Sand Hill Road

E52 Pricing strategies for generative AI with Orb co-founder and CTO Kshitij Grover Aug 16, 2024

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kshitij Grover, co-Founder and CTO of Orb (www.withorb.com), a billing platform provider that solves usage-based billing needs. The SF based startup has to date raised a total of c. $19.1 million across its Series A ($14 million led by Menlo) and seed ($5.1 million led by Greylock).

E51 Raising $1bn to bringing entrepreneurship to Japan with World Innovation Lab founder and CEO Gen Isayama Apr 06, 2023

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Gen Isayama, co-founder and CEO of World Innovation Lab, a Palo Alto and Tokyo based venture firm investing in growth-stage companies and serving as a bridge between startups and Japanese corporations. 00:00 Intro 01:30 World Innovation Lab 04:10 From Japanese lawyer to Silicon Valley VC 09:10 From DCM to WIL 13:55 WIL investment thesis 19:40 Japanese entrepreneurial culture 26:57 Open innovation Models at WIL 31:57 Raising Fund I 37:00 Full spectrum of WIL Activities 42:16 Investment strategy and portfolio construction 48:06 Outlook for WIL III 51:23 Call to action

E50 Establishing a growth equity firm with Left Lane Capital founding partner Dan Ahrens Mar 07, 2023

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Dan Ahrens, founding partner at Left Lane Capital, a New York based venture capital and early growth equity firm that invests in high-growth internet and consumer technology businesses.

00:00 Intro

02:43 Consumer vs. enterprise tech

05:09 Getting into venture

07:54 Raising Left Lane I

10:35 Investing while fundraising

13:09 The Left Lane Capital playbook

17:09 Due diligence in a hot market

18:52 Scaling Left Lane Capital

21:36 Deployment pace

23:28 Focus area

26:04 Hard conversations

28:10 Arc

32:53 Exo Freight

35:28 Supply Chain Tech

37:04 Call to action

E49 Cooking up the future of digital food halls with Byte Kitchen founder Divyang Arora Feb 22, 2023

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Divyang Arora, founder and CEO of Byte Kitchen about cooking up the future of digital food halls with Byte Kitchen founder Divyang Arora.

0:00 Intro

1:24 2 minute elevator pitch

4:27 Going all in

8:07 Business Model

14:52 The Byte Kitchen playbook

18:52 Optimal Partner Restaurant Profile

25:39 End customer benefits

27:25 Raising the Seed Round

30:14 Early traction

31:54 Byte Kitchen's Use of Tech

34:50 Call to Action

E48 Protecting passwords through open-source software with Bitwarden CEO Michael Crandell Jan 31, 2023

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Michael Crandell, CEO Bitwarden about scaling open-source password manager Bitwarden.

00:00 Intro

00:50 What is Bitwarden

03:22 From side hustle to venture-backed

06:36 Joining a Bootstrapper at Series A

09:58 Open-source GTM

13:25 Open-source defensibility

15:35 Community vs. enterprise edition

17:37 Revenue traction

19:51 Competition

22:25 Fundraising journey

25:46 Use of funds

28:25 Go-to-market strategy

31:40 Building a remote-first company

35:11 Arbitrating talent

36:00 Next steps for Bitwarden

38:28 Not the first time at the rodeo

E47 Your fund size is your strategy with Kyle Harrison, GP at Contrary Jan 13, 2023

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kyle Harrison, general partner at Country about everything from the economics of whale hunting, the venture product offering to his recent joining of Contrary.

00:00 Intro

01:11 Way into venture

04:58 Time of reflection

07:24 The under-innovated venture model

10:46 Your fund size is your strategy

16:16 The nature of the general partnership

20:38 Rethinking the org chart

25:13 VC product vs. VC service

28:31 VC product industry practice

31:13 From monolithic brands to solo capitalist

37:18 The future of venture tribes

39:52 Joining Contrary

E46 Uncovering tax credits (aka free money) for startups with MainStreet founder and CEO Doug Ludlow Nov 20, 2022

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Doug Ludlow, co-founder and CEO of MainStreet, which helps startups and small businesses uncover tax credits.

00:00 Intro

01:05 Hipster

05:09 Happy Home Company

07:10 Starting MainStreet

11:22 The nature of Tax credits

16:03 The Path Act

17:52 The MainStreet Product

19:14 Customer success stories

20:41 Customer profile

22:40 Audit protection / guarantee

24:13 Moats

25:37 Whitespace vs. Switching

26:30 MainStreet traction

27:47 Fundraising

28:17 Pre-empted Series A

30:22 MainStreet layoffs

32:42 Unit economics

33:42 Unit economics

34:50 Vision for MainStreet

37:42 Fast five

39:01 Call to action

E45 Building a nextgen, authentic professional social network with Candor founder Kelsey Bishop Nov 07, 2022

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Kelsey Bishop founder and CEO of Candor, which is a nexgen, authentic social network.

00:00 Intro

01:02 What is Candor

03:25 Single player mode

03:56 Kelsey’s background

06:19 Employee-culture fit

08:31 Getting started

10:31 Migrating from bubble

11:38 Raising the Seed

12:42 Getting pre-empted

13:50 Raising from angels

15:23 Solo founder journey

16:58 Product + traction

21:47 Business model

23:03 Talking to users

24:51 Remote first company

26:25 Becoming a CEO

27:03 Call to action

E44 Shipping an open-source, low code enterprise tool builder with Appsmith founder Abhishek Nayak Oct 29, 2022

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Abhishek Nayak the co-founder and CEO of Appsmith, which is an open-source, low code internal tool builder. 00:00 Intro

03:15 Entrepreneur in Residence at Accel

05:52 Third time at the Rodeo

09:55 Validating a startup idea at his wedding

11:38 Built for Internal facing apps

13:48 The Appsmith Customer Persona

15:06 From Dataset to app

15:42 What Appsmith is replacing

17:07 The Appsmith killer feature

18:29 Getting to the first 100 users

21:40 Customer love + product iteration

23:07 Competition

25:24 Open source vs. closed source

27:53 Open source applications vs. infrastructure

31:07 Open core model

34:12 Traction and metrics

36:43 Metrics tracked over time

37:43 Fundraising for 3rd time

39:27 Fundraising journey

43:50 Remote company discounts

45:27 Call to action

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

27:02 Offering power seller tools to boost supply

28:15 Cracking the demand side

29:12 Facilitating Marketplace Transactions

31:36 Marketplace take rate

32:43 Competition And Playbook

35:16 Formal wear Price dynamics

38:22 The Queenly Vision

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

54:48 Finding out more about Justin

E23 Insights from building a VC firm in public with Initialized Capital founder Garry Tan Apr 23, 2021

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Garry Tan, co-founder of Initialized Capital about his journey as a content creator, founder and managing partner at Initialized Capital.

00:00 Intro

02:02 Garry's Twitter game

06:00 Keeping up the content cascade

08:12 Getting started on YouTube

10:50 Paying it forward at scale

14:45 Respecting the audience

18:00 Content creation is like building a startup

21:13 Garry as a founder

25:14 Founder "what ifs"

28:26 Garry as a VC

E22 Engineering the atomic cockroach of databases with Cockroach Labs co-founder Spencer Kimball Apr 13, 2021

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Spencer Kimball, co-founder and CEO of Cockroach Labs about building a database unicorn backed by some of Silicon Valley's top venture firms, incl. Benchmark, Sequoia Capital and Index Ventures. After recording the episode, Cockroach Labs raised $160m on a $2bn valuation in January 2021, reflecting the explosive growth and product innovation of 2020.

00:00 Intro

00:56 Cockroach Labs elevator pitch

04:29 Getting the band together

09:24 Exit to Square and paddling back into the startup surf

11:44 First version of CockroachDB

14:17 Open core model

20:43 Relicensing Cockroach DB

25:39 Open source as top of the funnel tool

30:25 Series A from Benchmark and Sequoia Capital

35:15 Series A extension from Index

37:01 Late state startup life at Series D

39:44 CockroachDB technology

48:11 Synchronous replication and CockroachDB

53:50 CAP Theorem and CockroachDB

58:10 CockroachDB and Kubernetes

1:01:10 Spencer's workout regime

E21 Building a distributed warehouse network one parcel at a time with STORD co-founder Sean Henry Mar 05, 2021

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sean Henry, co-founder and CEO of STORD about building a digital warehouse and distribution startup backed by some of Silicon Valley's top venture firms, incl. Susa Ventures, Kleiner Perkins and Founders Fund from Atlanta, Georgia.

00:00 Intro

01:11 Announcing the Series B led by Founders Fund

02:57 What solution does STORD offer?

04:27 Sean Henry's entrepreneurial journey from childhood

13:00 STORD business model

19:50 Solving the two-sided marketplace problem

25:35 Competitive landscape

28:55 Software-enabled marketplace: Software as a wedge to get supply side

35:15 STORD pricing

38:50 STORD as a distributed logistics and storage systems

45:15 Acquisition of Cove Logistics in summer of 2020

48:31 Raising money from Silicon Valley as an Atlanta based startup

54:45 What's next for STORD

E20 Unpacking growth with Andy Johns, Partner at Unusual Ventures Jan 08, 2021

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Andy Johns (@ibringtraffic), Partner at Unusual Ventures about his growth journey at Facebook, Twitter, Quora and Wealthfront.

00:00 Intro

00:37 Growth at Facebook

03:50 Growth at Twitter

05:31 Growth at Quora

09:25 Growth at Wealthfront

12:11 Unusual Ventures

16:25 A balanced approach to growth

21:16 Shipping the org chart

24:29 Running experiments

28:05 Product development for innovation

31:40 Wonderschool

35:22 Ride Report

38:22 Finding out more about Andy

E19 Moving from the monolith to a microservices architecture with effx founder Joey Parsons Dec 24, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner and Cameron Weibel are joined by Joey Parsons, founder of effx to talk about moving from the monolith to a microservices architecture.

00:00
Intro

03:05
From rockstar engineer to found

06:02
Building early social network PicRave

$07:30
Taking the plunge with wife 5 months pregnant

09:00
Founder focus as a young father

10:06
Transitioning from Airbnb to Kleiner Perkins

12:03
Daily life as an entrepreneur in residence

13:46
Defining microservices

14:53
Explaining microservices to a kid

16:28
Microservices vs. structured programming

19:55
Functionality of microservices

22:20
User microservice example

24:15
Starting out: monolith vs. microservices architecture

25:42
Microservices teams: UI, middleware, DBA specialists

28:38
Data layer of microservices

30:56
Microservices vs. monolith debate

34:36
Moving to a microservices architecture at Airbnb

37:59
Managing microservices at Airbnb

42:12
effx and Kubernetes

43:44
Go to market strategy at effx

46:07
Raising the $3.9m Seed round

E18 Looking for the next Cal moonshots with Caroline Winnett of UC Berkeley's SkyDeck Dec 08, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by Caroline Winnett, Executive Director at UC Berkeley's accelerator and incubator SkyDeck.

00:00 Intro

01:51 What is SkyDeck?

02:57 Demo days during Covid-19

03:35 Caroline's founder journey at NeuroFocus

05:24 Joining SkyDeck and setting up the SkyDeck Fund

07:23 Berkeley SkyDeck carry split

08:35 Berkeley SkyDeck LP base

09:50 SkyDeck vs. YC, 500 Startups, Techstars

12:11 Cohort profile and eligibility requirements

14:37 Accelerator milestones

15:22 Breakout success stories

16:26 Berkeley within Silicon Valley ecosystem

18:33 Future of SkyDeck

E17 Migrating lawyers to the cloud with legal technologist Richard Mabey, co-founder of Juro Sep 17, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Richard Mabey, co-founder of London-based legaltech startup Juro, backed by Union Square Ventures.

00:00 Intro

02:01 Magic circle years at Freshfields

03:35 Catching the entrepreneurial bug

05:15 Transitioning to legaltech via LegalZoom

07:26 Meeting co-founder Pavel Kovalevich

08:43 The Juro Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

09:54 Getting the first customer

13:15 Finding customer pains and building the core product features

15:06 Core feature set: painkiller vs. vitamin

17:05 Early pricing

18:34 Selling Saas to corporate lawyers

19:59 Tech stack of Juro

21:11 Seedcamp accelerator

22:40 $750k Seed Round led by Point Nine Capital

24:24 $2m Seed extension round

25:15 $5m Series A led by Union Square Ventures

26:15 Getting a warm intro at USV

27:01 Deploying the Series A

28:12 Navigating through the Corona pandemic

E16 Unpacking marketplaces and modern food delivery wars with Mike Ghaffary from Canvas Ventures Aug 29, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Mike Ghaffary, GP at Canvas Ventures.

00:00 Intro

02:21 Swiss army knife of education

04:04 Business school after Dotcom bubble burst

05:06 Founding Stitcher

06:14 Focusing on news

08:03 Becoming CEO of Eat24

09:39 Growing Eat24 to $700m top line

10:45 Food delivery wars

11:55 Grubhub Partnership that never launched

13:12 Jeremy Stoppelman and Steve Jobs on search on mobile

14:30 Becoming a successful angel investor

15:35 Making the most expensive iPhone app ever

16:37 Angel investment in Strava

17:20 Angel investment in Superhuman

17:50 Joining Social Capital

19:58 Mike’s experience at Social Capital

20:28 CloudKitchens investment

21:30 HubHaus investment

22:37 Joining Canvas Ventures

24:04 Flyhomes investment

27:52 Marketplace Deep Dive

28:27 Lenny Rachitsky: focus on supply or demand side?

30:06 Thomas Eisenmann: Two-sided networks

30:57 Uber: demand side vs. supply side subsidies

32:09 Local vs. global network effects

33:24 Sarah Tavel (Benchmark) on unlocking new supply

34:21 Local delivery war zones

35:36 Uber Eats entering the market

37:04 Public vs. privately held delivery war contenders

38:54 Marketplace take rate

40:38 Out-of bound marketplace take rates

41:57 Zero percent take rate

E15 Building a cloud unicorn for developers with Digital Ocean co-founder Moisey Uretzky Aug 08, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Moisey Uretzky, co-founder of Digital Ocean. Digital Ocean is a cloud infrastructure unicorn built for developers and headquartered in New York City. In this episode we journal the founder journey from getting into Techstars to scaling the company with venture debt to a recent unicorn valuation.

00:00 Setting the scene

03:55 The Uretzky family

05:22 Roots of intellectual curiosity

07:15 Mathematics and first principles thinking

09:18 Startups before Digital Ocean

14:16 Finding co-founders on Craigslist

19:16 Digital Ocean MVP

23:12 First major Product Iteration: 5$ SSD Plan

29:36 Getting into Techstars

32:35 Raising the Seed from IA Ventures

37:19 Raising the Series A from a16z

42:28 Using venture debt to scale up

47:19 Scaling up Digital Ocean

54:22 Competition with big tech cloud providers

59:00 Running Digital Ocean during the Corona pandemic

E14 The great hits and misses of venture capital with Brendan Wales of e.ventures Jul 21, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Brendan Wales, general partner at e.ventures on investing in data infrastructure unicorn Segment at the Seed and passing on TikTok (then Musical.ly) at the Series A.

0:00 Sand Hill Road Intro

2:10 First job running a Golf shop while at college

3:20 First job out of college in 2009 and entrepreneurial ambitions

4:29 'I gotta get to the Valley' finding Zozi's on Crunchbase

6:06 Joining e.ventures in 2012

7:52 History and roots of e.ventures

9:53 e.ventures current fund and global footprint

11:10 Investing in Segment.io at the Seed along with Kleiner Perkins

15:08 Consumer-tech perspective on Segment

16:02 Passing on Musical.ly/TikTok

17:30 Warm introductions vs. metric-based discovery (digital exhaust)

20:30 Metrics requested from Musical.ly/TikTok founding team / key consumer social metrics

22:17 Machiavellian founder perspective on Musical.ly/TikTok consumer retention

24:35 Ex-post reflections why they passed on Musical.ly/TikTok

26:35 Comparison to the recent Clubhouse a16z-led Series A

28:50 Venture capital returns over the lifetime of a fund

31:10 Pattern matching for early markups

32:58 This Week's Seed Companies

35:24 EVA Growth Index / X-Factors

37:37 Nacelle: headless CMS for Shopify stores, backed by Index and Accomplice

39:05 Most recent investment: Airvet, $14m Series A led by Canvas Ventures

E13 Uncoding the ‘Coding VC’ Leo Polovets, Co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures Apr 02, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Leo Polovets, co-founder and general partner at Susa Ventures. As a partner at Susa, Leo focuses on investments in enterprise software, developer tools, technical products and logistics and supply chain. In this session we discuss his journey from being the second engineer at LinkedIn to starting his own venture firm. We discuss some of his notable investments in breakout companies, such as Robinhood and Flexport, as well as his most recent investment in Scalyr. As Leo is an icon on the VC twitter, we also dig into some of his previous tweets and try to draw lessons that go beyond the 280 character limit.

E12 Exploring the latest in data science with Sarah Catanzaro from Amplify Partners Mar 19, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Sarah Catanzaro from Amplify Partners. As a partner at Amplify, Sarah focuses on startups that apply technological advances in machine intelligence and enterprise infrastructure to solve real-world problems. In this session we discuss her journey from data scientist to venture capital, her take on recent data sciences trends and her most recent investments, including OctoML, InterVenn Biosciences, Maze and Bayes.

E11 Investing in the next frontier of open source with Bryan Offutt from Index Ventures Feb 01, 2020

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Bryan Offutt from Index Ventures, which is an active investor in the open source vertical, having invested in the likes of Hortonworks, Confluent, Elastic, Kong, Cockroach Labs and most recently Starburst. In this session we talk about the next frontier of open source, such as the open sourcing of pre-trained ML/NLP models (such as BERT) and distributed design. We also cover Index Venture's most recent COSS investment in Starburst, an open core company built around Presto, a distributed, open source query engine that has originally been developed at Facebook.