The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch

20VC: Behind The Scenes of a $Bn IPO Process, What Startups Can Learn From Teddy Roosevelt's "Five Minute Meetings" and What John Lennon Teaches Founders About Storytelling with Howard Lerman, Founder & CEO @ Yext

9 snips

Sep 14, 2018

Howard Lerman, founder and CEO of Yext, shares insights from leading his company through a successful IPO and into a multibillion-dollar enterprise. He emphasizes the importance of Teddy Roosevelt's 'five-minute meetings' for effective leadership and fostering company culture. Lerman also discusses John Lennon's storytelling technique to engage and inspire teams. He contrasts the roles of CEOs and entrepreneurs and reveals the challenges of scaling while maintaining vision. Plus, he reflects on his journey and the need for perseverance in entrepreneurship.

Ask episode

AI Snips

Chapters

Books

Transcript

Episode notes

ADVICE

Run Five-Minute Pulse Meetings

Hold tightly timed five-minute meetings to stay connected to every office and employee.
Ask an open question, listen, take notes, and record decisions to surface recurring themes quickly.

INSIGHT

Memorize Lines To Make Stories Stick

Memorize key lines to craft rhythm and make your message memorable and repeatable.
If you can't recall it tomorrow, your audience likely won't either.

ADVICE

Maintain Two Leadership Bodies

Build two leadership bodies: a small executive team and a broader leadership group.
Cultivate the extended leaders to carry culture and strategy across global offices.

Get the Snipd Podcast app to discover more snips from this episode

Get the app

Howard Lerman is the Founder & CEO @ Yext, the company that allows you to control your brand experience across the digital universe. Due in part to Howard's incredible leadership of the firm, Yext went public in April 2017 with an opening price of $11 a share, today the stock price sits at $26.85 and a market cap of $2.65Bn. Prior to the IPO, Yext raised over $117m in VC funding from Insight Venture Partners, IVP, SV Angel and CrunchFund to name a few. As for Howard, Yext is his 4th company and he is also Co-Founder and Chairman of Confide, a leading off-the-record messaging service.

In Today's Episode You Will Learn:

1.) How Howard made his way into the world of startups and came to Partner with is co-founders to start the now public company that is Yext?

2.) Why must every founder know about Teddy Roosevelt and his "Five Minute Meetings"? Literally, what is the right way to structure these meetings? What one question is the right question to ask? How can a leader look to retain that startup culture and ethos with scale? Why does Howard believe running a global company is like running a country?

3.) What have Howard's biggest takeaways been from studying "John Lennon's Storytelling Trick"? How can founders use this trick both to inspire their team more effectively internally and then to present a better vision for the company, externally?

4.) Howard has said before "fundraising is not an end in itself". Does Howard believe that company financing should be celebrated? How was the IPO process for Howard? From a literal standpoint, how does the process run? How did Howard choose which banks to work with? How did the 10-day roadshow shape up? How did the pricing decision-making process look the night before IPO?

5.) Why does Howard believe it is fundamentally better being a public company? What does "public" status allow you? How does being public introduce a challenge never before seen to founders? Why must founders always examine the motives of the VC behind whether they are pushing them to remain private or go public?

Items Mentioned In Today's Show:

Howard's Fave Book: Five Stars: The Communication Secrets to Get From Good to Great

As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Howard on Twitter here!

Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.