Book Club Discussion: Brotopia with Emily Chang

10/23/20 • 58 min

Hello ACQ2! Posting the audio recording of our Book Club Zoom session with Emily Chang in digestible podcast form. For those who weren't able to attend, we hope you get as much out of the recording as we did being there live!

Sponsors:

Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24

Book notes public post: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/book-club-discussion-brotopia-with-emily-chang

GDoc version of book notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1939VQja1rIK9yP1Ahe4w2frPy4-nUYEH7pxwRk-WjBk/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=110434699798216361855

Thanks as always,

Ben & David

Sponsors:

Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24

Book notes public post: https://www.acquired.fm/episodes/book-club-discussion-brotopia-with-emily-chang

GDoc version of book notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1939VQja1rIK9yP1Ahe4w2frPy4-nUYEH7pxwRk-WjBk/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=110434699798216361855

Thanks as always,

Ben & David

Previous Episode

How YC Rewrote the Seed Playbook with Garry Tan

We're joined by Posterous co-founder, former YC partner and current Managing Partner of Initialized Capital Garry Tan to go deep on how YC changed the game for company creation and seed investing, how they thought about building the "cult" of startups, and what lies ahead as the early-stage world continues to globalize and evolve more quickly than ever.

Sponsors:

Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24

Topics Covered (among others):

How the recruiting challenge for early-stage startups led to outside-the-box thinking
- Peter Thiel’s “crazy” (but not actually crazy) offer to Garry to join Palantir
- Leveraging “cult” startup culture into a magnet for specific types of people
Y Combinator’s path from fringe to mainstream
- Insight that those same cult recruiting techniques could be applied at a meta-level to recruiting company founders themselves
- Initial strong reactions to YC, and knowing they were on to something
- The beginning of “influencer investing” with Paul Graham’s essays + Hacker News
The blooming of Seed as an asset class alongside and around YC
- The landmark deal with SV Angel and DST / Yuri Milner to “auto-fund” every YC company starting in 2011
- YC scaling from ~10-12 companies per batch to 70-80 and now 200+ per batch
- Starting Initialized Capital within YC, and then spinning it out into one of the largest independent seed funds
Influencer investing and startup evangelism going mainstream
- The impact of The Social Network movie
- Exporting the ~”YC message” to the entire world: you can start a startup
- The power of direct, bi-directional access to people via the internet

Links:

Paul Graham’s Essays: http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
Hackers and Painters: https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-Computer/dp/1449389554/
Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com
Garry's (great) YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCIBgYfDjtWlbJhg--Z4sOgQ

Next Episode

Masterclass: Superhuman's Fundraising Playbook (with CEO Rahul Vohra)

Superhuman CEO Rahul Vohra joins us for an absolute masterclass on startup fundraising that shatters much outdated traditional wisdom in the space. We cover why it's possible to build momentum and raise even as a solo founder, how you should think about syndicates vs. "brand name" VCs, and why you always want to be preempted and how to make that happen. This episode is a 100% must-listen for anyone raising money now, or planning to in the future.

Sponsors:

Statsig: https://bit.ly/acquiredstatsig24

Topics Covered:

How to run a successful fundraising process
- Why founders should think about raising money as "creating a market" for their company's equity
- How to build fundraising momentum, and why you shouldn't be afraid of using outsourced design and development agencies
- Preempted fundraises vs marketed fundraises: why you always want to be preempted, and how to orchestrate that happening
- Non-obvious ways that founders should think about runway, amount to raise and raise-timing in order to always have leverage in fundraising conversations
Round construction
- The value of "brand name" investors vs. non-traditional capital, and why you actually want both at different times
- Why founders might want to raise their first capital from other founders and operators (versus from funds)
- Why founders should put some of their own capital into early rounds
- How to use high-resolution financings (SAFEs and convertible debt) efficiently
- The concept of "interstitial financings", where you raise convertible debt in-between rounds, and when & how to use them
Investing while also being a founder/operator
- Time/attention allocation and why it's now possible to do both effectively
- Flexibility to build positions over time vs. traditional fund structures
- Rahul's own angel fund with Todd Goldberg
Bonus! The origin story behind the Superhuman name