Gary recalled the most valuable lesson from leading a business development team in the enterprise offerings group at Verizon.(07:45) Gary recalled the challenges of bringing a company public during his time as the Director of Corporate Development at NorthPoint Communications.(12:18) Gary shared his learnings while holding a COO role at Vinfolio — an innovator in the wine Industry.(15:19) Gary talked about his responsibilities in the Chief Financial Officer roles at KnowNow and Zuora.(19:06) Gary gave advice to founders seeking the right investors for their startups.(23:51) Gary walked through the learning curves while serving as the CFO, CRO, and COO of enterprise AI pioneer Ayasdi.(31:06) Gary shared his playbook on building a well-oiled sales operations machine.(33:46) Gary shared his journey as a first-time CEO at CLARA Analytics.(36:37) Gary talked about his proudest accomplishments while driving significant growth for CLARA.(37:52) Gary discussed the go-to-market motions implemented at CLARA.(41:07) Gary walked through his brief stint as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Redpoint Ventures, a top-tier VC firm focused on early-stage investing.(44:14) Gary rationalized his decision to become the CEO of Arcion Labs in December 2021.(49:39) Gary explained the high-level architectural design of Arcion's data mobility platform.(54:19) Gary discussed strategies for finding the right technology partners to collaborate with.(57:42) Gary highlighted a few customer use cases of Arcion.(01:01:48) Gary shared valuable hiring lessons to attract the right people who are excited about Arcion's mission.(01:04:28) Gary distilled lessons learned while building a high-performance team at Arcion.(01:09:14) Gary described the benefits of adopting usage-based pricing in enterprise technology.(01:11:41) Closing segment.Gary's Contact InfoLinkedInTwitterCrunchbaseArcion's ResourcesWebsite | LinkedIn | Twitter | YouTube | Docs | Slack“Dawn of the Data Mobility Era” (Feb 2022)“Arcion lands $13M to help companies replicate data across platforms” (Venture Beat, Feb 2022)Mentioned ContentContentThe Network Effects Bible (by James Currier of NFX)Blog by Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint VenturesPeopleGurjeet Singh (Co-Founder and CEO of Oma Robotics, Ex-CEO/Co-Founder of Ayasdi)Satish Dharmaraj (Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures)NotesMy conversation with Gary was recorded back in March 2022. Since then, many things have happened at Arcion. I'd recommend checking out:The introduction of Arcion Cloud.This article about data mobility on The New Stack.This article about change data capture on Venture Beat.This big product launch on Oracle log reader availability featured by VentureBeatThe article about the missing piece for the Modern Data Stack featured by CrunchbaseArcion is launched with Databricks Partner Connect, featured by DatanamiArcion is a proud sponsor of the Oracle Cloud World 2022 in Las Vegas, Oct 17–20. If any data professionals are attending the conference, they should stop by the Arcion booth to say hi!About the showDatacast features long-form, in-depth conversations with practitioners and researchers in the data community to walk through their professional journeys and unpack the lessons learned along the way. I invite guests coming from a wide range of career paths — from scientists and analysts to founders and investors — to analyze the case for using data in the real world and extract their mental models (“the WHY and the HOW”) behind their pursuits. Hopefully, these conversations can serve as valuable tools for early-stage data professionals as they navigate their own careers in the exciting data universe.Datacast is produced and edited by James Le. Get in touch with feedback or guest suggestions by emailing khanhle.1013@gmail.com.Subscribe by searching for Datacast wherever you get podcasts or click one of the links below:Listen on SpotifyListen on Apple PodcastsListen on Google PodcastsIf you're new, see the podcast homepage for the most recent episodes to listen to, or browse the full guest list.

Office Hours welcomed Bill Binch, former CRO at Pendo, EVP Worldwide Sales at Marketo & operating partner at Battery to share his views on building world-class sales organizations.Bill & I exchanged emails about Deliberately Underselling as Sales Strategy. I asked him to share his views on land & expand team structure & quotas. But we covered much more. Here are three highlights from the session.First, Deliberately Underselling means optimizing the sales process for Net Dollar Retention (NDR). Logo-based quotas focus the team on speed to close. Sometimes, these plans have a minimum contract value plus a bounty.Another structure establishes land account executives & expand account executives. The company's leadership should calculate sales efficiency on the combined OTE (on-target earnings) to quota ratio of these teams.A land AE with a $300k OTE might have a $600k quota. Her land AE counterpart might also have a $300k OTE with a $2.8m quota. If they attain plan, the combined OTE/quota ratio is 0.176. Most startups operate between 0.15-0.25.This land & expand team construct recognizes the difference in difficulty between landing & expanding accounts; also, the potential difference in ideal AE for each role. Last, the plan compensates those responsible for growing accounts with a quota - in line with Frank Slootman's philosophy.Second, Bill offered a bold prediction. Top startups will record 200-300% NDR as PLG becomes a dominant go-to-market strategy. Today, best-in-class tops out at 170% or so. We agree there!Third, Bill revealed his Mojo Metric, his north-star metric. The Mojo Metric reports the net change in pipeline daily. Here's how to calculate yours:Mojo = new pipeline + new_pipeline_expanded + deals_pulled_forward deals_killed - deals_shrunk - deals_pushedEach day's Mojo reveals how much incremental pipeline the team has generated & informs the sales leader early on about this quarter's health.There's much more in the session including handling commissions on multi-year deals (TCV vs ACV), criteria for evaluating ramping account executives that echoes insights from the Vista sales playbook, optimal ratios for team construction, how sales has changed in 30 years & how it changes after Covid, amongst other topics.

Office Hours welcomed Lars Nilsson, VP Sales Development from Snowflake to talk about his learnings across 5 companies he helped take public.Throughout the hour, Lars provided insightful perspectives on how to build sales organizations. These the five most memorable takeaways for me.In early-stage companies, founders sell for the first three to four quarters. Then, many founders opt to hire an AE. Hiring a sales or business-development representative (SDR/BDR) can be the better choice. Incoming account executives will want to see a significant lead volume before joining, especially when selling into the enterprise.Teams often overlook storytelling as a critical part of effective lead generation. Fear-of-missing-out or the inspiration of a potential future, stories equip champions inside customer organizations to sell the product through the buying process. Founders validate the effectiveness of their stories when hiring SDRs better. SDRs call ten-times as many prospects as AEs do. Much the better to iterate with greater speed and confidence.As the company grows, building the sales development team becomes the most productive source of pipeline particularly for enterprise-grade technical products. Hire for hunger. Then surround the new SDR/BDR with three pillars: strong training materials, a manager who cares about the employee's success, and a peer to accelerate learning.At Snowflake, sales development lives within the marketing team. Lars manages his team through a single metric, meetings. Getting to an account late, a few days or a week after they've signed with a competitor accrues to the meeting metric (see why in the video).Last, exiting unlikely sales processes saves the company's resources and boosts team morale. Closed - no decision is the worst outcome of an engagement.We covered much more in the session including the techniques Snowflake uses to align account-based marketing with sales development & sales teams; how to structure career paths within the team; transitioning accounts between SDRs/BDRs to account executives; and the right SDR:AE ratios as companies scale.Thank you, Lars, for the masterclass on sales development.

On this episode of the Traction podcast, host Lloyed Lobo of Boast.AI welcomes Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures and co-author of Winning with Data. To build a massive long-term sustainable business, you need strong defensive moats around your company. However, the dramatic shifts in technology are rendering traditional moats useless and leaving companies feeling like it's almost impossible to build a defensible business. Tomasz shares a unique look at SaaS and data ecosystems, and offers a proposal for novel SaaS architecture to erect huge barriers to entry. Specifically, Tomasz covers: 3:14 - Tomasz's book, Winning With Data 9:28 - Emergence of the cloud data warehouse as a central part of the SaaS stack 17:09 - Disrupting service-oriented industries 20:48 - Traditional moats vs. new moats 28:50 - The most successful product-led growth options 36:42 - How startups can leverage this new architecture to rebuild the largest categories of software and challenge the incumbents 44:40 - Series A revenue vs series B revenue   Connect with Tomasz Tunguz: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomasztunguz/   Learn more about Redpoint Ventures at https://www.redpoint.com/   This episode is brought to you by: Each year the U.S. and Canadian governments provide more than $20 billion in R&D tax credits and innovation incentives to fund businesses, but the application process is cumbersome, prone to costly audits, and receiving the money can take as long as 16 months. Boast automates this process enabling companies to get more money faster without the paperwork and audit risk. We don't get paid until you do! Find out if you qualify today at https://Boast.AI. Launch Academy is one of the top global tech hubs for international entrepreneurs and a designated organization for Canada's Startup Visa. Since 2012, Launch has worked with more than 6000 entrepreneurs from over 100 countries, of which 300 have grown their startups to Seed and Series A stage and raised over $2 Billion in funding. To learn more about Launch's programs or the Canadian Startup Visa visit https://LaunchAcademy.ca  Content Allies helps B2B companies build revenue-generating podcasts. We recommend them to any B2B company that is looking to launch or streamline their podcast production. Learn more at ContentAllies.com  

On this episode of Insightful Reads, Jerry reads Tomasz Tunguz's article on SaaS pricing. He goes into detail of the strategy, philosophy, structure, and positioning of pricing. It is a short article but a must listen if you are looking to found a software company, join a software company, or you are currently working at a software company. You can find the full article here:  https://tomtunguz.com/pricing-summary/

In this episode of SaaS Connect, listen to a profitable discussion between your host Sunir Shah, president of Cloud Software Association, Tomasz Tunguz, MD of Redpoint and Bob Moore, CEO of Crossbeam. They address one of the greatest pain points of partnerships: how to convince the boardroom and VCs to take partnership seriously and invest in it. The following questions are answered: What is important to a VC when they look at a company, and how do they evaluate SaaS companies? What are the most important metrics of a business? When is there enough scalar momentum that it starts to actually be a needle mover in the investment decision? What were the personal lessons learned? What are the differences between the types of partnerships? Also under discussion are technology ecosystems, as well as what makes partner loyalty fall under the same lens as customer value. Resources Mentioned: Stripe Twilio Dremio HashiCorp Looker Snowflake Shopify Stitch Sentosa RJ Metrics Amazon Redshift Slack Salesforce Microsoft Big Query Accenture Thank you to our amazing podcast team at Content Allies. Want to launch your own B2B revenue-generating podcasts? Contact them at https://ContentAllies.com

In today's GROW B2B FASTER episode, our host Sammy, Managing Partner and founder of SAWOO catches up with Vikas Bhambri, SVP at Kustomer ($137m in funding). That's in it for you1. Kustomer's unique organizational structure and Vikas special role of overseeing the whole customer lifecycle and experience2. Vikas holistic view on account-based marketing and its potential for triggering innovation3. How to leverage the breadth of your business and ensure efficient cross-department collaboration 4. How to create content to arm your primary buyer for successfully selling your product internally5. Why customers and sales should drive strategy together and the importance of a mutual action planAbout VikasSince 2017, Vikas has been the SVP at Kustomer, leading all of the sales & customer experience functions at Kustomer, including Sales, Alliances, Operations, Technical Pre-Sales, Customer Success, Services, and Support. It is a privilege to lead this amazing team and to serve our customer base. He spent the first years of his career as a Software/Sales Engineer and System Consultant before working for 7 years as a Solution Consultant and later Solutions Director at Oracle. He appeared as the guest About KustomerKustomer is the omnichannel SaaS CRM platform reimagining enterprise customer service to deliver standout experiences. It scales to meet the needs of any contact centre and business by unifying data from multiple sources, enabling companies to deliver service and support through a single timeline view. Kustomer is the core platform of some of the leading customer service brands like Ring, Glovo, Glossier, Sweetgreen, Away, Rent the Runway and UNTUCKit. The company was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in New York.ShownotesFind Vikas on LinkedInIf you know anybody that is looking for a new challenge, Kustomer's career's page is a good place to start. Vikas mentioned Erica Schultz as a potential next guest on our podcast. She is his former boss and a mentor who's you know the president of field operations.Vikas' favourite business leader is Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director at Redpoint VenturesVikas' favourite business book is "Start with Why" by Simon SinekVikas is a big fan of meditation and uses the meditation app Headspace for his daily practice. 

In today's SaaStr podcast, Tomasz Tunguz, Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures shares the 5 metrics and benchmarks you should track to maximize your company’s valuation. 

Tech Out Loud is the only podcast to bring you impactful blog posts from the biggest names in tech, straight to your ears.Subscribe to Tech Out Loud to listen to articles from the best minds in tech, each week.This week's episode was written by Tomasz Tunguz, Venture Capitalist and Managing Director at Redpoint Ventures. Tomasz also serves as an active board member at ThredUp, Electric Imp, Gremlin, and Dremio, is author of "Winning with Data", and co-founder of Perquimans Systems. In this short but powerful episode, Tomasz proves that the best tips don't have to be 40mins long. He succinctly provides the solution to a problem that most companies face:  How do you compete and win without bloating your software stack?  Listen to the episode now or read the full article: How Many Technologies Can a Company Adopt at Once?"An IT executive recently asked me this question. How many technologies can a company adopt at once, successfully? It’s a question I hadn’t paused to contemplate before that moment. And if you are a vendor, it’s not one that you think about very often either. But if you are a member of the IT team, it’s top of mind every day.There are two answers to this question...."To read the rest of this article, click here: How Many Technologies Can a Company Adopt at Once? Tech Out Loud is brought to you by Process Street, a free way to manage playbooks and processes for your team, and Sound Advice Strategies, a full service for podcast setup, production, marketing, and editing. Subscribe to Tech Out Loud for more great articles, and leave a review to let us know what you think!Voted the #1 BPM software by GetApp, if you want a full month of Process Street for free, just click this link: https://www.process.st/audio-gift

Packy McCormick writes the popular newsletter Not Boring, which is all about strategy and investing, from big companies to small. Packy was the VP of experience at a company called Breather, but when he left that role to start another startup he ended up creating a blockbuster newsletter instead! Not Boring has grown to over 30,000 subscribers.Packy's newsletter is generating fantastic revenue, and his business model is a little different from the paid subscriptions that are popular right now. He dives into all the specifics. If you're curious just how much you can make from a 30,000-subscriber mailing list, don't miss this episode!In additional to business models and why he chose his, Packy also talks about the tactics that worked to rapidly grow his newsletter past 30,000 subscribers, the difference between being a writer and being an investor, and more.Links & Resources Prof. Scott Galloway: Overhauling Twitter Breather - Unique Meeting Rooms, Hourly Offices & Workspaces David Perell - Write of Passage Roam Research – A note taking tool for networked thought. Benedict Evans Clubhouse: Drop-in audio chat Packy McCormick's Links Not Boring by Packy McCormick Home page: packy - Beacons mobile website Twitter: @packyM Episode TranscriptPacky: [00:00:00] It is about sitting at your computer for hours and hours and hours every week. And making sure that you're getting it right. And then you're finding the right angle. Find something that you actually care about if you're not interested by the things that you're writing in. So you could probably bake it for a little while, but I think it really comes through when the writer is really interested in the things that they're writing about.Nathan: [00:00:25] In today's episode, I talked to Packy McCormick who writes a really popular newsletter, Not Boring. Packy was the VP of experience at a company called Breather. And then he left that role to start another startup and then decided to start a newsletter instead. And Not Boring has grown to over 30,000 subscribers.He's got some pretty fantastic revenue. He dives into the specifics. So if you're curious how much you can make off of a 30,000-subscriber mailing list, we talked about that. One of my favorite things is we get into business models. Paid subscription, is that best, or selling products or sponsorships?And so we dive in Packy shares why he chose the model that he did and why he thinks that's the best for his audience. So it's a really fun, wide ranging conversation. I think you're going to enjoy it. Packy, welcome to the show. Packy: [00:01:12] Great to be here. Nathan: [00:01:13] Thanks for having me. So I want to just dive in and hear a little bit about what are your, some of your favorite things to write about?Packy: [00:01:19] Yeah. So my favorite things to write about, and I actually, it took me a while to kind of get back to my favorite things to write about. I was writing about community and sleep and like just kind of all over, just doing the, I think the normal early newsletter thing of like thinking that you're a fantastic curator of the internet.And what I really loved writing about recently is as business strategy companies, big companies, small, and mixing that with finance, that's taken a couple of years, but I think I've kind of hit this sweet spot where it's a more fun approach to these topics that are kind of. Not super fun normally, which is business analysis and finance and the stock market.So I'm just trying to, you know, make it approachable, fun, and enjoyable while you're learning something. Yeah. Nathan: [00:02:01] So what's an example of one of those, of like a business strategy for a particular company that you've, you've enjoyed. Packy: [00:02:06] So I, this past week I wrote about Twitter, and, and wrote about, you know, how Twitter is this company that has been, you know, that I think a lot of us use and are on all the time, but it's done.An absolutely horrendous job of monetizing. So talked about it through the lens of professor Scott Galloway wrote a piece. And so what was wrong with that piece? And then what I thought that Twitter should do and why I think that Twitter is actually undervalued and this idea of like, you know, once things start kind of changing for Twitter, there's so much love for the company that I think people are just gonna pile into the stock.A lot of this is about being lucky. I wrote this on Monday, they reported earnings on Tuesday and it's up like 27% since I wrote about it. So just got super lucky on timing there, but there's a lot of that like kind of combining how they should think about business strategy and then how that parlays into the market.So it's less really quantitative and more like, here's kind of what everybody's saying about this company. Here's what they're doing. Here's what maybe they should be doing. And if they do that, here's what it might look like today. For example, I wrote about, Y angel at early stage valuations are not as crazy as they seem based on the fact that Amazon and Apple and Facebook and all these huge companies have grown actually way faster than the average startup valuation has round by round by round.And so just kind of walking through that, but then weaving in. The movie up as an analogy and, you know, the four minute mile. And so just try to like, make it super fun and approachable. Nathan: [00:03:31] Yeah. I like that one. And I have to say, I, on Monday, last week, I read your Twitter post, especially as you know, you're diving into the creator economy and all this stuff that.It's just so much fun. and then I was like, this is a compelling case and I've owned, you know, Twitter stock for years, but not very much. I bought more, after that article, so you're already making me money. Packy: [00:03:52] That's, that's amazing to hear that scares the hell out of me. So I wrote about Slack a couple of weeks before they, before they got acquired and, had this, like really this, this case of like, I love this company.They're just being mistreated by the market, all these things and, and made a, I think a fairly compelling bull case. And then they popped for totally different reasons. Something that I did not write about, but people came out of the woodwork and were like, Oh, thank you so much. I bought Slack because you said to buy Slack and bill.And I got a little bit scared, frankly, because I was like, I'm not a professional, I'm not a registered advisor. I'm not like. Amazing. If you like, then go do your own due diligence, I love that you're investing, but it's scary now that the audience is big enough that people are actually putting money behind the things that I'm writing, which is why.Nathan: [00:04:33] Yeah. You don't want the like yep. I put my kid's college fund in there. Like it's going to be fully funded to whatever school now. Thanks to your advice. And you're like, please, no!Packy: [00:04:43] Exactly. It works through, I mean, like the whole thing. And one of the things that I'm nervous about, frankly, is that the way that I write and the things that I write about work really, really well in this ridiculous bull market that we're in the middle of where every tech stock is just totally up and to the right where I could throw a a dart at a dartboard and then pick a stock in that way.And probably it's going to go up a little bit and then I can look smart. It'd be really interesting to see just kind of what general. Reader interest is at a time when the market is a lot more boring or flat or down or X, Y, or Z thing when the market changes. I feel I'm lucky that we're in this spot right now that the thing that I care about and enjoy writing about the most is also the thing that is doing the best in the market. Nathan: [00:05:26] Well, I think it would be interesting because if I'm, I might be reading into this too much, but you're trying to write about the longterm. Things that make the company and the business model and the strategy interesting, rather than like what the stock is going to do this week or this month, or even quarter this year.And so that would be like, you don't want people taking away that like right about on Monday, it'll make money on Tuesday. That's the wrong thing. It's more of like, Hey Twitter as a whole over the next year. Five 10 years is probably undervalued because of all of these things.Packy: [00:05:56] A hundred percent. Yeah. And that's the way that I approach it.And then what ends up happening? I think particularly because there have been things like the Twitter or Slack or whatever else, what ends up happening is that people just buy the next day. Cause we're like, cool. I mean, if it's a long-term and so did up by big caveat always is that I have no idea what's going to happen in the next month, day, year, week, whatever but term, I think these companies are in a really good spot and I think.People in the markets are just not used to companies with as massive a Tam or a massive, a potential market to address as a lot of these companies have and the business model that these companies have. And so if these things do well, and I don't think they're constrained necessarily by even, Apple's kind of current $2.2 trillion market cap, I think there's massive upside and a lot of these companies, but yeah, for sure that will take a long time to play out.Nathan: [00:06:41] Yeah, that makes sense. I want to go back to. You know how the newsletter has changed over time. And maybe before that, what made you start a newsletter in the first place? Packy: [00:06:50] Yeah, so I actually, so it was a company called Breather, which did kind of on demand meeting and workspace loved it, but was there for, you know, I was in year number six when I started the newsletter.And so I think after you're at a startup for that long, it gets a little bit stale. We brought in a professional exact team, which made it a little bit staler and I was like, man, I need to like. Exercise my brain a little bit, because I'm not getting that at work right now. And so I took David Perell's Write of Passage course and loved it as part of that. You know, one of the assignments was just go start a Substack. And so at that point I probably had 300 followers on Twitter. this was April, 2019, so 300 followers on Twitter and. you know, nobody obviously subscribed to the newsletter. I had to beg the first time I set up my stuff at Substack I sent out a tweet please, just like, I need to get 20 people to subscribe to this.Like, please just sign up. So I don't have to ask people individually. And so that's, that's kinda how the whole thing started and really it was this exploration for the first year or so where I was just sending links. And sometimes I'd go a little bit deeper on something, but it was things that I was listening to and reading.I think it's a really good way to start doing that and kind of summarizing other people's work and getting that muscle. In the beginning. I was petrified. Every time I hit send, but like there was this text chain going on among my friends. They were like, what is Packy doing? He went to a good school.He worked in finance for a while and now he's like, he's sending this newsletter every Sunday, just random internet links. Like what the hell is going on here. but did that for a awhile while it was in the middle of starting a company, never thought that it was going to be my, my full-time thing.Company was like Bri, they're kind of a physical place base thing, left breather kind of at the end of 2020, or the end of 2019 to start that. and then COVID it. And so I was like, Oh man, all right, I've grown this newsletter to like 350 people now. And that is like the asset that I have professionally because this company is at least on pause and maybe dead.And so let me just see if I, you know, reading this thing from per my last email, which was called to Not Boring and start writing some essays, like. Could this be enough that it at least pays rent and gives me time to figure out if this company is going to be the thing that I do, like pretty much anything to help me avoid getting a job.And so set a couple of, kind of short-term goals for myself. Like, all right. Hopefully I can get to, I think my goal on January 1st, 2020 was let's get to a thousand people by the end of the year, then COVID hit and it's like, let's get to 5,000 people I've ended the year. And then the goals kind of kept falling and it kept growing.And so then like at some point in the summer, I realized that this is probably what I want to do full time. So I was like, you need to start monetizing this thing. And so then I figured out, like, could I, you know, should I go paid or should I get a sponsor? And if I get a sponsor, how do I do that? So just put together a deck and tweeted that out and got sponsorship interest.And so it's been a series of like, none of this was intentional and I never set out to be a professional newsletter writer, but. Each step along the way. I think even as kind of the list grows cooler and cooler opportunities open up. And now I feel like I'm in a spot where I get to do this thing that I really liked doing and have all this serendipity with no real plan.Nathan: [00:09:50] Yeah. I love it. It's fun to see how that's grown. It's crazy that, so what, in, in 10 or 11 months, you're up 30,000 subscribers. Is that right? Packy: [00:10:00] Something like that. Yeah. Up to 33,000 now. Nathan: [00:10:04] Yeah. Okay. It's, it's crazy how fast, newsletters can grow. And we were talking about our mutual friend, Mario. Who's going to come on the podcast a little later and you know, he's grown incredibly fast and, and just sort of this thing of when you're putting out great content, then there's not really a ceiling on how, how fast or how high the newsletter can grow.Packy: [00:10:23] Totally. And I think Mario is such a good example of. One of my favorite, like kind of meta hacks, which is just experiment a ton over the past year he has tried so many different formats has brought in a bunch of different collaborators. You know, sweat made the switch before a lot of people, which I think is coming from Substack over to ConvertKit He did all of these things first.And I think more than even actually what you try, just trying new things is such a valuable thing to do in growing and growing a newsletter. So he's been so much fun to watch. Nathan: [00:10:54] Yeah, that's great. In that process, right. We're talking about adding 33,000 subscribers in a year. What are some of the things that have worked?Packy: [00:11:02] Yeah, I mean, it's really, frankly, most of that has just come from people sharing the newsletter, which has been great. Like my main two toolkits are spending a ton of time writing and then tweeting about it and that's like, Really most of the plan in the beginning when I was at like 500 and figuring out how to get to a thousand, I made a list of a hundred different things that I wanted to try.I tried a few of them actually had a friend who was leaving his cushy job, come and help me for a little while. And we did a few things like put together a referral program, which is good, but a lot of effort, We launched on product hunt, which was huge. I was at a thousand subscribers. Then we launched on product time, just put together like a very simple landing page, just as an excuse to go on product hunt that got to, I think 2000 plus people in a few days went from 1200 to 30, 200, just from that product, something.And then. From there. The biggest thing was, you know, even when it was, I think 200 people probably I started saying like, all right, I'm at 200 people. Here's the chart. Like next week, I'd love to be at 210 people. And I think just being that kind of open with everybody from the time that it was very small, has just built this feeling that we're all in it together, which is totally true because none of this growth happens without people.Responding giving feedback and sharing and all those types of things. So that's really been, frankly, the big thing I know, community is an overused word. And certainly like, this is more, I guess, technically an audience and a community. Cause they don't have a Slack, but I don't have any of that. But all of the growth has come from people reading and talking about it and sharing.Nathan: [00:12:29] Yeah. That makes sense. I love the way that you're inviting people along for the journey. Like so many people. Take like a, I am the expert. I will teach you things as the audience, you know, or, or that sort of thing. And I've just always loved it when someone says like, Hey, I'm a guy I'm trying to get from here to there.You know, if you want to subscribe, that'd be great. If you'd tell your friends that would help me hit this next milestone. And I mean, I did that in the very early days of ConvertKit where. it actually started with what I called the BA the web app challenge, which was trying to get to from zero to $5,000 in MRR in six months, and like blogging the whole way along.It didn't hit the goal, you know, in the short term, but it worked out in the long run. and I just think that more creators could bring their audience along for the journey. Packy: [00:13:16] Totally, and I think a huge part of this too, is like, you know, I saw people that I thought were just these, like, gods, right?Gods and goddesses who had big audiences. And, you know, we're always in the conversation on Twitter and got hundreds of likes and everything they did. And I was like, I doubt I'm ever going to get there. But in case, like, let me just kind of timestamp all of this stuff, because if it works, then, you know, I can show people that I'm a random idiot sitting in a basement, somewhere writing a newsletter.Like you could also be a random idiot doing this thing that you want to do, whether it's writing a newsletter, doing something else. I think it's so cool to be able to just kind of timestamp everything. Along the journey to show that this is not some like mystical thing that happens. It's just about putting in the work over time and having fun with it and finding something that you really like doing, I think.Nathan: [00:14:02] Yeah. And I think the approach that you've taken with the content of, you know, making the switch from just like, here's the things that I've read recently to actually doing, you know, long form essays, trying to make them Not Boring. I think that's, that's. Paid off really well. Are there, I want to hear more about your writing process, right?So you're publishing twice a week. Is that right? Packy: [00:14:22] Oh, usually twice a week. Now that was kind of accidental at some point I was. So I write every Monday I read kind of like my feature essay of the week. Typically it's about a big public company, sometimes about a broader trends. So today's piece on valuations was about a broader trend, but last week was Twitter.There's a Slack piece of Facebook. There's a bunch of just deep dives on a company. And then on Thursday, Probably yeah, six months ago. I was like, maybe it'd be nice if I do go sponsored at some point to have a second spot. And I want to be able to bring other people into the process and they want to experiment and all of these different things.So I opened up a Thursday that I really thought was going to be like, maybe once a month I have a guest or something else. And those that filled up. So Thursdays, I do. investment memos on startups that we're investing in through the syndicates. So Not Boring now has a syndicate that invests in startups together, or a sponsor deep dives, which is a company will pay me money to write up the company.And that's a fun one to dive into too. And I think goes pairs nicely with kind of letting people in on the process the whole time and, and my thought process on. Like, obviously I could be writing something that I don't believe in here or whatever, because they're paying me a lot of money. So you need to really trust that I'm only choosing companies that I actually would write about anyway, even if they weren't paying me and then I'm writing honestly about it and all of that.So Thursdays are mainly those two things, and then sometimes I'll have a guest post. So this past Thursday I had Dan Tran, who was the CEO of manage my Q a, write a piece on third-party food delivery and, and. Kind of like the impact on restaurants that we've seen over COVID from restaurants having to pay 30% of their profits to third party delivery companies or their revenues, I guess, and what that does to their economics and what a better way forward is.And so Thursday still is kind of this experimental thing, but mostly is, you know, the best memos and, and deep dives. So, yeah, so it ends up being a ton of writing. It's like, you know, I'm writing probably 10,000 words a week, which is not. Something that I thought I'd ever be capable of. Nathan: [00:16:27] So. Yeah, well, I mean like this, the first thing when people talk about, Oh, I want to, I want to start a newsletter.You know, maybe they want the Twitter engagement. Maybe they want to be one of those gods or goddesses that they look up to. And I'm always asking them like one that's amazing Two you're totally capable of it. Three. Do you know just how much writing is involved in that? Like just to set the stage, like you're signing up To be a writer as your profession. And sometimes they're like, yes, absolutely. I have this background in journalism or whatever else, like. I can nail it. And other times they're like, Oh, okay. I thought that the polished thing was just what you, you know, like that was the process. Packy: [00:17:03] Totally. Yeah. You remember essays that you had to write in college, like imagine doing like that final paper twice a week now.And that, that's what it is. I was talking to somebody, on Twitter the other day, somebody that I quoted in my piece today and we were talking and he had to write something for a job interview. And he was like, man, like I really thought this newsletter thing was cushy until I had to write one thing for a job interview. And I was like, Oh man, this is really, really hard to do. Yeah. Nathan: [00:17:28] It's, it's fun to see how, like so many people develop that muscle though. because it is just a muscle. I think, you know, we put a lot of great writers on pedestals and that's because, they've done the work.They've learned how to do it. It's it's, you know, it is really difficult, but at the same time, I think it's pretty approachable. And I, I think people like you and I prove that. Look, if you're going to sit down and put in the time. You can put out content, you know, I'm not going to win a Nobel prize for it, but a lot of people are going, yeah, sorry. I didn't mean to cry. Packy: [00:17:58] That's my goals. Now I think that the Nobel Nobel prize was, was really what I was after with this, this whole thing. But I think you're absolutely right. Right. Like it is about sitting at your computer for hours and hours and hours every week and making sure that you're getting it right.And that you're finding the right angle. I think so work is the number one piece of it. I'd say the other thing that you need to do. Is find something that you actually care about writing about and not fake it, because I think it's impossible to put in the work if you're not interested in the things that you're writing in.So you can probably fake it for a little while, but I think it really comes through when the writer is really interested in the things that they're writing about. Nathan: [00:18:39] Yeah. That makes sense. What's more of your process on researcher stories that you put together? You know, I talked to someone with, I'm asking purely for myself because I'm trying to figure out even more of my system.Right. I hang out with someone like Ryan holiday and he has this crazy like note cards, you know, in folders and all, you know, as he's writing all these books and I'm like, I have Apple notes with an assortment of random ideas that I jot down in there. And sometimes they make their way from like, Idea to rough draft and on from there, but I'm curious what, what your process is.Packy: [00:19:12] Yeah. You're more organized than I am. So I, I use, I use Roam because I think that you're supposed to, and that at some point, like all of my backlinks are going to start coming together and like, My mind is just going to start working like humming my second brand. I guess it's going to start humming here once, once my room starts working together, but frankly I have like something called Not Boring ideas where I put in a new tag.Whenever I have an idea. I think maybe once I've gone back to that list, it's probably like 35 ideas long. And so I'm like, okay, cool. Like I have this backlog of things that I might want to write about. And then every week on call it Wednesday for a Monday essay, I'm like, All right, let's go look at the list.Like, what should I write about this week? And they all end up kind of seeming stale. And so every Wednesday or Thursday, I sit there like panic thinking. I have no idea. I've written about every company that I'm interested in. I've written about a return that I'm interested in. Like, I think Monday is the day that like, I'm just not going to have anything to say.And so at some point there, I spent a lot of time on Twitter. I see something that interests me or reading something else. I see something that interests me. I wonder if I have a unique angle to take on that thing. And then if I do. I had set up to kind of a Google docs. I set up like the, you know, V1 draft doc.And I said at the outline doc, And I'd probably dump a few links in some, some in Rome and then some in the Google backs than there are all over the place. And there's nothing kind of special about it. And then I'll try to do an outline and I'll probably get like four bullets into the outline. And then I'm like, I'm just gonna start writing.And then I started kind of just writing the piece and hammering it out and doing a lot of the research kind of on the fly exactly how you're not supposed to do it. If they were teaching this in college where they'd say like, look at all the evidence first and then like figure out if there is an argument to be made there.They're not like. Certainly looking for confirmatory evidence, but also I'll ask like smart people around me who know more about the subject than I do. Like if I'm totally crazy on this, or if there's actually something there and really look for, you know, things that will disconfirm what I'm thinking as well.And certainly just cause I'm maybe a coward, like we'll caveat the hell out of things that I'm not certain on as I'm, as I'm writing them, then, you know, like there's this panic and ecstasy and whatever the whole kind of Wednesday through Sunday. Again, if you, if you want to. Really get a newsletter writing.Like I have not, I've taken one day off, I think in the past year that I've been doing this full-time cause every Saturday, every Sunday, I'm just kind of like sitting there writing. and then, you know, at some point I'll have a draft that I don't feel terribly embarrassed sending to my brother and my wife, my wife, her job as editor is to kind of say like, you know, this was interesting to read or like you do not have this yet.And my brother is, is to be a younger brother and just totally rip apart. What I've written and tell me when I sound like I'm too full of it or whatever, throughout the paper. And then also like grammatical stuff, or things that I've missed or different things. Like, luckily he's also, he works at a company called Parade.So he's also kind of in the startup space. And so he like knows also the material and the conversation that's going on. And so it can really help there he'll do that. Meanwhile, like half the time I'm probably in Figma just making terrible graphics because they help me think through things as well. I throw it all together, dump and stuff, stack.On Monday morning, I do another read. I'm like, ah, this is good. Or this is terrible. I don't know. Try to make some last edits, record an audio version of it and hit, send and violent eight 55 in a cold sweat every, every Monday morning. And then do the same thing on Thursday.Nathan: [00:22:38] And then just rinse and repeat every week.Packy: [00:22:41] Every week. Yeah, I'm actually 12, but I look 34 because it's aged me. Nathan: [00:22:49] What do you think about like, there's this thing with newsletters that I think everyone should be aware of is sort of this hamster wheel you can get on and you have to be, I don't know if it's careful of, and but maybe just know what you're signing up for.You know, we always talk about the incredible upsides of growing a subscriber base. We'll get into revenue and business models in a second. and, and the upsides are phenomenal, but one of the downsides is that. You know, you are showing up, you've spent all of your weekends, you know, or at least consistently every weekend for a while.Right. Of working on these posts. And so I'm curious how you think about those trade-offs and if you're looking towards systems to try to improve that in the future.Packy: [00:23:28] Yeah. I mean, thankfully I have an incredibly patient wife, we just had a baby, so that adds another level of complexity and, and happiness and all the great things to it as well.But. I don't know. I mean, I, I really genuinely enjoy doing this, so I don't mind it. It's more about thinking about the other people in my life and being like, I wonder if they mind that I've been in the basement for the past seven days, just writing and chances are they probably do. But the good thing is, you know, there are times throughout this process that I have nothing, you know, like I'm just sitting there and I'm blank. Then I can go hang out with the baby for three hours in the middle of a Wednesday, which is really, really cool. Or, you know, go to dinner with my life and not kind of have a set schedule knowing other than the fact that I know that Sunday, I'm going to be totally panicked and spending all day writing throughout the rest of the week.It can be a little bit more all over the place. My wife and I keep having this debate about. Whether or not, I'm inefficient. And like, certainly like she's an operation. She's the most hyper-efficient person in the whole world. Whereas I'm like certainly spent a lot of time just kind of scrolling Twitter.But I can, I think when you're a writer, you can really justify an awful lot. It's like working or research or whatever else. And I, I lean on that and I'm like, what do you expect? I'm an artist. Like, I can't just sit down at a keyboard and just type on ton demand. So, you know, there's a little bit of that.And so I never feel like, Oh man, I just worked. I was in investment banking out of school. I'd never feels like that where I'd feel like I'm just stuck to something and I have to be there, but in the daytime, it's really like, I really liked doing this and it's a little bit flexible. It's all on me. You know, it's all on yourself, which is is one of the good or bad things about this. It's like, there's no one else to blame. There's not a boss making you do anything. The downside, obviously, is you can let that run away in terms of systems, I keep making excuses for myself there too, where I'm like, I don't know. I'd love to hire an intern.I think it'd be really fun to have an intern, but I don't know what I would have them do because like, like I said, I sit down on Thursday with no idea what I'm going to write about. And so I can't tell somebody to pre-research. So much of the research happens in the process, or if I get an idea as I'm in the middle of the sentence and I go look something up, so it's really hard to plug somebody into that.So I I would love to put systems in place around this. And at some point I'll have to, but for now I kind of like, you know, just the rawness of going through it every week. Nathan: [00:25:53] Well, I think it comes through like the rawness combined with the interest and excitement comes through in the writing, you know, and that's what makes it exciting.And I think there's probably a version where you can be like, We have planned out our content schedule three months ahead. And you know, all of these things and every article was perfectly researched and all of this, you know, and whatever else and people would be like, Packy I don't mean to say anything bad, but this latest one was a little bit boring, you know?And then you'd be like, Hey, you know, this way we can guarantee, that it lives up to the name. Packy: [00:26:23] Totally. I mean, doing it this way, at least you can piggyback on a lot of the things that are happening. And so I think that's part of the growth thing too, is, is just being in kind of the conversation and knowing Oh, wow.This week, people really care about Twitter because they acquired Revue and they're launching spaces and they're like maybe making this play for the creator economy. I wrote that they should do this a bunch of months ago. now it feels like a time for me to jump in and do this, this piece.And so having that flexibility allows me to Do something people, are going to be interested in because they've been talking about it a lot that past week. Yeah. Nathan: [00:26:56] That makes sense. another side effect that we see. Well, so, um, another newsletter author. Who's, she's going to come on the podcast later, Legion, she had this line about, how her paid newsletter, is her, is her like LP update list, right?I'm talking about how, as an investor, you know, she has this newsletter that, is generating. You know, deal flow and revenue and all of that. I just loved the line. but I'm curious how, you know, as you've been investing in starting a syndicate and all that, how the newsletter has played in. Packy: [00:27:31] Yeah. So Lee and I were actually just having this conversation a couple of days ago about how investing and writing are just like two antithetical processes. They work really well together. The results work really well together, but the processes are so different, right? We're writing. You want to be sitting down with a bunch of time to just think and not have a bunch of meetings. And then the investing side, you always want to be meeting people and helping those companies in any way that you can, once you have invested.And it's like this very kind of unstructured time where if somebody is like, Yeah, we're, we're racing around and we're closing on Friday and can you meet and diligence it and put it up on AngelList and do all of this. And the next three hours, it's like, I'm going to figure out how to make it happen, but it totally jams that like kind of two day window that I've given myself for the writing.So from a process perspective, they do not work together at all, but from a results perspective, like I have no business being an investor, having anybody kind of trust me on my startup investing ideas. I've probably done between the syndicate and personal investments over the past six months. 12 investments.Like I'm not an experienced venture investor, but because I've been writing for the past year, twice a week, and like putting my thoughts out there, people have a pretty good kind of corpus of the way that I think about things. And so they can think. All right. Packy, like probably has thought through this in a similar way to all the other things that he's thought through.And so either I think that's stupid and I'm not going to invest with him because it's out there. And I think he's an idiot or, you know, at least like, know the way that he thinks. And I appreciate the way that he thinks. And so I'm sure that he's thought through this one, the other benefit of this for the company is because we're Not Boring.I'm pretty nakedly commercial about the whole thing. It's a little meta where we write about business, but then like really building this business and. I hate to use billing and public, but building this thing in public where like, like I said, I can write these sponsored deep dives and people actually really enjoy them because I try to write them the same way that I read a normal piece, write an investment memo where 90% of the value that I'm probably going to add to a company that I invest in comes on day zero before I even put any money into the company.Cause I'm like, look, I'll send out. An investment memo on your company. If I'm excited about it to a list of 33,000 people who are all in tech and finance. And so you'll probably find some hires, you'll probably find other investors. You'll definitely find customers. And that's a huge part of the value is just being able to help the company tell their story upfront.So from that perspective, I wouldn't get into half the deals that I've been able to get into. If I weren't writing and path is maybe being. Generously, maybe I wouldn't have gotten into any. Nathan: [00:30:05] Yeah. I mean, it's fascinating to see so many, angel investors, venture capitalists, see writing and building a newsletter as like one of the most effective forms of deal flow and like online, a lot of what we're doing is just trying to, to gather attention, right?So we're, we're putting out articles, we're putting, you know, essays, Nike's putting out ads, all of these things, right? We're, we're putting out our best version of content so that we can get attention. And then it's what, what can you channel that attention into that has, you know, the most enjoyment for you and the highest return and like, you know, that's where people joke that Nike is an advertising company that just happens to sell shoes.Because they found out that was more profitable than, you know, like being the next Wieden+Kennedy and just making ads for other people. Now that's apocryphal. That's not actually how Nike came to be, but you know, that's how I think about it. And so w when you have this attention, you could monetize it through sponsorships, through paid products.Or as, a lot of investors, I I always read to Tomasz Tunguz from Redpoint and he's had this newsletter going for a long time. It's totally free. All these things. He's not launching a paid newsletter because he's like the deal flow into Redpoint is the highest possible return that I can get.And so I think it's amazing to see, you know, like angel investors like you and I be able to do the same. Packy: [00:31:34] Totally. I mean, it's, it's been fascinating to where. But that's one of the main reasons that I want to keep this open is because it does just kind of create this surface area for opportunity and for new people reading it, who might be starting a company, or want to share a deal that might be interesting or all of those things.But even the sponsorship itself has helped me find investment. So companies that have sponsored deep dives Daenerys around, and now I know the story and I'm really familiar with the company. And I know the people on the team because we've worked together on the thing. And so either I try to get the syndicate in, or if I can only write a personal check, then I'll do that.But yeah. Even just like that the sponsorship piece is also great at generating deal flow. So the whole thing just seems to work together really nicely. And I don't want to think too deeply about the business model beyond this because what's happening is working and I'm sure other things that feel natural.And, you know, I think the number one thing is like, keep the audience's trust and keep them engaged and keep writing good stuff. And if I can find other ways to monetize that fit with that. Awesome. But I don't know, we can talk about the sponsorship thing versus paid, but one of the most fascinating things to me is that like consumer sponsors have come, like let's call it a hat brand and that's not a natural sponsor, but if a hat brand comes, I'll actually sell.Fewer units or get fewer clicks to that hat than I would to a $2,000-a-month SAS product, like just by number of actual orders that have gone through. And so figuring out kind of like what people actually care about then allows me to kind of build a monetization around. The content that people want to read.Nathan: [00:33:08] Yeah. Well, I want to dive in. There's more because, for a long time, people have monetized newsletters by selling products, and sponsorships. but then in the last say 18 months or two years paid newsletters have really had this rise. And, you know, you were on Twitter last week talking about like, yeah, sure, that's awesome. But I think sponsorship is a really underrated, method. And so as you think about it, like you could launch a paid newsletter right now, it would do very well. you would have that recurring revenue. and so I'm curious, you know, like make the case, why, why are you staying with sponsors?Packy: [00:33:42] So I ran the math when I was thinking, when I kind of hit 5,000, which was like, my I'll get to 5,000 and then I'll figure out monetization. So I started thinking about it, then didn't monetize till 10,000, but I was like, all right, cool. So the 5,000. Substack says that you can probably get 10% of your audience to convert.I've never met anybody. Who's converted 10% of their, their readers to paid. So let's say it's five. So if I get 5% that I'm at 5,000 times, 5%, I have 250 people subscribing. And if they pay me, I don't know. Even if generously, they pay me $10 a month, then I'm at $2,500 a month. And all of a sudden, either I need to find like three more days in the week to write that paid piece.Or I'm putting something behind a paywall. And so this growth that has been like the most fun part of this newsletter from, you know, it was more of like a game kind of than a business. When I was just trying to grow it from a thousand to 5,000, I never thought I'd actually make money on this thing. so at that point I was like, what am I going to shut off the growth or not sleep and write it there.Another piece. And the count, the quality of all of them will probably suffer from adding anything more. So we'll be in a spot where I'm making $2,500 a month growing more slowly. Not having people to share and talk about it, not opening up that surface area to other potential opportunities. It just like, you know, it'd be maybe a nice side thing if I weren't putting as much effort into it, but that's not, I can't feed a family on $2,500 a month.Whereas you know, the 10,000 I, I sent out a deck on the sponsorship side, filled up. This was end of August, pretty much from a tweet thread filled up the rest of the year, in terms of sponsors. And like didn't know sales efforts. And like, that's one of the downsides of doing sponsorships is that if there's not that kind of pull, then you have to like go out into the market and cold email people.And that takes more time. It's a painful process. And I really like marketing, I guess, more than sales. I like just putting something out there and seeing what comes back versus having to ask anybody for anything I'm not petrified of, of that. so, you know, filled up to the end of the year, I was like, cool.I'm at least like making money and can prove to my wife that. There is a path here. If I start bringing in some money and then that started working really well and sponsors started telling other sponsors. And so this year, you know, there's really like three formats that, that I do for sponsorships. I have my kind of Monday top of newsletter sponsorship.I have my Thursday, top of newsletter sponsorship, and I do different rates for the two of them because Mondays typically get shared a little bit more than Thursday pieces. Do. And then as I mentioned, I have the Thursday deep dives. And so with the three of those I'm now, you know, at least my run rate is more than I was making as an executive startup that raised a hundred million dollars and also have the investing piece of kind of like recreated a really good startup comp package through the syndicate and through the sponsorships.Nathan: [00:36:32] Well, that's interesting. I hadn't thought that you have both the salary replaced and then of course you, you know, you own a hundred percent of. You know, your, your new immediate business. but you also have the equity side covered because you've got the syndicate and the other investing. Packy: [00:36:49] Exactly. And again, this was like, you know, it could seem in hindsight that there was some plan where I was like, I'm going to synthetically recreate a startup compensation package, but it was really halfway through.I had spoken to a friend of mine who was launching a company. and trying to raise money and wanted to help telling his story. And so we experimented with me sending out an investment memo and sent the demand to somebody else and it worked. And so, you know, decided to start the syndicate and then halfway through, I'd probably three deals.Then I was like, wow, this is actually kind of like, I have equity and I'm making money on the sponsorship. This is kind of like, you know, what I was making before. And so now it's kind of there, which is, which is great. And the fun thing about it is there's not. Upside thing. I don't have to go to my boss in a year and say like, all right, you know, it's, it's the new year.Can I get a 3%, 8%, whatever raise it's. It is a direct result of how quickly the newsletter grows and how effective it is for sponsors. Nathan: [00:37:41] Yeah. That makes sense. So what are you charging for those different sponsorship slots? Packy: [00:37:45] Yeah, for Q1 Mondays or 5,000. There's days are 3,000 and ER, Thursday kind of top sponsorship is 3,000 and the deep dive is 20,000 because that's a ton of work and I think really good exposure for those companies.Nathan: [00:37:57] Yeah. That makes sense. Okay. So you're pulling in a significant amount of money from this. Packy: [00:38:02] Yeah. I mean, like I'll, I'll do I'll, you know, I'll do package discounts on some of the stuff and all that, but you know, a good month would be. 30 so far, a good month is like 30, 40. and like I said, growing, so that, that part is awesome.Now there's, you know, it's also no cost, but there really should be. As I said, I should probably hire somebody and build an actual website and do all of these things and there should be the cost side, but right now it's kind of like, The only cost is the fact that I'm spending 60 hours a week writing and then doing the other stuff on top of it.I love it. So that part's great. Nathan: [00:38:35] Yeah. So, I mean, it's just like a startup job in the fact that you've got the crazy long hours and then, you know, a questionable boss just in this case, the crazy boss.Packy: [00:38:42] Yep. Yeah, exactly. Nathan: [00:38:45] That's interesting. So I think you're underplaying the numbers that you would get from a paid newsletter.Like, I think there'd would be higher than what you, what you threw out there, but I don't think they'd be higher than what you're making off the sponsorships. Packy: [00:39:00] I, I think I agree. I think I'm more competent. I think it's 20,000 recurring, 20,000 recurring, I think. Yeah. I think at this point with 33,000 people, I, I could, I could also do like a more premium price point now because like, I get the comment a lot, which is like, Yeah, like you said, I made money on some of the things you've written.This is, I'd rather read this than an equity research report and all of those types of things I could do, maybe a hundred dollars a month sponsorship that a few people decided to subscribe to. There's a bunch of different ways to take it. But again, the big bottleneck right now is time. And the main source of enjoyment is having people kind of share and discuss the things that I'm writing and like have this conversation happened around the things that I care about and get to talk to smart people about them.So, yeah. I think the combination of the fact that it would be a little bit less than I'm making on the sponsorship side. and the fact that it would slow growth. I think those two things combined just make me want to lean away from that and then did a sponsorship plus because of stack charges that are cut on sponsorships and not on sponsorships, because they don't want to, you know, they, they want to ignore the fact that sponsorships exist.It's actually from, from a cost perspective. Pretty good. Nathan: [00:40:16] Yeah. I mean you're saving 10%. yeah. Plus plus drive fees. Yep. That is true. it's something else that is interesting with your sponsorships is a lot of people when they start entirely free and then go into sponsorships there. Like weirdly apologetic about it, of like, Oh, we'll get to the content really soon.Like, I'm sorry that, you know, like, sorry for this interruption or whatever else. And you're just like, boom sponsor right across the top. Let's start with sponsor, you know? And like you're not apologetic at all. and you've built that into the, the brand. Was that intentional? Packy: [00:40:54] Yeah. I mean, I think that comes with this whole thing of like, I don't know, guys, you want to, I'll see if I can grow this thing together and like help out.Maybe if you want. And then the next one was like, I do have a baby on the way and like a family. And so like, I'd love to make money on this. And so sent out, you know, before I, I got the first sponsor, I sent out the survey and said, I'm doing this because I want sponsorship and they want to know about you.And so that works. I chosen sponsors for the most part, for the entire part that they actually think. The audience would care to know about. And so, like, I got really lucky that public was one of the sponsors that the trading app, and then they've had this meteoric rise over the past few months. They were all over the Robin hood debacle, like the whole thing.So such a fun sponsor to get, to be associated with. They keep sending me cool gear that I'm like very proud to wear. And so, I don't know, like as long as I'm choosing sponsors that I think the audience actually cares about, then I don't feel bad about it. at all. And I'm trying to write, copy that, you know, that, that, the sponsors happy with, but the people actually enjoy.And so put it kind of in the same voice as the, as the newsletter. so all of that kind of works. Well. The one that I was a little bit apologetic about was the deep dives cause like that is really just like. Yeah. If I, I never pretended to be a journalist. I don't want to be a journalist, but like I went to journalism school, they would pull away my diploma for saying like, yeah, you could pay me $20,000 and I'll write a piece on the company.But I'm like from day one on those, I was like, here's how this works either. I do a CPM where they essentially pay me because there's a bunch of you here. Or I do a CPA where. They pay only if you click on something and sign up for something. and so like each time I do it, I'll tell you which one it is.I'm not going to pressure sell you into anything, but like, just know that this is how I'm getting paid on this one. And then a couple of days, or one deep dive ago, I've just wrote up my process and put it in a Google doc and share it with everybody on how I choose the companies and what I'll write about and how the writing process is with them behind the scenes and what I will, and won't say, and like that I won't just.Get paid to talk shit on competitors or like any of those things that it's really like, please don't tell these sponsors that I'm writing about something that I care about and would write about anyway. And they're paying me all this money for it, because like that's what I wanted to come across that.So I'll do you know, I I'm bad and I I'd love tips on how to just manage my own email as someone who puts a lot of email out into the universe, like between email and DMS, like. I get a ton of inbound requests, particularly for the deep dive. That's another one where even though it's a higher price point, I get more demand for that than I do for a Monday or Thursday sponsorship.But I'll just, if it's a company that I don't think people are going to care about, I'll just kind of ignore them and then it, you know, it would just bad. but I just like, I I'm overwhelmed by the, by the inboxes and all sorts of different places between Twitter and mail and text and whatever else. So one screen is just that I'm an asshole and I'll, I'll just not respond to people.If I don't think the audience is going to be interested. And then two there's plenty of conversations that I'll have with companies where I'm like, frankly, I think like you'd be a really interesting Monday or Thursday sponsor, but is your company doing anything like. Different that would be cool to write about.And it would be worth three or 4,000 words. And some companies are like, no, totally like we're very straightforward business. And I completely understand that you wouldn't watch her write 4,000 words on what we're up to. And like, maybe we'll come back and talk if you have a product launch or something coming up.But otherwise I think that's helped that they're very clearly companies that I would have written about anyway. Like you're not going to see a state farm insurance. Sponsorship probably sponsored deep dive in anytime soon. And they're probably on the more interesting side.Nathan: [00:44:32] Yeah. That makes sense. Well, I love kind of bringing things full circle.They like working in public, sharing the journey, bringing people along for it. And then that allowing you to actually generate more revenue because then your audience is like, I love that he's got these sponsorships and that, you know, he's putting them front and center. I love these brands are supporting, you know, my favorite newsletter and, and it's completely the opposite of like, What a lot of people get of like, Oh, he's a sellout or any of these other things.And it just goes to show you, bring the audience along for the journey. Then they're in your corner a hundred percent.Packy: [00:45:06] A hundred percent like this one, and I'll give them a plug, even though it's not gonna this, this might not air until after I read it. But I'm writing about this company. Also IRA on, on Thursday.Yeah. Essentially that you set up a self-directed IRA, which means that you can do all sorts of things. Like I know that people who read not were in care about, which is take your 401k money, which is just sitting in like a mutual fund somewhere and invest it through Angeles, invest it into crypto, invested into masterworks, which I've written about and invest into all of these different things that I've already written about.And so like, That one is an absolute no-brainer because we have a syndicate on angel list. We've written about mastery. Like all these things just kind of like come together. And so I think that's the other fun part about writing about things even on the sponsor side that I care about is that that then attracts other kind of like companies.So, you know, they came in when they saw a piece on masterworks. And so it all just feels, I think very natural because it is very natural. Nathan: [00:46:01] Yeah. Does that make sense? Something else that you've been doing, that I find interesting is you record the audio version of each article and you, you release those in separate posts.And that's, I guess I've seen a few people doing that, where they have, you know, a related podcast or something. when did you start doing that? And, and what, what drove that? Packy: [00:46:20] So my pieces are really long, right? Like compared to a normal piece, the main feedback I got when I was doing these, like. One to 2,000 were links pieces.It was like, Oh man, these are really way too long. You should cut down. Even from one to 2,000. And then I went the total opposite way and I, I wrote, I think a 9,000 word piece on Facebook and the average length is like 6,000 words. And so I think it's only fair to people who want to consume the content.That there's an easier way where you can just throw some AirPods in and listen to it for half an hour, instead of like. Trying to schedule time in your calendar on Monday morning to read enough worrying. So that's, that's the Genesis of it. It is truly painful that most Monday mornings I'm getting up right now.I'm in Miami. We have our own place. I woke the baby up to kick them out of his room and recorded in here this morning. But normally it's in my in-laws basement where we've been living for the past few months since we had the baby. And like, I'm just praying that like the water heater doesn't turn on or that like somebody doesn't run the water upstairs or like.That something doesn't mess, mess up the audio. So it's like really painful to wake up at six every Monday morning and do this, but it's also open up this thing now where, like, I just kind of have a podcast and it's like this thing that seemed hard to do before that, just because I hit plane published an anchor.Now I have like kind of descript anchor. I got my Yeti microphone over here. Like I have a little setup. And so now, you know, if I'm writing about a company, I can invite the CEO or somebody on the team on, and just have a quick conversation. I really liked that about audio, that it's so easy to just kind of work with, I think, for the podcast, the audio version and for the writing itself, like part of the reason I've been able to do it is that.I don't care about it being perfectly. I want it to be right, but I don't care about it being perfect. And so like the audio quality sucks. Like if you listen to the audio quality on my podcast compared to anybody else it's terrible, but I'd rather just kind of get started. And then at some point, like I'm starting to talk to audio editors now who can help fix that.Maybe they can't fix that, you know, the hissing from the water heater, but can picks a lot of it and professionalize it. But I think the biggest thing is just like getting over the hump and getting started. And a lot of that stuff is easier than it would seem to just dive in and do. Nathan: [00:48:28] Yeah, I think that's the right approach of whether it's writing or audio is to start and then improve over time because the hardest thing is showing up and doing it consistently.And then everything else is like optimizations on that continual effort. Totally. Yeah. Okay, what else should we talk about when we get into platforms? You, I mean, you write about platforms all the time, so I'm, I'm curious for your take on the newsletter platform space. I'm obviously, you know, full disclosure to come into the conversation.I'm a little bit biased in that. I own one of these platforms. you know, you and I both talk on Twitter extensively, they now own review. I'm, I'm curious for your take on, on newsletter platforms as a whole and where all this is going.Packy: [00:49:12] Yes, I've been on sub stack the whole time could not be more grateful to Substack.Like I said, because I do a sponsor model and they ignore sponsorships. I paid $0 for the platform it's free. I paid $0 for the platform on top of which I've built this business, which I am eternally grateful for. I now have my own custom domain and Not Boring.co. So like, like they're making improvements and, and it's.It's nice. I think from a, like putting my analyst hat on perspective, they're in such a tough, tricky spot. They have so many different types of writers on the platform who all want different things and who are all looking at the other types of writers. And so obviously with the past year, they've made a big push to bring on people.Who are journalists or NBA stars or who have kind of existing audiences and bring them onto the platform and do all sorts of sweetheart deals, where you're getting, you know, libel insurance and maybe health insurance. And you're getting a legal staff and you're definitely not paying 10% if you're coming on and they're pulling you over from the New York times or somewhere else.And so there's these like bespoke deals happening that the next class of people, which I've kind of put my self in, which are like people who have kind of built an audience there who are more like the business. Analyst type who are annoying and loud and like, like me kind of pontificating on what some stacks should do, even though I'm not there building the company.And like, we all see that that's happening. And so always kind of gripe about the fact that there's this 10% fee and that everybody's going to leave, but I think that's true. And I think another really interesting wrinkle there is that. In a Ben Thompson's written about this. I think Benedict Evans has that, that you know, what they need to do is solve for discovery and help people build their audience.If they want to keep them a platform and keep people from leaking, once they've hit, you know, 10,000 paid subscribers or whatever that number is, or the math no longer makes sense. And I think that's really tough because I don't think, and you know, this better than I would having more of a bird's eye view, but I don't think people necessarily want newsletters.Right? Like, I don't think people very often go to. Sub stack.com/discover. And they're like, I'd love to find a new newsletter to read. Cause my, the 37 that I get right now, like aren't quite doing it for me. I'm looking for that 38 that I think it's going to do it. And so I think they're in a tough spot in terms of bringing in new demand.And so that otherwise what you're doing is like kind of pulling the, you know, the limited hours and attention that each. Reader has to different places. If you're trying to solve discovery for the readers that you have on your platform. And so in the beginning, when I had 2000 followers or subscribers, like I was like, yes, I would love if stack helped me solve discovery.And now I'm kind of like, I think I'm in like the top 10 free, like, do I want them sending attention to other people? Cause like they only have so many hours in the week and don't maybe, maybe they don't solve this discovery thing and I'm happier that way. And so I, I think they have like all of those kinds of tensions up and down the stack that are going to make it really, really tough.They're doing an amazing job. Obviously they reported numbers that are great and people are making a ton of money on the platform. And so all of that's great. They're hugely responsible for this boom and for what I'm doing myself into, like really, really grateful and have enjoyed writing on it. But. I think they're in a really tough spot and I'm interested to see how it works out long term.Nathan: [00:52:31] Yeah. It'd be interesting that the discovery thing is fascinating because I agree with, what you were saying or, you know, quoting Ben Thompson and others talking about like, I think that's where they have to provide value in order to retain people long term. It's a problem that like, I have my notebook right here of like lots of time spent on.Is how can you solve this? Is it a way that it can be solved? Like looking to companies like Shopify and others that have found this balance between you own your brand entirely, you know, all of this. Oh, but you want a network effect with Shopify pay or shop pay, you know, and they're pulling off some of these little things and that's what I'm fascinated with of like, could we do that with ConvertKit?Also, You know, just playing around with clubhouse the last week or so seeing the audience sizes and that people are generating, like, you'll see someone on a clubhouse who has an audience 20 times the size of their Twitter following. And they've been building Twitter for like 10 years and then clubhouse for five weeks or 10 weeks, you know?And how is that possible? Is there a mechanism that you could create in newsletters that could allow for audience growth of that size and. And I just don't know. So it's fascinating to look at.Packy: [00:53:43] I mean, I wrote about this last week, I think Twitter is in, you know, please Twitter product team, get this one right. But I think Twitter is in a really interesting spot here where they actually have a lot of people. I I'd say probably of their, you know, 190, monetized daily active users or whatever they call them. Like a hundred million of them probably actually want to consume newsletters. Like it's a very kind of intellectual, da you set.And so they have this like thing where they know the tweets that you like, they know who you follow. They know all of these things, they know what topics you're interested in. They made a big push around topics. And so could they push you to another newsletter or could they do a better job of alerting you that somebody that you follow actually wrote this longer form thing?And I bet you'd like the last 10 of their tweets. I bet you'd love to read their, their thing and subscribe and all of that. Who knows if you can trust the Twitter product team historically, I think it's actually, it seems like it's better now, but historically you would not have been able to trust the Twitter product team to get this right.Maybe now you can, but then to like turn those people into, you know, Twitter spaces, people, so you can have the conversation. I really do thin

Did you now that Q4 of 2020 saw the greatest number of startup companies being launched than ever before in our country's history. If you're ready to start a business but just don't know what business to get started, you're not alone. To help you figure out what business to start, we're sharing some incredibly valuable insights from Tomasz Tunguz, director of the Redpoint venture capital firm. Tomasz breaks down the top categories that saw the biggest increase in venture capital investment in 2020. Tune in to this morning's WJR Business Beat to hear Jeff share the top five fastest growing sectors.

This is The Founders' List - audio versions of essays from technology’s most important leaders, selected by the founder community. Alongside our latest NFX Essay "The Hidden World of Pricing: Uber, Trulia, Etsy, Superhuman & More with Madhavan Ramanujam", we decided to release multiple supplemental pricing articles on The Founders' List. This is a two-part episode including two essays from Tomasz Tunguz (Venture Capitalist at Redpoint). He is also a board member of Looker, ERPLY, Electric imp, inc., AxialMarket, Quantifind, Expensify, and more. Prior to joining Redpoint, Tomasz was the product manager for Google's social media monetization team, including the Google-MySpace partnership. Tomasz's featured articles in this episode: - Ten Years Worth of Learnings About Pricing - There are Only 3 Pricing Strategies for Your Startup Read the full NFX pricing essay here - https://www.nfx.com/post/the-hidden-world-of-pricing/

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Thursday's main ep, and our bonus episode that went out on Saturday.If you like Equity, your cup runeth over.So, what did we get into this morning? A grip of things, which I've listed below in order:American Thanksgiving is this week, so news may slow as we move towards Thursday.New, good vaccine news is boosting stocks and hopes that the pandemic could be brought under control next year.Bitcoin is racing towards new records.LA-based Credit Key raises $33 million for its business-to-business payments platform -- in light of the Affirm IPO this round is no surprise.Digital freight forwarder Forto raises another $50M in round led by Inven Capital -- the pandemic is messing around with supply chains, perhaps leaving room for startups in the space to aggressively grow.Digital electricity supplier Tibber closes $65M Series B led by Eight Roads, Balderton -- of our three rounds, this one took me the longest to understand.This essay from Tomasz Tunguz, which is good.Please stay safe this week, America. Do something boring and unfun, so that we can keep more of us alive into next year.Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Hello and welcome back to Equity, TechCrunch’s venture capital-focused podcast where we unpack the numbers behind the headlines.This is Equity Monday, our weekly kickoff that tracks the latest big news, chats about the coming week, digs into some recent funding rounds and mulls over a larger theme or narrative from the private markets. You can follow the show on Twitter here and myself here — and don’t forget to check out last Thursday's main ep, and our bonus episode that went out on Saturday.If you like Equity, your cup runeth over.So, what did we get into this morning? A grip of things, which I've listed below in order:American Thanksgiving is this week, so news may slow as we move towards Thursday.New, good vaccine news is boosting stocks and hopes that the pandemic could be brought under control next year.Bitcoin is racing towards new records.LA-based Credit Key raises $33 million for its business-to-business payments platform -- in light of the Affirm IPO this round is no surprise.Digital freight forwarder Forto raises another $50M in round led by Inven Capital -- the pandemic is messing around with supply chains, perhaps leaving room for startups in the space to aggressively grow.Digital electricity supplier Tibber closes $65M Series B led by Eight Roads, Balderton -- of our three rounds, this one took me the longest to understand.This essay from Tomasz Tunguz, which is good.Please stay safe this week, America. Do something boring and unfun, so that we can keep more of us alive into next year.Equity drops every Monday at 7:00 a.m. PDT and Thursday afternoon as fast as we can get it out, so subscribe to us on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts.

Nick Caldwell has built and grown product and engineering organizations at PowerBI (0 to 300 engineers), Reddit (500M MAU) and Looker ($2.7B sale to Google). Nick will share 5 big lessons he's learned along the way that you can use as you build your company's product and engineering functions from its earliest days to its largest successes.

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/

Headwinds and Tailwinds from the pandemic. A wide ranging conversation with Alex Bard and Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures. Guests - Alex Bard and Tomasz Tunguz, both are Partners at Redpoint Ventures   howardlindzon.com, Redpoint.com Twitter: @howardlindzon, @alexbard, @ttunguz, @redpointvc, @knutjensen

Tomasz Tunguz of Redpoint Ventures joins Nick on a special Crisis Coverage installment to discuss SaaS Strategies, Sector Data, and the $ Ceiling for Deals over Zoom. In this episode, we cover: September of 2015 was the last time we had you on the program...  bring us up-to-speed on major milestones and changes since then? Has your thesis changed at all? Aside from the effects of the pandemic now, what has been the biggest change in SaaS investing since then? Lots of varying advice from so-called experts... some suggesting to deep cuts across the board, extend runway out for a few years... others saying now is the time to lean-in, expand and take advantage of opportunities that are created by the crisis.  You put together a pretty simple two by two decision-matrix for startups.  Can you talk through this and how you're providing different counsel to startups in different positions? If you're vetting a startup for a Series A that has benefited from the crisis, how do you disentangle or segregate temporary or non-sustainable revenue sources from the steady-state? Have you adjusted your vetting criteria or expectations around metrics due to the crisis? What's something you look for and analyze that is less common? What's your take on situations where there is an agreed MRR but the contract is structured such that the bulk of the contract value is paid upfront.  On one hand is a great boost to working capital but how do you look at that from an MRR standpoint? Any tactical advice for founders/sales teams w/ regards to structuring new customer contracts in this environment? Is there a maximum $ contract size that you think can be closed over the phone? To determine the sectors impacted most by COVID-19, you looked at Roger Lee's data on Layoffs.  We've discussed a lot of the impacted sectors anecdotally here on the show... according to the data, what has been impacted most? Are there some sectors where we'll see a lagging effect... due to factors like sales cycles maybe we don't see the effects yet but will over the coming quarter or two? You've discussed sectors and categories that this crisis might accelerate... aside from the obvious like teleconference, telehealth, grocery delivery, video streaming, etc... what are some non-obvious areas that may get a big boost? 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.

Pour ce nouvel épisode j’ai pris le temps d’échanger avec Marie Brayer, partner chez Serena Capital, fond de capital amorçage / Series A / Series B fondé en 2008 et qui a investit notamment dans Evaneo, Malt, Dataiku, La Fourchette, IbanFirst, AramisAuto...   Nous échangeons ensemble sur plusieurs sujets:  Son parcours; comment elle est passée d’ingénieure-geek à entrepreneur, puis leveur de fonds chez Chausson Finance avant d’intégrer Serena Capital en 2016. Marie nous explique les parallèles entre les métiers de leveur de fonds et VC. La thèse d’investissement de Serena Capital (amorçage; series A; series B); les différents fonds actifs et thématiques (deep tech data et gaming/entertainment).  Nous parlons ensuite de la Series B; pourquoi la series B est une étape cruciale dans le développement d’une startup; que pense Marie de la citation de Tomasz Tunguz, partner chez Redpoint Venture, qui dit que “la series B est le tour de financement le plus difficile réaliser, que c’est le dernier jalon avant de prouver que le cash est le facteur limitant de l’entreprise” Marie nous partage les chiffres clés Series A vs Series B en France sur la Tech; quelles sont les tailles des tours de Series B en France et pourquoi ils ont tendance à augmenter A lire sur le sujet l’article sur le blog de Serena - Everything about the 381 French deals of 2018 above 1m€ Quels sont les critères clés pour être éligible à la Series B (croissance, unit economics, people, internationalisation). Pourquoi la series B est si compliquée? Quels conseils pour anticiper au mieux la Series B? Quel est l’état d’esprit d’un investisseur de Series B, comment regarde-t-il une société quand il doit investir 10 à 20M€ dans une startup? Qu’est ce qu’il recherche? La différence d’exigence entre un investisseur US vs Européen Pourquoi il faut bien choisir le type d’investisseur (fond venture ou growth) que l’on souhaite en Series B? Quel est le niveau de risque que l’investisseur est prêt à prendre? pour quel multiple? A lire la série d’articles (en cours) rédigés par Marie sur les Marketplaces, from 0 to €100m GMV - part 1 what kind of marketplace are you? et part 2 Supply  Retrouvez Marie sur twitter et pour en savoir plus sur Serena Capital c’est ici! Si vous avez des questions après l’écoute d’un épisode, ou si vous souhaitez en savoir plus sur un sujet ou un secteur d’activité n’hésitez pas à me contacter alexis.menard@gocapital.fr ou sur linkedin je me ferais un plaisir de vous répondre directement ou de poser la question à mes futurs invités. Pour recevoir chaque semaine le nouvel épisode dans votre boîte mail inscrivez vous ci-dessous! https://medium.com/equity-101/inscription-%C3%A0-la-newsletter-equity-101-5c40932e722c 

Software companies such as Slack, Zoom, and Uber have recently gone public. When a company goes public, they issue a document called an S-1. Within the S-1, there is a wealth of information about the company, providing a detailed story about the company’s business model, economics, and future prospects. The S-1 describes the operating model The post Software IPOs with Tomasz Tunguz appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Software companies such as Slack, Zoom, and Uber have recently gone public. When a company goes public, they issue a document called an S-1. Within the S-1, there is a wealth of information about the company, providing a detailed story about the company’s business model, economics, and future prospects. The S-1 describes the operating model The post Software IPOs with Tomasz Tunguz appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Animalz is quickly gaining a reputation for being one of the top content marketing shops in the B2B SaaS world. Here's how they approach content creation... This week on The Inbound Success Podcast, Animalz marketing director Jimmy Daly dives into his process for creating content for Animalz. As the guy in charge of both marketing AND sales for Animalz, he splits his time between marketing/lead generation and closing deals. When he's on sales calls, Jimmy pays close attention to the questions he gets from prospects and turns each of those questions into an article on the Animalz blog. This process has netted strong sales results that the company can track directly back to the individual articles Jimmy creates. This week's episode of The Inbound Success Podcast is brought to you by our sponsor, IMPACT Live,  the most immersive and high energy learning experience for marketers and business leaders. IMPACT Live takes place August 6-7, 2019 in Hartford, Connecticut, and is headlined by Marcus Sheridan along with special guests including world-renowned Facebook marketing expert Mari Smith and Drift CEO and Co-Founder David Cancel. Inbound Success Podcast listeners can save 10% off the price of tickets with the code "SUCCESS."   Click here to learn more or purchase tickets for IMPACT Live Some highlights from my conversation with Jimmy include: Jimmy is responsible for marketing and sales at Animalz, which is a B2B content marketing agency. Because Jimmy is involved in both sales and marketing, he is constantly listening on sales calls for the questions prospects are asking and turning them into articles on the Animalz blog. Jimmy thinks that a lot of marketers do buyer personas wrong and focus too much on creating fictional characters. In his case, he thinks of his audience on a spectrum from tactical to strategic. If he's writing to a tactical audience, that person needs instructions on how to do something. If he's writing to a strategic audience, they need a framework for how to make a big decision.  By focusing on creating content about the questions he gets in the sales process, Jimmy can in some cases attribute three or four deals worth $50,000 to $75,000 to an individual blog article. When new articles are published, Animalz emails them out to its newsletter distribution list, but Jimmy is also a fan of using Tweet storms to gain traction and visibility online. Another form of content that Animalz has seen get strong results for its clients is thought leadership articles. They define thought leadership as essays that express a strong, original point of view. The average new article on the Animalz website gets 3,000 to 5,000 views in the first two months after publication.  Resources from this episode: Save 10% off the price of tickets to IMPACT Live with promo code "SUCCESS" Connect with Jimmy on LinkedIn Follow Jimmy on Twitter Check out the Animalz website Listen to the podcast to learn more about how Jimmy leverages the conversations he's having with sales prospects to build a more effective marketing strategy for Animalz. Transcript Kathleen Booth (Host): Welcome back to the Inbound Success Podcast. I'm Kathleen Booth and I'm your host. And today my guest is Jimmy Daley, who's the marketing director at Animalz. Welcome, Jimmy. Jimmy Daly (Guest): Thanks so much, Kathleen. I'm happy to be here. Jimmy and Kathleen recording this episode together . Kathleen: Yeah, I'm excited to have you here because your agency has come up twice on this podcast before. As my loyal listeners know, I always ask my guests who is doing inbound marketing really well, company or individual, and two times now I've had one of my guests say Animalz. I think most recently it was Barron Caster at rev.com. So whenever I hear that sort of pattern happen, I think I need to talk to that person. Jimmy: That's awesome. That makes my day. Kathleen: Yeah, so I'm glad you're here. And for the listeners, can you just talk a little bit about who you are, your background, as well as what Animalz does? About Jimmy Daly and Animalz Jimmy: Yeah, absolutely. So I'm a longtime B2B content marketer. I've been working in some capacity in content marketing for almost 10 years. I started as a writer, evolved to kind of managing freelancers and other writers, and now as a marketing director at Animalz, I'm responsible for new business. So I'm in charge of marketing the company and then also doing our sales, which has been a very interesting evolution, as I think we'll probably get into a little bit. Jimmy: Animalz is a content marketing agency. Primarily, we work with B2B SaaS companies. We've been around for about four years. We're a distributed team, a fantastic team too, we have some really great people. We work with awesome customers. I feel we've built a model that allows us to hire great people, pay them good salaries, that allows us to create really, really high quality work, which helps us attract fantastic clients. So it's a great system and a really fun place to work. Kathleen: That's great, and obviously, it's contributing to you guys producing great work, because the word on the street is that you're a good agency to work with. Aligning Sales and Marketing Kathleen: One of the things I was fascinated by when you and I first connected is how you talked about, I asked you what was really moving the needle and you talked about some of the ways that you're kind of aligning sales and marketing. Because you kind of are like a one-man sales and marketing team, correct? Jimmy: That is correct, yes. Kathleen: Yeah, and it's funny we talked about- Jimmy: To caveat by saying... Sorry, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you. It feels unfair to take too much credit for all the amazing business that we get because so much of it is driven by word of mouth. I feel fortunate that in my first role doing sales that we have very low volume requirements, right? We're not like a SaaS company that needs hundreds or thousands of new customers a month. We only need two or three or four for a really fantastic month. Kathleen: Yeah, but it's interesting to me because I think there's a lot of conversations that happen amongst people that work at really large companies about what is the best way to achieve sales and marketing alignment. I think that sometimes the fact that there are just a lot of people involved kind of serves as a barrier to seeing what could be a much simpler and more elegant solution. I liked when you talked about how you address this issue that you could be a larger team doing what you're doing, you just happen to be one guy. It shows how when you're one person and you have to do it all, how you align with yourself. So I want to talk about that a little bit. Jimmy: Yeah, definitely. Well, certainly, it's easier with just one person, right? I'm a writer at heart and so I'm constantly looking for ideas to spark what will be the next blog post for the Animalz blog. Luckily, I get so much of that through our sales process, right? So I spend a lot of time on the phone, meeting potential customers, trying to close deals, onboarding new customers, and that provides me with a lot of fodder for blog posts. Jimmy: We have a very, very lean process where basically I am just constantly observing the things that I'm hearing in those sales calls, and then documenting them on the blog in one form or another. So if I hear two or three different people on a sales call mention a similar thing, then that gets jotted down. That goes in the editorial calendar. There's probably two dozen of those in the editorial calendar right now that have not even been written yet. Actually, one thing I've learned very related to this is that most B2B SaaS companies have very, very similar problems. Because we're so specialized in that niche, it allows us to by speaking to one company, we can speak to almost all of them. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a great point, and it really hits home, because one of the owners of IMPACT is a man named Marcus Sheridan, who has literally written a book called, They Ask You Answer. He wasn't a marketer by trade, he was a pool guy. He had a pool company, and he just started listening to the questions he was getting from customers because he was out on sales calls all the time, and then answering them. The answers that he wrote in the form of blog posts generated a tremendous amount of traffic, leads, and then eventually sales for the company. Now of course he's a marketing speaker and an author. But what I love about that approach and what I so appreciate is it's so elegant in its simplicity. I often say, at least in the case of Marcus, it took a non-marketer to figure out that that was a thing. Jimmy: Yeah, that's so interesting. Kathleen: It's common sense, right? It's solving for the people. If one person has a question, odds are there's like hundreds, if not thousands of them, out there with the same question. They just haven't happened to reach out to you directly to ask it yet. Jimmy: Absolutely. Now that I've had this experience of experiencing the full circle of someone finding a blog post, reaching out, talking through problems, realizing there's another blog post to be written that sparked someone else to reach out, et cetera, et cetera, I, thinking back on previous jobs, realized that I hadn't spent hardly any time talking to customers. I was just so focused on optimizing a piece of content for search or doing keyword research or trying to build links to a piece of content that I overlooked this very, very obvious fact that you have to actually talk to the people that you're trying to reach so that you can have a very nuanced understanding of their problems. Do You Really Need Buyer Personas? Kathleen: Yeah, and it's funny that you say this because I also have had long conversations with Marcus about the concept of buyer personas, because he actually says you don't need buyer personas in marketing, which is somewhat controversial because I feel like go to any marketing conference, read any marketing book, talk to any marketing expert, and then I'll be like start with buyer personas, right? Jimmy: Right, right. Kathleen: His point is, it's kind of related to what you're saying, which is that instead of spending a month doing all this research and interviews and this and that, and then creating this like fictional profile, if you spend that same month and just sit down and catalog 50 questions and write 50 answers out in the form of blogs, you'll be so much further ahead than you would have been had you done a month's worth of audience persona research, which I think is true. Jimmy: Fascinating. Kathleen: That's sort of what you're saying. Like, no staged interview can substitute for an actual live sales conversation. Jimmy: No, it's so true, and I would agree with Marcus that I'm personally not a huge believer in buyer personas. I'm sure in some cases they're executed in a way that's really useful. Typically, the way that we see them executed is like, Software Sally is a mid-career manager and she has this problem. It's so fictional that it's hard to take this fake demographic and turn it into a marketing campaign. Jimmy: We actually think about that in a very different way, which is so like when I'm writing a post for the Animalz blog, I'm thinking of the reader on a spectrum from tactical to strategic. If we're writing to a tactical audience, that person needs instructions on how to do something. If we're writing to a strategic audience, they need a framework for how to make a big decision. And a lot of little steps is actually not very helpful. They need more of an overarching principle. There's kind of a mix of those different things, but I found that to be a much more effective way to think through, okay, we have this topic, there's this tactical way we could go about it, but if we want to reach this more decision maker level person, we have to kind of take a step back and try to understand the higher level problem and address it from that angle instead. Kathleen: No, I always say we get caught up in this term buyer persona, and as you say, people tend to create these somewhat useless but entertaining profiles of people who don't exist. What we really need is buyer persona, it's good audience research, which essentially is what you're doing when you have these conversations with people and catalog what they're saying. Jimmy's Process For Capturing Content Ideas Kathleen: So let's talk through an actual example. You're having these sales calls, you're getting these questions. Walk me through your process. Is it simply you just make a note and you say, "Oh, I better go write a blog on this?" Or do you have a structured process around it? Jimmy: I wish I could say I had a very structured process. I don't though. I think over years of doing content marketing, I'm tuned in, right? I'm observing very carefully what people are saying, how they're saying it. Are they frustrated? Are they excited? I sort of pull those threads as I uncover that we're onto something. Jimmy: A very good example of this happened, I don't know, probably almost a year ago now, where I got on three sales calls in a week and three different people told me they had this exact same problem, which was that their organic traffic was actually declining over the last three months or so. I thought that was very interesting, and in each case it had prompted them to do some research about why their traffic was declining, reach out to some friends to try to help them figure out what was going on, and then that prompted them to reach out to an agency to potentially help them. Jimmy: To me, that was like the most obvious example because it happened in such a short period of time. But we wrote a blog post about that, about why organic traffic declines and things you might do to reverse that trend. That post has been hugely successful for us. It turns out a lot of people have that problem. Just through our very, very lean process, we made sure that it was documented, published, distributed, and I could attribute probably three to four more deals that were closed, at least in part, as a result of that exact article, and those deals are good for, $50,000 to $75,000 a year each. Kathleen: Wow. Jimmy: So, it's a easy, simple process with a big payoff. Kathleen: I love hearing that kind of data because you always have people who say, "I don't have time to blog," but I don't know anybody who's billable rate is as high as $50,000 an hour, or let's say it took you four hours, $10,000 an hour. Even some of the best attorneys I know don't charge that much. So, there's a good case there for spending the time. Jimmy: Absolutely. Animalz Content Promotion Strategy Kathleen: Now you've mentioned you write it, you edit it, you optimize it, and then you distribute it. Can you just talk through a little bit, I mean, is this a case of you write these blogs, you put them on your site, and it's, if you build it, they will come? Or is your content distribution or promotion strategy somewhat responsible for the results you're getting? Jimmy: That's a good question. So a few things happen. I should again caveat this by saying, as an agency, we have very low volume requirements. Our blog frankly doesn't get all that much traffic, doesn't need a ton of traffic in order to really help the business. Two to three new deals in a month is a fantastic month. So I actually don't go crazy distributing content. Jimmy: We have an email list with a few thousand people on it. They get everything. I have a personal email newsletter with about 5,000 people on it. I include our stuff in that. We have a really strong network of customers that we will sometimes ask to help us amplify content. Then other than that, I'm a fan of tweet storms. Whenever I publish something new, tweet storms have been a really useful way for us to get stuff out. Then I ask our team to help re-tweeting or sharing stuff. So again, it's simple. The reach is not enormous, by any means, but it's big enough that it works. Kathleen: That's great. Have you done this with clients or have you advised clients on doing this and have they seen similar results? Jimmy: Hmm, that's a great question. In a few cases, yes. In some cases, it just doesn't quite work. So like for example, many of our customers are B2B SaaS. Their primary objective is growing organic search traffic. So we're doing the things you would probably expect. We do a lot of keyword research, we write really long informative posts, we optimize them for search, et cetera, et cetera. That provides a certain amount of leverage in their distribution, because over time they can get a lot more traffic out of organic search than we'll ever be able to get for them doing one-off promotional things. Jimmy: For some of our other customers though, there's this bucket of customers that we work with, and we produce thought leadership content for them. That type of content also works very well using the same very simple mechanisms that we use for our own content, because it's more about making an impact, sharing an idea, and less about the more traditional content distribution where it's about basically page views. Kathleen: Now can you define what you mean by thought leadership content? Because I know people use that term in different ways. Jimmy: It's funny you ask that. I have a half-written blog posts about this exact topic, because you're right, people do think of it in very different ways. The way that it typically manifested Animalz, a thought leadership content strategy is built around sort of this idea that we internally call movement first, where the emphasis is really on sharing strong original ideas and that is like the core of the strategy for that type of content. It often looks more like an essay than it does regular content marketing. It often lives on Medium or a different part of the site than the rest of your blog content. Those things don't all have to be true. Jimmy: We do have a couple of cases with customers where we're doing SEO-driven content with thought leadership characteristics. Simply meaning that we've started with a keyword, but then we've taken a very different approach to the style and the tone of that article. I guess ultimately it means different things. To me the thing that it really means is this piece of content is born from a great idea and it is hopefully encapsulated in that article in a very concise way. Kathleen: That's interesting, and I love that you mentioned not all of this content lives on your site. You mentioned Medium, which I'm always curious about Medium. I think it has so much potential, but you can also, if you don't do it right, spend a lot of time with no results. Jimmy: No, totally. I'm actually personally not a huge fan for the problem that you just stated. We have encouraged a couple customers recently to launch personal blogs that are affiliated with the company that they work for, which is a strategy that I'm liking so far. Obviously, there are institutional hurdles to jump over when you do that kind of thing. Kathleen: Right. Jimmy: But owning the platform provides a bunch of advantages that tend to make it worth it. How To Approach Bottom of the Funnel Content Kathleen: Yeah. Going back to this notion of sales and marketing alignment, at a very, very simplistic level, what you're talking about is being very mindful of the questions you're getting in the sales process, and then answering those questions in your articles. I feel like this has the potential to be incredibly powerful, but it also has the potential to be insanely misused by content creators who venture into the territory of being overly self-promotional. In other words, using a sales question as an excuse to write a blog that is all about the company and their products as opposed to bigger picture questions that a prospect has. Can you talk me through, like do you have any personal guardrails around how you handle that type of content, what topics you'll cover, what you won't, and how often you venture into that very, very bottom of the funnel kind of topic area? Jimmy: Wow, that's a really interesting question. I don't know that I have come across a situation yet where the only answer to the question is you should hire Animalz. I mean, certainly I drop mentions in there occasionally, but just as a company we think about this so differently. Jimmy: I'll give you an example. You know our core business is content marketing services. Through this process of closely observing the problems that come up on sales calls and then also the problems that come up with customers, because there's plenty of those too, we're in the very early stages of building out some software solutions to address those problems. I anticipate that in the future, this problem that you bring up will become more top of mind because we're going to have more things to promote, right? There's just so few companies that are interested, willing, and ready to hire an expensive content marketing agency, that hopefully there will be many, many more that would be interested in paying $10 or $50 or $100 a month to use a piece of software that would solve some of these same things. So yeah, that's interesting. I imagine that's something that we'll have to be asking ourselves more closely over the next six to nine months. Kathleen: Yeah, I think a good example is a question that everybody gets at some point in a sales process is how much does it cost, right? That's a very different question than what do I do if my organic traffic is declining? How much does it cost in the wrong hands could be answered in the form of an article. That's basically like a substitute for your pricing page. In the right hands, it's an opening point for discussion around the factors that impact cost. Jimmy: Got it, okay. I think I better understand your question now, so that's a great point. In general, I would like for us to be as transparent as absolutely possible. Interestingly, we find that many of our customers do not have strong Google Analytic skills. So as I write the post about how to diagnose problems with the organic traffic, I just explain exactly the steps I would take in Google Analytics to start doing the research. We're happy to tell you exactly what those steps would be. Then the hope is, and often the reality as well, is that that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's one of so many possible things going on that they ultimately possibly could need help with. It sounds Cliche, but we established that little bit of trust early on, so hopefully they'll think of us when the time actually does come. Kathleen: Yeah, it sounds like your focus is much more on educational topics than it is on, I would call them sort of sales topics, but it's really that bottom of the funnel, those types of questions, which I like. So you're answering questions that are educating the audience and making them smarter, not so much answering questions that help them choose to pull the trigger and purchase from you. Jimmy: That is correct, yes. Kathleen: Yeah, there's an important distinction there. Jimmy: Definitely. The Results Kathleen: Can you tell me a little bit about, do you have any sort of data around like the traction? Do these posts tend to get, percentage-wise, more traffic than some of your other articles? You mentioned that some of them have led to deals. What have the results been from using this approach? Jimmy: That's an interesting question. I can tell you, as I mentioned, none of the posts on our blog are what I call whales. None of them are just like outliers getting tons and tons of traffic. For the most part, they all are, I don't know, they probably 3,000 to 5,000 visits in their first two or three months of publication, which is just okay, but it's not- Kathleen: Which is great, if that's the right 3,000 to 5,000 people, that's all that matters. Jimmy: Totally, yes. Kathleen: You could have 300 to 500 people, and if they were the 300 to 500 people that are looking for an agency, then that's all you would need. Jimmy: Yes, totally. The reason I'm having a little trouble giving you a really specific quantitative answer on how effective they are is because something I've noticed in our sales process is that almost no one reaches out as the result of one interaction or mention of Animalz. It's always two. So they might say, "I heard about you guys at a conference, or a friend mentioned they liked a blog post by you guys, or I'm in this Slack group and someone shared an article that you guys had written." Then sometime later on, they were on Twitter or they were searching for something, and they came across a second piece. It seems to be the power of those two things together that prompts people to reach out, but it's very difficult to track what what those two things are, because usually one of them, or in many cases, one of those things has happened offline and we're not going to be able to get data on it. Kathleen: It's funny that you mentioned that because as I mentioned at the beginning, I reached out to you after hearing your name twice. Jimmy: Yes. Kathleen: I think I'm proof in the pudding. Jimmy: Totally, yes. I think this is probably a little different than the way that most SaaS companies operate. So agencies are able to grow by word of mouth in a way that SaaS companies simply are not. I know I keep throwing out caveats, but we are writing about SaaS content marketing all the time, but we are not a SaaS company. Therefore a lot of it is like do as we say, not necessarily as we do. Kathleen: Interesting. Well, I love that. I love the process. Any other guidelines for somebody listening around how to write those articles or how to make them especially useful? Jimmy: Get feedback on them from people that don't work at the same company that you do. So that's something that I do. I don't do it as often now, but I did it quite a bit when we were initially getting the Animalz blog rolling. I just reached out to friends in the content marketing world and asked them to review drafts of our posts, and I got a lot of really good feedback on that. Kathleen: I love that. That is so simple. It's so simple and something that so few people do. Jimmy: Yes, totally. You can just get better feedback if you don't talk to the person you're asking to review it on a daily basis. I'm part of a couple of Slack groups full of content marketers, a Facebook group full of content marketers. Those have been really amazing resources for getting good feedback on work. I discover things in those feedback sessions that I can't imagine I ever would have figured out any other way. Kathleen: Oh, can you share any of those Slack or Facebook groups, the names of them? Jimmy: Yeah, so there are a couple. So there's a Facebook group I'm in that I believe is just called Content Marketers with an exclamation point. Very good group. I started a Slack group of my own called Content Marketing Career Growth. There is another one I'm in. It is called Content in UX, which is also very good. It's a huge one. There's a ton of people in there, a really, really good community. I'm sure there are others. If you'd like, I can send you links. Kathleen: Yes, please do, and I will include them in the show notes. That would be great. Jimmy: Cool. Kathleen: Yeah, I found similarly some of those groups to be incredibly helpful. I mean, we have our own group which has IMPACT Elite, that's a Facebook group, and then I am a member of Online Geniuses, which is huge. It's all different marketing disciplines. Then I think I might be a member of Content in UX. Sometimes there's so many groups I lose track. Jimmy: Yes, it is easy to lose track. Kathleen: But that's a great tip, to just go outside. If you were talking to a company that had a larger sales and marketing team, any thoughts or advice or insights for bigger company teams on how to operationalize a process like this? Jimmy: Yes, so the first thing, in a perfect world, this would be easy to do, I would have content marketers get on sales calls and I would have sales people write blog posts. Not as a way to test them, but just to have them operate in the other person's world every now and then. I feel like it's trendy, especially for SaaS companies to say every one of the company does customer support twice a year or something like that. I think that if you are going to be doing marketing to support a sales team or you're doing sales that is hopefully the result of high quality marketing, you have to be in the other person's shoes at least every now and then. I would definitely recommend that. Jimmy: Also, there was a thing, I spent a year working at QuickBooks doing content marketing for them, and they had a program set up where once a week they would have a real live QuickBooks customer in the office. They were there for the day and people from around the company could book time with them and ask them questions. So you knew that every Thursday from 9:00 to 4:00 a customer would be there and you could schedule time with them and you could ask them whatever questions you want about how they found QuickBooks, what did they find useful, what do they not, et cetera, et cetera. Jimmy: I think for companies of a certain size, assuming you have enough customers to support a program like that, it's a great idea because we would find that in our weekly content meetings, our team would get together and questions would come up that we just didn't have answers to. Then somebody would say, "Oh, well, why don't we just ask the customer on Thursday?" So we'd book time and we would do that. Kathleen: That is so nice to be able to do that. Jimmy: Yeah, it was fantastic. Maybe it's once a quarter, maybe it's twice a year for smaller companies, but formalizing the process is important. Kathleen: I love that. I wish that I could have a customer in the office every week, but alas, we are not in that position at this point. But no, that is a great point about switching roles and sitting in the other seat, because I do think sometimes there's this very natural tension that builds up between sales and marketing, I think you and I talked about this, I used to be on our sales team. Now I'm on our marketing team and I have much more empathy for our salespeople than I think I would have otherwise. Jimmy: Yes. Kathleen's Two Questions Kathleen: Yeah, it helps a lot. Well, shifting gears, I'm curious to hear now that I told you several people have mentioned Animalz name when I've asked this question, I'm curious to know who you're going to talk about. So company or individual, who do you think is doing inbound marketing really well right now? Jimmy: Such a good question. So there's a few that come to mind. Am I allowed to offer more than one? Kathleen: Yeah, go for it. Jimmy: I tend to find that companies that do inbound marketing really well build steam and build a strong reputation over time. So I'm a big fan of not just people who are kind of off my radar today, but who have been there for a couple of years and a few that stand out. One company that I think has just done an incredible job over the past five or six years is Wistia. One, because their branding has evolved from, well, it's still friendly and kind of playful, but it's so refined now. It's tangible. The good vibes are tangible when you visit their site. They write really high quality stuff. Their videos are excellent. I mean, I'm not really a video person, but I find myself on their site all the time because I'm just curious what their marketing team is up to, because there's always something new and a little different going on. So that's one that I would call out. Kathleen: That's a good one. Jimmy: You mentioned Barron Caster from Rev at the beginning of this podcast, and it's funny, I was actually just on a call with him this morning. As I've been exposed to what he and the team over there are doing, I am increasingly impressed. One thing that I like about what they do is that their product marketing is straightforward, obvious, but not overly promotional at all. Jimmy: A good example is they have their product marketing team, and they've tied this into their content strategy as well, their product marketing team has come up with solutions for all the possible entry points to a transcription service, and I find that they've just done it in such a perfect little way. So for example, they built iPhone apps for phone call recording, right? That creates this very easy transcription workflow for journalists or anyone who has to do research or interviews for their job. They did the same thing with a voice recording app. They have a Zoom integration. They've just figured out all the little ways that people might work transcription into their day-to-day, and they've addressed that. Jimmy: I find that type of subtle, very useful product marketing to be inspiring, right? Because they're not hammering you with ads and obnoxious copy. They're just kind of offering you a dozen different ways to build their really, really good product into the work you're already doing. So I love that. Kathleen: Yeah, I would agree. They do a nice job of really tightly aligning marketing and product. Jimmy: Yes, yes, definitely. Kathleen: Well, a second question, digital marketing is changing so quickly, and the number one gripe I hear from marketers is that they have a really hard time keeping up with everything. So how do you personally keep up and stay up to date and educate yourself? Jimmy: I do most of that offline, to be honest. There's a couple of blogs that I keep track of, like Tomasz Tunguz blog I really like, especially now that I work in sales. He talks about sales quite a bit. He also talks about just the SaaS industry, which I find to be increasingly useful information as I spend less time on the ground doing the marketing and more time talking to customers. So that's one. Jimmy: I'm a very loyal reader of Ben Thompson's Stratechery blog. Similar thing, like his really deep dives on business strategy I find to be useful. I feel like that has provided me with a lot of context for conversations that I have with customers. Jimmy: But like I said, I try to do quite a bit offline too. So one really fantastic resource that I read recently was Jim Collins, Good to Great. Kathleen: Yeah, that's a great book. It's such a classic. Jimmy: It's so good. You know, the examples that he uses in there are just timeless. They've stood up so well. Kathleen: Absolutely. Jimmy: So that's one. I have a book on my desk that I keep keep with me all the time, called On Writing Well by William Zinsser, which helps me with the day-to-day writing of blog posts and emails, but also sales proposals now. Whenever I find myself getting stuck on something, I'll open up that book and the answer is always in there. Kathleen: And it's called Unwriting. Jimmy: It's called On Writing Well. Kathleen: Oh, On Writing, got it. Jimmy: Yes. William Zinsser is the author. Kathleen: Great. Oh, lots of new good ones here. I always like when I hear new ones, because this is how I stay up to date is I just ask other people and then follow their lead in my podcast. Jimmy: That's a great idea. How To Connect With Jimmy Kathleen: Well, Jimmy, if somebody wants to learn more about Animalz or wants to reach out and connect with you online, what's the best way for them to do that? Jimmy: Yeah, animalz.co, we have a kind of outdated, not very fancy website, but hopefully the content there is helpful to you. We also have a podcast and you can find all that stuff on there. Kathleen: Animalz with a z, important to know. Jimmy: Yes, Animalz with a z, and then if you'd like to reach out, please do. Probably the best way to do that is Twitter. I spend a lot of time on Twitter, probably too much, but it's just Jimmy_Daly. Yeah, if you ever want to chat content strategy, hit me up. I love chatting about it. Kathleen: Great, well, thank you so much. And if you're listening and you liked what you heard, you learned something new, I would love it if you would give the podcast a five star review on Apple Podcasts. If you know somebody else doing kick-ass inbound marketing work, tweet me at WorkMommyWork, because I would love to interview them. That's it for this week. Thank you so much, Jimmy. Jimmy: Thank you, Kathleen. That was fun.

E24 is a gold mine of information on what goes into building a scalable, successful SaaS company. Tune in as we chat with Tomasz Tunguz — legendary VC and SaaS expert!

E24 is a gold mine of information on what goes into building a scalable, successful SaaS company. Tune in as we chat with Tomasz Tunguz — legendary VC and SaaS expert!

Hoy en SaaS Product Chat ponemos el foco tanto en las ventajas como en los inconvenientes de crear un proyecto SaaS. También resaltamos la oportunidad de negocio que representa SaaS y las problemáticas reales que encuentra en fidelidad de usuarios y modelo de negocio. Recomendaciones: Jose Carlos Moreno explica en qué consiste el Cloud Computing, y en concreto el Saas https://youtu.be/pa_g2tJSrx4 Todos los posts relacionados con SaaS en el blog del inversionista de Redpoint, Tomasz Tunguz: http://tomtunguz.com/categories/saas/ Canal de SaaStr en YouTube: https://bit.ly/2NFanH3

In episode #676, Eric and Neil Discuss the two schools of thought on content marketing. Tune in to hear how your conversions rates can be affected. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES [00:27] Today's Topic: Content Marketing Doesn't Work The Way You Think [00:37] There are two schools of thought on content marketing: The first is: Write a lot of content and you will get rankings, traffic, and generate a ton of sales. [01:02] Someone will not convert the same way if they visit your home page vs. your blog post, because the intent is to read, not to buy. [01:20] You just have to keep in mind how conversions work. [01:38] The second school of thought is that quality wins over quantity every time. [01:50] Backlinko writes infrequent, high-quality content. [02:07] HubSpot posts the most content, but their quality isn't as good. [02:44] However, they still do extremely well in rankings, conversions, etc. [03:08] Backlinko is worth less than HubSpot. [03:40] Guest contributors can bring in new audience members and get you more conversions. [04:01] It's all about finding high-ranking keywords and flooding the marketplace, which is what HubSpot does well. [04:20] It's all about creating a framework/system for posts and guest posts. [04:35] Read the post from Tomasz Tunguz of Red Point Ventures about how content marketing compounds. [04:48] You will have hits and misses, but the more you post, the more likely you are to be successful. [05:00] Content marketing will boost your site authority. [05:20] That's it for today! [05:26] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

In episode #676, Eric and Neil Discuss the two schools of thought on content marketing. Tune in to hear how your conversions rates can be affected. TIME-STAMPED SHOW NOTES [00:27] Today’s Topic: Content Marketing Doesn't Work The Way You Think [00:37] There are two schools of thought on content marketing: The first is: Write a lot of content and you will get rankings, traffic, and generate a ton of sales. [01:02] Someone will not convert the same way if they visit your home page vs. your blog post, because the intent is to read, not to buy. [01:20] You just have to keep in mind how conversions work. [01:38] The second school of thought is that quality wins over quantity every time. [01:50] Backlinko writes infrequent, high-quality content. [02:07] HubSpot posts the most content, but their quality isn’t as good. [02:44] However, they still do extremely well in rankings, conversions, etc. [03:08] Backlinko is worth less than HubSpot. [03:40] Guest contributors can bring in new audience members and get you more conversions. [04:01] It’s all about finding high-ranking keywords and flooding the marketplace, which is what HubSpot does well. [04:20] It’s all about creating a framework/system for posts and guest posts. [04:35] Read the post from Tomasz Tunguz of Red Point Ventures about how content marketing compounds. [04:48] You will have hits and misses, but the more you post, the more likely you are to be successful. [05:00] Content marketing will boost your site authority. [05:20] That’s it for today! [05:26] Go to Singlegrain.com/Giveway for a special marketing tool giveaway! Leave some feedback: What should we talk about next? Please let us know in the comments below. Did you enjoy this episode? If so, please leave a short review. Connect with us: NeilPatel.com Quick Sprout Growth Everywhere Single Grain Twitter @neilpatel Twitter @ericosiu

Part 2 is here! Listen to the second half of the conversation around "Winning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future" by Tomasz Tunguz and Frank Bien. In Part 1 you heard our perspectives on how to run A/B tests, how this differs from a large org to a small one, what data to focus on when you're starting out, and much more. Now in Part 2 we talk about how to use data proactively, what to do if you don't have data to work with, how data can hurt you as much as it can help, how to set your org up for success with data and so much more. 

Large technology companies have no shortage of data. But raw data itself does not provide a competitive advantage. Many companies are bottlenecked by a shortage of data scientists who can query that data effectively. This results in an organizational dysfunction where people lining up to ask questions of the data science team are unable to The post Winning With Data with Tomasz Tunguz appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Large technology companies have no shortage of data. But raw data itself does not provide a competitive advantage. Many companies are bottlenecked by a shortage of data scientists who can query that data effectively. This results in an organizational dysfunction where people lining up to ask questions of the data science team are unable to The post Winning With Data with Tomasz Tunguz appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.

Ken Cowan has made his way from a consultant, to CEO of an automotive services company to an investor. Currently, Ken is an associate at OpenView Venture Partners, a venture capital firm that focuses on expansion-stage software companies. Ken quit his first job at age 13, caddying at a local golf course, because he found it too boring and quickly found a new job working at a startup organizing and running tests on laptops. Since graduating from BC, Ken has mostly been involved with startups in some form and joined OpenView in 2016.   In this episode, Ken talks about:   The issues expansion stage software companies run into   The pros and cons of being solely focused on software companies   The mistakes first-time founders make in the fundraising process   The metrics OpenView looks for when screening companies   The difference between features and products   What makes a great founder   Links from today’s episode:   Datadog   VTS   NetSuite   Salesforce   Expensify   How Google thinks about hiring, management, and culture   Tomasz Tunguz   Fred Wilson’s Blog   The Hard Thing About Hard Things   If you liked this episode:   Follow the podcast on Twitter   Subscribe on iTunes or your podcast app and write a review   Get in touch with feedback, ideas, or to say hi: nic {AT} startupbostonpodcast [DOT] com   Music by: Broke For Free

Comentamos sobre alguns dos 7 métodos de previsão de vendas para sua empresa neste episódio do Casts for Closers. Baixe e confira! Post que comentamos: https://meetime.com.br/blog/previsao-de-vendas/ Livro do Tomasz Tunguz: http://tomtunguz.com/winning-with-data/

Intercom co-founder and chief strategy officer Des Traynor chats with venture capitalist Tomasz Tunguz about what he looks for in a potential SaaS investment, the recent startup funding squeeze, and more.

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.

Tomasz Tunguz from Redpoint Ventures joins us to discuss what models are working for structuring Customer Success organizations, for achieving negative net churn, and even for interpreting the Customer Success hints buried inside financial filings.

Tomasz Tunguz is a partner at Redpoint Ventures and former Product Manager at Google. Tomasz is best known for his data-driven blog posts about the key questions facing startups including how to fundraise, startup benchmarks, management best practices and team building. Almost all of his writing and thought leadership is centered around one main theme: “What can you do to grow faster?”