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Sand Hill Road

Sand Hill Road

By Sand Hill Road

A place to talk about startups, venture capital and tech. For a full download, double-click on sandhillroad.io
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E07 Simmer co-founders Richard Wu and Vaibhav Verma on challenging Yelp through dish level reviews

Sand Hill RoadNov 21, 2019

00:00
35:59
E51 Raising $1bn to bringing entrepreneurship to Japan with World Innovation Lab founder and CEO Gen Isayama

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

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
Apr 06, 202353:07
E50 Establishing a growth equity firm with Left Lane Capital founding partner Dan Ahrens

E50 Establishing a growth equity firm with Left Lane Capital founding partner Dan Ahrens

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

Mar 07, 202341:03
E49 Cooking up the future of digital food halls with Byte Kitchen founder Divyang Arora

E49 Cooking up the future of digital food halls with Byte Kitchen founder Divyang Arora

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

Feb 22, 202335:37
E48 Protecting passwords through open-source software with Bitwarden CEO Michael Crandell

E48 Protecting passwords through open-source software with Bitwarden CEO Michael Crandell

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

Jan 31, 202339:21
E47 Your fund size is your strategy with Kyle Harrison, GP at Contrary

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

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

Jan 13, 202347:35
E46 Uncovering tax credits (aka free money) for startups with MainStreet founder and CEO Doug Ludlow

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

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

Nov 20, 202239:55
E45 Building a nextgen, authentic professional social network with Candor founder Kelsey Bishop

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

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

Nov 07, 202227:50
E44 Shipping an open-source, low code enterprise tool builder with Appsmith founder Abhishek Nayak

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

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

Oct 29, 202245:53
E43 Opening a global hub for tech entrepreneurs at UC Berkeley with SkyDeck founding GP Chon Tang
Sep 06, 202246:47
E42 Taking Zoom meetings like a pro with Fathom (YC W21) founder Richard White

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

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

Aug 12, 202251:02
E41 Replacing credit bureaus one API integration at a time with Argyle founder Shmulik Fishman

E41 Replacing credit bureaus one API integration at a time with Argyle founder Shmulik Fishman

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
Jun 06, 202244:43
E40 The world is broken, let's fix it with 8VC founding partner Drew Oetting
May 22, 202254:31
E39 Trailblazing the silver tech category with Seth Sternberg co-founder of home-care unicorn Honor

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

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 

31:45 Competitive landscape 

34:08 GTM and growth strategies

May 01, 202237:52
E38 Helping brands build sustainable products with Novi Connect found Kimberly Shenk

E38 Helping brands build sustainable products with Novi Connect found Kimberly Shenk

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

Apr 04, 202235:48
E37 Finding regulatory moats at the Series A with Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners

E37 Finding regulatory moats at the Series A with Jordan Nof of Tusk Venture Partners

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

Feb 19, 202241:53
E36 Running the world's largest trust experiment with Couchsurfing founder Casey Fenton

E36 Running the world's largest trust experiment with Couchsurfing founder Casey Fenton

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 

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

Jan 08, 202236:16
E35 Launching a startup acquisition marketplace with MicroAcquire founder Andrew Gazdecki

E35 Launching a startup acquisition marketplace with MicroAcquire founder Andrew Gazdecki

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

Nov 28, 202140:26
E34 Tackling the formalwear industry with Queenly co-founders with Trisha Bantigue and Kathy Zhou

E34 Tackling the formalwear industry with Queenly co-founders with Trisha Bantigue and Kathy Zhou

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

Nov 16, 202141:28
E33 Catching the perfect privacy wave one consent at a time with Didomi co-founder Jawad Stouli

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

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

Oct 06, 202144:01
E32 Incubating a space factory at Founders Fund with Delian Asparouhov

E32 Incubating a space factory at Founders Fund with Delian Asparouhov

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

Sep 22, 202140:07
E31 Building the future of remote work with Remote.com founder Job van der Voort

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

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

Sep 03, 202141:08
E30 Fintech investing with Better Tomorrow Ventures co-founder Sheel Mohnot

E30 Fintech investing with Better Tomorrow Ventures co-founder Sheel Mohnot

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 

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

Aug 23, 202143:50
E29 "Billon Dollar Loser" author Reeves Wiedeman on the epic rise and fall of WeWork

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

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

Aug 08, 202141:23
E28 Inside DCM’s Record IPO Streak with Kyle Lui, Partner at DCM

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

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

Jul 28, 202131:05
E27 Replacing PDF attachments one Docsend at a time with founder and CEO Russ Heddleston

E27 Replacing PDF attachments one Docsend at a time with founder and CEO Russ Heddleston

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

May 29, 202145:03
E26 Deciphering Super Founders with author and DCVC partner Ali Tamaseb

E26 Deciphering Super Founders with author and DCVC partner Ali Tamaseb

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


May 20, 202139:26
E25 Bottoms-up product and go-to-market strategy with product leader and investor Vivek Saraswat

E25 Bottoms-up product and go-to-market strategy with product leader and investor Vivek Saraswat

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

May 17, 202135:04
E24 Bootstrapping from zero to $1m+ in ARR with Justin Jackson, mega maker of Transistor.fm

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

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

Apr 30, 202156:21
E23 Insights from building a VC firm in public with Initialized Capital founder Garry Tan

E23 Insights from building a VC firm in public with Initialized Capital founder Garry Tan

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

Apr 23, 202133:08
E22 Engineering the atomic cockroach of databases with Cockroach Labs co-founder Spencer Kimball

E22 Engineering the atomic cockroach of databases with Cockroach Labs co-founder Spencer Kimball

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

Apr 13, 202101:04:36
E21 Building a distributed warehouse network one parcel at a time with STORD co-founder Sean Henry

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

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

Mar 05, 202156:49
E20 Unpacking growth with Andy Johns, Partner at Unusual Ventures

E20 Unpacking growth with Andy Johns, Partner at Unusual Ventures

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

Jan 08, 202138:50
E19 Moving from the monolith to a microservices architecture with effx founder Joey Parsons

E19 Moving from the monolith to a microservices architecture with effx founder Joey Parsons

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

Dec 24, 202049:08
E18 Looking for the next Cal moonshots with Caroline Winnett of UC Berkeley's SkyDeck

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

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

Dec 08, 202020:31
E17 Migrating lawyers to the cloud with legal technologist Richard Mabey, co-founder of Juro

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

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

Sep 17, 202031:17
E16 Unpacking marketplaces and modern food delivery wars with Mike Ghaffary from Canvas Ventures

E16 Unpacking marketplaces and modern food delivery wars with Mike Ghaffary from Canvas Ventures

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 

Aug 29, 202045:12
E15 Building a cloud unicorn for developers with Digital Ocean co-founder Moisey Uretzky

E15 Building a cloud unicorn for developers with Digital Ocean co-founder Moisey Uretzky

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

Aug 08, 202001:04:59
E14 The great hits and misses of venture capital with Brendan Wales of e.ventures

E14 The great hits and misses of venture capital with Brendan Wales of e.ventures

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

Jul 21, 202042:23
E13 Uncoding the ‘Coding VC’ Leo Polovets, Co-founder and General Partner at Susa Ventures

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

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.

Apr 02, 202048:15
E12 Exploring the latest in data science with Sarah Catanzaro from Amplify Partners

E12 Exploring the latest in data science with Sarah Catanzaro from Amplify Partners

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.

Mar 19, 202037:58
E11 Investing in the next frontier of open source with Bryan Offutt from Index Ventures

E11 Investing in the next frontier of open source with Bryan Offutt from Index Ventures

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.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Feb 01, 202032:60
E10 Pioneering the gig economy with TaskRabbit co-founder Brian Leonard

E10 Pioneering the gig economy with TaskRabbit co-founder Brian Leonard

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner talks with Brian Leonard (@bleonard), the technical co-founder of TaskRabbit, which has pioneered the gig economy alongside Airbnb and Uber. In the session, they talk about the journey from the early days of TaskRabbit when it was just a few hundred Taskers to how they scaled it to one of the largest gig economy marketplaces that was eventually sold to IKEA.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Jan 23, 202026:08
E09 Investing in vertical SaaS and marketplace companies with Trinity Ventures Principal John Lin

E09 Investing in vertical SaaS and marketplace companies with Trinity Ventures Principal John Lin

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner talks with John Lin, who is a Principal from Trinity Ventures about his key learnings from being an entrepreneur himself and his transition to VC at Trinity. We take a deep dive into his portfolio companies Branch, Grow, Squire and Side.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io


Dec 06, 201939:35
E08 On financing hard tech with Root Ventures partner Lee Edwards

E08 On financing hard tech with Root Ventures partner Lee Edwards

Venture capital used to be about 'financing what would not otherwise be financed'. This is exactly what Root Ventures is all about. In this session I talk to Lee Edwards about his journey from CTO at Teespring to venture and about financing deeply technical founders who are tackling interdisciplinary engineering problems.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Nov 29, 201935:57
E07 Simmer co-founders Richard Wu and Vaibhav Verma on challenging Yelp through dish level reviews

E07 Simmer co-founders Richard Wu and Vaibhav Verma on challenging Yelp through dish level reviews

Simmer is a recent Y Combinator company that is challenging Yelp's restaurant discovery through dish-level reviews. In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by the co-founders Richard Wu and Vaibhav Verma about their startup journey so far, which challenges they have had to overcome so far and how they are planning to change the way in which foodies discover the best cuisine.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Nov 21, 201935:59
E06 Investing in open source software with Patrick Chase from Redpoint Ventures

E06 Investing in open source software with Patrick Chase from Redpoint Ventures

Patrick Chase is an investor with Redpoint Ventures who specializes on investments in the open source vertical. In this episode, I talk with him about the different business models in open source, challenges around defensibility and open source software moving from the backend to the application layer.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io


Nov 14, 201930:02
E05 Pioneering version control for data science with Pachyderm co-founder and CEO Joe Doliner

E05 Pioneering version control for data science with Pachyderm co-founder and CEO Joe Doliner

5 years ago, Joe Doliner and his co-founder Joey Zwicker decided to focus on the hard problems in data science, rather than building just another dashboard on top of the existing mess. It's been a long road, but it's really payed off. Last year, after an adventurous journey from their seed round, they  closed a $10m Series A led by Benchmark. In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by Joe Doliner to explore what Pachyderm does and how it scaled from just an idea into a fast growing tech company.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Nov 02, 201946:24
E04 Open sourcing code and companies with Gitlab co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij

E04 Open sourcing code and companies with Gitlab co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij

Gitlab is a unique tech unicorn. Last valued at $2.75bn, the company is fully remote. The two co-founders worked fully separately on the company for more than a year, knowing only each others avatars. As such, Gitlab is defying not only how code is deployed, but also how companies are run. So far, Gitlab has raised $436m from the likes of Khosla Ventures, August Capital and Google Ventures. In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by co-founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij to talk about their founder, product and financing journey.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io


Oct 27, 201936:17
E03 Exploring chaos engineering with Gremlin co-founder and CTO Matthew Fornaciari

E03 Exploring chaos engineering with Gremlin co-founder and CTO Matthew Fornaciari

Gremlin is a fast growing company in the chaos engineering space founded in 2016. The company has pioneered the space by offering failure-as-a-service. So far, Gremlin has raised almost $27m from the likes of Amplify Partners, Index Ventures and Redpoint. In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is joined by co-founder and CTO Matthew Fornaciari to talk about their founder, product and financing journey.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Oct 23, 201928:17
E02 How open-source software is eating software with Joseph Jacks from OSS Capital

E02 How open-source software is eating software with Joseph Jacks from OSS Capital

In this episode, Erasmus Elsner is talking to Joseph Jacks, founder and general partner at OSS Capital, the first and only VC fund exclusively dedicated to supporting commercial open-source software founders. 

We discuss the definition of commercial open-source software (COSS) companies and how open-source software is eating software.

Check out the Youtube version on: https://channel.sandhillroad.io

Jun 14, 201901:03:31