EP 18: Parker Conrad, Sequoia’s Leaked Deck, a Different Kind of Crisis and VCs vs. Hedge Funds

The Logan Bartlett Show

The Down Round Without Context or What?

4min Snip

00:00

Play full episode

Summary

Transcript

Episode notes

The psyche of down rounds is mostly, if you were the outlier, it's bad because the perception of your employee base is like, why is this shitty company worse than everybody else? And so i think we're going to see someone, a, say, hey, we got in front of our skis and be public. I want any of my companies to lead in that regard, like a impro actively take a down round. It will make it more socially acceptable for other people to follow. That'll be a good, healthy thingi don't know what great we're planning to return to, but li enjoy my air conditioning.

(00:08) Welcome Zach Weinberg

(00:55) Andreessen Horowitz/Flow Carbon

(10:41) Crypto Litigation Risk

(16:27) Venture vs. Hedge Funds

(22:25) Sequoia’s Leaked Deck

(27:04) Different Kind of Crisis

(28:20) Tech Companies Had It Easy

(30:21) Uber vs. Lyft

(34:16) Down Rounds

(40:27) High Valuation Doesn’t Mean Good Employment

(45:31) 2008 Work Force

(49:50) Parker Conrad Intro

(50:13) Working on Harvard’s Crimson

(52:45) Left School for a Little Rock Newspaper

(55:13) Cancer Diagnosis

(57:16) Starting SigFig

(58:52) Raising Money Pre-2013

(1:05:29) Challenges in Automating

(1:08:36) The Public Narrative

(1:10:36) Forced Out of Zenefits

(1:19:50) VC’s Role in Narrative

(1:22:59) What Do Founders Want From VCs?

(1:25:46) Do VCs Increase Success?

(1:30:09) Discussing Rippling

(1:38:16) Building a Compound Company

(1:46:56) Hiring People With a Chip On Their Shoulder

(1:49:02) Most Important Job of a CEO

(1:51:05) Raised the Next Round

(1:54:47) Determining the Valuation

(1:58:09) San Francisco

Follow the show:

https://twitter.com/cartoonavatars

https://www.instagram.com/cartoonavatars/

https://www.tiktok.com/@cartoonavatars

Follow the host:

https://twitter.com/loganbartlett

Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky

Produced: Andrew Nadeau and Rashad Assir

Executive Producer: Josh Machiz

Music: Griff Lawson

Links:

Sequoia’s Leaked Deck - https://fortune.com/2022/05/25/sequoia-capital-slide-dek-warning-to-founders-downturn/

Zack’s Twitter Battle - https://twitter.com/zachweinberg/status/1527107650911186944?s=20&t=DN_FdiP-WW6rDwmHNkJPTA

Parker Conrad Discussing Chip on Their Shoulder - https://techcrunch.com/2021/11/18/parker-conrad-i-like-working-with-people-who-have-a-chip-on-their-shoulder/?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAqlH6GlRJ8EA-ptL8cD-XPUGeoXNRqKe9l_Qegi--qyyHZQrMTJ8bwlg47vSJ9rkc2eaJlUKyMvb3wA-Rw2PjFYJl5gUwZfO0WPMLF-tRT_lVDYq_uoEnC29d6L45AlVFRTnPJqbCPEJM0_ICBeqES_kZ8t5gUQkVg7BwMKsGs7

Chesa Boudin and San Francisco - https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/05/chesa-boudin-recall-san-francisco-crime/629907/

Andreessen Horowitz/Flow Carbon - https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2022/05/25/a16z-crypto-record-4th-fund-doubles-down-on-web3-amid-market-crash/?sh=7f704b7f34ff

VCs Driving Down Valuation Narrative - https://twitter.com/bgurley/status/1528535418076995584

Executive Producer: Rashad Assir

Producer: Leah Clapper

Mixing and editing: Justin Hrabovsky

Check out Unsupervised Learning, Redpoint's AI Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/@UCUl-s_Vp-Kkk_XVyDylNwLA

🎙 Listen to the show

Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-logan-bartlett-show/id1606770839

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5WqBqDb4br3LlyVrdqOYYb?si=3076e6c1b5c94d63&nd=1

Google Podcasts: https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5zaW1wbGVjYXN0LmNvbS9zb0hJZkhWbg

🎥 Subscribe on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCugS0jD5IAdoqzjaNYzns7w?sub_confirmation=1

Follow on Socials

📸 Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/theloganbartlettshow

🐦 Twitter - https://twitter.com/loganbartshow

🎬 Clips on TikTok - https://www.tiktok.com/@theloganbartlettshow

About the Show

Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.