The IO Podcast: Investor + Operator

Latest Episodes:

Building Lattice & Alt Capital: Jack Altman On Investing & Operating Oct 01, 2024

"Joining a company as early as possible, right after achieving product-market fit, offers the greatest career advantage." – Jack Altman

Jack Altman epitomizes the true "Investor-Operator." As the co-founder and former CEO of the multi-billion-dollar startup Lattice, and now a full-time investor with his $150 million venture fund, Alt Capital, Jack has successfully navigated both sides of the entrepreneurial journey. It’s clear he excels in every aspect, and we were thrilled to have him on the show.

In this episode, we delve into Jack’s career trajectory, from his early days in tech to how he gained the insight to launch Lattice. Jack shares the invaluable lessons he’s learned from building and scaling Lattice to a Series F company, and how those experiences have shaped his approach to investing.

Here’s a breakdown of what we covered:

1:20 – How Jack got into tech and landed at a fast-growing startup

5:30 – Joining an early-stage company vs. starting your own: which provides better learning?

11:30 – The launch of Lattice and pivoting to achieve product-market fit (PMF)

14:14 – How to recognize when you’ve found PMF

19:20 – Best practices for scaling companies: “If your product won’t be used 10 years from now, you’ll never build a lasting, valuable SaaS business.”

21:15 – Jack’s early fundraising mistakes and what he’d do differently

24:30 – The top three traits every founder needs

30:15 – Transitioning to investing: "My hobby is other startups"

39:20 – How being a founder prepares you to be an investor

42:40 – How to become a Level 6 investor (Link to Tweet)

46:20 – Why point solutions won’t cut it—compound startups will generate the biggest returns

51:45 – Investing in AI and the rise of ‘killer apps’

58:54 – Investment strategies: should you aim to create returns by incubating or seed funding?

1:04:00 – Recap with Tyler & Sterling

For more on Alt Capital, visit altcap.com.

Check out Jack’s hierarchy of investors on X (formerly Twitter).

Discover more insights from Investor-Operators on the IO Podcast:

YouTube: @IO-Podcast

X: @IO__podcast

TikTok: @io_podcast

Leading a16z's Growth Fund: David George On Investing Now and In the Future | Ep 13, IO Podcast Sep 09, 2024

In this episode, Tyler Hogge & Sterling Snow sit down with David George, General Partner at a16z, where he leads the growth investing practice. Since joining in 2019, David has been at the forefront of investments in companies like Coinbase, Databricks, Figma, Robinhood and Instacart. Prior to a16z, David was at General Atlantic, where he invested in iconic brands like Airbnb, Opendoor, Slack, Crowdstrike, and Uber. David shares his unique insights into growth investing and his predictions for the future.

Chapters:

01:15 David's Path to Venture

05:30 What Makes Andreessen Horowitz Different

10:30 What He Looks For When Making Growth Investments

21:15 Focus On Inputs Not Outputs

29:30 How They Source Investments

35:10 "On TAM, Ignore the Research Reports". Here's What To Look For Instead

44:30 What It Takes To Go Public: The Three Things A Company Needs

48:56 Where AI Is Going And How He's Investing

1:01:23 Episode Takeaways

Connect With David & a16z

https://x.com/DavidGeorge83

https://a16z.com/growth/

Emergency Episode of the I/O - Building Utah with Redo CEO Sterling Snow Aug 20, 2024

Current Investor and Divvy's Former CRO Sterling Snow is jumping back into an operating role, this time as CEO of Redo, a fast growing customer experience platform.

Sterling shares how Redo's founder Taylor Brown approached him to take on the job and how together they're building a company everyone in Utah can root for.

Chapters:

01:03 Why The Investor Operator Podcast Was Started

03:45 How Sterling Started Talking With The Founding Team At Redo

05:12 Why Redo May Be The Next Divvy

09:41 What Is Redo & How It's Going

16:30 Why You Should Join Redo

23:30 Join An Excellent Startup For Faster Career Growth

Here's Why Shopify Will Be A 100 Year Company | Kaz Nejatian, Shopify COO & Former YC Founder | Episode 12 Jul 10, 2024

How far would you travel for a good conversation? For hosts Tyler Hogge and Sterling Snow it was a no brainer to fly 2000 miles to talk with Kaz Nejatian, the COO of Shopify in their Toronto HQ.

Kaz is a fascinating mind in tech and an unconventional thinker shaping the the product culture of Shopify. He shares his story of growing up in Iran, experiencing the Iran-Iraq war, and eventually immigrating to Canada at age 12. In Canada, Kaz gets even deeper into his fascination with computers and goes onto found a YC company, run a product line at Meta and now acts as the COO and Product Evangelist at multi-billion dollar company Shopify.

Tyler and Sterling find out why Shopify employees have no meetings, how big tech companies are doing product wrong, and why Shopify's unique culture will create a 100 year company that just keeps getting bigger.

Chapters:

01:50 - Kaz's Childhood in Iran and Fleeing to Canada

06:49 - Hot Takes on Current Protests on College Campuses

07:55 - Early Exposure To Computers and Path To Tech

11:17 - The Best Product Managers Are Weird People

13:30 - "I Cannot Take An Average Person And Train Them To Be A PM"

21:25 - How Shopify Is Different Than Other Big Companies

31:00 - How Kaz Killed Meetings At Shopify

37:30 - Write Code And Talk To Users, Do That Over And Over Again

43:39 - Why Getting Married Will Be Your Best Career Accelerant

50:00 - Wrap Up questions

57:25 - Tyler & Sterling's Recap

_________________________

Connect With Kaz

https://x.com/canadakaz

Kaz@shopify.com

Connect With Tyler & Sterling

https://x.com/thogge

https://x.com/sterlingmsnow

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He Started A Business That Sold For $2.5 Billion. Here's What He Learned | Blake Murray, Divvy CEO | I/O Pod Episode 11 Jun 04, 2024

NEA's Scott Sandell May Have The Most IPOs Of All Time. Here's How He Did It | Ep. 10 I/O Podcast May 07, 2024

Scott Sandell, Executive Chairman and Chief Investment Officer at NEA is truly one of the great venture capitalists of our generation. With nearly three decades at NEA he leads the field with a track record of dozens of successful investments including unicorns like Salesforce, Plaid, Workday, Robinhood, Cloudflare and Tableau.

How has he done it? Scott shares his investment philosophy influenced by other greats like Dick Kramlich and John Doerr: understand an individual's life story, decision-making process, and future goals as key in making successful investment choices.

Chapters:

00:02:17 What Are The Characteristics Of Unicorn Founders?

00:10:16 "I Look For Passion-Driven Missionaries"

00:16:05 Building Tableau's Success: Lessons in Slow, Purposeful Growth

00:27:13 Make Your Investors Your Partners. Navigating Board Relationships

00:40:55 The Era of Decreasing LP Commitments

00:52:39 Tyler and Sterlings Recap

Connect with Scott and NEA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/scottdsandell

YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCTU3mQDqk3QyB4WeDQwZ1YQ

Connect with IO Pod

Twitter: https://twitter.com/IO__podcast

Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@io_podcast

YT: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCayuY0VO95kQTUXJvh9T0oQ

Website: https://www.investoroperator.io/

This episode of the IO Podcast is brought to you by Pelion Venture Partners

https://pelionvp.com/

The Kings of Fintech | How NerdWallet's Jake Gibson and Sheel Mohnot Are Funding The Next Generation | Ep. 9 Apr 10, 2024

How Mercury's CEO Immad Akhund Changed the Startup Banking Experience And Got Into Investing || Ep. 8 IO Pod Mar 13, 2024

From TrialPay, Affirm and a16z | Alex Rampell on Investing & Entrepreneurship | Ep. 7 IO Podcast Feb 13, 2024

Andreessen Horowitz General Partner Alex Rampell may be the most true version of an investor-operator. Alex's first entrepreneurial endeavor started as a child when he built and sold shareware out of his parent's house. Eventually he added more businesses to his portfolio before launching the payment platform TrialPay after college and eventually Affirm. Today, Alex invests in some of the largest companies at Andreessen Horowitz and he shares with Tyler and Sterling what he looks for in entrepreneurs and shares tactical advice from his days building.

Chapters:

(00:03:00) How Alex Started His First Company in Middle School

(00:14:46) Investing in People: The Key to Startup Success

(00:18:33) Building Relationships for Business Success

(00:21:23) The Advantage of Naivete in Entrepreneurship

(00:26:41) Interconnected Attributes for Building a Successful Business

(00:28:44) Building a Strong Entrepreneurial Framework

(00:36:04) Mitigating Risk of Overdependence on Initial Customers

(00:42:20) The Battle for Market Dominance

(00:46:05) The Crucial Role of Distribution for Startups

(00:57:17) The Challenge of Convincing Buyers

(01:00:38) Leveraging fear to drive successful acquisitions

Going All In On OpenAI, Rippling and Others | Bedrock Capital's Geoff Lewis On How How He Makes Investments | Ep. 6, IO Pod Jan 03, 2024

Geoff Lewis is a titan in the VC world as both the lead investor and founder of Bedrock Capital, the firm backing some of the world best-known tech companies. Geoff joins Tyler and Sterling on the podcast to share his insights on venture capital and what it takes to consistently make money for LPs. Geoff discusses the unique decision to raise Bedrock's fund size in a time when other funds are downsizing, the importance of assessing founders and their unique qualities, and the challenges and rewards of starting a venture capital firm. He also shares his thoughts on the future of social media, the venture capital industry, and the power of authenticity in building strong partnerships.

Chapters

00:04:10 - Why Bedrock Is Upsizing Their Fund Structure.

00:06:54 - How Geoff Assesses Entrepreneurs and Raises Capital.

00:10:10 - Building Relationships Brings Smart Investments

00:14:13 - Achieving Work-Life Integration For Entrepreneurs.

00:17:49 - Why The Best Founders Are Authentic

00:21:29 - Different Investment Styles in VC

00:26:44 - When To Double Down

00:38:04 - The OpenAI Situation

00:40:37 - Geoff's Hot Takes

00:57:08 - Rapid Fire and Wrap-up

We think you'll love this conversation. Don't miss hearing from one of the industry's top investors and operators.

How To Build A World-Class Revenue Org with Mark Cranney, Former a16z Partner | IO Podcast Ep. 5 Nov 28, 2023

How did this small town farm kid go on to lead the revenue orgs for Silicon Valley's biggest companies? Mark Cranney credits his success to the lessons he learned growing up: work hard and run things efficiently. Mark shares the playbook he's used to build billions in pipeline through his career as an executive, sales leader and most famously as a partner at Andreessen Horowitz. If you're a founder, there's no better person to learn from than Mark.

Chapters

00:37 Introducing Mark Cranney

04:45 Find Sales Leaders Who Can Perform

07:03 What To Look For In Potential Hires

13:03 Find Courageous People To Join Your Team

17:07 The Sales Playbook - Are You Running It Or Can You Put It Together?

22:51 Putting Together The Revenue Org At SignalFx

25:15 How Mark Uses Company Bootcamps To Build Cohesion

31:47 Getting Everyone To Buy Into the Vision

37:25 Common Mistakes First Time Founders Make With Their Sales Org

48:27 Wrap up and Takeaways

Read 'Hard Thing About Hard Things'

Connect With Mark

Find Highlights from the show on TikTok

Check out our website

Brought to you by Pelion Venture Partners

Henry Ward, CEO of Carta | How This Second Time Founder Built A $7.4 Billion Company | Episode 4 Oct 24, 2023

This isn't Henry Ward's first shot at entrepreneurship. In fact, the first company he founded failed. But Henry says the things he learned were pivotal for starting Carta, a multi-billion dollar company that's a darling of the venture world. CEO of Co-founder Henry Ward sits down with Tyler & Sterling and recounts his journey to entrepreneurship and shares critical advice for other builders who are in the game -- from establishing a strong company culture to the how of developing stronger insights.

Chapters:

00:00 Intro

01:45 Henry's path to Carta

06:21 Developing Insights: "There's A Lot of Stuff You Discover A Long The Way"

08:20 The Best Founders Fill A Need For Customers They Didn't Know They Had

12:48 Finding Product Market Fit at Carta

16:30 Fundraising Strategy: "The Pitch Matters, But Not As Much As Finding Someone Who Cares About The Problem"

19:03 How To Attract The Right Type of Employees To Your Startup

28:32 Establishing Strong Culture At Your Company

40:22 What are some "Henryisms"?

42:40 Advice to Current Founders

47:50 Tyler & Sterling's Takeaways

Connect with Henry:

Medium: https://henrysward.medium.com/

LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heward

X: https://twitter.com/henrysward

More on Garry:

Current President and CEO of YC, Garry was a partner at Y Combinator from 2011 to 2015, where he built key parts of the YC experience for founders including Bookface and the Demo Day website. Garry is the co-founder of Initialized Capital and Posterous (YC S08), a blog platform acquired by Twitter, and prior to that, he was an early designer and engineering manager at Palantir (NYSE:PLTR), where he designed the company logo. Garry holds a BS in Computer Systems Engineering from Stanford.

Keith Rabois, Founders Fund | The IO Podcast - Episode 2 Aug 01, 2023

If there was a Mount Rushmore of Investors, Keith Rabois would definitely be on it.

Over his decades long career as both an investor and operator, Keith has had a hand in Silicon Valley unicorns like Square, Paypal, Airbnb and Youtube. In fact, he's aiming to be the 'Michael Jordan' of the investment world. Now, as a co-founder of Opendoor and Partner at Founders Fund Keith sits down with Tyler and Sterling and shares what he looks for in companies he invests in, what attributes a founder must have, why Elon Musk is wrong and takeaways from his career.

Timestamps

00:01:07 - Keith’s Investments & Becoming the Michael Jordan of VC

00:04:36 - Finding Your Strengths as an Investor or Operator

00:13:10 - The Traits & Characteristics of Successful Founders

00:18:25 - Launching OpenDoor and the role of storytelling in successful companies

00:24:41 - What Makes Founders Fund Unique

00:30:25 - How They Select Partners and Investments at Founders Fund

00:34:12 - Build A Ideologically Diverse Team For Success

00:41:00 - Common Bad Advice Given To Founders

00:53:08 - Live a Purposeful and Deliberate Life

Don't miss this episode - be sure to comment and subscribe

Andy Rachleff from VC to Entrepreneur Mar 22, 2023

The IO podcast with Sterling and Tyler features Andy Rachleff, the founder of Benchmark Capital and unicorn startup Wealthfront, and explores the intersection between investing and operating. Ratcliffe believes that finding product-market fit and being ambidextrous in finding new opportunities while optimizing existing ones is more important than being paranoid in either role. He also discusses the importance of learning from success and putting entrepreneurs first. Venture capitalist Bill Gurley emphasizes the importance of product market fit and finding an inflection point in technology to identify a non-consensus market that is desperate for a product. Rachleff admires investors Howard Marks, John Dora, and John Valentine, and considers Reed Hastings as an exemplary operator who makes asymmetric bets. The success of running a company or making investments is determined by the magnitude of success when you are right, and great CEOs must be like venture capitalists in adding businesses to their portfolio and betting the company through major development initiatives and acquisitions with a high chance of failure.

Timestamps

[00:00:00] Interview with Investor Operator Andy Rachleff

[00:01:40] Investing vs. Operating Skills

[00:03:32] Product Market Fit and the Art of Being Ambidextrous

[00:05:41] From VC to Entrepreneur: How Wealthfront Was Born

[00:09:41] Making Money & Taking Leaps of Faith in Non-Consensus Ventures

[00:12:37] The History and Success of Benchmark's Equal Partnership Model

[00:16:41] Insight on Product Market Fit with Andy Keen

[00:19:03] Spotting Inflection Points: Technology Entrepreneurship and Venture Capitalism

[00:20:22] Product Market Fit and the Thesis of Everything Going Wrong

[00:22:51] Key Trait of Successful Entrepreneurs: Deep Understanding of Technology

[00:27:07] Finding Desperate Customers for Startup Success