Fostering a Community (Notes from Aug 26 - Sep 1, 2019)

What a crazy couple of weeks! And it's not likely to slow - I'll give some more information behind that very shortly. Exciting new things on the horizon, though - and ones I'll be proud to announce when I can. August provided a lot of clarity in direction - good because it wasn't exactly restful.I mentioned it in last week's post, as well, but I've been hyper-aware of the people around me interacting, enjoying and laughing over commonalities. It's at every level, though I peruse coffee shops far more often than other places. Interesting stories are almost expected. If you refer to my reading list, you'll notice a new one, Dignity. As part of a book club, I was hesitant and unsure when it took the lead because of the topic - primarily drugs/poverty/downtrodden/unlucky collection as reported, but halfway through I've been pleasantly surprised at how much perspective Chris provides. I can't help but draw that fixture of everyone has their own experiences that provide the lens through which we draw conclusions on everything else. Endless and it's very tough to remove ourselves or step back - especially with things we're unfamiliar with.Ultimately, though, everyone wants to share their experiences with others - whether it's some depth of despair, depression or building a community, religion, or hiring employees to work with or spending time for fun and adventure. We're human. We spend time with other humans. There's a reason we've survived this long in groups and why the solo artists end up in peril - this is completely generalized but in MY experience, I'd say I see a truth in this.Kate Shillo, Director at Galvanize, mentioned her journey for Martha Stewart's media company to Galvanize where they help businesses grow with their people. Morgan Dunbar, at Bendigo Partners, discussed his involvement in AIR - summit and conference for sharing ideas/businesses for financial services to hopefully rise all boats, as they say. Mike Vernal, at Sequoia Capital, went through how Facebook's earlier years helped him with approaching problems and the finality of decisions - what they've fostered for the boards he is now a member of. He tries to understand the start-up and the founders view of the problem after a quick determination of if they know the idea enough. Others, which I only caught pieces of, had similar views.I hope your community, whatever that may be, is productive and positive - helping you gain what you'd prefer from it.

• Kate Shillo (@kshillo), Director at Galvanize Ventures (20min VC 1/13/16)

• Investing in hardware and future of IoT
• Got an interview with Martha Stewart's Omni Media and she was temping for her - living in NYC 2007
• Would have an idea in her company - create, build & continue w/ mini incubators
• She wishes Marthapedia was made - hasn't done it yet
• Wasn't quite stimulated enough in 2007, she quit and bought a surfboard - 6 months later she was back in NYC
• Had met Kenny Lerer (around in interviews) - met before Martha with an internet newspaper (Huff Post)
• Took a huge pay cut to do some research on other startups as Kenny was on the chair for Huffington Post (~30 employees) He was chair at Betaworks at that time, too
• She was the human tester for Betaworks (only other one to test)
• Helped launch Ken Lerer Ventures (Lerer Hippeau Ventures) as formalizing process for his angel investing
• Help of having Huffington Post (sold in 2011) as starting propelled them into NYC market - unheard of at the time
• Market down, nobody investing in seed - writing small checks at Lerer "Go by Betaworks and Lerer Ventures is there"
• First content investment was Food 52
• Consumer tech pics - paperless post, Warby Parker, Bottle Bar, BarkBox
• Galvanize (continuous learning - helping businesses and their business grow - new archetype in higher ed)
• Galvanize Ventures with 3 partners - all of elements to provide their startups
• Early stage - small, idea from pre-seed to series A (seed process), reserving for follow-ons
• Small markets like ATX, PHX, SLC to get in - coaching co's along the way
• 48 investments in 2 years Consumer mobile-heavy so far, her excitement in hardware - starting in 2014 was IoT hotbed
• Crowdfunding as a bit of advertising, validating customer interaction and capital as gravy - her opinion
• Shipping product is usually a hurdle - many people don't want to invest without seeing this
• Reflecting on Lerer investments - seeing market share of her old portfolio companies
• Size of fund is $10.2 mln, $100k checks for pre-seed, seed and series A - get priced out for series A
• Favorite book: God of Small Things, misconception for VC: that it's easy (no control for company sometimes but exciting when it works) Sourcing vs existing portfolio co's helping
• Favorite apps: Moment app, Twodots (betaworks), Slash, Sunrise calendar, Pant, Wildcard and Venmo at the time
• Recent investment: msg.ai empowering brands for messaging platforms ecommerce
• Morgan Dunbar, partner at Bendigo Partners (FYI 8/5/19)

• Capital Market Space within FinTech as principal investors
• Was mostly on sell-side for analytics on portfolio construction - with Citi Group in Tokyo in 2009 running Japanese equities
• Bendigo - early stage fintech companies with bias on capital markets, retail, middle and back office
• Advisor practice with institutional, private equity, large enterprise in capital marketers
• Transaction advisory, operational consulting and strategy around fintech ecosystem
• Bill Stevenson partner on AIR Summit - 2013 creation for invitation-only for senior buy/sell-side pros to discuss high-level themes Alpha Innovation Required (AIR) - invite ~20 emerging fintech cos to speak to a use case for front office (alpha generative)
• Traditional VCs have a fundamental lack of operational understanding in capital markets
• Secondly, long sales cycle in businesses - thousands at enterprise level vs millions in consumer
• Regulatory that can be scary without expertise
• Artificial Intelligence as just replicating a process (as opposed to intelligent)
• AIR focusing on people, organization, talent and cultural alpha
• Tradition, trust, not new - center for innovation and trying to do something, be empowered for innovation and development
• Google pushing into asset management other than cloud, data and analytics Asset managers may start looking at Google like Bloomberg - help build portfolios, vendors to tap for alpha
• If buy-side problem, then sell-side has a problem, fee compression (growth of passive) - active vs passive (value for performance) Robos (whether or not they're worth valuations) validated demographics looking for low-cost access with simple UI and intuitive
• Mike Vernal (@mvernal), Partner at Sequoia Capital (20min VC 8/26/19)

• Citizen, rideOS, Rockset, Threads & Houseparty board
• Spent 8 years at Facebook as VP of Product
• Sequoia - Brian, led A to join board for his roommate's company and his former PM at Microsoft started a co in 2009 and Brian joined
• Joined Scouts program early on
• Had first child a week prior to 8 years at Facebook, took paternity leave to reflect
• Really enjoyed Facebook first few years - tremendous energy and optimism to create something from nothing Early stage founders in a garage for idealism and irrational energy, switched to Sequoia (been there 3 years)
• Entrepreneurs that can explain entirety of business in 3-5 min, rest of meeting is the details of the pitch
• Feedback cycle for great and enduring company - decision-making is a short or longer memo and reading through them
• For his mistakes, thinking and writing and playing out future - each case was instinctually being interested but not trusting instincts Try to be rational and analysis-driven
• More importantly, internal conviction on a company, founding team and working on
• If not at Sequoia, would he go work for that company?
• Terminal and non-terminal decisions - once you've made it, you can't make it again
• Do something, if wrong, do it again - try to hire, realize mistake, hire again Pick one, roll out to some, figure if it's working or not, and iterating
• Venture - most important is decisions - if you pass a round, you're done maybe until next round
• In operations, tempo and learning for decision-making
• Bundling vs Unbundling - past 10 years will be unbundling of SaaS and best in breed
• SaaS that are more niche - features as something larger, $1 or $2 / ee / mo
• Thinks there will be a consolidation of the apps, incumbents that will integrate and put them all-in-one (Notion)
• Meta-SaaS apps that will put them together as the market matures
• SaaS as software, business software (maybe banks that are on-premise)
• Book: 100 years of Solitude, almost every startup underprices their product
• Time management is the challenge - constant battle, reading quickly and get the ones he finds most interesting
• Verkada as most recent investment - can build a great experience
• Kash Mathur (@kashmathur), COO of Chewse (Wharton XM)

• Tracy and cofounders starting it in LA originally, in 2011 before bringing it to SF for 500 Startups
• Attracting Kash in 2016 as they were figuring out SF before relaunching LA
• Corporate culture, enterprise dealing and owning the customer service - blended marketplace
• Starting each executive, strategy board with a "One thing most people don't know about me is…"
• Connecting between people
• Why they have connected Hosts for each enterprise - owning the location, service and whole process Important value and differentiator from other catering companies
• Linda Crawford, CEO of Helpshift (Wharton XM)

• Being named top 50 SaaS CEO of 2018, joining HelpShift after Salesforce
• CCO (customer) at Optimizely, as well as Board Member at Demandwise
• Rob Farmer, Independent Advisor Study and assets at Schwab (Wharton XM)
• Talking about participants and customers