Sand Hill Road

Latest Episodes:

E33 Catching the perfect privacy wave one consent at a time with Didomi co-founder Jawad Stouli Oct 06, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Didomoi co-founder and CTO Jawad Stouli about building consent management platform Didomi for the perfect privacy wave.

00:00 Intro

00:46 Early days of Didomi

03:29 Fighting a US patent troll

08:14 Building the Didomi MVP

12:18 Developer-centric platform approach

14:46 Early costumers: self-service vs. SDRs

18:22 Didomi data architecture

24:02 Bootstrapping Didomi

27:43 Raising the Series A

30:37 Raising the Series B

33:35 Scaling up

35:55 Competition

41:29 Call to action

E32 Incubating a space factory at Founders Fund with Delian Asparouhov Sep 22, 2021

Show notes

00:00 Intro

00:24 Welcome to Miami

01:08 Operators Podcast

03:21 Finding the right guests

06:54 Delian’s founder/operator

08:22 Cohort analysis with Keith at Square

10:30 Nightingale

12:24 Operating experience at Teespring

14:24 Varda Space

17:45 Splitting time between Varda and FF

19:45 Varda Space incubation

23:50 Delian as an investor at Founders Fund

27:07 Faire

30:56 Tiger Global and the rise of crossover funds

35:31 Hyperscaling

36:45 Moving to Miami

39:45 Keeping up with Delian

E31 Building the future of remote work with Remote.com founder Job van der Voort Sep 03, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Remote.com founder Job van der Voort about building the future of remote work.

0:00 Intro

00:49 The first two years of Remote

02:19 Preparing for the perfect Storm at Gitlab

06:17 Leaving Gitlab

10:47 Business model

14:10 Legal war chest

15:20 Fintech-payment layer

16:20 SaaS layer

17:52 Pricing

19:47 Competitive landscape

24:12 Seed round

25:42 Series A

28:37 Remote best practices

31:52 Enabling random bump ins

34:07 The remote company handbook or “bible”

35:23 Remote company stack

36:20 Asynchronous vs. synchronous work

40:19 Remote for startups

E30 Fintech investing with Better Tomorrow Ventures co-founder Sheel Mohnot Aug 23, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sheel Mohnot, co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures about his journey as a founder, angel investor and co-founder of Better Tomorrow Ventures.

00:00 Intro

01:11 Guest appearance on a Justin Bieber/Ariana Grande music video

03:16 The “pronoia” mindest

05:04 Sheel’s background

07:56 The Pitch

12:12 Investing with founder authority

14:16 500 Startups fintech fund

18:25 Fintech thesis and sector evolution

22:09 Fintech backend

23:43 Better Tommorrow Ventures

29:24 Differentiation

32:52 Reserve capital

34:52 The good, the bad and the ugly investments

37:40 Sheel-defining investment

41:10 …the bad and the ugly

E29 "Billon Dollar Loser" author Reeves Wiedeman on the epic rise and fall of WeWork Aug 08, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Reeves Wiedeman, author of "Billion Dollar Loser: the epic rise and fall of WeWork".

00:00 Adam's intro

01:11 Intro

01:38 Adam Neumann

04:11 Adam's art of persuasion

05:41 Book title

08:10 Writing process

13:01 WeWork evolution and business model

16:21 Tech vs. real estate company

19:25 WeWork community

22:01 WeWork funding journey

25:11 JPMorgan round

26:50 Masa and the Softbank round

30:39 Acquisitions and side businesses

33:16 Valuation and comps

36:59 Public persona and IPOs

38:50 WeWork today

40:07 Staying in touch with Reeves

E28 Inside DCM’s Record IPO Streak with Kyle Lui, Partner at DCM Jul 28, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Lui, Partner at DCM, about the recent IPO roll that DCM has been on. The Menlo Park-based firm has generated a 61x return on investments that have gone public in the past two years. Kuaishou is the standout, with its market cap to entry valuation at 2,000x.

00:00 Intro

00:50 Who is Kyle Lui

01:33 Intro to DCM

03:30 DCM IX and the A-Fund

05:36 Differentiation through US-Asia angle

07:45 DCM's Japan strategy

08:48 DCM's recent roll

10:00 Biggest winner Kuaishou

11:07 All three sides of the table

14:01 Choicepass

15:36 First 5 years at DCM

18:52 Docsend investment

21:47 Lime investment

23:57 Him’s and Hers investment

26:05 D2C unit economics

28:13 Keeping up with what Kyle is up to

29:33 Kyle's investment focus areas

E27 Replacing PDF attachments one Docsend at a time with founder and CEO Russ Heddleston May 29, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Russ Heddleston, founder of Docsend. The episode was recorded one month before the announcement that DocSend would be acquired by Dropbox for $165m.

00:00 Intro

00:37 What is Docsend

01:51 Selling Pursuit to Facebook in a talent acquisition

04:12 Leaving Facebook and starting Docsend

07:03 Product idea

09:00 Fundraising for Pursuit

12:53 Fundraising for Docsend

14:17 Series A

17:34 Docsend product

20:39 Initial startup client segment

22:29 Docsend fundraising network

25:20 Expanding from initial client segment

29:51 Docsend Spaces

33:07 Pricing strategy

37:50 Next steps for Docsend

39:50 Competing with Intralinks

41:00 Scaling up Docsend

42:29 Remote work at Docsend

43:29 Call to action

E26 Deciphering Super Founders with author and DCVC partner Ali Tamaseb May 20, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Ali Tamaseb, partner at DCVC, about his recently launched book "Super Founders: What Data Reveals About Billion-Dollar Startups".

00:00 Intro

01:00 Who is Ali?

03:02 Spark of motivation for the Super Founders book

05:49 Primary data collection

08:13 Data set: timeframe and selection criteria

10:28 The age of super founders

13:04 Optimal number of co-founders

16:12 Founder education

17:45 Did all of them go to Stanford?

19:38 Pre-founding work experience

21:08 Definition of the "super founder"

25:38 Painkiller vs. vitamin products

27:14 Startup competition

29:50 Defensibility factor

31:44 Venture funding vs. bootstrapping

34:41 Capital requirements

35:46 Startup fundraising

37:15 Time to hatch

E25 Bottoms-up product and go-to-market strategy with product leader and investor Vivek Saraswat May 17, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Vivek Saraswat, who has been a venture investor at Mayfield at the time of the recording and previously a product leader at Docker/VMware/AWS. Since recording this episode, Vivek has joined Immersa as a founding VP of product.

00:00 Intro

00:56 Who is Vivek?

03:12 Joining Mayfield

05:07 Portfolio companies

07:08 Covid impact on commercial open-source

10:17 Go-to-market (GTM)

14:13 Managing product roadmaps in open-source

17:10 Dedicating to bottoms-up GTM

20:49 Hooks and upsells

24:54 Optimal lines between community and commercial

29:22 Firewalls between community and commercial

31:51 Inculcating community-commercial in the organization

E24 Bootstrapping from zero to $1m+ in ARR with Justin Jackson, mega maker of Transistor.fm Apr 30, 2021

Show notes

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Justin Jackson, co-founder of Transistor.fm about his journey as a mega maker, bootstrapping his podcast hosting and analytics platform to $1m+ in ARR in less than 3 years.

00:00 Intro

01:55 Getting Real

04:30 Business is like surfing

7:43 Selling ice cream on a busy beach

11:33 Why your business idea matters

14:17 The nature of the megamaker

19:46 Grow slow, grow real

24:53 Success is gradual, then sudden

31:10 VC attention to podcasting

38:00 Podcast hosting and analytics space

44:20 First version of Transitor.fm

50:45 Dealing with depression as a solopreneur