The Journey (Notes From Feb 25 - March 3, 2019)

I wanted to focus on the variety of journeys that these amazing people have been on. All different, all learning. The commonality of assessing one's place and moving strategically to take advantage of an opportunity that allowed each of them to do what it was, at that time, that they wanted to do or focus. I believe that is an innate skill. Some have to build up to have the confidence to assess what they want. Others let it sit in the back of their mind until someone brings it out.As a founder, I believe that becomes even more of an important skill. You have to not only know what you want to chase, but also where you want to go. Then, follow that up with being able to creatively attract others to do the same - whether they're investors, customers, or potential employees/partners.

  • Julia Silge, co-author of Text Mining with R (Data Skeptic 2/22/19)
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  • At StackOverflow now, phD in astrophysics, astronomy
  • Worked in academia and went to edtech start-up for academic development
  • Transitioned into data science - had needed to brush up on some of the skills and updated machine learning
  • Data scientist for 3-4 years
  • Did some public work for her portfolio, worked with state stuff on Drought, etc…
  • Thought about NLP for analyzing Jane Austen texts (public, projectgutenberg), and opened it up Which parts of book have narrative more sad / joyous and sentiment analysis with heat maps
  • Started to develop TidyText package and R build with a friend - bridging text and R analysis
  • Using R as data science
  • Tidyverse database, messy real source & into the form she needs quickly
  • Mature community for statistical modeling in R
  • Text classification - regex as building blocks for effective results
  • At StackOverflow - texts every day and statistically analyze the numbers Developers survey as one of the largest projects
  • Book for people who may have tried other approaches with text
  • 1st half lays out concepts, common tasks in text mining
  • 2nd half is beginning to end case study - eda, what's in dataset, implementation of model
  • Brian Wong, Founder at Kiip (20min VC FF018)
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  • Started after university at Digg (laid off after 6 months) before starting Kiip, focused on mobile rewards network
  • People he truly knows are the ones he's been with over 5 years True Ventures, Relay Ventures, AMEX ventures, Hummer Winblad
  • Founder-friendly in his terms: creating services and ecosystem of the founders among the invested, not taking a massive chunk immediately Services as you're getting formed, early on
  • Quiet with his board - once every two, three months meet up, depending on financing
  • Sources for him if he needs others, find specific customer or advisor, analytically looking at problems
  • Trained by True Ventures initially about dealing with the board
  • Gamification tactics derived from Predictably Irrational book
  • "Nothing is ever as good as it seems and nothing is ever as bad as it is"
  • Jason's Calacanis blog - seems to agree with a few
  • Inspired by a few founders: Elon, Elizabeth Holmes; moreso maybe less loud founders, Mike (one of his investors - NASA scientist)
  • Favorite apps: Tinder for dating, Evernote, Box app (storage - mobile app is awesome - faster than DropBox)
  • For Kiip, ad-blocking fever-pitch and being ones that can help - MasterCard as one of their big partners, usage / app data that they're sitting on
  • Matt Lerner, Distro Partner with 500 Startups (20min VC 082)
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  • Runs the London office, specializing in conversion optimization, analytics engagement, retention
  • Helps them build and grow (Distro team) to growth engines and scale
  • Worked at PayPal in 2004, marketing director initially before later
  • Skype calls over 45 minutes, brainstorm over tests with a cycle time and see results in 48 hours - 2 days
  • Was told he could do this full-time and enjoyed it (Distro Dojo - growth to product-market fit) Invest in post-seed, pre-series A typically - early stage / accelerator program for earlier
  • In London, he looks for live, functioning product with corpus of people out of beta
  • Talked about Mayvenn (connecting to the NEW episode about Series B) - Series A here
  • Where in the funnel do you need to focus on? Understand the business, then brainstorm in the "dojo" - all kinds of ideas 20% CTA button change occasionally - not always
  • Just invested in Fy, Founder Tom in Berlin - built entire business with growth in mind
  • Anna Kerenana "Happy families are all alike but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own special way."
  • Companies don’t get their product out to customers in a way
  • Measuring / optimizing for wrong targets
  • Tactical things to ensure spend is done properly
  • Way to test quickly - 4 Hour Workweek - Bought 5 different ad-words and checked his titles for unpublished book
  • Paid acquisition in way that CAC is much lower than proven LTV of customer, can go quickly through advertising Most businesses need organic acquisition channels over paid
  • Ultimate growth hacker - David McClure (his boss) - pirate metrics talk (viewing of video)
  • Sean Ellis (from DropBox, GrowthHackers.com owner) - mentored him at PayPal - attachment too big for email, send DropBox
  • Eddie Johns (Growth at Wealthfront, before at Quora and Facebook)
  • In London, Millen Paris?
  • Favorite growth hacking tools: MarTech talk, 500 Startups for best tools Deck in show notes, Top 35 and Top 10
  • Books: The One Thing You Need to Know?
  • Tamatem - exciting startup in Dojo, Middle Eastern mobile games publisher
  • License other successful games, translate them, half the revenue and found money for developers
  • Don't have to be good at making games - just need to have the database and quick adoption of other games
  • Chuck Smith, CEO / co-founder of Dixie Brands, Cannabusiness (Wharton XM)
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  • Discussing CBD vs THC products and difference in integration / vertical distribution
  • THC requires state and full distribution
  • CBD can be sold online
  • Keeping the brand as a reputable one and making sure it sees plenty of time
  • Partnership with Latin American company for full integration / distribution channels, laying foundation for easy process Ventures with other companies to engage quickly or acquisitions
  • Solomon's Code authors (Wharton XM)
  • Olaf Groth, Mark Nitzberg
  • The Ultimate Side Hustle - Elana Varon (Wharton XM)
  • Different types of start-ups and trading compensation (time vs money)
  • Marvin Liao (@marvinliao), Partner at 500 Startups - SF accelerator (20min VC 083)
  • 10+ year vet at Yahoo!, came to Bay Area/Silicon Valley in 1999 tech boom, laid off 2001
  • Left Yahoo in 2012, did angel investing and speaking at conferences, mentoring
  • Learned investing game by angel investing, though, to his wife's scolding, didn't do well
  • Operator as investors - used to be in the same role - lots of services
  • Online marketing / sales experts in accelerator in the portfolio
  • Both models-Greylock, Accel vs 500 Startup & First Round,service-based)
  • Why 500 Startups? Strongly focused on sales and marketing - fit for him, especially being international (global) First 2-3 meetings or intros are free, but after that - some value returned
  • Went from 1100 companies down to 36 for the accelerator Seed fund - 12-30 cos a week, one inv ~2 weeks - not necessarily random
  • Average check size is $50-100k - doesn't take board seats but gets board observer rights
  • Look at pre-launch phase, consumer mobile phase wants to see traction (10mil vs 1mil downloads)
  • Won't look at enterprise SaaS pre-launch, wants to see $10-15k mRR in established space
  • Different industries requiring different attention
  • Industries that he's looking at - marketplaces / platforms (SkillBridge), digital health
  • Challenge in his 2 years: cycles of learning (shocked that there are arrogant investors), still treats himself as a complete novice Great investor and develop the instincts, thesis and to risk being wrong a majority of the time
  • Favorite book: Art of Worldly Wisdom, Dune (science fiction - key) - SingularityHub
  • Calend.ly and Evernote, Amy.X.AI (?)
  • Take on Yahoo: "They're toast." No disrespect to Marissa - trying M&A and most big companies aren't good.
  • Challenge for 500S: scaling @ quality, going from 2 accelerators to 4 in Silicon Valley Lucky and systematic difference to get to that point
  • Interested in the most recent batch: Neighborly (batch 10, fintech - hates Wall Street so disrupting this), AgFinder (agtech - not much attention but such a vital part of the global problem)
  • Ashley Whillans (@ashleywhillans), Asst Prof at HBS in Negotiations, Orgs and Markets (Wharton XM - Time Poverty)
  • Went through study in Canada with subjects that would receive $40
  • One group subjected to restriction that it has to be spent on "time saving", other could be whatever Measured happiness after each day (with a call)
  • Time saving could be fast food of some sort, hiring a neighborhood boy to shop, etc…
  • Happiness was higher with the $40 spent for time saving
  • Check the white paper for time saving and happiness
  • Elizabeth Hogan, Brand Dev at GCH, Cannabusiness (Wharton XM)
  • Discussing various levels of products - CBD vs THC and other treats
  • Company founded by Willie Nelson in 2015
  • Willie's Reserve (flower, edibles, vape products at both med and rec dispensaries)
  • Willie's Remedy - CBD oil-based products - talked about the neuroscience behind activation with cbd products
  • 8 oz cups of coffee with 5mg dose of CBD - often bring as product demos for concerts, festivals, events
  • Marketing is difficult because of federal regulations and the big marketing channels - Facebook, Instagram, Google, etc Some influencers have been used but have to be careful - can lose their accounts if wrongly done
  • Plenty of organic marketing currently, but looking for paid channels has been a difficult task
  • Hooked author, Nir Eyal, (Wharton XM)
  • Habit building - playing on pains
  • 4 different ways to take market shares Velocity, frequency (think)
  • Pains as psychological effects - pleasure as a result, and minimizing pain