Sand Hill Road

Latest Episodes:

E43 Opening a global hub for tech entrepreneurs at UC Berkeley with SkyDeck founding GP Chon Tang Sep 06, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Chon Tang, the founding GP of the Skydeck Fund. Chon is an experienced Silicon Valley engineer, entrepreneur and investor. He was formerly founding partner and Managing Director of Junzi Capital Engineering, a leading quantitative hedge fund investing in the commodity space. He has been actively investing in Silicon Valley startups for 12 years, and has personal investments in over 25 deals with multiple IPOs and exits.

00:00 Intro

03:40 Starting a tech company in 2000

09:27 Founder-investor transition

17:51 The art of talent arbitrage

22:09 Raising Fund II

27:00 Portfolio construction

30:40 Skydeck Fund entry point

32:50 Success stories

37:00 Skydeck Accelerator Program + Challenges

41:00 The accidental VC

45:00 Next Skydeck batch

E42 Taking Zoom meetings like a pro with Fathom (YC W21) founder Richard White Aug 12, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Richard White, the serial entrepreneur behind Uservoice and Fathom.video. Richard is a design engineer and product visionary who has been in the first YC batch with Justin Khan and Emmett Shear for Kiko (YC S05) and most recently came back to the YC W21 to see how startup kids are doing the tricks today.

00:00 Intro

00:51 Who is Richard White

03:40 The power of cold emails

05:09 Kiko (YC S05)

08:53 The UserVoice journey

12:09 Traction and funding

16:09 UserVoice today

$18:16 Starting Fathom

22:28 The Fathom product

27:35 Fathom customer profile

30:27 Fathom in remote orgs

32:03 Richard's own use of Fathom

33:57 Fathom integrations

36:14 Zoom Marketplace + platform risk $

39:20 Going through YC (again)

42:57 Fathom seed round

46:11 The fun of fundraising

47:28 Vision for Fathom

E41 Replacing credit bureaus one API integration at a time with Argyle founder Shmulik Fishman Jun 06, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Shmulik Fishman, founder and CEO of Argyle, about raising the Series A through an investment memo and the firm’s mission of making user-permissioned employment data ubiquitous and reinvent credit decisioning for lenders and consumers. 00:00 Intro 00:56 What does Argyle do? 03:17 Experiencing the pain point 06:48 Raising the Series A with an investment memo 11:41 Automated form population 14:05 Real-time income/employment verification 17:52 Status quo: credit bureaus 22:18 Technical/data moats 26:59 Standing on the shoulders of giants 28:40 API integrations 30:28 Screen scraping vs. API scanning 32:41 Traction and metrics 35:26 Pricing Strategy 38:36 Argyle Team 41:36 Remote-first valuation discount/premium

E40 The world is broken, let's fix it with 8VC founding partner Drew Oetting May 22, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Drew Oetting, founding partner of 8VC, about building a multi-billion venture firm from the ground up with Joe Lonsdale.

00:00 Intro

01:05 Operation Mask

06:33 Resilience

12:54 Views on Venture

20:06 Building 8VC / Addepar

26:30 Raising the maiden fund

30:48 8VC Investment Thesis

40:01 Drew as a VC

50:53 Silicon Hills

E39 Trailblazing the silver tech category with Seth Sternberg co-founder of home-care unicorn Honor May 01, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Seth Sternberg the co-founder and CEO of Honor, which is a managed marketplace for in-home care that has recently announced a USD 370m Series E led by Baillie Gifford.

00:00 Intro

01:19 Elevator pitch

02:19 Original inspiration

05:28 The Meebo experience

08:06 Serial founder problems

09:06 Getting the founder team together

10:52 The Honor MVP and marketplace model

14:52 Marketplace supply side

19:44 Marketplace demand side

21:57 Fundraising journey

25:07 Growth capital rounds

27:07 Expansion strategy

28:56 Homestead acquisition

31:45 Competitive landscape

34:08 GTM and growth strategies

E38 Helping brands build sustainable products with Novi Connect found Kimberly Shenk Apr 04, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kimberly Shenk of Novi Connect, B2B marketplace to help brands build and manufacture transparent products, which recently announced a $10.3M Series A led by Greylock 00:00 Intro 02:04 Getting started with Naked Poppy 04:09 From Naked Poppy to Novi Connect 05:17 Sustainable Chemicals Market 07:30 Kimberly’s data science background 09:19 The Novi Connect Business Model 11:11 The Novi Connect MVP 12:49 Getting the first Customers 13:42 Growth Metrics and Milestone 14:33 Fundraising journey 15:50 Series A led by Greylock 17:37 Mulit-sided B2B marketplace 21:26 Growth metrics and milestones 23:26 Acting as certification agent 24:24 Competition 26:49 AI-driven platform 28:26 Scaling Novi Connect 29:37 Newjoiner Bootcamp 30:53 Priorities and focus 31:53 Category expansion 33:14 Longterm vision

E37 Finding regulatory moats at the Series A with Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners Feb 19, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners, a venture firm that invests in early-stage consumer technology startups operating in heavily regulated markets.

00:00 Intro

01:39 Investment thesis 2022

02:36 Lithic

05:02 Tusk Venture Partners

08:46 Meeting Bradley Tusk

12:52 Regulatory investment thesis

14:58 The role of regulations in startups

16:37 Fanduel / repeal of PAPSA

17:33 Tusk entry stage

19:01 Consumer vs. Enterprise

19:43 Roman - men’s health

21:34 Alma - mental health care

23:31 Out of scope areas

25:14 Bird - scooter wars

29:36 First mover vs. fast follower

32:50 Sunday - DTC lawn care

37:11 Focus areas 2022

41:02 How to get in touch

E36 Running the world's largest trust experiment with Couchsurfing founder Casey Fenton Jan 08, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Casey Fenton, founder of Couchsurfing and Upstock, about the early days for Couchsurfing when Casey was pioneering what has since become known as the “sharing economy” and how is is now bringing the sharing economy to the cap table with Upstock.

00:00 Intro

01:13 The Couchsurfing proof-of-concept

02:46 The first Couchsurfing stay

03:49 501(c)3 non-profit status

06:34 The mechanics of the benchmark Series A

08:27 The Couchsurfing MVP

10:38 The donation-based model

11:58 The demand side monetization model

15:34 The chicken-and-egg question

17:11 Casey’s philosophy on ego hacking

21:11 Building for the internet without ego

23:57 Upstock

28:34 Ideal customer moment

30:20 Switching costs

31:09 Competitors and integrations

33:40 Milestone-based equity kickers

35:03 Following Casey’s work

E35 Launching a startup acquisition marketplace with MicroAcquire founder Andrew Gazdecki Nov 28, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Andrew Gazdecki, founder of MicroAcquire. The episode was recorded when MicroAcquire was still a fully bootstrapped one person company. A few weeks later MicroAcquire announced that it had raised a $6.3m Seed round led by Bessemer Ventures.

00:00 Intro

01:09 What is MicroAcquire?

02:55 Buying a micro-SaaS as a learning experience

05:15 Andrew’s own founder path

10:40 Key bootstrapper metrics

14:53 Solving the chicken-and-egg problem

19:17 Supply side: company profiles

20:24 Marketplace discovery vs. transaction facilitation

22:45 Microacquire marketplace monetisation

26:51 Microacquire as a curated marketplace

30:12 Dealing with inflated seller asks

33:25 Disrupting the business broker industry

35:45 Competitor marketplaces

36:50 Scaling Microacquire

38:10 Raising venture capital vs. bootstrapping

E34 Tackling the formalwear industry with Queenly co-founders with Trisha Bantigue and Kathy Zhou Nov 16, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Queenly co-founders Trisha Bantigue and Kathy Zhou about building a consumer marketplace and tackling the formalwear industry.

00:00 Intro

00:56 The Queenly Elevator Pitch

01:52 Launching Queenly during lockdown

04:04 The pageant dress market

08:06 Formal wear resale market microstructure

10:16 The Queenly minimum viable product

12:37 Go to market strategy

14:56 Queenly marketplace metrics

16:36 The Queenly fundraising journey

20:40 Raising $6.3m From Andressen Horowitz

22:58 Solving the marketplace chicken and egg problem

24:58 Unlocking supply