Podcasts about Webvan

Sponsored By AdCirrus ERP, your trusted partner for cloud ERP solutions. Learn more at adcirruserp.com.Meet Vivek JoshiVivek is the founder and CEO of Entytle, a provider of Installed Base Intelligence solutions to Original Equipment Manufacturers. He has extensive leadership experience in various industries, spanning diversified industrial manufacturing, healthcare, high technology and private equity. He previously was founder and CEO of LumaSense Technologies Inc., an Operating Partner at Shah Capital Partners, and Senior Vice President of Marketing for Sun Services, a $3.6 billion division of Sun Microsystems. He also served at Webvan as Vice-President of Program Operation; at GE Transportation as General Manager, Off Highway/Transit Systems; at GE Corporate as Manager of Corporate Initiatives; at Booz Allen & Hamilton as a Management Consultant; and at Johnson & Johnson in an operations role. Vivek has an M.S. in Chemical Engineering and an M.B.A. from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville and a B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from IIT, Mumbai.Connect with Vivek!Entytlevivek.joshi@entytle.com LinkedInAftermarket Champions PodcastLinksKirin Holdings will begin online sales of "Electric Salt Spoon", a spoon that uses electricity to enhance salty and umami tasteHighlights00:00 Fun Team Question: What's Your Career Theme Song?01:55 Introducing Our Guest: Vivek Joshi04:58 Vivek's Journey in Manufacturing08:50 The Impact of Key Mentors11:10 Why Entrepreneurship?13:03 The Importance of Aftermarket Services16:28 I Just Learned That: Fascinating Insights21:31 Addressing the Labor Crisis in Manufacturing24:49 Conclusion and Contact InformationConnect with the Broads!Connect with Lori on LinkedIn and visit www.keystoneclick.com for your strategic digital marketing needs! Connect with Kris on LinkedIn and visit www.genalpha.com for OEM and aftermarket digital solutions!Connect with Erin on LinkedIn!

Spacex är nu en större källa till Elon Musks förmögenhet än Tesla. Genom Starlink ger bolaget internetuppkoppling världen över – men kontroverserna har hopat sig, inte minst kring Ukraina. Henning Eklund går igenom alternativen när allt fler vill lämna Starlink. Det är 25 år sedan dotcom-bubblan sprack och Björn Jeffery bjuder på en historisk exposé från Webvan till Boo.com. Vad var det egentligen som hände – och håller det på att hända igen? Dessutom kan vi inte undgå att dyka ner i veckans mest uppseendeväckande gruppchatt. En exklusiv svensk översättning av The Atlantic-artikeln om gruppchatten "Houthi PC small group" finns att läsa här (kräver SvD-prenumeration): https://www.svd.se/a/qPMy1m/pete-hegseth-i-topphemliga-chatten-vi-borde-kora SvD Tech brief är en podd från Svenska Dagbladet. Feedback: techbrief@svd.se Signa upp dig för nyhetsbrevet: https://www.svd.se/story/tech-brief-nyhetsbrev

Former TechStuff co-host Lauren Vogelbaum comes back to TechStuff to talk about the chaotic, absurd, and sometimes infuriating world of food delivery apps. Are they good for restaurants? (No). Are they good for drivers? (Nope). Are they good for the companies themselves? (Not really).See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

We're back for another interaction with the industry experts recorded from the NMFTA Cybersecurity Conference!  In this episode, we've got two amazing guests, Steve Hankel and Ben Gardiner!  Steve and Ben shared critical cybersecurity threats affecting businesses of all sizes, proactive prevention measures against cyber attacks, and the NMFTA's stand on ensuring the effective implementation of practices protecting transportation professionals!   About Steve Hankel Steve Hankel is the Vice President of Information Technology at JTS (Johanson Transportation Service). He joined JTS in 2010 and during his tenure, he developed a SaaS TMS (Transportation Management System), moved the company's infrastructure to the Cloud, built up their software engineering program, and rolled out their Disaster Recovery and Cyber Security initiatives. Prior to joining JTS, Steve made a name for himself as Director of IT Operations at Webvan, managing the support of cutting-edge technology during the .com boom. He then worked as Tools Team Lead at Wamu, developing a state-of-the-art BC (Business Continuity) and DR (Disaster Recovery) web application. Later he became Co-Founder and Principle at Continuity Source, a company developing BC/DR SaaS Solutions.   About Ben Gardiner Ben is a Senior Cybersecurity Research Engineer contractor at the National Motor Freight Traffic Association, Inc. (NMFTA)™ specializing in hardware and low-level software security. With more than ten years of professional experience in embedded systems design and a lifetime of hacking experience, Ben has a deep knowledge of the low-level functions of operating systems and the hardware with which they interface. He has held security assurance and reversing roles at a global corporation, as well as worked in embedded software and systems engineering roles at several organizations. Ben has conducted workshops and presentations at numerous cybersecurity events globally, including the CyberTruck Challenge, GENIVI security sessions, Hack in Paris, and HackFest. In 2022, he was honored with invitations to speak at escar USA and serve as a main stage speaker at DEF CON. In addition to speaking on the main stage at DEF CON, Ben is a volunteer at the DEF CON Hardware Hacking Village (DC HHV) and Car Hacking Village (CHV). He is GIAC GPEN certified and a GIAC advisory board member, serves as the chair of the SAE TEVEES18A1 Cybersecurity Assurance Testing TF (drafting J3322), a contributor to several American Trucking Associations (ATA) Technology & Maintenance Council (TMC) task forces, ISO WG11 committees, and a voting member of the SAE Vehicle Electronic Systems Security Committee. Ben holds a M.Sc. Eng. in Applied Math & Stats from Queen's University.  

CEOs of publicly traded companies are often in the news talking about their new AI initiatives, but few of them have built anything with it. Drew Houston from Dropbox is different; he has spent over 400 hours coding with LLMs in the last year and is now refocusing his 2,500+ employees around this new way of working, 17 years after founding the company.Timestamps00:00 Introductions00:43 Drew's AI journey04:14 Revalidating expectations of AI08:23 Simulation in self-driving vs. knowledge work12:14 Drew's AI Engineering setup15:24 RAG vs. long context in AI models18:06 From "FileGPT" to Dropbox AI23:20 Is storage solved?26:30 Products vs Features30:48 Building trust for data access33:42 Dropbox Dash and universal search38:05 The evolution of Dropbox42:39 Building a "silicon brain" for knowledge work48:45 Open source AI and its impact51:30 "Rent, Don't Buy" for AI54:50 Staying relevant58:57 Founder Mode01:03:10 Advice for founders navigating AI01:07:36 Building and managing teams in a growing companyTranscriptAlessio [00:00:00]: Hey everyone, welcome to the Latent Space podcast. This is Alessio, partner and CTO at Decibel Partners, and there's no Swyx today, but I'm joined by Drew Houston of Dropbox. Welcome, Drew.Drew [00:00:14]: Thanks for having me.Alessio [00:00:15]: So we're not going to talk about the Dropbox story. We're not going to talk about the Chinatown bus and the flash drive and all that. I think you've talked enough about it. Where I want to start is you as an AI engineer. So as you know, most of our audience is engineering folks, kind of like technology leaders. You obviously run Dropbox, which is a huge company, but you also do a lot of coding. I think that's how you spend almost 400 hours, just like coding. So let's start there. What was the first interaction you had with an LLM API and when did the journey start for you?Drew [00:00:43]: Yeah. Well, I think probably all AI engineers or whatever you call an AI engineer, those people started out as engineers before that. So engineering is my first love. I mean, I grew up as a little kid. I was that kid. My first line of code was at five years old. I just really loved, I wanted to make computer games, like this whole path. That also led me into startups and eventually starting Dropbox. And then with AI specifically, I studied computer science, I got my, I did my undergrad, but I didn't do like grad level computer science. I didn't, I sort of got distracted by all the startup things, so I didn't do grad level work. But about several years ago, I made a couple of things. So one is I sort of, I knew I wanted to go from being an engineer to a founder. And then, but sort of the becoming a CEO part was sort of backed into the job. And so a couple of realizations. One is that, I mean, there's a lot of like repetitive and like manual work you have to do as an executive that is actually lends itself pretty well to automation, both for like my own convenience. And then out of interest in learning, I guess what we call like classical machine learning these days, I started really trying to wrap my head around understanding machine learning and informational retrieval more, more formally. So I'd say maybe 2016, 2017 started me writing these more successively, more elaborate scripts to like understand basic like classifiers and regression and, and again, like basic information retrieval and NLP back in those days. And there's sort of like two things that came out of that. One is techniques are super powerful. And even just like studying like old school machine learning was a pretty big inversion of the way I had learned engineering, right? You know, I started programming when everyone starts programming and you're, you're sort of the human, you're giving an algorithm to the, and spelling out to the computer how it should run it. And then machine learning, here's machine learning where it's like actually flip that, like give it sort of the answer you want and it'll figure out the algorithm, which was pretty mind bending. And it was both like pretty powerful when I would write tools, like figure out like time audits or like, where's my time going? Is this meeting a one-on-one or is it a recruiting thing or is it a product strategy thing? I started out doing that manually with my assistant, but then found that this was like a very like automatable task. And so, which also had the side effect of teaching me a lot about machine learning. But then there was this big problem, like anytime you, it was very good at like tabular structured data, but like anytime it hit, you know, the usual malformed English that humans speak, it would just like fall over. I had to kind of abandon a lot of the things that I wanted to build because like there's no way to like parse text. Like maybe it would sort of identify the part of speech in a sentence or something. But then fast forward to the LLM, I mean actually I started trying some of like this, what we would call like very small LLMs before kind of the GPT class models. And it was like super hard to get those things working. So like these 500 parameter models would just be like hallucinating and repeating and you know. So actually I'd kind of like written it off a little bit. But then the chat GPT launch and GPT-3 for sure. And then once people figured out like prompting and instruction tuning, this was sort of like November-ish 2022 like everybody else sort of that the chat GPT launch being the starting gun for the whole AI era of computing and then having API access to three and then early access to GPT-4. I was like, oh man, it's happening. And so I was literally on my honeymoon and we're like on a beach in Thailand and I'm like coding these like AI tools to automate like writing or to assist with writing and all these different use cases.Alessio [00:04:14]: You're like, I'm never going back to work. I'm going to automate all of it before I get back.Drew [00:04:17]: And I was just, you know, ever since then, I mean, I've always been like coding like prototypes and just stuff to make my life more convenient, but like escalated a lot after 22. And yeah, I spent, I checked, I think it was probably like over 400 hours this year so far coding because I had my paternity leave where I was able to work on some special projects. But yeah, it's a super important part of like my whole learning journey is like being really hands-on with these things. And I mean, it's probably not a typical recipe, but I really love to get down to the metal as far as how this stuff works.Alessio [00:04:47]: Yeah. So Swyx and I were with Sam Altman in October 22. We were like at a hack day at OpenAI and that's why we started this podcast eventually. But you did an interview with Sam like seven years ago and he asked you what's the biggest opportunity in startups and you were like machine learning and AI and you were almost like too early, right? It's like maybe seven years ago, the models weren't quite there. How should people think about revalidating like expectations of this technology? You know, I think even today people will tell you, oh, models are not really good at X because they were not good 12 months ago, but they're good today.Drew [00:05:19]: What's your project? Heuristics for thinking about that or how is, yeah, I think the way I look at it now is pretty, has evolved a lot since when I started. I mean, I think everybody intuitively starts with like, all right, let's try to predict the future or imagine like what's this great end state we're going to get to. And the tricky thing is like often those prognostications are right, but they're right in terms of direction, but not when. For example, you know, even in the early days of the internet, 90s when things were even like tech space and you know, even before like the browser or things like that, people were like, oh man, you're going to have, you know, you're going to be able to order food, get like a Snickers delivered to your house, you're going to be able to watch any movie ever created. And they were right. But they were like, you know, it took 20 years for that to actually happen. And before you got to DoorDash, you had to get, you started with like Webvan and Cosmo and before you get to Spotify, you had to do like Napster and Kazaa and LimeWire and like a bunch of like broken Britney Spears MP3s and malware. So I think the big lesson is being early is the same as being wrong. Being late is the same as being wrong. So really how do you calibrate timing? And then I think with AI, it's the same thing that people are like, oh, it's going to completely upend society and all these positive and negative ways. I think that's like most of those things are going to come true. The question is like, when is that going to happen? And then with AI specifically, I think there's also, in addition to sort of the general tech category or like jumping too fast to the future, I think that AI is particularly susceptible to that. And you look at self-driving, right? This idea of like, oh my God, you can have a self-driving car captured everybody's imaginations 10, 12 years ago. And you know, people are like, oh man, in two years, there's not going to be another year. There's not going to be a human driver on the road to be seen. It didn't work out that way, right? We're still 10, 12 years later where we're in a world where you can sort of sometimes get a Waymo in like one city on earth. Exciting, but just took a lot longer than people think. And the reason is there's a lot of engineering challenges, but then there's a lot of other like societal time constants that are hard to compress. So one thing I think you can learn from things like self-driving is they have these levels of autonomy that's a useful kind of framework in driving or these like maturity levels. People sort of skip to like level five, full autonomy, or we're going to have like an autonomous knowledge worker that's just going to take, that's going to, and then we won't need humans anymore kind of projection that that's going to take a long time. But then when you think about level one or level two, like these little assistive experiences, you know, we're seeing a lot of traction with those. So what you see really working is the level one autonomy in the AI world would be like the tab auto-complete and co-pilot, right? And then, you know, maybe a little higher is like the chatbot type interface. Obviously you want to get to the highest level you can to build a good product, but the reliability just isn't, and the capability just isn't there in the early innings. And so, and then you think of other level one, level two type things, like Google Maps probably did more for self-driving than in literal self-driving, like a billion people have like the ability to have like maps and navigation just like taken care of for you autonomously. So I think the timing and maturity are really important factors to include.Alessio [00:08:23]: The thing with self-driving, maybe one of the big breakthroughs was like simulation. So it's like, okay, instead of driving, we can simulate these environments. It's really hard to do when knowledge work, you know, how do you simulate like a product review? How do you simulate these things? I'm curious if you've done any experiments. I know some companies have started to build kind of like a virtual personas that you can like bounce ideas off of.Drew [00:08:42]: I mean, fortunately in a company you generate lots of, you know, actual human training data all the time. And then I also just like start with myself, like, all right, I can, you know, it's pretty tricky even within your company to be like, all right, let's open all this up as quote training data. But, you know, I can start with my own emails or my own calendar or own stuff without running into the same kind of like privacy or other concerns. So I often like start with my own stuff. And so that is like a one level of bootstrapping, but actually four or five years ago during COVID, we decided, you know, a lot of companies were thinking about how do we go back to work? And so we decided to really lean into remote and distributed work because I thought, you know, this is going to be the biggest change to the way we work in our lifetimes. And COVID kind of ripped up a bunch of things, but I think everybody was sort of pleasantly surprised how with a lot of knowledge work, you could just keep going. And actually you were sort of fine. Work was decoupled from your physical environment, from being in a physical place, which meant that things people had dreamed about since the fifties or sixties, like telework, like you actually could work from anywhere. And that was now possible. So we decided to really lean into that because we debated, should we sort of hit the fast forward button or should we hit the rewind button and go back to 2019? And obviously that's been playing out over the last few years. And we decided to basically turn, we went like 90% remote. We still, the in-person part's really important. We can kind of come back to our working model, but we're like, yeah, this is, everybody is going to be in some kind of like distributed or hybrid state. So like instead of like running away from this, like let's do a full send, let's really go into it. Let's live in the future. A few years before our customers, let's like turn Dropbox into a lab for distributed work. And we do that like quite literally, both of the working model and then increasingly with our products. And then absolutely, like we have products like Dropbox Dash, which is our universal search product. That was like very elevated in priority for me after COVID because like now you have, we're putting a lot more stress on the system and on our screens, it's a lot more chaotic and overwhelming. And so even just like getting the right information, the right person at the right time is a big fundamental challenge in knowledge work and these, in the distributed world, like big problem today is still getting, you know, has been getting bigger. And then for a lot of these other workflows, yeah, there's, we can both get a lot of natural like training data from just our own like strategy docs and processes. There's obviously a lot you can do with synthetic data and you know, actually like LMs are pretty good at being like imitating generic knowledge workers. So it's, it's kind of funny that way, but yeah, the way I look at it is like really turn Dropbox into a lab for distributed work. You think about things like what are the big problems we're going to have? It's just the complexity on our screens just keeps growing and the whole environment gets kind of more out of sync with what makes us like cognitively productive and engaged. And then even something like Dash was initially seeded, I made a little personal search engine because I was just like personally frustrated with not being able to find my stuff. And along that whole learning journey with AI, like the vector search or semantic search, things like that had just been the tooling for that. The open source stuff had finally gotten to a place where it was a pretty good developer experience. And so, you know, in a few days I had sort of a hello world type search engine and I'm like, oh my God, like this completely works. You don't even have to get the keywords right. The relevance and ranking is super good. We even like untuned. So I guess that's to say like I've been surprised by if you choose like the right algorithm and the right approach, you can actually get like super good results without having like a ton of data. And even with LLMs, you can apply all these other techniques to give them, kind of bootstrap kind of like task maturity pretty quickly.Alessio [00:12:14]: Before we jump into Dash, let's talk about the Drew Haas and AI engineering stuff. So IDE, let's break that down. What IDE do you use? Do you use Cursor, VS Code, do you use any coding assistant, like WeChat, is it just autocomplete?Drew [00:12:28]: Yeah, yeah. Both. So I use VS Code as like my daily driver, although I'm like super excited about things like Cursor or the AI agents. I have my own like stack underneath that. I mean, some off the shelf parts, some pretty custom. So I use the continue.dev just like AI chat UI basically as just the UI layer, but I also proxy the request. I proxy the request to my own backend, which is sort of like a router. You can use any backend. I mean, Sonnet 3.5 is probably the best all around. But then these things are like pretty limited if you don't give them the right context. And so part of what the proxy does is like there's a separate thing where I can say like include all these files by default with the request. And then it becomes a lot easier and like without like cutting and pasting. And I'm building mostly like prototype toy apps, so it's like a front end React thing and a Python backend thing. And so it can do these like end to end diffs basically. And then I also like love being able to host everything locally or do it offline. So I have my own, when I'm on a plane or something or where like you don't have access or the internet's not reliable, I actually bring a gaming laptop on the plane with me. It's like a little like blue briefcase looking thing. And then I like literally hook up a GPU like into one of the outlets. And then I have, I can do like transcription, I can do like autocomplete, like I have an 8 billion, like Llama will run fine.Alessio [00:13:44]: And you're using like a Llama to run the model?Drew [00:13:47]: No, I use, I have my own like LLM inference stack. I mean, it uses the backend somewhat interchangeable. So everything from like XLlama to VLLM or SGLang, there's a bunch of these different backends you can use. And then I started like working on stuff before all this tooling was like really available. So you know, over the last several years, I've built like my own like whole crazy environment and like in stack here. So I'm a little nuts about it.Alessio [00:14:12]: Yeah. What's the state of the art for, I guess not state of the art, but like when it comes to like frameworks and things like that, do you like using them? I think maybe a lot of people say, hey, things change so quickly, they're like trying to abstract things. Yeah.Drew [00:14:24]: It's maybe too early today. As much as I do a lot of coding, I have to be pretty surgical with my time. I don't have that much time, which means I have to sort of like scope my innovation to like very specific places or like my time. So for the front end, it'll be like a pretty vanilla stack, like a Next.js, React based thing. And then these are toy apps. So it's like Python, Flask, SQLite, and then all the different, there's a whole other thing on like the backend. Like how do you get, sort of run all these models locally or with a local GPU? The scaffolding on the front end is pretty straightforward, the scaffolding on the backend is pretty straightforward. Then a lot of it is just like the LLM inference and control over like fine grained aspects of how you do generation, caching, things like that. And then there's a lot, like a lot of the work is how do you take, sort of go to an IMAP, like take an email, get a new, or a document or a spreadsheet or any of these kinds of primitives that you work with and then translate them, render them in a format that an LLM can understand. So there's like a lot of work that goes into that too. Yeah.Alessio [00:15:24]: So I built a kind of like email triage system and like I would say 80% of the code is like Google and like pulling emails and then the actual AI part is pretty easy.Drew [00:15:34]: Yeah. And even, same experience. And then I tried to do all these like NLP things and then to my dismay, like a bunch of reg Xs were like, got you like 95% of the way there. So I still leave it running, I just haven't really built like the LLM powered version of it yet. Yeah.Alessio [00:15:51]: So do you have any thoughts on rag versus long context, especially, I mean with Dropbox, you know? Sure. Do you just want to shove things in? Like have you seen that be a lot better?Drew [00:15:59]: Well, they kind of have different strengths and weaknesses, so you need both for different use cases. I mean, it's been awesome in the last 12 months, like now you have these like long context models that can actually do a lot. You can put a book in, you know, Sonnet's context and then now with the later versions of LLAMA, you can have 128k context. So that's sort of the new normal, which is awesome and that, that wasn't even the case a year ago. That said, models don't always use, and certainly like local models don't use the full context well fully yet, and actually if you provide too much irrelevant context, the quality degrades a lot. And so I say in the open source world, like we're still just getting to the cusp of like the full context is usable. And then of course, like when you're something like Dropbox Dash, like it's basically building this whole like brain that's like read everything your company's ever written. And so that's not going to fit into your context window, so you need rag just as a practical reality. And even for a lot of similar reasons, you need like RAM and hard disk in conventional computer architecture. And I think these things will keep like horse trading, like maybe if, you know, a million or 10 million is the new, tokens is the new context length, maybe that shifts. Maybe the bigger picture is like, it's super exciting to talk about the LLM and like that piece of the puzzle, but there's this whole other scaffolding of more conventional like retrieval or conventional machine learning, especially because you have to scale up products to like millions of people you do in your toy app is not going to scale to that from a cost or latency or performance standpoint. So I think you really need these like hybrid architectures that where you have very like purpose fit tools, or you're probably not using Sonnet 3.5 for all of your normal product use cases. You're going to use like a fine tuned 8 billion model or sort of the minimum model that gets you the right output. And then a smaller model also is like a lot more cost and latency versus like much better characteristics on that front.Alessio [00:17:48]: Yeah. Let's jump into the Dropbox AI story. So sure. Your initial prototype was Files GPT. How did it start? And then how did you communicate that internally? You know, I know you have a pretty strong like mammal culture. One where you're like, okay, Hey, we got to really take this seriously.Drew [00:18:06]: Yeah. Well, on the latter, it was, so how do we say like how we took Dropbox, how AI seriously as a company started kind of around that time, that honeymoon time, unfortunately. In January, I wrote this like memo to the company, like around basically like how we need to play offense in 23. And that most of the time the kind of concrete is set and like the winners are the winners and things are kind of frozen. But then with these new eras of computing, like the PC or the internet or the phone or the concrete on freezes and you can sort of build, do things differently and have a new set of winners. It's sort of like a new season starts as a result of a lot of that sort of personal hacking and just like thinking about this. I'm like, yeah, this is an inflection point in the industry. Like we really need to change how we think about our strategy. And then becoming an AI first company was probably the headline thing that we did. And then, and then that got, and then calling on everybody in the company to really think about in your world, how is AI going to reshape your workflows or what sort of the AI native way of thinking about your job. File GPT, which is sort of this Dropbox AI kind of initial concept that actually came from our engineering team as, you know, as we like called on everybody, like really think about what we should be doing that's new or different. So it was kind of organic and bottoms up like a bunch of engineers just kind of hacked that together. And then that materialized as basically when you preview a file on Dropbox, you can have kind of the most straightforward possible integration of AI, which is a good thing. Like basically you have a long PDF, you want to be able to ask questions of it. So like a pretty basic implementation of RAG and being able to do that when you preview a file on Dropbox. So that was the origin of that, that was like back in 2023 when we released just like the starting engines had just, you know, gotten going.Alessio [00:19:53]: It's funny where you're basically like these files that people have, they really don't want them in a way, you know, like you're storing all these files and like you actually don't want to interact with them. You want a layer on top of it. And that's kind of what also takes you to Dash eventually, which is like, Hey, you actually don't really care where the file is. You just want to be the place that aggregates it. How do you think about what people will know about files? You know, are files the actual file? Are files like the metadata and they're just kind of like a pointer that goes somewhere and you don't really care where it is?Drew [00:20:21]: Yeah.Alessio [00:20:22]: Any thoughts about?Drew [00:20:23]: Totally. Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of potential complexity in that question, right? Is it a, you know, what's the difference between a file and a URL? And you can go into the technicals, it's like pass by value, pass by reference. Okay. What's the format like? All right. So it starts with a primitive. It's not really a flat file. It's like a structured data. You're sort of collaborative. Yeah. That's keeping in sync. Blah, blah, blah. I actually don't start there at all. I just start with like, what do people, like, what do humans, let's work back from like how humans think about this stuff or how they should think about this stuff. Meaning like, I don't think about, Oh, here are my files and here are my links or cloud docs. I'm just sort of like, Oh, here's my stuff. This, this, here's sort of my documents. Here's my media. Here's my projects. Here are the people I'm working with. So it starts from primitives more like those, like how do people, how do humans think about these things? And then, then start from like a more ideal experience. Because if you think about it, we kind of have this situation that will look like particularly medieval in hindsight where, all right, how do you manage your work stuff? Well, on all, you know, on one side of your screen, you have this file browser that literally hasn't changed since the early eighties, right? You could take someone from the original Mac and sit them in front of like a computer and they'd be like, this is it. And that's, it's been 40 years, right? Then on the other side of your screen, you have like Chrome or a browser that has so many tabs open, you can no longer see text or titles. This is the state of the art for how we manage stuff at work. Interestingly, neither of those experiences was purpose-built to be like the home for your work stuff or even anything related to it. And so it's important to remember, we get like stuck in these local maxima pretty often in tech where we're obviously aware that files are not going away, especially in certain domains. So that format really matters and where files are still going to be the tool you use for like if there's something big, right? If you're a big video file, that kind of format in a file makes sense. There's a bunch of industries where it's like construction or architecture or sort of these domain specific areas, you know, media generally, if you're making music or photos or video, that all kind of fits in the big file zone where Dropbox is really strong and that's like what customers love us for. It's also pretty obvious that a lot of stuff that used to be in, you know, Word docs or Excel files, like all that has tilted towards the browser and that tilt is going to continue. So with Dash, we wanted to make something that was really like cloud-native, AI-native and deliberately like not be tied down to the abstractions of the file system. Now on the other hand, it would be like ironic and bad if we then like fractured the experience that you're like, well, if it touches a file, it's a syncing metaphor to this app. And if it's a URL, it's like this completely different interface. So there's a convergence that I think makes sense over time. But you know, but I think you have to start from like, not so much the technology, start from like, what do the humans want? And then like, what's the idealized product experience? And then like, what are the technical underpinnings of that, that can make that good experience?Alessio [00:23:20]: I think it's kind of intuitive that in Dash, you can connect Google Drive, right? Because you think about Dropbox, it's like, well, it's file storage, you really don't want people to store files somewhere, but the reality is that they do. How do you think about the importance of storage and like, do you kind of feel storage is like almost solved, where it's like, hey, you can kind of store these files anywhere, what matters is like access.Drew [00:23:38]: It's a little bit nuanced in that if you're dealing with like large quantities of data, it actually does matter. The implementation matters a lot or like you're dealing with like, you know, 10 gig video files like that, then you sort of inherit all the problems of sync and have to go into a lot of the challenges that we've solved. Switching on a pretty important question, like what is the value we provide? What does Dropbox do? And probably like most people, I would have said like, well, Dropbox syncs your files. And we didn't even really have a mission of the company in the beginning. I'm just like, yeah, I just don't want to carry a thumb driving around and life would be a lot better if our stuff just like lived in the cloud and I just didn't have to think about like, what device is the thing on or what operating, why are these operating systems fighting with each other and incompatible? You know, I just want to abstract all of that away. But then so we thought, even we were like, all right, Dropbox provides storage. But when we talked to our customers, they're like, that's not how we see this at all. Like actually, Dropbox is not just like a hard drive in the cloud. It's like the place where I go to work or it's a place like I started a small business is a place where my dreams come true. Or it's like, yeah, it's not keeping files in sync. It's keeping people in sync. It's keeping my team in sync. And so they're using this kind of language where we're like, wait, okay, yeah, because I don't know, storage probably is a commodity or what we do is a commodity. But then we talked to our customers like, no, we're not buying the storage, we're buying like the ability to access all of our stuff in one place. We're buying the ability to share everything and sort of, in a lot of ways, people are buying the ability to work from anywhere. And Dropbox was kind of, the fact that it was like file syncing was an implementation detail of this higher order need that they had. So I think that's where we start too, which is like, what is the sort of higher order thing, the job the customer is hiring Dropbox to do? Storage in the new world is kind of incidental to that. I mean, it still matters for things like video or those kinds of workflows. The value of Dropbox had never been, we provide you like the cheapest bits in the cloud. But it is a big pivot from Dropbox is the company that syncs your files to now where we're going is Dropbox is the company that kind of helps you organize all your cloud content. I started the company because I kept forgetting my thumb drive. But the question I was really asking was like, why is it so hard to like find my stuff, organize my stuff, share my stuff, keep my stuff safe? You know, I'm always like one washing machine and I would leave like my little thumb drive with all my prior company stuff on in the pocket of my shorts and then almost wash it and destroy it. And so I was like, why do we have to, this is like medieval that we have to think about this. So that same mindset is how I approach where we're going. But I think, and then unfortunately the, we're sort of back to the same problems. Like it's really hard to find my stuff. It's really hard to organize myself. It's hard to share my stuff. It's hard to secure my content at work. Now the problem is the same, the shape of the problem and the shape of the solution is pretty different. You know, instead of a hundred files on your desktop, it's now a hundred tabs in your browser, et cetera. But I think that's the starting point.Alessio [00:26:30]: How has the idea of a product evolved for you? So, you know, famously Steve Jobs started by Dropbox and he's like, you know, this is just a feature. It's not a product. And then you build like a $10 billion feature. How in the age of AI, how do you think about, you know, maybe things that used to be a product are now features because the AI on top of it, it's like the product, like what's your mental model? Do you think about it?Drew [00:26:50]: Yeah. So I don't think there's really like a bright line. I don't know if like I use the word features and products and my mental model that much of how I break it down because it's kind of a, it's a good question. I mean, I don't not think about features, I don't think about products, but it does start from that place of like, all right, we have all these new colors we can paint with and all right, what are these higher order needs that are sort of evergreen, right? So people will always have stuff at work. They're always need to be able to find it or, you know, all the verbs I just mentioned. It's like, okay, how can we make like a better painting and how can we, and then how can we use some of these new colors? And then, yeah, it's like pretty clear that after the large models, the way you find stuff share stuff, it's going to be completely different after COVID, it's going to be completely different. So that's the starting point. But I think it is also important to, you know, you have to do more than just work back from the customer and like what they're trying to do. Like you have to think about, and you know, we've, we've learned a lot of this the hard way sometimes. Okay. You might start with a customer. You might start with a job to be on there. You're like, all right, what's the solution to their problem? Or like, can we build the best product that solves that problem? Right. Like what's the best way to find your stuff in the modern world? Like, well, yeah, right now the status quo for the vast majority of the billion, billion knowledge workers is they have like 10 search boxes at work that each search 10% of your stuff. Like that's clearly broken. Obviously you should just have like one search box. All right. So we can do that. And that also has to be like, I'll come back to defensibility in a second, but like, can we build the right solution that is like meaningfully better from the status quo? Like, yes, clearly. Okay. Then can we like get distribution and growth? Like that's sort of the next thing you learned is as a founder, you start with like, what's the product? What's the product? What's the product? Then you're like, wait, wait, we need distribution and we need a business model. So those are the next kind of two dominoes you have to knock down or sort of needles you have to thread at the same time. So all right, how do we grow? I mean, if Dropbox 1.0 is really this like self-serve viral model that there's a lot of, we sort of took a borrowed from a lot of the consumer internet playbook and like what Facebook and social media were doing and then translated that to sort of the business world. How do you get distribution, especially as a startup? And then a business model, like, all right, storage happened to be something in the beginning happened to be something people were willing to pay for. They recognize that, you know, okay, if I don't buy something like Dropbox, I'm going to have to buy an external hard drive. I'm going to have to buy a thumb drive and I have to pay for something one way or another. People are already paying for things like backup. So we felt good about that. But then the last domino is like defensibility. Okay. So you build this product or you get the business model, but then, you know, what do you do when the incumbents, the next chess move for them is I just like copy, bundle, kill. So they're going to copy your product. They'll bundle it with their platforms and they'll like give it away for free or no added cost. And, you know, we had a lot of, you know, scar tissue from being on the wrong side of that. Now you don't need to solve all four for all four or five variables or whatever at once or you can sort of have, you know, some flexibility. But the more of those gates that you get through, you sort of add a 10 X to your valuation. And so with AI, I think, you know, there's been a lot of focus on the large language model, but it's like large language models are a pretty bad business from a, you know, you sort of take off your tech lens and just sort of business lens. Like there's sort of this weirdly self-commoditizing thing where, you know, models only have value if they're kind of on this like Pareto frontier of size and quality and cost. Being number two, you know, if you're not on that frontier, the second the frontier moves out, which it moves out every week, like your model literally has zero economic value because it's dominated by the new thing. LLMs generate output that can be used to train or improve. So there's weird, peculiar things that are specific to the large language model. And then you have to like be like, all right, where's the value going to accrue in the stack or the value chain? And, you know, certainly at the bottom with Nvidia and the semiconductor companies, and then it's going to be at the top, like the people who have the customer relationship who have the application layer. Those are a few of the like lenses that I look at a question like that through.Alessio [00:30:48]: Do you think AI is making people more careful about sharing the data at all? People are like, oh, data is important, but it's like, whatever, I'm just throwing it out there. Now everybody's like, but are you going to train on my data? And like your data is actually not that good to train on anyway. But like how have you seen, especially customers, like think about what to put in, what to not?Drew [00:31:06]: I mean, everybody should be. Well, everybody is concerned about this and nobody should be concerned about this, right? Because nobody wants their personal companies information to be kind of ground up into little pellets to like sell you ads or train the next foundation model. I think it's like massively top of mind for every one of our customers, like, and me personally, and with my Dropbox hat on, it's like so fundamental. And, you know, we had experience with this too at Dropbox 1.0, the same kind of resistance, like, wait, I'm going to take my stuff on my hard drive and put it on your server somewhere. Are you serious? What could possibly go wrong? And you know, before that, I was like, wait, are you going to sell me, I'm going to put my credit card number into this website? And before that, I was like, hey, I'm going to take all my cash and put it in a bank instead of under my mattress. You know, so there's a long history of like tech and comfort. So in some sense, AI is kind of another round of the same thing, but the issues are real. And then when I think about like defensibility for Dropbox, like that's actually a big advantage that we have is one, our incentives are very aligned with our customers, right? We only get, we only make money if you pay us and you only pay us if we do a good job. So we don't have any like side hustle, you know, we're not training the next foundation model. You know, we're not trying to sell you ads. Actually we're not even trying to lock you into an ecosystem, like the whole point of Dropbox is it works, you know, everywhere. Because I think one of the big questions we've circling around is sort of like, in the world of AI, where should our lane be? Like every startup has to ask, or in every big company has to ask, like, where can we really win? But to me, it was like a lot of the like trust advantages, platform agnostic, having like a very clean business model, not having these other incentives. And then we also are like super transparent. We were transparent early on. We're like, all right, we're going to establish these AI principles, very table stakes stuff of like, here's transparency. We want to give people control. We want to cover privacy, safety, bias, like fairness, all these things. And we put that out up front to put some sort of explicit guardrails out where like, hey, we're, you know, because everybody wants like a trusted partner as they sort of go into the wild world of AI. And then, you know, you also see people cutting corners and, you know, or just there's a lot of uncertainty or, you know, moving the pieces around after the fact, which no one feels good about.Alessio [00:33:14]: I mean, I would say the last 10, 15 years, the race was kind of being the system of record, being the storage provider. I think today it's almost like, hey, if I can use Dash to like access my Google Drive file, why would I pay Google for like their AI feature? So like vice versa, you know, if I can connect my Dropbook storage to this other AI assistant, how do you kind of think about that, about, you know, not being able to capture all the value and how open people will stay? I think today things are still pretty open, but I'm curious if you think things will get more closed or like more open later.Drew [00:33:42]: Yeah. Well, I think you have to get the value exchange right. And I think you have to be like a trustworthy partner or like no one's going to partner with you if they think you're going to eat their lunch, right? Or if you're going to disintermediate them and like all the companies are quite sophisticated with how they think about that. So we try to, like, we know that's going to be the reality. So we're actually not trying to eat anyone's like Google Drive's lunch or anything. Actually we'll like integrate with Google Drive, we'll integrate with OneDrive, really any of the content platforms, even if they compete with file syncing. So that's actually a big strategic shift. We're not really reliant on being like the store of record and there are pros and cons to this decision. But if you think about it, we're basically like providing all these apps more engagement. We're like helping users do what they're really trying to do, which is to get, you know, that Google Doc or whatever. And we're not trying to be like, oh, by the way, use this other thing. This is all part of our like brand reputation. It's like, no, we give people freedom to use whatever tools or operating system they want. We're not taking anything away from our partners. We're actually like making it, making their thing more useful or routing people to those things. I mean, on the margin, then we have something like, well, okay, to the extent you do rag and summarize things, maybe that doesn't generate a click. Okay. You know, we also know there's like infinity investment going into like the work agents. So we're not really building like a co-pilot or Gemini competitor. Not because we don't like those. We don't find that thing like captivating. Yeah, of course. But just like, you know, you learn after some time in this business that like, yeah, there's some places that are just going to be such kind of red oceans or just like super big battlefields. Everybody's kind of trying to solve the same problem and they just start duplicating all each other effort. And then meanwhile, you know, I think the concern would be is like, well, there's all these other problems that aren't being properly addressed by AI. And I was concerned that like, yeah, and everybody's like fixated on the agent or the chatbot interface, but forgetting that like, hey guys, like we have the opportunity to like really fix search or build a self-organizing Dropbox or environment or there's all these other things that can be a compliment. Because we don't really want our customers to be thinking like, well, do I use Dash or do I use co-pilot? And frankly, none of them do. In a lot of ways, actually, some of the things that we do on the security front with Dash for Business are a good compliment to co-pilot. Because as part of Dash for Business, we actually give admins, IT, like universal visibility and control over all the different, what's being shared in your company across all these different platforms. And as a precondition to installing something like co-pilot or Dash or Glean or any of these other things, right? You know, IT wants to know like, hey, before we like turn all the lights in here, like let's do a little cleaning first before we let everybody in. And there just haven't been good tools to do that. And post AI, you would do it completely differently. And so that's like a big, that's a cornerstone of what we do and what sets us apart from these tools. And actually, in a lot of cases, we will help those tools be adopted because we actually help them do it safely. Yeah.Alessio [00:36:27]: How do you think about building for AI versus people? It's like when you mentioned cleaning up is because maybe before you were like, well, humans can have some common sense when they look at data on what to pick versus models are just kind of like ingesting. Do you think about building products differently, knowing that a lot of the data will actually be consumed by LLMs and like agents and whatnot versus like just people?Drew [00:36:46]: I think it'll always be, I aim a little bit more for like, you know, level three, level four kind of automation, because even if the LLM is like capable of completely autonomously organizing your environment, it probably would do a reasonable job. But like, I think you build bad UI when the sort of user has to fit itself to the computer versus something that you're, you know, it's like an instrument you're playing or something where you have some kind of good partnership. And you know, and on the other side, you don't have to do all this like manual effort. And so like the command line was sort of subsumed by like, you know, graphical UI. We'll keep toggling back and forth. Maybe chat will be, chat will be an increasing, especially when you bring in voice, like will be an increasing part of the puzzle. But I don't think we're going to go back to like a million command lines either. And then as far as like the sort of plumbing of like, well, is this going to be consumed by an LLM or a human? Like fortunately, like you don't really have to design it that differently. I mean, you have to make sure everything's legible to the LLM, but it's like quite tolerant of, you know, malformed everything. And actually the more, the easier it makes something to read for a human, the easier it is for an LLM to read to some extent as well. But we really think about what's that kind of right, how do we build that right, like human machine interface where you're still in control and driving, but then it's super easy to translate your intent into like the, you know, however you want your folder, setting your environment set up or like your preferences.Alessio [00:38:05]: What's the most underrated thing about Dropbox that maybe people don't appreciate?Drew [00:38:09]: Well, I think this is just such a natural evolution for us. It's pretty true. Like when people think about the world of AI, file syncing is not like the next thing you would auto complete mentally. And I think we also did like our first thing so well that there were a lot of benefits to that. But I think there also are like, we hit it so hard with our first product that it was like pretty tough to come up with a sequel. And we had a bit of a sophomore slump and you know, I think actually a lot of kids do use Dropbox through in high school or things like that, but you know, they're not, they're using, they're a lot more in the browser and then their file system, right. And we know all this, but still like we're super well positioned to like help a new generation of people with these fundamental problems and these like that affect, you know, a billion knowledge workers around just finding, organizing, sharing your stuff and keeping it safe. And there's, there's a ton of unsolved problems in those four verbs. We've talked about search a little bit, but just even think about like a whole new generation of people like growing up without the ability to like organize their things and yeah, search is great. And if you just have like a giant infinite pile of stuff, then search does make that more manageable. But you know, you do lose some things that were pretty helpful in prior decades, right? So even just the idea of persistence, stuff still being there when you come back, like when I go to sleep and wake up, my physical papers are still on my desk. When I reboot my computer, the files are still on my hard drive. But then when in my browser, like if my operating system updates the wrong way and closes the browser or if I just more commonly just declared tab bankruptcy, it's like your whole workspace just clears itself out and starts from zero. And you're like, on what planet is this a good idea? There's no like concept of like, oh, here's the stuff I was working on. Yeah, let me get back to it. And so that's like a big motivation for things like Dash. Huge problems with sharing, right? If I'm remodeling my house or if I'm getting ready for a board meeting, you know, what do I do if I have a Google doc and an air table and a 10 gig 4k video? There's no collection that holds mixed format things. And so it's another kind of hidden problem, hidden in plain sight, like he's missing primitives. Files have folders, songs have playlists, links have, you know, there's no, somehow we miss that. And so we're building that with stacks in Dash where it's like a mixed format, smart collection that you can then, you know, just share whatever you need internally, externally and have it be like a really well designed experience and platform agnostic and not tying you to any one ecosystem. We're super excited about that. You know, we talked a little bit about security in the modern world, like IT signs all these compliance documents, but in reality has no way of knowing where anything is or what's being shared. It's actually better for them to not know about it than to know about it and not be able to do anything about it. And when we talked to customers, we found that there were like literally people in IT whose jobs it is to like manually go through, log into each, like log into office, log into workspace, log into each tool and like go comb through one by one the links that people have shared and like unshares. There's like an unshare guy in all these companies and that that job is probably about as fun as it sounds like, my God. So there's, you know, fortunately, I guess what makes technology a good business is for every problem it solves, it like creates a new one, so there's always like a sequel that you need. And so, you know, I think the happy version of our Act 2 is kind of similar to Netflix. I look at a lot of these companies that really had multiple acts and Netflix had the vision to be streaming from the beginning, but broadband and everything wasn't ready for it. So they started by mailing you DVDs, but then went to streaming and then, but the value probably the whole time was just like, let me press play on something I want to see. And they did a really good job about bringing people along from the DVD mailing off. You would think like, oh, the DVD mailing piece is like this burning platform or it's like legacy, you know, ankle weight. And they did have some false starts in that transition. But when you really think about it, they were able to take that DVD mailing audience, move, like migrate them to streaming and actually bootstrap a, you know, take their season one people and bootstrap a victory in season two, because they already had, you know, they weren't starting from scratch. And like both of those worlds were like super easy to sort of forget and be like, oh, it's all kind of destiny. But like, no, that was like an incredibly competitive environment. And Netflix did a great job of like activating their Act 1 advantages and winning in Act 2 because of it. So I don't think people see Dropbox that way. I think people are sort of thinking about us just in terms of our Act 1 and they're like, yeah, Dropbox is fine. I used to use it 10 years ago. But like, what have they done for me lately? And I don't blame them. So fortunately, we have like better and better answers to that question every year.Alessio [00:42:39]: And you call it like the silicon brain. So you see like Dash and Stacks being like the silicon brain interface, basically forDrew [00:42:46]: people. I mean, that's part of it. Yeah. And writ large, I mean, I think what's so exciting about AI and everybody's got their own kind of take on it, but if you like really zoom out civilizationally and like what allows humans to make progress and, you know, what sort of is above the fold in terms of what's really mattered. I certainly want to, I mean, there are a lot of points, but some that come to mind like you think about things like the industrial revolution, like before that, like mechanical energy, like the only way you could get it was like by your own hands, maybe an animal, maybe some like clever sort of machines or machines made of like wood or something. But you were quite like energy limited. And then suddenly, you know, the industrial revolution, things like electricity, it suddenly is like, all right, mechanical energy is now available on demand as a very fungible kind of, and then suddenly we consume a lot more of it. And then the standard of living goes way, way, way, way up. That's been pretty limited to the physical realm. And then I believe that the large models, that's really the first time we can kind of bottle up cognitive energy and offloaded, you know, if we started by offloading a lot of our mechanical or physical busy work to machines that freed us up to make a lot of progress in other areas. But then with AI and computing, we're like, now we can offload a lot more of our cognitive busy work to machines. And then we can create a lot more of it. Price of it goes way down. Importantly, like, it's not like humans never did anything physical again. It's sort of like, no, but we're more leveraged. We can move a lot more earth with a bulldozer than a shovel. And so that's like what is at the most fundamental level, what's so exciting to me about AI. And so what's the silicon brain? It's like, well, we have our human brains and then we're going to have this other like half of our brain that's sort of coming online, like our silicon brain. And it's not like one or the other. They complement each other. They have very complimentary strengths and weaknesses. And that's, that's a good thing. There's also this weird tangent we've gone on as a species to like where knowledge work, knowledge workers have this like epidemic of, of burnout, great resignation, quiet quitting. And there's a lot going on there. But I think that's one of the biggest problems we have is that be like, people deserve like meaningful work and, you know, can't solve all of it. But like, and at least in knowledge work, there's a lot of own goals, you know, enforced errors that we're doing where it's like, you know, on one side with brain science, like we know what makes us like productive and fortunately it's also what makes us engaged. It's like when we can focus or when we're some kind of flow state, but then we go to work and then increasingly going to work is like going to a screen and you're like, if you wanted to design an environment that made it impossible to ever get into a flow state or ever be able to focus, like what we have is that. And that was the thing that just like seven, eight years ago just blew my mind. I'm just like, I cannot understand why like knowledge work is so jacked up on this adventure. It's like, we, we put ourselves in like the most cognitively polluted environment possible and we put so much more stress on the system when we're working remotely and things like that. And you know, all of these problems are just like going in the wrong direction. And I just, I just couldn't understand why this was like a problem that wasn't fixing itself. And I'm like, maybe there's something Dropbox can do with this and you know, things like Dash are the first step. But then, well, so like what, well, I mean, now like, well, why are humans in this like polluted state? It's like, well, we're just, all of the tools we have today, like this generation of tools just passes on all of the weight, the burden to the human, right? So it's like, here's a bajillion, you know, 80,000 unread emails, cool. Here's 25 unread Slack channels. Here's, we all get started like, it's like jittery like thinking about it. And then you look at that, you're like, wait, I'm looking at my phone, it says like 80,000 unread things. There's like no question, product question for which this is the right answer. Fortunately, that's why things like our silicon brain are pretty helpful because like they can serve as like an attention filter where it's like, actually, computers have no problem reading a million things. Humans can't do that, but computers can. And to some extent, this was already happening with computer, you know, Excel is an aversion of your silicon brain or, you know, you could draw the line arbitrarily. But with larger models, like now so many of these little subtasks and tasks we do at work can be like fully automated. And I think, you know, I think it's like an important metaphor to me because it mirrors a lot of what we saw with computing, computer architecture generally. It's like we started out with the CPU, very general purpose, then GPU came along much better at these like parallel computations. We talk a lot about like human versus machine being like substituting, it's like CPU, GPU, it's not like one is categorically better than the other, they're complements. Like if you have something really parallel, use a GPU, if not, use a CPU. The whole relationship, that symbiosis between CPU and GPU has obviously evolved a lot since, you know, playing Quake 2 or something. But right now we have like the human CPU doing a lot of, you know, silicon CPU tasks. And so you really have to like redesign the work thoughtfully such that, you know, probably not that different from how it's evolved in computer architecture, where the CPU is sort of an orchestrator of these really like heavy lifting GPU tasks. That dividing line does shift a little bit, you know, with every generation. And so I think we need to think about knowledge work in that context, like what are human brains good at? What's our silicon brain good at? Let's resegment the work. Let's offload all the stuff that can be automated. Let's go on a hunt for like anything that could save a human CPU cycle. Let's give it to the silicon one. And so I think we're at the early earnings of actually being able to do something about it.Alessio [00:48:00]: It's funny, I gave a talk to a few government people earlier this year with a similar point where we used to make machines to release human labor. And then the kilowatt hour was kind of like the unit for a lot of countries. And now you're doing the same thing with the brain and the data centers are kind of computational power plants, you know, they're kind of on demand tokens. You're on the board of Meta, which is the number one donor of Flops for the open source world. The thing about open source AI is like the model can be open source, but you need to carry a briefcase to actually maybe run a model that is not even that good compared to some of the big ones. How do you think about some of the differences in the open source ethos with like traditional software where it's like really easy to run and act on it versus like models where it's like it might be open source, but like I'm kind of limited, sort of can do with it?Drew [00:48:45]: Yeah, well, I think with every new era of computing, there's sort of a tug of war between is this going to be like an open one or a closed one? And, you know, there's pros and cons to both. It's not like open is always better or open always wins. But, you know, I think you look at how the mobile, like the PC era and the Internet era started out being more on the open side, like it's very modular. Everybody sort of party that everybody could, you know, come to some downsides of that security. But I think, you know, the advent of AI, I think there's a real question, like given the capital intensity of what it takes to train these foundation models, like are we going to live in a world where oligopoly or cartel or all, you know, there's a few companies that have the keys and we're all just like paying them rent. You know, that's one future. Or is it going to be more open and accessible? And I'm like super happy with how that's just I find it exciting on many levels with all the different hats I wear about it. You know, fortunately, you've seen in real life, yeah, even if people aren't bringing GPUs on a plane or something, you've seen like the price performance of these models improve 10 or 100x year over year, which is sort of like many Moore's laws compounded together for a bunch of reasons like that wouldn't have happened without open source. Right. You know, for a lot of same reasons, it's probably better that we can anyone can sort of spin up a website without having to buy an internet information server license like there was some alternative future. So like things are Linux and really good. And there was a good balance of trade to where like people contribute their code and then also benefit from the community returning the favor. I mean, you're seeing that with open source. So you wouldn't see all this like, you know, this flourishing of research and of just sort of the democratization of access to compute without open source. And so I think it's been like phenomenally successful in terms of just moving the ball forward and pretty much anything you care about, I believe, even like safety. You can have a lot more eyes on it and transparency instead of just something is happening. And there was three places with nuclear power plants attached to them. Right. So I think it's it's been awesome to see. And then and again, for like wearing my Dropbox hat, like anybody who's like scaling a service to millions of people, again, I'm probably not using like frontier models for every request. It's, you know, there are a lot of different configurations, mostly with smaller models. And even before you even talk about getting on the device, like, you know, you need this whole kind of constellation of different options. So open source has been great for that.Alessio [00:51:06]: And you were one of the first companies in the cloud repatriation. You kind of brought back all the storage into your own data centers. Where are we in the AI wave for that? I don't think people really care today to bring the models in-house. Like, do you think people will care in the future? Like, especially as you have more small models that you want to control more of the economics? Or are the tokens so subsidized that like it just doesn't matter? It's more like a principle. Yeah. Yeah.Drew [00:51:30]: I mean, I think there's another one where like thinking about the future is a lot easier if you start with the past. So, I mean, there's definitely this like big surge in demand as like there's sort of this FOMO driven bubble of like all of big tech taking their headings and shipping them to Jensen for a couple of years. And then you're like, all right, well, first of all, we've seen this kind of thing before. And in the late 90s with like Fiber, you know, this huge race to like own the internet, own the information superhighway, literally, and then way overbuilt. And then there was this like crash. I don't know to what extent, like maybe it is really different this time. Or, you know, maybe if we create AGI that will sort of solve the rest of the, or we'll just have a different set of things to worry about. But, you know, the simplest way I think about it is like this is sort of a rent not buy phase because, you know, I wouldn't want to be, we're still so early in the maturity, you know, I wouldn't want to be buying like pallets of over like of 286s at a 5x markup when like the 386 and 486 and Pentium and everything are like clearly coming there around the corner. And again, because of open source, there's just been a lot more com

Christina Warren joins Jason Howell to talk about how nostalgia for the early Internet and failed technology companies has permeated her life in tech. From developer advocacy at Microsoft and Github to working in the tech journalism trenches at Mashable, Christina has stayed passionate about the possibilities of tech and its limitations.Please support our work on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/JasonHowellChristina's experience of accidentally not hitting the "go live" button at the start of the interview, and the importance of redundancy in recordingHer early memories and passion for technology, sparked by video games, gadgets, and the internet in the 90sBuilding her first website on GeoCities as a 12-year-old unpaid "community leader"Her collectibles obsession, including shoes and merchandise from failed/infamous tech companies like Theranos, FTX, Pets.com etc.Reminiscing about the spectacular dot-com boom and bust, and companies like Webvan, Pets.com that didn't surviveDiscussing the decline of TiVo and how the DVR experience has arguably gotten worse over timeHer current role as a developer advocate at GitHub, and how to follow her work Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to the first episode of season 2 of the Aftermarket Champions Podcast, hosted by Vivek Joshi, CEO of Entytle! We're thrilled to have Carla Wynter, the VP of Global Parts and Services at Johnson Controls, join us for an engaging conversation. Carla shares her remarkable journey through the world of logistics, manufacturing, and technical services. As Carla reflects on her career, she unveils a tapestry of experiences, from her days at FedEx to her pivotal roles at Webvan, GE, and now Johnson Controls. Each chapter reveals insights into managing diverse teams and driving aftermarket success. Throughout our discussion, Carla underscores the importance of people-centered leadership and the transformative power of technology in shaping customer experiences. With anecdotes from her tenure at leading organizations, Carla paints a vivid picture of the evolving landscape of aftermarket services. Listeners will uncover valuable lessons on organizational maturity, from reactive approaches to predictive and proactive strategies. Carla dives into the nuances of assessing capabilities and aligning with industry standards for sustained growth. But it doesn't stop there. Carla generously shares her wisdom, offering practical advice for aspiring leaders in the aftermarket and service sectors. From the art of networking to the essence of team dynamics, Carla's words resonate as a guiding light in a dynamic industry. Join us as we embark on a journey with Carla Wynter, exploring the road to aftermarket excellence and uncovering invaluable insights along the way.

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. When we set out to do a five minute podcast over a year ago, said said we'll need 6 months to get enough data and adjust strategy if needed. Not only did we do six months, we consistently put something out weekly for a year. As we start our 52nd podcast, I'm here to say this will be our last one. In one year, there have been thousands upon thousands of downloads with days worth of listening around each episode. The numbers are good but, I also think we can make an even bigger impact with storytelling and startups, therefore, we're going to take some time to ruminate on the several ideas brewing around media, podcasting, content, and more. We have seen the power and leverage of short-form content and are hooked, however we can be even better, bigger, and more impactful. If you really miss us, we're stacking up guests on the Atlanta Story Podcast throughout the summer so follow along with more stories of building and creating over there as well. The next guest is a good one. With all that said, buckle in for our 52nd and final Five and Thrive and thank you, the several thousands of you, who have listened to an episode over the past year. We're closing this chapter but the next one will be even better, I promise        Major Announcement of the Week: Major news coming out of Soft Bank's Open Opportunity Fund, local investor and entrepreneur, Paul Judge is taking the lead as Chairman to invest $150M into minority entrepreneurs. Last year, black founders received 1% of venture capital investment and the Open Opportunity fund is a major step and resource to invest in the best. Congratulations to Paul on this fantastic opportunity and focus. We put a link in the show notes to his interview with TechCrunch.     Companies Coming Up: Gridline, out of Atlanta, is the company coming up. Gridline helps any accredited investor gain access and insight to alternative assets quickly and easily. Their software provides the individual investor with access to funds typically reserved for institutions and large family offices all while ensuring compliance. Check out Gridline if you're looking to access more alternative investment opportunities which is led by CEO Logan Henderson.  Event of the Week: Atlanta Startup Convos passed 3000 members this past week and they keep getting better and better. The next one is on Wednesday, June 21st. The three companies are Ubiquitous, Novel, and Turbine. All of them are products worth taking a look at and putting a save the date on the calendar.   Raise a Glass: Congrats to Zack Eikenberry of HookSecurity for closing a $5.5M round led by Tampa Bay Ventures. If y'all remember, Hook Security provides modern and engaging approaches to cybersecurity. Their team of 21 is growing and they are tackling the market. Keep an eye on them as the Tampa startup scene is bustling.   Blog Post of the Week: We have a long blogroll of entrepreneurs and investors we subscribe to and one of my favorites, Fabrice Grinda. He just came out with a great post titled: Timing is Everything. He analyzes how great entrepreneurs and investors are excellent predictors of what will happen in the future. However, what many folks get wrong is the timing. He brings in some examples of the dot com bust including Pets.com and Webvan, both of those markets have created mult-billion dollar businesses today, it was just back in the late 90's, they were just too early. However, Fabrice goes into a laundry list of markets, ideas, and products he is excited about for any entrepreneur to go build the next great business. I highly recommend it as the opportunities out there are limitless!  And on that note, that is 5 minutes.  Major Announcement of the Week: Paul Judge  Company Coming Up: Gridline Event of the Week: Atlanta Startup Convos Raise a Glass: Hook Security Blog Post of the Week: Fabrice Grinda: Timing is Everything

Jen Kem is an ultra-quotable entrepreneur. She is full of incredible wisdom based on her rich experiences in business - learning how to live her values, maintain her confidence, and empower others. Jennifer "Jen" Kem is a San Francisco Bay area-based brand building and leadership expert who gets entrepreneurs seen, heard, and paid for being themselves. She's the creator of the Master Brand Method: a framework to develop powerful brands that win customers' hearts, which she uses in strategic consulting for emerging entrepreneurs, celebrity brands like the Oprah Winfrey Network and Steve Harvey, and other major corporations including Verizon, Blue Cross Blue Shield, and Bank of Hawaii. She is a successful owner of three multimillion-dollar businesses and the proud mother of three children. The seeds of entrepreneurship were planted early Jen Kem had no intention of building a business, much less multiple successful businesses. But a long and winding path led her here.  At a young age, Jen was in search of one thing: Knowledge. Growing up in Hawaii, she went to her local library in search of information and a world outside her small island community. After devouring the entire children's section, she worked her way through the adult books - and wished for more.  Sitting on her Grandmother's shaggy 1970's carpet, she was handed the business section of the newspaper and her eyes lit up. She began to realize that the world was impacted by business decisions.  Even in school, when asked what she wanted to become, she answered precociously that she wanted to become the General Counsel of Coca-Cola International. The adults in her life were stunned.  Jen never became a lawyer, but what she became is incredibly powerful - a high-level Business Strategist and creator of The Master Brand Method. Passed up for a promotion inspired her Jen was working in the corporate world before she became an entrepreneur. She was happy there - until a white male coworker got a promotion over her.  Regardless of her respect for him, she realized that her qualifications would never be enough in her industry. It was time for her to pave her own path and create the kind of world she wanted to live in.  She left behind her corner office and charted a new path - a path of trying new things, rediscovering herself again and again, and using her values as a path to the life she wanted. Doing what works, quitting what doesn't Jen has owned multiple businesses, and they didn't all work out. In fact, she uses her story as a teachable moment to us entrepreneurs - to show us that sometimes, a failure is actually an important lesson.  Before there was Doordash, there was Webvan, and Jen Kem was on the launch team. It was a great idea back in the late 1990's! But the market wasn't ready - and the idea flopped.  Jen watched the Founder of Webvan recover and go on to do great things. When Doordash became popular, she laughed at the timing: Sometimes an idea is great, but the market just isn't ready.  Before she founded The Master Brand Institute, Jen launched an underwear store in Hawaii. It was a great idea, since there weren't any others like it at the time! Women on the Hawaiian islands were traveling back to the mainland and shopping at Victoria's Secret for their options in underwear, because they didn't have any local options. But when the recession hit, her store went under - and she subsequently lost her house, her marriage, and her confidence. Jen fell into a deep depression.  It would have been easy for Jen to tell herself negative stories about her “failures.” She could have decided that she was bad at business, and that she shouldn't try again. Instead, her ten-year-old daughter gave her a big pep talk. Jen began seeing a therapist and gaining back her mental and emotional health. It inspired one of her best pieces of advice for us: Focus on what you're great at.  When Jen asked herself the hard questions, she realized that she didn't actually love retail! Was it really a failure if she wasn't passionate about it long-term? Retail was limiting, and one of Jen's key principles is autonomy - and her business wasn't in alignment with that value. This realization made Jen realize that it was time to create a company that was, and she bounced back.  Values are a verb Jen's core values are autonomy, justice, generosity, leadership of self, and legacy. Now, her business clearly reflects those values.  While businesses frequently feature their values as words on a wall, Jen reminds us that values are how we live, not what we preach.  Your values can help you make important business decisions. For example, Jen's biggest goal is to be autonomous; To be in charge of herself and in control of her life. Now, when presented with a choice, she filters it through her values before coming to a conclusion. Does this option give her more autonomy, or take it away? Does it require so much of her time that she loses too much freedom in order to participate? Does this serve the legacy she is trying to create?  Jen's work to live her values inspires us to do the same. What are your personal values, and how do you actively use them in your business? Quotes “I am obsessed with learning. Reading is my favorite thing to do. Every morning my grandmother would drink her Lipton tea and I would sit on her shaggy 70's carpet. She would give me the business section of the newspaper, so I started reading about business. I started to understand that that was what made the world move.” “As a visionary, we do see the future. Sometimes the ideas aren't ready. Sometimes the market is not ready, but that doesn't mean the idea isn't good.” “The system wasn't set up to support people like me - women of color, women ingenral. The system was set up to support people who played golf with our boss.” “I made the big scary decision to leave my corporate job. I took 9 months to create an exit plan. I had to, because I had two young kids. I spent the entire 9 months putting away half my paycheck. I had no reason to leave, I was making $400,000 a year in a corner office with a disco ball in it. I had the trophies and triumphs.” “Entrepreneurs are the reason we solve problems in the world.” “I wanted to help others like me get rich, respected and recognized for the fact they could see the future.” “I'm committed, not attached. Not every business I build is my dream home. We get so attached to our dream home. But a real estate investor never gets attached! So I look at my business like a real estate investor. I put all the elements inside it to make it work, but if it's not working and I've tried everything, I can elegantly shut it down.” “Courage is a muscle. It's something you have to keep training. People ask me if I lose confidence. I am still scared to do things! But what I can trust is what I know. I would rather fail fast than fail slow. It doesn't mean I'm not scared.” “Values aren't what you wish for. They are who you are and how you're behaving right now.” “Legacy isn't about the future - legacy is what you're doing right now to create the world you want to live in. Every decision I make runs through that filter.” “Maybe is a place we use as an excuse. It slows us down. I only say a clean yes or a clean no. When I filter things through ym values, I don't have regrets. You start to feel like yourself.” Links mentioned in this episode: Visit Jen Kem's website at www.JenniferKem.com    Connect with Jen Kem on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/jenniferkem  Follow Jen on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/JenniferKemComm  Follow Jen on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/jennifer.kem/?hl=en  Follow Jen on Twitter at https://twitter.com/_JenniferKem_

About Speaker: Girish Nair founded Curiosity Gym and MySphere to address the shift from a Knowledge based to a Skills based education ecosystem. Mr. Girish has 32 years of experience in industry and academics, and has a background in technology and management at various companies in India and in Silicon Valley, California. He has worked at Intel, Webvan and Siebel in the US and was Netcore CEO previously as also a Partner at a Seed capital fund. Curiosity Gym offers hands-on learning experiences, incorporating technology to inspire innovation. MySphere is a digital portfolio for students to showcase skills and experiences, vital for internships, college admissions and building an interest based network. #Soulfulस्कूलConference #mysphere #zamit --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/future-school-leaders/message

If we had a nickel for every time we've heard the phrase “timing is everything” we'd have a lot of nickels. Not only is this true for jobs, relationships, life changes… It's also a key ingredient for startups. The best part? You can't control it. From successes like Uber and Airbnb, to not-so-successes like Webvan and Friendster, JoJo, Brentos, and Jeff dive into how consumer shifts and startup launch timing go hand in hand.A word from our portfolio: Calm is the #1 app for sleep, meditation, and relaxation with proven techniques designed to ease your mind or lull you to sleep in under 10 minutes. Calm is on a mission to make the world healthier and happier. Head over to calm.com to check out their latest collabs. Host: Joelle CosmasGuests: Jeff Cantalupo and Brentos FernandezFollow Us⁣:LinkedInInstagramTwitter

In this episode of Lochhead on Marketing, let's talk about how to spot a legendary startup / new category idea. It turns out there are a few secret hiding places where these ideas hide, but they're in plain sight. One of these ideas was shared by Avram Miller in a recent episode of Follow Your Different (FYD 234) when we were discussing his new book, titled The Flight of a Wild Duck. It is a simple, powerful, yet under-used idea for discovering massive ideas for new companies, products or categories, so we are going to talk about it in detail here. As a bonus, I'll share one of my own as well! So stay tuned to this episode, and enjoy. Avram Miller on Being a Legendary Startup When we talked to Avram Miller in Follow Your Different, we got into the discussions of why a lot of startups seemed to fail. These startups had, on paper, great ideas for products, services, and categories that should have dominated the market. Yet looking back, most of them did not achieve that potential. So what was the culprit? It was time. Specifically, they were too early or ahead of their time. Whether it was due to being technologically early or there's no demand for that particular idea yet, it was just too early. One of the examples was WebVan.com. It was a startup designed to deliver groceries to your home, and it was launched in the late 1990s. If you think about it nowadays, it makes sense that it would be a successful business. Yet WebVan.com shut its business down in 2001, while the same model today made Amazon a household brand. So if you have a legendary startup idea, one of the things you need to consider is this: is it too early, or just the right time to launch it to the world? Never Stop Innovating Idea no. 2 comes from me, and what I have observed upon past and existing category leaders in their respective markets. As I have discussed here in Lochhead on Marketing, and also at our Category Pirates newsletter, sometimes these Category Kings settle with fighting for a share of the market, rather than innovating and creating new markets for their own. One of the most known examples of this was Kodak and the physical media category, which tried to adapt too little, and too late. Surprisingly, Avram Miller shares in our conversation that Intel's CEO Andy Grove was also resistant to innovating things early on in Intel's history, which almost led them to miss out in getting into the chipset business for personal computers. As for a great example in the opposite direction, Victoria's Secret got left in the dust by Rihanna's line of lingerie called Savage. This was because it moved away from the POV of "be like these supermodels", to more inclusive and being comfortable with their own body. This radically different POV redesigned the category. As most native digitals see exclusivity as elitist and not welcoming, it was also embraced by the market almost overnight. So at the end of it all, would you rather be fighting to stay on top of your current market, or be the King of the Hill in a category that you have created or innovated? To hear more ideas on how to become a legendary startup or innovate your current business, download and listen to this episode. Bio Christopher Lochhead is a #1 Apple podcaster and #1 Amazon bestselling co-author of books: Niche Down and Play Bigger. He has been an advisor to over 50 venture-backed startups; a former three-time Silicon Valley public company CMO and an entrepreneur. Furthermore, he has been called “one of the best minds in marketing” by The Marketing Journal, a “Human Exclamation Point” by Fast Company, a “quasar” by NBA legend Bill Walton and “off-putting to some” by The Economist. In addition, he served as a chief marketing officer of software juggernaut Mercury Interactive. Hewlett-Packard acquired the company in 2006, for $4.5 billion. He also co-founded the marketing consulting firm LOCHHEAD; the founding CMO of Internet consulting firm Scient,

Twitter, Discord, and Time. When Bitcoin was pushing $20,000 in late December 2017, people asked: “are we late?”When Ethereum was approaching $4,000 in August 2021, people asked: “are we late?”When NFT sales hit a record-breaking $900M in the month of August, people asked: “are we late?”Maybe we are late, but long-term early.Yes, the early adopters may benefit most from being truly early - buying Bitcoin in 2010 or taking part in the Ethereum pre-sale in 2014 - but there will always be those who are earlier than others. And it doesn't mean we are late.In fact, if we think about the history of the internet, we are still so early. It was less than 30 years ago that the internet existed in any commercial form. And only 14 years since the first supercomputer in our pocket (the iPhone) released its first generation product. It might have felt late in 1999, when tech stocks were booming. But we were early. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and many more hadn't even been created yet.It might have felt late when Bitcoin was at $20,000 in December 2017, but almost four years later, Bitcoin is at $47,000. We are so early.Those who remember the first wave of the internet will remember names like AOL, UUNET, PSINet, CompuServe, BBN, MindSpring, Delphi. While many of these companies (or their infrastructure) may still exist as part of other companies, the majority of the companies created during Internet 1.0 are no longer household names.For every AOL, there was a Prodigy. For every UUNET, there was a PSINet. For every Amazon there was a Barnes & Noble. For every Instacart, there was a Webvan. We are so early.Value takes time to be created. And sometimes it's hard to comprehend how big markets can truly be until they are created. The beauty of this wave of the internet is that we've never been more interconnected digitally. Access to information has never been easier to come by. As Alexis said on the podcast, “you are the only thing stopping yourself from spending the time to educate yourself.” We have “Twitter, Discord, and time.”Yes, it's often better to be early than late. But it's also better to be late than never. Especially when it's still long-term early.

In June, Microsoft announced that Windows 11 is on the way, and the first preview is out now for those in the Windows Insider Dev Channel. Not all computers that run Windows 10 will be able to run Windows 11, so let's take a look. In Short Circuits: 4G cellular systems became the dominant technology in just a few years, and it looks like adoption of 5G will be even faster. • Should software developers wait until the code is perfect before releasing operating systems or applications? Short answer: No. In Spare Parts (only on the website): An executive order from the president aims to make it easier for consumers to get faulty devices repaired, to re-establish Net Neutrality, and to address several other consumer issues. • If you feel like your company is demanding that you do more in less time, you're not alone. • Twenty years ago: Online grocer Webvan had just announced that it had laid off its remaining 2000 employees, shut down, and would file for bankruptcy. Nobody wanted to buy groceries online back then. What a difference 20 years and a pandemic make!

In the words of George Washington, "Those that don't learn from the past, it will come back to bite you in the ass." In part 1 of this mini series we revisit everyone's favorite time period, the turn of the millenium. Remember when Y2k was going to down airplanes, stop the power grid, and usher in a real life version of Mad Max? Turns out, clocks had no problem turning from 1999 to 2000. But what we didn't see coming, Dot com companies going bankrupt because they weren't actually making any money. Who knew? Yes, we got Amazon and Ebay from it, but do you recall, Flooze.com, or Webvan? We break this down and review some of the most tasty tidbits from the Dot Com meltdown.

The Y2K bug generated a lot of fear, but all that hype fizzled when the new millennium didn't start with a digital apocalypse. It turns out that fear was just aimed at the wrong catastrophe. While plenty were riding high on the rise of the internet beyond the Y2K scare, another disaster had been brewing since 1995—and would bring them back down. But the dot-com bubble wasn't the end. The internet was here to stay. Not long after the turn of the millennium, the dot-com economy collapsed. Peter Relan points to the flawed business plans that fueled the dot-com bubble, and how many entrepreneurs and investors underestimated the complexity of building a business on the internet. Ernie Smith tells the story of Pets.com, and how a similar idea a decade later had a much better chance of succeeding. Gennaro Coufano reveals the element of luck that saved Amazon from going under —and how it evolved in the aftermath. Julia Furlan reflects on the changes the dot-com bubble brought, and what's left to consider. And Brian McCullough describes how the dot-com bubble paved the way for a more resilient digital economy.If you want to read up on some of our research on the dot-com bubble, you can check out all our bonus material over at redhat.com/commandlineheroes. The page is built in the style of 1995—check it out.Follow along with the episode transcript.

Veteran venture capital investor Pete Farner distills experience from four decades of entrepreneurship and investing on the Economics For Business Podcast #114. Passion, perseverance and intelligence are the three critical attributes he looks for in investable entrepreneurs, an insight drawn from a broad survey that we summarize here. Key Takeaways 1. The entrepreneurial mindset develops in youth. It is averse to the restrictions experienced on the subordinate levels of the corporate hierarchy. In an early experience that several E4B podcast guests have shared, Pete grew up in an entrepreneurial household and absorbed the approach. He created several independent job opportunities in high school and college, including house painting and taxi driving and trading classic cars. When he joined a corporation, he quickly understood that a life in the hierarchy requires you to do as exactly as ordered by superiors, an experience incompatible with the entrepreneurial mindset. In that brief corporate experience, Pete was able to observe that even the highest levels of the executive ladder are occupied by mere humans, with all their quirks and flaws, and not by superhumans. This observation can translate into the self-confidence of being able to tackle any business undertaking oneself. 2. Taking the entrepreneurial route is not risk-taking. In fact it's the opposite. Pete suggested that entrepreneurs are not risk-takers. They are, in fact, risk-averse. They typically do not take great personal risk or financial risk. If their business does not achieve the success they imagined, they seldom “lose all”, and their financial risk is often shared with others or syndicated in some way. Entrepreneurs deal with business uncertainty. They embrace it. They are comfortable with what Pete called the ambiguity of entrepreneurship. That's not risk. 3. Develop a knowledge space from which to begin your entrepreneurial journey. Pete's corporate experience was in the beer industry. That knowledge space included the use of neon signs for advertising and display purposes. He was also able to observe the use of etched mirrors in bars along with other forms of decoration and display such as sports memorabilia. He launched his first entrepreneurial venture with a technological improvement on the conventional (and also expensive and fragile) neon sign. He merged this venture with a mirror and sports memorabilia company to give it greater breadth and market penetration. His first investor was a beer company. We all curate a knowledge space as we go through life, and that space can provide the foundation for entrepreneurial initiative. 4. Entrepreneurial success lies on a time-and-place continuum. What are the determinants of success for an entrepreneurial business? For a venture capitalist who is financing the business, the appropriate metric is a sale to an acquirer, who validates the worth of the entrepreneurial initiative. Surveying his experience of such acquisitions, Pete emphasized the relevance of time and place: being in the right place at the right time. Acquirers are ready for their own reasons at their own time. He discussed the sale of Minute Clinic, a walk-in in-store clinic staffed by nurse practitioners, to the CVS drug store chain. Minute Clinics were under-developed and unprofitable on their own, but a great marketing device to drive traffic to CVS's highly profitable pharmacies. On the other hand, Webvan, one of the most spectacular venture-financed startup bankruptcies, was ahead of its time in 2001, but could have been a standout success in 2021. Business brilliance has a role to play in entrepreneurial success, but so do luck and timing. 5. Entrepreneurs widen and deepen their own knowledge space by making far and wide knowledge connections. Entrepreneurship is a knowledge process. One entrepreneur, one team, one firm can have only partial knowledge. There might be a surrounding network of investors and partners to supplement the available knowledge. Successful entrepreneurs reach further, making connections in as many directions and to as many knowledge sources as possible. Syndicated investments with a wide range of partners can yield a lot of knowledge sources. 6. Specialization must be balanced with a broad-based understanding of business. Differentiation can come from a specialized body of knowledge that the entrepreneur and partners bring to bear. In addition to this deep specialization, there must be a broad interest in starting, running, growing and managing a business. Entrepreneurs are T-shaped people — able to combine their specialist knowledge with boundary-crossing interest and capabilities in everything from accounting to HR to marketing, and especially the development of motivational purpose. 7. Personal qualities — and especially integrity — play an important role in success. In Pete's summary of success factors, “People are the real key”. As an investor, given the choice between a great business plan, a great idea, and a great person, “I'd choose the great person”. Integrity is a core attribute: the strength to go through growing pains, pivots, disappointments and adverse situations, and maintain belief. Certainly these personal qualities can be more important to success than what Pete called “pedigree” — the degree from the right school, or the resume with the right corporations, or the well-credentialed board of directors. 8. Different personal qualities are appropriate for different stages of the entrepreneurial journey. Pete observed that it is rare that the same individual who launches a business or manages it in its earliest formative stages is the same one to manage it to and through maturity. From start up to 8- or 9-figure revenues is a difficult transition for most people to make. It requires both decentralization of decision making and rigorous, detailed and disciplined operational management that are not always the strengths of originating entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, the founder's continued presence — in a significant role, not just a symbolic one — is a very important factor in the maintenance of mission and purpose for a young firm. 9. Revenue is king, especially when efficiently generated. Revenue is the most important indicator of marketplace acceptance for an entrepreneurial service — proof that customers will buy what the business is selling. It's a harbinger for the future: if there is a revenue stream, it can be grown. Revenue — assuming cash flow is well managed — is the guarantor against the worst sin of entrepreneurial businesses, which is running out of cash. Austrians know that the value of capital is the NPV of the flow of customer revenue it generates. Venture capitalists respect capital efficiency — a high ratio of revenue to capital. 10. Empathic customer understanding underpins revenue generation and capital efficiency. It is the deep understanding of the customer and market that ultimately is the key to revenue generation. Pete talked about the medical device market where a misunderstanding of the incentives for surgeons — that they might not adopt a superior-performing device if they don't make as much money using it as they do with the incumbent device — as an example of the battles that have to be fought and won for market acceptance, and might be lost with poor customer understanding. Revenue generation is the primary indicator of customer understanding at work. Additional Resource "10 Attributes of Investable Entrepreneurs and Businesses" (PDF): Mises.org/E4B_114_PDF

Veteran venture capital investor Pete Farner distills experience from four decades of entrepreneurship and investing on the Economics For Business Podcast #114. Passion, perseverance and intelligence are the three critical attributes he looks for in investable entrepreneurs, an insight drawn from a broad survey that we summarize here. Key Takeaways 1. The entrepreneurial mindset develops in youth. It is averse to the restrictions experienced on the subordinate levels of the corporate hierarchy. In an early experience that several E4B podcast guests have shared, Pete grew up in an entrepreneurial household and absorbed the approach. He created several independent job opportunities in high school and college, including house painting and taxi driving and trading classic cars. When he joined a corporation, he quickly understood that a life in the hierarchy requires you to do as exactly as ordered by superiors, an experience incompatible with the entrepreneurial mindset. In that brief corporate experience, Pete was able to observe that even the highest levels of the executive ladder are occupied by mere humans, with all their quirks and flaws, and not by superhumans. This observation can translate into the self-confidence of being able to tackle any business undertaking oneself. 2. Taking the entrepreneurial route is not risk-taking. In fact it's the opposite. Pete suggested that entrepreneurs are not risk-takers. They are, in fact, risk-averse. They typically do not take great personal risk or financial risk. If their business does not achieve the success they imagined, they seldom “lose all”, and their financial risk is often shared with others or syndicated in some way. Entrepreneurs deal with business uncertainty. They embrace it. They are comfortable with what Pete called the ambiguity of entrepreneurship. That's not risk. 3. Develop a knowledge space from which to begin your entrepreneurial journey. Pete's corporate experience was in the beer industry. That knowledge space included the use of neon signs for advertising and display purposes. He was also able to observe the use of etched mirrors in bars along with other forms of decoration and display such as sports memorabilia. He launched his first entrepreneurial venture with a technological improvement on the conventional (and also expensive and fragile) neon sign. He merged this venture with a mirror and sports memorabilia company to give it greater breadth and market penetration. His first investor was a beer company. We all curate a knowledge space as we go through life, and that space can provide the foundation for entrepreneurial initiative. 4. Entrepreneurial success lies on a time-and-place continuum. What are the determinants of success for an entrepreneurial business? For a venture capitalist who is financing the business, the appropriate metric is a sale to an acquirer, who validates the worth of the entrepreneurial initiative. Surveying his experience of such acquisitions, Pete emphasized the relevance of time and place: being in the right place at the right time. Acquirers are ready for their own reasons at their own time. He discussed the sale of Minute Clinic, a walk-in in-store clinic staffed by nurse practitioners, to the CVS drug store chain. Minute Clinics were under-developed and unprofitable on their own, but a great marketing device to drive traffic to CVS's highly profitable pharmacies. On the other hand, Webvan, one of the most spectacular venture-financed startup bankruptcies, was ahead of its time in 2001, but could have been a standout success in 2021. Business brilliance has a role to play in entrepreneurial success, but so do luck and timing. 5. Entrepreneurs widen and deepen their own knowledge space by making far and wide knowledge connections. Entrepreneurship is a knowledge process. One entrepreneur, one team, one firm can have only partial knowledge. There might be a surrounding network of investors and partners to supplement the available knowledge. Successful entrepreneurs reach further, making connections in as many directions and to as many knowledge sources as possible. Syndicated investments with a wide range of partners can yield a lot of knowledge sources. 6. Specialization must be balanced with a broad-based understanding of business. Differentiation can come from a specialized body of knowledge that the entrepreneur and partners bring to bear. In addition to this deep specialization, there must be a broad interest in starting, running, growing and managing a business. Entrepreneurs are T-shaped people — able to combine their specialist knowledge with boundary-crossing interest and capabilities in everything from accounting to HR to marketing, and especially the development of motivational purpose. 7. Personal qualities — and especially integrity — play an important role in success. In Pete's summary of success factors, “People are the real key”. As an investor, given the choice between a great business plan, a great idea, and a great person, “I'd choose the great person”. Integrity is a core attribute: the strength to go through growing pains, pivots, disappointments and adverse situations, and maintain belief. Certainly these personal qualities can be more important to success than what Pete called “pedigree” — the degree from the right school, or the resume with the right corporations, or the well-credentialed board of directors. 8. Different personal qualities are appropriate for different stages of the entrepreneurial journey. Pete observed that it is rare that the same individual who launches a business or manages it in its earliest formative stages is the same one to manage it to and through maturity. From start up to 8- or 9-figure revenues is a difficult transition for most people to make. It requires both decentralization of decision making and rigorous, detailed and disciplined operational management that are not always the strengths of originating entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, the founder's continued presence — in a significant role, not just a symbolic one — is a very important factor in the maintenance of mission and purpose for a young firm. 9. Revenue is king, especially when efficiently generated. Revenue is the most important indicator of marketplace acceptance for an entrepreneurial service — proof that customers will buy what the business is selling. It's a harbinger for the future: if there is a revenue stream, it can be grown. Revenue — assuming cash flow is well managed — is the guarantor against the worst sin of entrepreneurial businesses, which is running out of cash. Austrians know that the value of capital is the NPV of the flow of customer revenue it generates. Venture capitalists respect capital efficiency — a high ratio of revenue to capital. 10. Empathic customer understanding underpins revenue generation and capital efficiency. It is the deep understanding of the customer and market that ultimately is the key to revenue generation. Pete talked about the medical device market where a misunderstanding of the incentives for surgeons — that they might not adopt a superior-performing device if they don't make as much money using it as they do with the incumbent device — as an example of the battles that have to be fought and won for market acceptance, and might be lost with poor customer understanding. Revenue generation is the primary indicator of customer understanding at work. Additional Resource "10 Attributes of Investable Entrepreneurs and Businesses" (PDF): Mises.org/E4B_114_PDF

Veteran venture capital investor Pete Farner distills experience from four decades of entrepreneurship and investing on the Economics For Business Podcast #114. Passion, perseverance and intelligence are the three critical attributes he looks for in investable entrepreneurs, an insight drawn from a broad survey that we summarize here. Key Takeaways 1. The entrepreneurial mindset develops in youth. It is averse to the restrictions experienced on the subordinate levels of the corporate hierarchy. In an early experience that several E4B podcast guests have shared, Pete grew up in an entrepreneurial household and absorbed the approach. He created several independent job opportunities in high school and college, including house painting and taxi driving and trading classic cars. When he joined a corporation, he quickly understood that a life in the hierarchy requires you to do as exactly as ordered by superiors, an experience incompatible with the entrepreneurial mindset. In that brief corporate experience, Pete was able to observe that even the highest levels of the executive ladder are occupied by mere humans, with all their quirks and flaws, and not by superhumans. This observation can translate into the self-confidence of being able to tackle any business undertaking oneself. 2. Taking the entrepreneurial route is not risk-taking. In fact it's the opposite. Pete suggested that entrepreneurs are not risk-takers. They are, in fact, risk-averse. They typically do not take great personal risk or financial risk. If their business does not achieve the success they imagined, they seldom “lose all”, and their financial risk is often shared with others or syndicated in some way. Entrepreneurs deal with business uncertainty. They embrace it. They are comfortable with what Pete called the ambiguity of entrepreneurship. That's not risk. 3. Develop a knowledge space from which to begin your entrepreneurial journey. Pete's corporate experience was in the beer industry. That knowledge space included the use of neon signs for advertising and display purposes. He was also able to observe the use of etched mirrors in bars along with other forms of decoration and display such as sports memorabilia. He launched his first entrepreneurial venture with a technological improvement on the conventional (and also expensive and fragile) neon sign. He merged this venture with a mirror and sports memorabilia company to give it greater breadth and market penetration. His first investor was a beer company. We all curate a knowledge space as we go through life, and that space can provide the foundation for entrepreneurial initiative. 4. Entrepreneurial success lies on a time-and-place continuum. What are the determinants of success for an entrepreneurial business? For a venture capitalist who is financing the business, the appropriate metric is a sale to an acquirer, who validates the worth of the entrepreneurial initiative. Surveying his experience of such acquisitions, Pete emphasized the relevance of time and place: being in the right place at the right time. Acquirers are ready for their own reasons at their own time. He discussed the sale of Minute Clinic, a walk-in in-store clinic staffed by nurse practitioners, to the CVS drug store chain. Minute Clinics were under-developed and unprofitable on their own, but a great marketing device to drive traffic to CVS's highly profitable pharmacies. On the other hand, Webvan, one of the most spectacular venture-financed startup bankruptcies, was ahead of its time in 2001, but could have been a standout success in 2021. Business brilliance has a role to play in entrepreneurial success, but so do luck and timing. 5. Entrepreneurs widen and deepen their own knowledge space by making far and wide knowledge connections. Entrepreneurship is a knowledge process. One entrepreneur, one team, one firm can have only partial knowledge. There might be a surrounding network of investors and partners to supplement the available knowledge. Successful entrepreneurs reach further, making connections in as many directions and to as many knowledge sources as possible. Syndicated investments with a wide range of partners can yield a lot of knowledge sources. 6. Specialization must be balanced with a broad-based understanding of business. Differentiation can come from a specialized body of knowledge that the entrepreneur and partners bring to bear. In addition to this deep specialization, there must be a broad interest in starting, running, growing and managing a business. Entrepreneurs are T-shaped people — able to combine their specialist knowledge with boundary-crossing interest and capabilities in everything from accounting to HR to marketing, and especially the development of motivational purpose. 7. Personal qualities — and especially integrity — play an important role in success. In Pete's summary of success factors, “People are the real key”. As an investor, given the choice between a great business plan, a great idea, and a great person, “I'd choose the great person”. Integrity is a core attribute: the strength to go through growing pains, pivots, disappointments and adverse situations, and maintain belief. Certainly these personal qualities can be more important to success than what Pete called “pedigree” — the degree from the right school, or the resume with the right corporations, or the well-credentialed board of directors. 8. Different personal qualities are appropriate for different stages of the entrepreneurial journey. Pete observed that it is rare that the same individual who launches a business or manages it in its earliest formative stages is the same one to manage it to and through maturity. From start up to 8- or 9-figure revenues is a difficult transition for most people to make. It requires both decentralization of decision making and rigorous, detailed and disciplined operational management that are not always the strengths of originating entrepreneurs. Nevertheless, the founder's continued presence — in a significant role, not just a symbolic one — is a very important factor in the maintenance of mission and purpose for a young firm. 9. Revenue is king, especially when efficiently generated. Revenue is the most important indicator of marketplace acceptance for an entrepreneurial service — proof that customers will buy what the business is selling. It's a harbinger for the future: if there is a revenue stream, it can be grown. Revenue — assuming cash flow is well managed — is the guarantor against the worst sin of entrepreneurial businesses, which is running out of cash. Austrians know that the value of capital is the NPV of the flow of customer revenue it generates. Venture capitalists respect capital efficiency — a high ratio of revenue to capital. 10. Empathic customer understanding underpins revenue generation and capital efficiency. It is the deep understanding of the customer and market that ultimately is the key to revenue generation. Pete talked about the medical device market where a misunderstanding of the incentives for surgeons — that they might not adopt a superior-performing device if they don't make as much money using it as they do with the incumbent device — as an example of the battles that have to be fought and won for market acceptance, and might be lost with poor customer understanding. Revenue generation is the primary indicator of customer understanding at work. Additional Resource "10 Attributes of Investable Entrepreneurs and Businesses" (PDF): Mises.org/E4B_114_PDF

Summary One time in college, I told my housemate he should drop $10 on a Mario mobile game because “You've made stupider purchases than that.” He used this same reasoning to make progressively stupider purchases until he realized that he needed to change his ways. Smart people often make bad financial decisions when everyone around them is acting irrational. The best example of this is the dotcom bubble, where investors stopped caring about fundamentals and started pouring money into pretty much every Internet company. To avoid losing money in a bubble, be self-aware and try writing down the reasoning for your investment decisions. “You've made stupider purchases than that.” One time in college, my housemate walked into our living room and told me that he was thinking about buying some new Mario mobile game for $10. He thought it looked cool, but he wasn't sure that it was really worth $10. “I don't think it's a big deal man, it's just $10,” I told him. I was looking at my laptop and I wasn't really paying attention to what he was saying. “You've probably spent $10 on stupider things than that.”  “Huh, that makes a lot of sense,” he said. He ended up buying the app, but he didn't stop there. For some reason, “You've probably spent $10 on stupider things than that,” really resonated with him. He used that same framework to buy a bunch of other things on Amazon that he didn't really need. He ended up buying progressively stupider and stupider things until he found himself in his room, surrounded by a bunch of useless shit. He looked around, shook his head in shame, and wondered where his life had gone wrong. Apparently, he never even played that original Mario game that much. All of that happened because of my terrible advice. Anyway, I'm going to try to make up for what I did by giving you guys some good advice on how you can avoid letting bad influences (like the college version of me) convince you to make bad financial decisions. Why do smart people make bad decisions? There's a reason why the advice I gave my housemate was so terrible. Every purchase decision seems okay if you're comparing it to the stupidest purchases you've ever made. My advice can easily be used to justify purchases that give you a quick hit of instant gratification before you recognize that you made a terrible mistake. Next thing you know, you're dropping $175 on an Adventure Time Christmas sweater, not realizing that none of the fifty-year-olds at your office holiday party even know the show until you open the package. Now look, I'm not telling you this story to make fun of my housemate. All of us have held incredibly stupid beliefs at some point in our lives. Usually, we rely on other people to talk us out of whatever ridiculousness we currently have in our heads. Most of the time, relying on friends and family to stop us from being morons works pretty well. Of course, it doesn't work when everyone is being stupid. Sometimes, the entire market gets hit with an epidemic of people who are making really bad excuses to chase instant gratification. That's how bubbles happen. The dotcom bubble To get a better idea of how this works, we can take a look at the dotcom bubble of the late 90s and early 2000s. Back in 1999, the Internet was still relatively new and user numbers were going up exponentially. From 1995 to 1999, it's estimated that the number of global Internet users went from 16 million to 248 million. Those numbers made investors very excited. They started pouring huge amounts of money into any Internet company they could find. The demand for dotcom stocks reached unreal levels. During 1999, the average IPO closed 90% over its offering price on the first day of trading. It didn't matter how unprofitable or nonsensical your business was, the public markets were still happy to buy your stock. For example, Webvan, a company that promised to deliver customers groceries in 30 minutes, raised $375 million in a 1999 IPO. Let's be real — there's no way any company in the 90s could have delivered on that promise. Even today, Amazon doesn't offer 30-minute grocery delivery despite the fact they have the most sophisticated delivery operation in the world and own more than 500 Whole Foods stores in North America. Eventually, reality hit. The tech sector started crashing in the year 2000 when interest rates rose and Wall Street guys started actually looking at the balance sheets of the tech companies they were investing in. They quickly realized that companies like Webvan were unprofitable and didn't have any viable path to actually start making money. The NASDAQ index, which contains most tech stocks, lost 39% of its value that year. It wouldn't get back to pre-crash levels until 2015. As we can all know now, the Internet was a game-changer, and there have been many billion-dollar companies built on top of it. The problem wasn't that the Internet was all hype — investors who poured money into dotcom companies were just getting way ahead of themselves. While there were a few big winners in that era like Amazon and eBay, lots of other successful Internet companies were still years away. The infrastructure that was needed to actually make the Internet a great place for users and businesses wasn't there yet — broadband speeds were still incredibly slow in the 90s. Plus, the one innovation that made the Internet a constant presence in people's lives — the smartphone — wouldn't become popular until 2007 with the release of the iPhone. What can we learn from all this? Even though I was just a kid when the dotcom bubble happened, I can totally imagine what was going through the heads of investors at that time. It's not easy to stay rational and try to make reasonable decisions when you see all your friends becoming insanely wealthy in just a few months. You get jealous and then you want to jump in. Soon enough, the whole market is driven by the emotions of people who don't want to be the only person in their friend group who didn't get rich. Plus, it's important to remember that there have been bubbles around exciting new pieces of technology since the dawn of time. Just like the dotcom bubble, there was a bubble in canals in the 1700s and a bubble in railroads in the 1800s. All of these technologies turned out to be a big deal for humanity's progress as a species. Still, human beings got too excited each time and ended up losing tons of money. So how do you avoid losing money in a bubble? Here's a quote from William Bernstein, where he talks about what he would tell someone who's afraid of getting caught up in a bubble. I would ask them how empathetic they are. When they see someone around them happy, do they get happy? When they see someone around who is very sad, do they get sad along with them? And if you answer those two questions yes, then you really have to be on your guard, because that tells you that you're the kind of person who is going to feed off other people's investing emotions, which is death in investing.The trick is having as much self-awareness as possible. Personally, I've been trying to do that by writing down my investment decisions. Honestly, I could be better about it — I don't do it as much as I should. Still, it's the best way to force yourself to look at the reasons why you're making certain decisions. If you end up losing money, you can always come back to what you wrote to figure out where you went wrong. In conclusion My housemate wasn't the first person who got sucked into really bad financial decisions by the stupidity of the people surrounding him. He's definitely not going to be the last one either. We all get sucked into bubbles — it's just human nature. The only way out is through self-awareness. Anyway, if you liked what you read, sign up for our weekly newsletter. If you enjoyed hearing about my housemate ruining his bank account, you'll definitely enjoy our weekly articles on business, tech, and investing. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit sundayspecial.substack.com

Hi ha alguna cosa darrere del punt d'inflexió, i ens obsessiona. De fet, aquest capítol és un meta-punt d'inflexió en si mateix. Safareig deixa enrere un format tecno-social més obert per enfocar-se en esbrinar què fa d'un producte, una campanya, o un moviment, un èxit rotund.Show notes:L'efecte papallona, és un dels principis subjacents governant la teoria del caos. De manera molt resumida, ens explica l'alta dependència i sensibilitat a les condicions inicials en l'evolució de certs sistemes.Fins a quin punt és important el context temporal en el llançament d'un producte? Durant l'episodi mencionem algunes empreses emergents dels noranta que, malgrat que llavors van fracassar estrepitosament, avui dia s'han convertit en models molt exitosos. Podríem dir que Webvan vindria a ser Glovo, o Pets.com qualsevol vertical del comerç electrònic.En Ramon fa referència l'efecte ramat, un biaix cognitiu que explica la tendència d'un individu a adoptar el comportament d'un col·lectiu simplement perquè "tothom ho està fent".The Tipping Point és un llibre de Malcom Gladwell on s'explora la idea del punt d'inflexió.En Ramon té cinc invitacions per una nova xarxa social que de ben segur ha entès com creuar el punt d'inflexió.

In this episode about Instacart, Jeff and Mike talk about WebVan, Weee!, and buying groceries in your underwear

We cover Sequoia Capital a lot on this show. Not only across our now four(!) dedicated episodes, but across a stunning nearly 50% of recent season companies where Sequoia was a primary or only investor — the most of any venture firm by an enormous margin. Today in this very special episode, we dive into the principles that have led to the firm's 49 years of unparalleled success in venture, and the playbook behind how they identify markets and companies that create outcomes worthy of the firm's namesake tree. If you love Acquired and want more, join our LP Community for access to over 50 LP-only episodes, monthly Zoom calls, and live access for big events like emergency pods and book club discussions with authors. We can't wait to see you there. Join here at: https://acquired.fm/lp/ Sponsors: Thanks to MITIMCo for being our presenting sponsor for this special episode. They are truly some of the best and most well-known investors in the LP communit, and their investment performance supports MIT's cutting-edge research, and world-class education. If you or someone you know is starting a fund or recently launched, get in touch with them at: http://bit.ly/acquiredmitimco , and tell them that you heard about MITIMCo on Acquired. Thank you as well to Masterworks and to Perkins Coie. You can learn more about them at: http://bit.ly/acquiredmasterworks (use code “Acquired” to skip the waitlist) http://bit.ly/acquiredperkins The Sequoia Capital Playbook: (also available on our website at https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/special-sequoia-capitals-investment-playbook-with-alfred-lin ) 1. Bring a prepared mind. Founders (as they should) typically think more about solving a problem in the world, and less about the market context around what they're doing. Sequoia has always focused on the market — which allows them to bring a prepared mind to conversations with founders both pre and post investment. Great partnerships and great investments lie at the intersection of these two perspectives. Focusing on the market takes many forms at Sequoia. It includes building and maintaining market landscapes, constantly looking for white spaces, and convening quarterly "blue sky" sessions within the firm. 2. The two questions that matter are "Why now?" and "Who cares?". Early-stage is different from other forms of investing. As Don would say, it's predicated on investing in markets undergoing significant change: today's solutions are wrong for tomorrow. A good answer to "why now" upends the Warren Buffet quote about reputations of businesses with bad economics surviving intact. For example, DoorDash and Instacart had great “why now's” (ability to access a whole new class of labor through mobile devices), whereas Webvan (also a Sequoia investment) did not. Similarly, the key to evaluating market size in the context of early-stage venture is to focus on the opportunity size tomorrow, not today. "Who cares" is a great lens to predict and distill this: if this new solution were widely known and available who (how many people/customers, what segments, with what buying power) will care (how much will it improve their lives or businesses)? 3. The goal is not buying low and selling high. The goal is compounding capital. In a compounding environment, gains from the next few years will always dwarf all cumulative gains from years prior. The goal is to invest in companies that are able to become compounders, help them do so, and enjoy the returns as long as possible. Identifying compounding (and whether it will continue) is hard to get right. The question Sequoia asks is whether the future for a given market, company or investment looks brighter than today. When the answer is yes:

About Speaker: GIRISH NAIR is the Founder & CEO of Curiosity Gym. Curiosity Gym is an educational organization that provides curriculum and runs experiential learning Innovation Hubs is schools. Prior to founding Curiosity Gym, Mr. Nair was CEO at Netcore, India's leading email and mobile technology platform service provider and also a Partner at Tandem Capital a Silicon Valley based seed capital fund where he mentored entrepreneurs. Mr. Nair has worked in Silicon Valley, USA for over fifteen years at technology companies like Siebel, Webvan and Intel in senior engineering management roles prior to his return to India 15 years ago. At both Intel and Webvan, he was one of the youngest Program Managers, tasked with automation of large integrated robotic systems for material handling within Intel's factories and Webvan's distribution centres. Mr. Nair has a Bachelor's in Engineering from IIT Bombay, a Masters in Industrial Engineering from Virginia Tech and also studied Engineering Management at Stanford. In his second innings, at Curiosity Gym he would like to create a platform for kids, youth and adults to have fun while learning. Mr. Nair's hobbies are biking, basketball and playing frisbee with his sons and dog Leo. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/future-school-leaders/message

In 2000, Internet Satellite Provider Iridium and Grocery Delivery Service Webvan failed; Starlink and Doordash now thrive. Look up for flying cars in 2040.

At this point, it’s old hat to say that 2020 was a pretty wild year — countless industry experts have waxed poetic about the long-term implications of the acceleration of ecommerce we’ve seen this year.  But Joe Manning hasn’t just been talking about adapting in the face of change, he’s working to make it happen.Joe is the Chief Business Officer at Shipt, an on-demand delivery service that connects customers with thousands of grocery items and retail shops like Target, Best Buy, CVS, and national and local grocery stores -- and they do it all through a single mobile app. This year Joe has been on the front lines of scaling Shipt while still delivering not only physical products, but exceptional experiences to Shipt customers, employees, and partners. Earlier this year, Shipt doubled the size of its shopper network to meet the growing demand for grocery delivery. And now, as the holiday season is in full swing, the company has added 100,000 more shoppers to its network. Not every company will have to scale quite that quickly or extensively, but ecommerce companies that will thrive moving forward will be the ones that are ready to jump into new markets, pivot quickly, and reach beyond their comfort zone.On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Joe explains what it takes to do just that, including how to maintain a culture of happy workers and customers as your company grows and changes. Plus, he looks at what is ahead this holiday season and why last-mile delivery is an area ripe for innovation.  Main Takeaways:Super Market Sweep – When entering new markets, researching the dynamics of where you are expanding is a critical step. No two markets are the same, and each new market will require investments in different areas. Taking the time to get to know who your customers might be and what their needs are will provide you with a better idea of where you should invest your resources.Happy Employee, Happy Customer – Even if you are employing mostly gig workers, helping to build a good culture and work environment should still be at the core of your business strategy. When workers feel supported and connected, they in turn will deliver better customer experiences, which impacts the bottom line.Choose Your Own Adventure – The future of ecommerce is all about providing choice, personalization, and bringing the best of the in-store experience online. Companies that learn how to capitalize on the unique needs of every customer through gathering data, implementing technology and deploying resources — whether it’s last-mile delivery, seamless returns, or personalized shopping suggestions —  will lead the industry.Tech Talk – There will be more tech brought into the ecommerce experience, especially as it relates to grocery shopping. From barcode scanning, to robot shoppers, to maps to help customers navigate the aisles in-store, there is a lot coming down the pike.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone, and welcome back to the number one ecommerce podcast. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-founder at Mission.org. Today on the show, we have Joe Manning, the Chief Business Officer at Shipt. Joe, welcome to the show.Joe:Well, thank you. Thank you for having me. I'm very excited to be here.Stephanie:I'm excited to have you too. How many podcasts have you done so far? You seem like a good veteran.Joe:This is my first.Stephanie:Ooh, really? Oh, this will be fun then. I love having people on for the first time.Joe:Cool.Stephanie:So before we dive into Shipt, I was hoping you could kind of touch on your background at Starbucks because I saw that you worked there, I think, for over 10 years. And I want to hear what you did there, your role and some of your learnings that you got from there.Joe:Absolutely. So, I had the opportunity to work for 10 years at Starbucks. Starbucks was an amazing company. And one of the things that I really loved about what Starbucks did, and does, and how that applies to Shipt, Starbucks is very focused on the human connection between the barista and the customer. And they're great at leveraging technology. But as an enabler for a human connection. And I think at Shipt, we're trying to do very much ... We are doing very much the same thing. We are all about creating great connections between shoppers and customers, and we're a people-first organization. And we recognize the technology is a great enabler for that. But it is about the human connection.Joe:And so when I was at Starbucks, I worked in a couple of different spots. One area was the licensed stores business, which is the store inside a store. So, if you go into a Target or an airport, that business model I worked with those retailers to really build out those businesses. And then in addition to that, I spent a few years on the CPG business, which is the coffee and the aisle at the grocery stores. And that retailers and I led the business development area for that for a few years as well. And as I said, it was a great experience and the commitment to partnerships and the human connection was really impactful. And really, I think, gave me great insights to bring to Shipt as we started to build out the Shipt business.Stephanie:That's great. So what's one of your favorite memories or stories when you were working at Starbucks and trying to get Starbucks within the stores, or getting it on those supermarket shelves? What do you have a fond memory of or a funny story from your days there?Joe:Well, I'd say, I think one of the pieces that we really focused a lot on the Starbucks cafe experiences is very unique. They take a lot of pride in that customer experience. And so it was exciting when we would bring the stories to the retailers about how to operate at Starbucks or what the brand should be within the cafe. And we started to hear where retailers were then using the same terminology that Starbucks had been using. So, it was really fun when we started to hear them repeat back to us the words and the phrases that we had used, which really signal to us that it was going to be a great partnership, that they really understood what we were trying to accomplish. And that they were embracing that for their own business purposes, which was great.Joe:So coffee is at the core of everything Starbucks does. And I had an opportunity to go to a coffee farm in Costa Rica. And I got to plant a coffee tree and connect with all the farmers, or a lot of the different farms in Costa Rica where we sourced or Starbucks sourced coffee. And it was just really inspirational. I mean, it was fun to do for sure, but hearing the stories from the farmers about how their lives have changed because of their opportunities to partner with Starbucks was really inspirational and really made us feel good that we were making a difference around the world, not just creating great coffee or creating great experiences in the cafes.Stephanie:That sounds like a really good life-changing trip. Very cool. So what had you go over to Shipt? What led you to Shipt?Joe:So in about end of 2015, 2016, everything in Northern California was focused on the gig economy. Airbnb was growing, Uber was growing, and grocery delivery was starting to grow. And I don't know, about 20 years before then, there had been a grocery delivery company called Webvan that had had some success, but then it did not last. And I had been working with grocers, and it really felt like the time was right for grocery delivery to really kind of flourish. And I started looking around at different gig economy delivery companies, and I came across Shipt and Shipt was a small company. It was headquartered out of Birmingham, Alabama still is. And the founder was talking about how the quality of the shoppers and the personal experiences between the shoppers and the customers where was the competitive advantage that Shipt was going to capitalize on.Joe:And I really thought that that really resonated with me. I do really believe people have a personal connection to the food that they consume, the foods that they have in their homes, and creating that model. And it was different than what a lot of other companies are talking about. A lot of other companies were talking about the technology, and how technology was so important, and it was changing the landscape. And again, technology is important, but I really love the way Shipt talked about the personal connection, and the quality of the shoppers, and how that was the area where Shipt was going to invest, and it was going to win.Joe:And then when I met with the founder and I met with the company, the culture was just phenomenal, and it still is today. Everybody is passionate about the mission for Shipt and really focused on doing right, making a difference in the communities, passionate about building the business, but they recognize that it's really about helping people. And if we do that, then the business results will follow.Stephanie:I love the fact that you guys are so focused on giving a good quality shopper that I can feel a connection with. Because so often, when I order from certain companies, I'll get things like an avocado that's so soft. I'm like, "Who would get this? I would never pick an avocado this soft. Or I would never pick tomatoes with fuzz on them. You obviously do not care about my groceries." So, I feel a very close connection to having someone who ... A shopper that is looking out for my best interest, and actually picking things that I want, and not just being like, "Ah, there's five avocados, throw them in a bag, or they're fine."Joe:Well, that's exactly right. And that's what we hear from customers too. It's again, produce is tough to pick. And we put a lot of effort into supporting our shoppers so that they can get the right produce. And even the product is set up so that when we ordered bananas, we order a couple of green and then three yellow because we know we're not going to consume them fast enough. And our shoppers are graded, selecting that for us, and we get what we want. And it really is impactful because getting products that you don't want or that aren't going to work for you defeats the whole value proposition and the convenience of grocery delivery.Stephanie:So tell me a bit about how Shipt has changed over this past year because it seems like ... I mean, especially with grocery delivery, people really just had to rip up their plans, and start over, and be like, "This is the new world. Now I need to figure out how I'm going to do shipping." And everything seems so hard when it comes to grocery delivery instead of like Amazon, where they're all on routes, and they can deliver 60 things in a day versus a grocery delivery just feels so one-to-one. So tell me, what kind of shakeups have you guys seen at Shipt, and what are you doing to tackle them?Joe:This year has been unreal and, obviously, unexpected. And one of the first things that we did is we ramped up our shopper network. We doubled the size of our shopper network early when COVID had spiked, and we knew demand was growing, and we knew people were just desirous of getting products delivered. And so, we wanted to be able to support as many customers as possible. So we invested a lot to ramp up the shopper network. And even as we've gotten into holiday now, we're going to add another hundred ... We are adding another 150,000 shoppers this holiday season. And so, building up the shopper network was first and foremost and what we need to do to support the demand. But then, in addition to that, we worked really closely with a lot of grocers and a lot of retailers to help them succeed in this space.Joe:And to your point, it's a complicated model. And as you said, it's a one-to-one model. So there isn't the ability to drive around, for numerous routes all day long, you really have to put the care and effort into each individual order. And the order sizes are 25 to 30 items in the basket. And so we've worked a lot with retailers, not only to enable them on the Shipt marketplace to reach more customers. But we invested a lot in our last-mile delivery business, which we call Shipt Driven, which has really helped a lot of groceries. And a lot of retailers extend their curbside program to last-mile delivery. And that's really been impactful certainly through COVID. And we're seeing it even more so now during the holiday when again, there's a little bit more of a COVID spike. But then, just during the holidays, every retailer is trying to put together the pieces to support their customers and enable them to get the products they want in a way that works for the customer.Stephanie:Are you also helping advise some of these retail partners around coming up with the economics to make it work? Because it seems like a big Safeway has a very different model and how to get scale and efficiencies than a local grocery might have. Are you working with them to be like, here's what I see works? Here's how to make the model work for you guys.Joe:Absolutely. And you're right. I mean, we work with a lot of awesome regional grocers. And to your point, they don't have the scale of some of the national grocers. And so, in putting our programs together, we work closely with them to make sure that not only is it a good experience for the customer, but that it's economically beneficial and profitable business for the retailer. And we'll do that in a couple of ways. We'll certainly work with them on the technology and the integration to manage that so that it's as cost-effective where they get the best return on investment that they can. But in addition, we'll create marketing programs together. We'll do merchandising programs together to add items to the basket. And then, we'll collaborate on operations efficiencies so that we can pull out costs from the system so that it can be a profitable endeavor for them.Stephanie:So earlier, you were mentioning how you scaled up your shopper network. I think you said 100,000 shoppers, right?Joe:150,000 in holiday. And it was as a 100,000 earlier in the year. So 250,000, over the last six months or so.Stephanie:I mean, that's a crazy number, especially if you're trying to keep quality high. So how did you all go about hiring those shoppers? I mean, even finding that many people and making sure that they're going to be the quality shoppers that you want. How did you go about scaling like that?Joe:Part of what we did was implemented some enhancements to our recruiting process so that we were able to move through applicants much more quickly and thoughtfully, but while still ensuring we're getting the great quality candidates.Joe:We also invested a lot, as you would imagine in sourcing applicants, but we also worked with a lot of retailers back in the spring. There were a lot of retailers who were shutting down stores. And so, both our partners, as well as other retailers. We partnered with them to enable their employees who were looking for work to get fast-tracked through the Shipt application process so that if they wanted to pick up some Shipt shopping opportunities, they could, and they were great partners with whom we worked. And we got a lot of great applicants through that.Joe:And then another piece that we did ... Doing the first shop can be intimidating for folks if they've never done it before. And so, we have a lot of resources available for shoppers to access. And we continue to build on those, especially around how to enable the first shop. Because once you do a shop or two, you get into a rhythm, and you feel good about it. But it takes a little encouragement sometimes to do that first shop. So we put in resources to really make it as easy as possible for our shoppers to get out there and do the first shop.Stephanie:That does seem kind of scary doing that first one. So, I mean, how do you think about onboarding people? Did you have to set up all-new systems for all these new people? Did you have to change a bunch of things to scale that?Joe:Fortunately, we had the systems in place and in part because Shipt has been expanding rapidly since 2016. And even in, I think it was 2018; we were launching three to four markets a week for a good portion of the year. So, we had really good systems in place for recruiting shoppers building the network. And so, it was really more of just kind of amplifying that so that we could go even quicker during this period of time as opposed to having to build out new systems.Stephanie:Got it. So when you are going into these new markets, and you're launching quickly, what are some of the biggest issues that you encounter when you're going into the new markets?Joe:So new markets they're exciting, but they can be challenging. And one of the great things is the market dynamics differ. Launching in a New York City is different than Savannah, Georgia, for instance. And so, one of the pieces that we do is, when we go into markets, we'll spend time there to really understand the market dynamics so that we're thoughtful about our investments. Not only in how to recruit the shoppers to succeed in that market, but how to tailor our messaging so that it resonates with potential customers and that we're knowledgeable about the markets. And we've built out a market operations team that works and serves in all the different markets in which we operate so that we have the local knowledge that we can tap into.Joe:But one of the things that is super exciting as we launched markets is, we will do a market launch gathering a couple of days before. And then the night before, we launched the market, and the intent there is to get together with shoppers, to engage with them. So, we understand how they're feeling about launching this market and supporting us. We'll partner with the retailers in those markets with whom we'll be working. And it's really a great opportunity. It's a celebration of sorts. There's a great opportunity to connect with the shoppers and really help them better understand what Shipt is all about. Help them understand the retailers with whom we're working, and to get them excited about launching the market. And then back to the Shipt culture, part of what happens is there's just a whole group of folks who are working through the night to make sure the launch goes off properly. They're in the market for the next couple of days, picking up orders if we need to, troubleshooting if anything happens.Joe:And again, it's a celebration, it's a lot of work, but it's really exciting. And listening and engaging with the shoppers is really fun because you really get to understand who they are as people. And again, how enabling these jobs is really kind of making a difference in the communities in which we operate.Stephanie:It seems like a really good way to also build a community among those shoppers where they could potentially get to know each other, talk about best practices. I mean, do you cultivate the community of shoppers so they can kind of have their own little network? Can you talk to me-Joe:Absolutely. You're exactly right. We support the shoppers, and through various Facebook lounges, there are shopper communities. But you're right. The shoppers build such an amazing community amongst themselves. And it's great because they share best practices. They share tips. They're great resources for new shoppers who again maybe are a little bit hesitant or uncertain about how to operate. And then they celebrate with each other. And there's been instances in which there'd be a surprise party at a particular store because a shopper is just on their 5,000 shops or something like that. And we see the pictures of it and you see the shoppers. They're just so excited for each other, and they really do support each other.Joe:And they recognize that the stronger the community they build, the better the customer experiences are going to be, which is going to drive more volume, which is going to be supportive for everybody. And it's really exciting to watch. And we do think it's something unique that we've helped create as what we've seen with other gig economy companies. They don't put the same effort into supporting their shoppers or their gig economy workers. And we do think it's a unique advantage that we have.Stephanie:And I think that's a really good lesson for gig economy type of employers because I think a lot of people who do that work aren't really celebrated. And you don't see the person being really proud to be working on that because I think the company is not cultivating a community where people can be excited to actually showcase the brand and say, "This is what I do." I mean, I think about shoppers right now. You wouldn't know looking around Whole Foods or something, who maybe is a shopper, who's not, they're not wearing a shirt. They're not walking around proud for the majority of shoppers or even delivery drivers or anything like that. And I think that the moment that you start incorporating people to be proud of their job like that, and wanting to celebrate the other people in that network and community, you're only going to scale quicker and also build a good experience for everyone.Joe:Totally agree. Totally agree. And that's I think too often, some of the technology companies look at the gig economy worker as a cost. And we look at it the other way. We celebrate them, they're a phenomenal brand representation, and they represent our brand, and they represent the retailers with whom we work. And so, the more they feel good about what they're doing, the more we can help support them to do a great job. Often, it'll show up in the customer experience, and that's so hugely important. And so, we are excited about that, and we do provide Shipt Swag, let's call it because-Stephanie:It actually sounds better.Joe:For sure, the shoppers wanted it. And it's great. And again, I mean, it's brand building, but it's really more ... It speaks to how excited they are about what they're doing. And then the stories we hear from the shoppers, they feel like they're making a difference in people's lives. And that's invaluable to growing and driving the business. And so, we're excited about that.Stephanie:I think people view ... I mean, at least out in Silicon Valley ... And you probably know this Joe, since you lived out here. But swag being a thing of like, "Oh, you get so much of it." Employees don't even want that anymore. Don't spend money; it's a waste. They just throw it away or whatever. But I think they aren't thinking about the rest of the country who actually still celebrates a great t-shirt or hoodie and how important that is to them. And that's still a good technique to keep your employees engaged and excited to get something great.Joe:Absolutely. Absolutely.Stephanie:So let's talk a bit about customer acquisition. I saw a few articles where you were giving Shipt, I think, memberships to the elderly for free, which I was like, "Wow, that is genius." Because these are people who maybe wouldn't have engaged with grocery delivery ever before, but it's a good way to not only help them right now but also have a long time customer, even when COVID and everything's done. So how do you think about growing your customer base, getting on their radar, people who maybe would never find you organically?Joe:And so, one of the things that came out through COVID, there were a lot of people who tried grocery delivery for the first time. And we saw a large increase in the senior population as well. And it makes sense there may be a little less or a little reluctant to go out to the stores. And so, from that, we began talking to different agencies across the country who support the senior population. As well as talking to some healthcare entities and talking about how do we work together to build awareness about grocery delivery, make it easy for folks to get grocery delivery, support them economically? And so, that's been an area that we are continuing to invest in because we're seeing good results. And again, we know it makes a difference in the community, and the feedback we've gotten from the agencies and the senior population has been phenomenal.Joe:In addition to that, I mean, again, desire for grocery delivery has skyrocketed this year. Previously, Shipt was a membership only option you had to buy and an annual membership. During this year, we expanded to offer a pay per order option. And then you can also one order, or you can buy passes and get multiple orders. But we did that because, again, we knew people wanted to try the service. They weren't certain that it was for them, and either they wanted to try it because they were in a need state for it or because it was just new to them. But by enabling the PPO option, we have greatly expanded the number of customers that we're reaching. And it's really been, again, it gets back to supporting customers in a way, where they are today. And sell by providing the individual orders or the passes we've greatly increased the number of customers that are accessing the Shipt service.Stephanie:So how did you think about retention when it comes to ... I mean, I think that's great to be able to allow someone to pay for order. I know that would be something I would do. Is like try it at once and if it works well, maybe do the subscription, or maybe just keep paying for order. But how did you think about retaining someone who might just try it out and then forget how do you keep that customer around for the longterm?Joe:Absolutely. And with our members, the usage and the retention is phenomenal, and it makes sense. They've committed to the membership with the PPO customers. We are very focused on connecting with them and engaging with them so that we're giving them multiple opportunities to use this service several times. What we've found is using the service several times, it starts to become part of your shopping pattern. And so, part of what we do is we continue to connect, to communicate with those customers to make it worthwhile for them to try it a second or a third time if they haven't.Joe:And what we've seen, we've been very pleased. What we've seen is the transition from PPO to either multiple passes or Shipt Everyday, which is our annual membership, has been very good. And what we do find is as they use the service a couple of times, the quality of the service they're very pleased with. And so that gets them to kind of continue. But to your point, we're absolutely focused on how do we continue to connect and communicate with them so that they aren't one-time customers, but they become a much bigger part of connecting with us.Stephanie:So this past year, I'm sure you guys have noticed customers coming to you from many different channels. Like new channels are popping up to tax, not very big. I mean, where have you seen your new customers coming from, and how are you also trying to differentiate yourself from all the other competitors right now? Because I'm thinking, if I'm a customer, and I'm scrambling, like, "I need eggs." I'm just going to go on there and be like, "Okay, either I can just go on Amazon, because I already have a Prime account or let me just try, Instacart or whatever. How do you make sure to separate yourself, and really show your value, and also get on new and different channels, and finding customers in new ways where maybe other brands aren't doing that?Joe:We think the quality of the experience that we provide continues to be our competitive differentiation, and the quality of our shoppers is far and away superior to others in the market. We've always been very good at digital marketing, and we continue to invest there. We've also done quite a fair number of social media campaigns that have created different avenues and exposed us to different customer demographics that have been really beneficial. And then we've also leaned in more to traditional marketing as, particularly for the grocery space; we find that to be an effective channel. And so, in working with our grocers and exploring traditional media, we've seen some very good results with that. And so, it's really quite a credit cross-section of investments across various channels. But we're seeing good success across all the different channels in which we invest.Stephanie:Cool. I could see there being some fun campaigns with just an image of a dirty little brown banana and being like, "Did you just get this delivered to you? Come on over to Shipt. It'll never happen."Joe:Absolutely. And one of the campaigns we did, we talked about again the quality of our shoppers. And there were fun little snippets of how the shoppers will go above and beyond to get you the right product. And I think there was a version of it was tongue in cheek. But a shopper going into a lake to make sure you're getting fresh fish or diving into the freezer at the grocery store to get you the right product. And really trying to capitalize on the quality of the shopper is really beneficial because you want to get the products that you want, and not have somebody who's just focused on trying to get in and out of the store as quickly as possible, and throwing whatever in the bag to deliver it to you.Stephanie:So, with the holidays coming, you hear a lot right now with ecommerce about there's going to be a ton more demand for shipping. Things are going to get held up. How are you guys approaching the holiday season right now since you don't only do grocery, you do other things as well?Joe:That's right. And so, as we said earlier, ramped up the shopper network so that we can continue to support the increased demand. One of the areas where we've invested a lot in 2020 is in our last-mile delivery, so, Shipt Driven. And that's a program where a customer will actually place an order of the retailer's property or ecommerce program, and our shopper will arrive at the store and pick up the order and drive it to the customer's home. So it's basically extending BOPUS to last-mile delivery. And that business has skyrocketed this year. And we've got a great lineup of retailers that go beyond just the grocery side. So, we work with Bed Bath & Beyond, and Best Buy, and CVS, and Office Depot.Joe:And one of the things we're doing closely, we work closely with those retailers. We are managing, or we're partnering on forecasting so that we understand not only holistically what kind of volume we're thinking there's going to be, but even down to the store level because we'll make sure that we're hiring the right shop. Not just the right number of shoppers, but the right shoppers in the right locations. And then in addition, we are really focused between both the driven business and the marketplace on communicating that you can get products delivered the same day.Joe:And I think particularly in the next couple of weeks as other services are going to take longer to get products, we're going to communicate to customers that whatever product you're looking for, you can get it that day and at the last minute. Gifting ideas and through the holiday, ensuring that people are getting the products before the holiday arrives is a big opportunity that we're going to focus on from a Shipt marketplace standpoint. But also in partnership with our retailers on the last mile piece, because we can enable same-day delivery for those retailers as well.Stephanie:That seems like a really good opportunity there. And so many people are trying to figure out that last-mile delivery. What are some of the hiccups you encountered when setting that up? Because that once again seems like a very hard problem to solve, starting to work with all different kinds of retailers and solving that problem for them.Joe:So, fortunately, we've got such a great network of shoppers that on our side for the logistics that's the foundation is in place. I think what we find with retailers is they're standing that up, and how we work with them. Fulfillment costs can be daunting. And particularly on the last mile piece, the retailer needs to be prepared to collect those orders and ship those orders so that we can then drive at the last mile. So, we work with them to try to help them think through how to forecast and then how to plan for that fulfillment piece because that is an area that we have experience in. But in this model, they're going to be managing that. So that's one piece.Joe:And then, working with them on the operations and the handoff, it's not difficult, but we do put effort in there. Their store associates need to know who Shipt is, and why we're showing up at the store, and collaborating on how we connect with the customer to ensure that we're communicating effectively with the customer. Both on when is the order ready, when we're picking it up, when it will be dropped off, and if for some reason there are returns or other items that we need to communicate, setting up that structure so that we're all communicating effectively. So, that is a great customer experience.Stephanie:So you mentioned forecasting a couple of times. And you share those plans with the retailers to also help them plan for inventory, and like you said, fulfillment and everything. Is that a pretty standard process, or does every retailer in market ... Is everyone having a different kind of forecast or a training procedure to work through to be prepared this year?Joe:Yeah. So, we do collaborate with retailers, and we'll let them know what kind of volume we're expecting, and they'll share with us as well so that we can do what we can to manage inventory positions. Every retailer has their own process for that, but we have a dedicated team. We call it the Partner Success Team. They're phenomenal, and they work closely. Every retailer gets a dedicated team that supports them. And again, I think it's an area where we've invested more than a lot of other companies because these retail partnerships are so hugely important that we want to make sure they're getting the support that they need.Joe:And the feedback we've gotten from the retailers is that far and away, our commitment to details or thoroughness, and our communication exceeds what they see with other partners that they have. But on the forecasting, we'll work closely with them. We'll communicate the numbers that we're seeing. They'll share what they're seeing, and we'll review it, certainly right now on a weekly basis because if there's going to be spikes in demand, we want to be prepared for that so that we can create great customer experiences.Stephanie:That'll be interesting to see what happens this holiday season. So, where do you see the future of app-based delivery headed? What are you all planning for?Joe:So, everything we see through the pandemic, grocery delivery is certainly going to continue to be a huge part of the grocery industry. And I was thinking about there's in 2016, a lot of people in the grocery space didn't think customers would ever really embrace ecommerce that they needed to be in the store. They needed to see the produce they needed to choose it for themselves. And since 2016, so many things have changed. And so, grocery commerce is still going to be a huge portion of the business. I think projections are 2025. There'll be no more than 20% of the business. So we don't think I don't see anything changing there.Joe:The other ... But in addition, and we do work with retailers outside of the grocery space. What I think the pandemic has created is, retailers are building out a broad ecosystem of ecommerce solutions for the customers. They're recognizing that customers are going to want to interact with them and their products in different ways. And they want to let the customer choose how they want to get the products. And whether that's a third-party marketplace like Shipt, or if they want to do pickup, or having the retailers enable last-mile delivery through their own ecommerce programs. That, to us, feels like the winning strategy. That's what we're seeing, the retailers who are creating multiple options in allowing the customer to choose. Those are the ones that appear to be gaining a share and taking more of the business in the market. And that's where we see the future going.Stephanie:I've heard that quite a few times where the market is headed to where the consumers now know that there's options and they should have all the options and it needs to be the best option that they get to choose. And that wasn't something that even a year or two ago was something that may be a lot of consumers expected. So, I think that's a fun place where it's headed, though.Joe:Yeah, I agree. And I think that's it. I think awareness has grown so much so; customers are way more aware right now. And like everything else, they want to choose. It's the same if you go into a store, into a category. There's lots of options because consumers want to have the right to choose what they want. And again, I think the pandemic has kind of accelerated that mindset a little bit. Particularly as awareness has grown so much.Stephanie:So what kind of tech advancements are you all most excited about, or what tech enablements are helping your business the most right now?Joe:I think, again, I'll talk a little bit about grocery. But it's consumers want the ecommerce experience that's convenient and fast, and they want it to replicate their experiences in the store in the good ways. And so, some of the pieces that we're excited about substitutions, is a big portion of the shopping experience. It's about 76% of orders will have an item that's not available in the store. And so, substitution is an option there for the customer. So, we're enabling proactive substitutions to make that as seamless as possible. And we know it resonates because again, the customer wants to get the products and they want ... If you think if you're in the aisle, I can make a choice there because I'm looking across it. So how do we bring that to life through the ecommerce experience?Joe:And so we've enabled some features there, and we'll continue to build on that savings and loyalty programs continue to be a big portion. We look to integrate in with retailers' loyalty programs as much as possible. We know the consumers like that. And they want to get rewarded for making the purchase, whether it's inside the store or through Shipt. And so we're bringing that to life. And the other piece is continuing to find ways to enable exploration through ecommerce, it's still the early stage, but if you think about all the different touchpoints inside a store in which a retailer can speak to a customer, how do we bring that to life through ecommerce.Joe:And then the extension of that is personalization, especially in the food space, everybody's eating habits are very different. And so, how do we continue to capitalize on personalization so that the way my interaction in the app is different than yours based on my preferences? And how do we gather those preferences? But then also, continue to enable that, so that I'm getting access or information about the products that are most relevant to me. So, I think from a customer experience those are some of the areas that we're really excited about.Stephanie:Cool. It seems like imagery too, is, such an important piece of it. I know when I've ordered food before, if they ... I mean, why I go to the grocery store is so I can maybe look around and be like, "Oh, I didn't know I wanted that goat cheese and red wine type of thing. But it's so beautiful looking, and it's very enticing. I'm going to get it." And I think that's something where if it was in an app and it showed it right next to something, I would right away probably add to cart. But sometimes, it feels like that's still lacking of having the right imagery and being able to showcase it in a way that really makes me want it just like I would in the store.Joe:Totally. That's right. I mean, and image coverage is not where it needs to be. And again, part of it is for a lot of the industry they weren't really built for ecommerce. And so, they're moving quickly to enable elements like that, but you're right. I mean, that's such a huge opportunity. And then, even I think with the patterns that may be the pandemic have created there's a lot more eating at home. So how do you continue to find variety and give consumers various options that fit in with what they want, but they may not be thinking about on their own? And I think that will continue to be a bigger opportunity. And I think that'll last post-pandemic as well.Stephanie:Do you know what I want? I want a surprise me button. I want my shopper to know me so well where I'm just like, "Here's $3, surprise me with something." Because that's why you go to the grocery store. Sometimes, you feel like, "Oh, I'm pleasantly surprised by what I just spent on like ..." Can my shopper do that for me?Joe:Totally, absolutely. And so, you should try it out. We have a special request portion of our product when ... So you can ... If for some reason you're not finding a product that you need, or if you have a special request, you can put that in. And so, you absolutely should. And I think the shoppers would love that. They totally enjoy that. And I mean, we've got two dogs, and there's a handful of shoppers that we see regularly, and the dogs love when the shopper pulls up because they know that food is coming, which they're excited about. But also, the shoppers have multiple times picked up a little treat that they've seen for the dogs. Because they just think it's fun. And so, you absolutely should test that out.Stephanie:That's fun. And what about things like personal barcode shopping and things like that, or ways to make the shoppers more efficient? But then you have to partner with retailers to enable that. Are there any technologies in that area that you guys are exploring right now?Joe:Yes. And so, creating the efficiencies is a big focus area for us and will continue to be. And so, a couple of the areas, you had hit on like the product catalog, and imagery, and attributes for the products, that's an area. But for driving the efficiencies, we work really closely with the retailers and out of stock information. We have real-time data because we have shoppers that are in the store and they're looking for particular products. And so, we share that with the retailers to help them incorporate that in with their logistics information to try to reduce out-of-stocks. And we've seen some really good results with retailers where our data was helpful as an additional data point to solve some out-of-stocks. And so that's a big area that we focus on.Joe:Getting good IO location data is really helpful for helping the shopper navigate through the store. And so, we'll work with retailers on that. And then, I think your barcode scanning, we call it scan and go technology. We've enabled that with a couple of retailers, we're going to continue to build on that. And that is just so helpful for moving through the store more quickly, reducing checkout time, and reducing some of the labor costs in the store because the more that we can simplify the checkout process, that's labor savings with the retailers. And then, we're at the early stage of looking at other kinds of automated opportunities. And how do we take advantage of some of the investments that the retailers are to generate efficiencies?Stephanie:I see. And they should [inaudible] Bigger ones like Walmart were experimenting with having robots going down the aisles to map the store and take inventory. But having just so many issues depending on things were all jumbled behind the one that was near the aisle or how high the aisles were. And it seems like a big problem to solve, but something that could really help a lot of ... Especially larger retailers like the Costcos of the world, who just have so much stuff to inventory all the time and are constantly running out of things.Joe:Absolutely. And that's I think the bigger stores. But even the traditional grocery store could have 45,000, 50,000 skews. So it's such a big opportunity. I think there's going to be a lot of investments and especially as ecommerce has grown. Again, in many ways, the grocery industry is still early in the ecommerce space. And so, I do think there's going to be a lot of good technologies developed that will really help generate efficiencies, which will ultimately be a great win for the consumer because the efficiencies will drive down costs.Stephanie:Yep. I agree. All right. Let's move over to the lightning round, brought to you by our friends at Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question, and you have a minute or less to answer. Joe, are you ready?Joe:Yeah, I'm ready.Stephanie:All right. I feel like you're on a roll. So I'm going to start with the trickier question first. What one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Joe:Well, the pandemic is certainly going to continue to have an impact on ecommerce. But I think ultimately, it will be how quickly retailers can continue to build out a broad ecosystem. And I think that's what customers are looking for. And I think those who move quickly to enable that will be most successful.Stephanie:What is one of your favorite business or management books that you refer back to from time to time?Joe:Well, it's funny. I just had this conversation with somebody with one of my peers and we were talking about strategy, and Art of War is something that I have on my bookshelf, and I do refer to it on an ongoing basis. I just think it's ... I mean, it's a classic, but I find it to be really beneficial.Stephanie:I love that one. What do you not understand today that you wish you did?Joe:Oh gosh. There's not a limit there. I think the piece that I want to continue to more broadly understand is the customer buying patterns across retailers and how that will continue to change. Everybody's got their collection of retailers that they shop for. And I just had this conversation recently because we were driving down the road, and there was a little strip mall that we've never really gone in. Those stores, I'm sure, are great. It's all part of our pattern. So the psychology behind creating the patterns and the behaviors, and then what would it require to disrupt that.Stephanie:That's a good answer. I like that. If you were to have a podcast, what would the podcast be about, and who would your first guest be?Joe:So I-Stephanie:I think you've thought about this-Joe:I have. I think podcasts are awesome, and I'm so envious. So, an area that I've found to be more interesting of late, I kind of stumbled across this street art. And so, Denver has got a really good community of street artists. And so I think it's super cool. And if ... I mean, my goal and I would love to meet Banksy, who's a street artist out in the UK. And that's if I could have him on my podcast. That's how I would do my one episode, and I'd be done.Stephanie:Like mic drop, I'm good.Joe:Exactly.Stephanie:That'd be a good one. All right. And then the last one, what is the favorite app on your phone?Joe:So, my favorite app, I don't know if I should say, well, DraftKings is recently become legal in Colorado. I have two boys. And so, we like pro football. And so, every Sunday, we choose a game and put 10 bucks on it. And so that is ... It's probably not the best family forward kind of thing, but we're having fun with it.Stephanie:Sounds pretty family forward to me, so, you can do what you want, Joe.Joe:So let me know if you have any recommendations because we haven't been winning the last couple of weeks.Stephanie:Oh, man. You don't want recommendations from me. Trust me. I'll let you guys do your thing there. I'll trust you. All right, Joe. Well, this interview has been great. Where can people find out more about you and Shipt?Joe:So Shipt.com and download the Shipt app. And then I am on LinkedIn, and Joe Manning chipped up on LinkedIn.Stephanie:Awesome. Thanks so much for coming on.Joe:Thank you. I really appreciate it. 

Pets.com. Webvan. Kozmo.com. All these companies met their demise when the bubble burst. But their ideas live on today, in Chewy.com, Fresh Direct, Postmates, and many other start-ups. Looking at 2020 through the lens of the dot-com crash, what's changed about the tech industry and the way we think about technology, and what's stayed the same? And are we in another bubble? From Epic Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network. Hosted by Julia Furlan. Enjoyed this episode? Rate us ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, then share it with your friends! Subscribe for free. Be the first to hear our next season by subscribing in your favorite podcast app.

In this episode you'll learn on the importance of proper planning in business together with quality marketing integration and how that positively impacts your business. We review a case study on Webvan, an online grocery delivery company that was operational in the late 90s and early 00s. Despite its failure, Webvan has a unique story that changed the perspective of business stakeholders and the dynamics of business operations. We can derive a lot of quality information and knowledge from their story and if you want to read more, you can read The Startup Owners Manual by Steve Gary Blank. For more info www.themarketingpodcast.live For business enquiries www.siftgroup.net --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/augustine-kiama/message

Business schools around the nation study Webvan’s overly ambitious rush to the biggest IPO to date in Silicon Valley, as a prime example of what to avoid doing while scaling.While it’s true that the impatience to go public helped steer Webvan off a cliff, the once darling company made three critical, but often overlooked mistakes when it came to revolutionizing home grocery deliveries. We'll talk with Ben Foster about his experience leading product teams at Webvan. BIG NEWS We've officially launched the Rocketship Premium Podcast feed! Join today for $5/month or $40 annually, and get access to exclusive bonus shows of Rocketship, previews of new seasons, and an ad free version of every episode of the podcast. Check it out today by clicking here. This episode is brought to you by: DigitalOcean, the cloud platform that makes it easy for startups to launch high-performance modern apps and websites. Learn more about DigitalOcean and apply for Hatch at do.co/rocketship. App & Flow. If you're a startup founder, App & Flow will help you build an app that's ready for takeoff. Rocketship listeners get 25% off of their first month by going to rocketshipfm.appandflow.com. Augusto Digital. Augusto Digital is a product engineering team that creates web, mobile, and cloud based digital products. Rocketship listeners get $1,000 off by going to augusto.digital/rocketship. Logi Analytics is the leading platform for embedded analytics. Take your dashboard and reports to the next level. Rocketship listeners get free access to the Logi Analytics library of product demos by going to logianalytics.com/rocketship. Rocketship is brought to you by The Podglomerate. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Online grocery delivery, done at the beginning of the Internet age.

Wow. $800 Million Dollars? Who knew that grocery delivery existed way back in 2001? Webvan was today's version of Shipt and Instacart, a convenient grocery delivery service. This company has an interesting story (and honestly, some of us never knew they even existed). This is an episode you do not want to miss, be sure to stay until the end. --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/legendvest/support

Never miss another interview! Join Devin here: http://bit.ly/joindevin. Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/2X4mVfG. When anyone seeks to reinvent the grocery business in light of both the wreckage left by WebVan and the presence of Amazon with Whole Foods in the market, it is hard to conceive success for a well-capitalized upstart. When the entrepreneur is a 24-year-old college dropout, the temptation to dismiss him grows. Chai Mishra is launching a consumer-owned cooperative to provide online groceries with confidence bordering on hubris, but backers including Y Combinator and the San Francisco 49ers are betting on his new platform, simply called Move. Mishra sees two primary problems with the current food distribution business. First is unequal access to food. Second is the exploitation of food producers, especially smallholder farmers both in the U.S. and around the world. He argues that the existing supply chain for food makes it unnecessarily expensive to consumers and rewards producers inadequately. He notes that coffee growers are paid as little as 7 cents per pound for raw coffee beans and consumers pay $15 per pound in stores. Read the full Forbes article and watch the interview here: http://bit.ly/2X4mVfG. Click the following link to learn my insider secrets to media publicity for social impact: http://bit.ly/75offmedia.

Tony Xu, the CEO and co-founder of DoorDash, and Christopher Payne, the COO, talk with Recode's Kara Swisher about how the delivery company's busy 2018 and why it's starting to think about delivering more than food. In this episode: (01:41) Where DoorDash is now and the delivery business; (05:25) Is Amazon a competitor?; (08:07) Xu and Payne's backgrounds; (11:32) Why DoorDash succeeded where Webvan failed; (15:10) Working with big restaurants and why they don't do it themselves; (21:03) How DoorDash makes money; (25:53) The gig economy and the future of work; (30:48) Where the business could go beyond food delivery; (34:09) Why Xu started DoorDash; (36:08) The current startup environment and the image of tech; (39:31) What does it take to be an entrepreneur now?; (43:05) Raising money from SoftBank's Vision Fund; (44:55) The future of DoorDash and the future of retail stores; (50:51) Trends in shopping and the delivery business Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What do lessons from the dot.com era teach us about the disruptive forces facing companies today? http://bit.ly/DisruptionEverywhere  Note to All Readers: The information contained here reflects the views of AllianceBernstein L.P. or its affiliates and sources it believes are reliable as of the date of this podcast. AllianceBernstein L.P. makes no representations or warranties concerning the accuracy of any data. There is no guarantee that any projection, forecast or opinion in this material will be realized. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The views expressed here may change at any time after the date of this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. AllianceBernstein L.P. does not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. It does not take an investor's personal investment objectives or financial situation into account; investors should discuss their individual circumstances with appropriate professionals before making any decisions. This information should not be construed as sales or marketing material or an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument, product or service sponsored by AllianceBernstein or its affiliates.  The [A/B] logo is a registered service mark of AllianceBernstein, and AllianceBernstein® is a registered service mark, used by permission of the owner, AllianceBernstein L.P. © 2018 AllianceBernstein L.P.

What do lessons from the dot.com era teach us about the disruptive forces facing companies today? http://bit.ly/DisruptionEverywhere Note to All Readers: The information contained here reflects the views of AllianceBernstein L.P. or its affiliates and sources it believes are reliable as of the date of this podcast. AllianceBernstein L.P. makes no representations or warranties concerning the accuracy of any data. There is no guarantee that any projection, forecast or opinion in this material will be realized. Past performance does not guarantee future results. The views expressed here may change at any time after the date of this podcast. This podcast is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice. AllianceBernstein L.P. does not provide tax, legal or accounting advice. It does not take an investor’s personal investment objectives or financial situation into account; investors should discuss their individual circumstances with appropriate professionals before making any decisions. This information should not be construed as sales or marketing material or an offer or solicitation for the purchase or sale of any financial instrument, product or service sponsored by AllianceBernstein or its affiliates. The [A/B] logo is a registered service mark of AllianceBernstein, and AllianceBernstein® is a registered service mark, used by permission of the owner, AllianceBernstein L.P. © 2018 AllianceBernstein L.P.

Iya Khalil is a woman who’s always been ahead of her time. In middle school she was captivated by the writing of Stephen Hawking. After graduating school at Cornell with a PhD in physics, while colleagues were heading to Wall Street to be quants or to Silicon Valley to launch the next Webvan, she was […]

My guest for episode 4 of The Startup Playbook Hustle is Morgan Ranieri, the Co-founder of YourGrocer. Prior to starting YourGrocer, Morgan was one of the co-founders of Thankyou - one of the best known Australian startups in the FMCG industry. Morgan used his experience at ThankYou to launch YourGrocer, an online grocery delivery platform that connects you to local independent shops in Melbourne and Sydney. Since launching in 2013, the company now has a network of 150 local businesses and has fulfilled more than 80,000 orders to date. The company has also raised a total of $3M funding from investors such as Giant Leap Fund, Cyan Ta'aed and Tank Stream Ventures In this episode we talk about: - the 4 pillars of building startups - balancing short term goals vs long term vision - building from first principles - the consequences of growth   PLAYBOOK MEDIA – 10X your growth through Data-Driven Storytelling STARTUP PLAYBOOK HUSTLE APPLICATION Show notes: Thankyou Group Coles Woolworths Startup Victoria Webvan Amazon YourGrocer  Morgan Ranieri (Twitter)  Morgan's ask: Help spread the word for YourGrocer. Get in touch with him here Feedback/ connect/ say hello:  Rohit@startupplaybook.co @playbookstartup (Twitter) @rohitbhargava7 (Twitter – Rohit) Rohit Bhargava (LinkedIn) Credits: Intro music credit to Bensound Other channels: Don't have iTunes? The podcast is also available on Stitcher & Soundcloud Want to be featured on an upcoming episode? Fill out the Application Form: STARTUP PLAYBOOK HUSTLE APPLICATION The post Hustle Ep004 – Morgan Ranieri (Co-founder – YourGrocer) on building from first principles appeared first on Startup Playbook.

Ben and David are once again live on the scene, this time covering the biggest disruption in grocery since… well, sliced bread: Amazon’s $13.7B purchase of Whole Foods Market. We place this deal in context by diving deep into the long, intertwining history of grocery, tech and Amazon, from the infamous dotcom flameout Webvan (domain name now owned by Amazon) to its much more successful progeny Kiva Systems (acquired by Amazon in 2012) to current Silicon Valley unicorn Instacart (founded by former Amazon logistics engineer Apoorva Mehta). One thing is clear: for Amazon and Jeff Bezos, realizing the longterm vision of the Everything Store truly means building the everything store. Topics covered include: The origins of Whole Foods Market as “Saferway” in the late 70’s Austin, TX hippie scene, founded by CEO John Mackey (“the Steve Jobs of grocery stores”) and his then-girlfriend Renee Lawson Hardy Whole Foods’ expansion through acquisition throughout the 80’s and 90’s The company’s recent struggles with competition, leading to sales declines and attracting activist shareholder interest from Jana Partners  Amazon’s acquisition of the company on June 16, 2017 for $13.7 billion, a 27 percent premium to the stock's previous day closing price In depth history and analysis of the four keys to understanding this deal: Webvan, Kiva Systems, AmazonFresh and Instacart  Followups: Walmart/Jet buys Bonobos for $310M The Carve Out: Ben: Mark Zuckerberg’s 2005 CS50 guest lecture David: Exponent on Podcasting and Centralization Sponsor: Thanks to Silicon Valley Bank for sponsoring this episode. If you'd like to learn more or start a banking relationship, you can get in touch with Dan Allred here.

The "Money Talks" experts answer listeners’ questions on the evolution in retail commerce, comparing today’s insta-cart and Prime delivery with the Webvan concept of 16 years ago. They also address the advantages and disadvantages of rolling over a 401(k) into an IRA.

Antibiotics, ticks, soul mates, Rudy Giuliani divorce, women bosses, Dee’s Suzette at home wife story, flirting at work, embarrassing thing to talk to your doctor, animals giving birth, Kiss Kasket, Kiss merchandise, Luke & Laura, Bond girls, foul ball calls, Friday’s show promo with CC Deville and Enuffznuff coming in, song parody of Crawling, peeps reactions to; capital punishments, top sound bites, Who’s going to snap game, responses to Nick’s older women statement, returning to Who’s going to snap game, peeps reactions to; Dee stickers, army training, prison names, things Sean would never say, what we learned today. Keyworded by metal kitten!

Donald Trump has proposed a $1 trillion spending plan to rebuild America's infrastucture. But for what ends? Better roads? More people working? Evan and special guest host Daniel Roth debate the right and wrong ways to spend $1 trillion and the problems that can't be solved with asphalt and nostalgia. Speaking of building and rebuilding! If you were alive during the original dotcom boom, you knew Webvan, the company that sought to deliver just about everything to anyone anywhere. This was Amazon before Amazon was Amazon and Coppy Holzman was the co-founder of the one-time $9 billion (!) in market cap company. Then, as quickly as it expanded, Webvan went bust in the dotcom crash. Coppy has since gone on to build and sell charity-experience company CharityBuzz and is now creating a dog-friendly coffee chain called Boris and Horton. He talks about how his vision of what it takes to build a sustainable business has changed over the years and what matters most.  

Here at Knowledge Society Headquarters I spoke with Coppy Holzman, founder of Webvan.com. Webvan was an online grocery business during the Dotcom era, in 1998, that became a billion dollar company by 1999. After the Dotcom bubble bursted in 2000, Coppy's company Webvan went out of business. He has since recovered with new businesses, many of which include Charitybuzz.com and Prizeo.com.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hasan Aslanoba'nın girişimi Tazedirekt geçtiğimiz hafta hiç beklenmedik bir şekilde kapandı. Ardında üzgün bir takipçi kitlesi bırakan Tazedirekt'in kapanması hem Türk tüketicilerini hem de Türkiye girişimci ekosistemini derinden sarstı. Bu bölümde Tazedirekt'in 'post-mortem' analizini yapıyoruz. Amerika'da benzer bir durum yaşamış olan Webvan bölümde bahsettiğimiz bir girişim, hakkında daha fazla bilgi almak isterseniz:Steven Blank'ın kitabından: http://web.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdfBu haftanın bir diğer konusu Yandex'in Türkiye'de küçülmeye gitmesi oldu. Ardarda gelen bu üzücü haberler üzerine konuştuğumuz bu bölümümüzü beğendiyseniz lütfen bizi Twitter'dan takip edin, ekşisözlük'te ve iTunes'da bizim hakkımızda yorum yazın!Bölüm sonunda bahsettiğim Yoga eğitmeni arkadaşımın formu: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1TB1NhhOfUURUqBULhuYGqqEELDCKTTRaifblHIlYFTc/viewform?c=0&w=1Bu arada Samican'ın yanlış bölümü upload etmiş olmasından ötürü bölüm bir gün geç yayınlandı. Bütün dinleyicilerimize özür dileriz :(

Summary:One of the big trends of recent years in the tech space has been the rise of delivery startups like Instacart and Postmates and the like. In a way, this is a resurrection of an idea, if you remember famous 90s startups like WebVan, Peapod and Kozmo.com. So, I thought it would be interesting to speak with someone who founded a delivery startup back in the 90s. Tim DeMello was the founder of Streamline, a delivery startup which actually predated the dot-com era. We talk to Tim about the economics of home delivery businesses and find out what he thinks the prospects are for the current crop of delivery companies. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

People Marketplaces are a lot like eBay -- connecting buyer and seller -- but for services, says a16z General Partner Jeff Jordan. These two-sided marketplaces are cropping up across the economy, from finding a ride to house cleaning and pet sitting. Now Instacart is bringing the People Marketplace model to the grocery business -- a massive market that has seen very little change even as the internet and mobile have upended most retail categories. Joined by a16z's Sam Gerstenzang, this segment outlines the elements of a People Marketplace; why the model is gathering momentum now; and if we all remember what happened with Webvan, why is this time is different?

Webvan the ambitious online grocer once bragged that it would set a new standard for Internet retailing. As most people now know for all its hubris the company has turned out to be one of the dot-com economy's most spectacular failures. After burning its way through $1.2 billion in capital it declared bankruptcy in July. Does Webvan's collapse mean that shoppers dislike buying groceries online? For a part of the answer look across the Atlantic to a Britain-based supermarket chain called Tesco. Its online arm Tesco.com will probably have revenues of $420 million this year. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.