The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

David Friedberg is Founder and CEO of The Production Board (TPB), a holding company established to solve the most fundamental problems that affect our planet, by reimagining global systems of production. Prior to founding The Production Board, David founded The Climate Corporation, a 10-year journey that culminated in their $930M acquisition by Monsanto. If that was not enough, David is the Founder and Chairman at Metromile and also sits on the board of Soylent, Clara Foods, Tillable, Cana Technologies and more.

1.) Origins:

• How David made his way into the world of startups and technology from academia and physics?
• What were David's biggest takeaways from scaling The Climate Corp to $930M exit to Monsanto?
• How did the exit put pressure on David for all future companies he builds? How does he manage that?

2.) The Macro: Venture + The Economy

• How does David foresee the impending rate hikes? What impact will this have on venture and the economy?
• What segment of the market will be first to be hit? Why is growth investing last to be hit? How does early stage play out in this very new environment?
• How will we see the velocity of capital deployment change in this new period? What does David believe are some of the crucial flaws of the venture model?
• How does David reflect on his own price sensitivity? What lessons has he learned from deals he has done or missed that have changed his perspective?

3.) David Frankel: The Business Builder

• What is David's rubrik for business value creation? How has this changed with time?
• How mentally plastic does one have to be around the time it takes to see margins, unit economics etc change from negative to positive?
• How does David and the team approach building new companies at TPB? Where do they find the founding teams? How do they incentivise them?
• How does TPB approach continuous funding for the companies they create? What milestones need to be hit? How do they assess them?
• How does David approach liquidity with regards to exits for the companies they create? Why does their holding company structure mean they have different incentives to VCs?

4.) David Friedberg: Father and Husband

• How does David reflect on his own relationship to money today? How has it changed over time?
• What have been David's biggest realisations on what provides him true happiness?
• How did having children change his operating mentality? What does being a great father mean to David?

David’s Favourite Book: Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Sahil Bloom is the Founding Partner @ SRB Ventures, a $10M fund that leverages the 500K followers Sahil has amassed to invest at the intersection of venture and media. Previously, Sahil spent 7 years at a large investment fund managing >$3.5 billion in capital and serves on the board of 4 companies. He has also been an active angel investor in over 30 companies.

1.) How Sahil made his way from a career in traditional finance to building a media company and leveraging that to raise the latest SRB fund? How does Sahil advise others is the best way to "find their zone of genius"?

2.) How To Build a Media Engine:

• What have been some of Sahil's biggest lessons on what works on Twiter and what does not work?
• What is the golden rule for Twitter?
• How does Sahil plan and come up with ideas for his Twitter threads? What tools and software does he use? How long does each thread take?

3.) The End of the Road for Traditional Venture:

• Why does Sahil think traditional venture is dying?
• What newcomers will take the place of the existing incumbents?
• Why does he think they are weak? What do new players provide that they do not?
• Which existing players will remain and be strong? Which will fade out?
• Does Sahil believe that VCs really provide any value?

4.) SRB Ventures:

• Why did Sahil decide to raise the new fund?
• How did he decide on size of the fund? What is the strategy? What is the portfolio construction?
• How does SRB provide media services others do not?
• How did Sahil meet Tim Cook and get him to invest in the fund?
• What is the biggest thing Sahil believes most people misunderstand about luck?

Sahil’s Favourite Book: When Breath Becomes Air: Kalanithi Paul

Sahil’s Most Recent Investment: Wander

Howard Marks is co-chairman and co-founder of Oaktree Capital Management, a leading investment firm with more than $120 billion in assets. Prior to founding Oaktree, Howard spent 10 years at The TCW Group, where he was responsible for investments in distressed debt, high yield bonds, and convertible securities. Howard has also written two books, most recently Mastering the Market Cycle: Getting the Odds on Your Side, and it was Warren Buffet who said, “When I see memos from Howard Marks in my mail, they’re the first thing I open and read. I always learn something.”

Bill Gurley is a General Partner @ Benchmark Capital, one of the most successful funds of the last decade with a portfolio including the likes of Uber, Twitter, Dropbox, WeWork, Snapchat, StitchFix, eBay and many many more. As for Bill, widely recognised as one of the greats of our time having worked with the likes of GrubHub, NextDoor, Uber, OpenTable, Stitch Fix and Zillow. Prior to Benchmark, Bill was a partner with Hummer Winblad Venture Partners. Before entering venture, Bill spent four years on Wall Street as a top-ranked research analyst, including three years at CS First Boston.

In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:

1.) In March Ray Dalio stated we would be entering a "global recession", how do Howard and Bill feel about this statement? How does today's environment remind Howard and Bill of 2010/11? What is similar? What is different? How does Bill think about investing through cycles?

2.) How does Bill think about investing through cycles? What have Bill's lessons been from seeing many venture vintages on LP performance across cycles? How does Howard think about investing through cycles from a distressed debt perspective? What have his lessons been from Oaktree's performance over the years?

3.) Do Howard and Bill agree we will not see interest rates go anywhere for the next 3-5 years? What is the impact of this sustained low-interest rate environment? What could be done that would see interest rates increase in the future? How does Bill believe this will impact the supply of LP dollars in venture?

4.) How do Bill and Howard evaluate the state of the public markets today? Why does Howard believe that FOMO has really taken effect? How does Bill think about network effects and the laws of compounding with regards to public companies?

5.) Do Howard and Bill agree we are seeing a retreat from globalisation? What are the core impacts of this retreat? Why is Bill so concerned about "regulatory capture"? Why does Bill fear that today, "Washington is for sale"? What would he like to see change?

Item’s Mentioned In Today’s Episode

Howard’s Favourite Book: Across That Bridge: A Vision for Change and the Future of America

Bill’s Favourite Book: How Innovation Works

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Oliver Jay (OJ) is one of the most successful sales leaders of the last decade. Most recently, OJ spent 6 years at Asana where he was hired as the company's first revenue leader. As CRO, OJ was responsible for product-led and sales-led revenue and grew the team from less than 20 to over 450. Before Asana, OJ spent 4 years at Dropbox in a period of hyper-scaling for the business where OJ was Head of APAC and LATAM. At Dropbox, OJ scaled the sales team from 0 to 50 while tripling ARR. If that was not enough, OJ is also an independent board member at Grab, the leading Super app in Southeast Asia.

1.) Entry into Sales:

• How did OJ make his way into sales with Dropbox?
• If OJ were to choose 1-2 lessons from his time at Dropbox and Asana that have stayed with him, what would they be? How did they impact his mindset?
• What were some of the non-obvious but crucial things Asana and Dropbox did in sales that led to success?

2.) The Playbook:

• Why does OG disagree with so many definitions of "the sales playbook"? What is the sales playbook to OJ? What are the different chapters?
• Should the founder be the one to create the sales playbook?
• What are the signs that the founder has a repeatable and scalable playbook?
• When is the right time to hire the first sales rep? Should it be a Head of Sales or Sales Rep?
• How does the first hire depend on whether you are PLG or enterprise sales led?

3.) The Hiring Process:

• How does OJ structure the hiring process?
• How does OJ know the qualities that he wants to uncover in each candidate?
• What questions does OJ ask to unpack whether the candidate has those qualities?
• How does this differ when hiring sales reps vs sales leaders?
• How does OJ use the sales demo to test the quality of a candidate? What does he want to see?
• Who does OJ bring into the interview process? When do they get involved?
• What are two questions that will immediately tell whether someone is a good manager?

4.) Sales Onboarding:

• How does OJ segment sales onboarding into 3 crucial steps?
• Chapter 1: Support: Why does OJ believe it is so important for reps to spend their first week with support? What should they look to learn? What questions should they be asking?
• Chapter 2: Market Knowledge: How can sales leaders teach and educate new reps on market landscape, dynamics and competition? Why does this have to come before sales training?
• Chapter 3: Sales Training: In the final step, what does the sales training process? What does OJ look for in the final sales demo? When does OJ let reps speak to customers? How does this differ when comparing enterprise to PLG?

Kayvon Beykpour is one of the most prominent product leaders of the last decade. For the last 7 years, Kayvon has been at Twitter where he led all of the teams across Product, Engineering, Design, Research and Customer Service & Operations. Kayvon came to Twitter through Periscope, the live broadcasting app that raised from GV, Bessemer, Scott Belsky and was ultimately acquired by Twitter in 2015. If that was not enough, Kayvon is also an active angel investor today.

1.) Entry into Product:

• How did Kayvon make his way into the world of tech and come to be Head of Consumer Product @ Twitter?
• What were some of Kayvon's biggest lessons from the journey with Periscope?
• What were some of Kayvon's biggest takeaways from working closely with Scott Belsky?

2.) Building Your Product Team:

• How does Kayvon advise on your first product hires? Should it be Head of Product or more junior product team members?
• When is the right time for the founder to hand off some core product decisions to these hires?
• What are the core traits and characteristics of some of the best first product hires?

3.) Perfecting the Hiring Process for Product Teams:

• How does Kayvon approach the hiring process for all new product team members?
• What are the stages? What does he look to learn at each stage?
• What questions reveal the most in product candidates? How do the best respond?
• How does Kayvon use case studies and product demos in the process?

4.) Building Product: 101:

• How does Kayvon approach product reviews? Who is invited? Who sets the agenda? How often?
• What have been Kayvon's biggest lessons about what leaders need to do to get the most from their product teams? How do they communicate?
• What has been one of Kayvon's biggest product mistakes? What did he learn?
• How does Kayvon advise founders on when to give up on a new product vs when to iterate and persist?