Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Chetan Puttagunta – Go Slow to Go Fast: Software Building and Investing - [Invest Like the Best, EP.156]

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Jan 28, 2020

Chetan Puttagunta, a general partner at Benchmark Capital, sharing insights from his impressive background in early-stage software investing. He discusses the evolution of databases with MongoDB as a case study, emphasizing agility and innovation. Key topics include empathetic product design to foster customer trust and the crucial role of recruiting exceptional talent. Chetan also highlights collaborative investment strategies and the transformative impact of AWS on cloud business models, offering a wealth of knowledge for aspiring software entrepreneurs.

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ANECDOTE

Andy Ratcliffe's Non-Consensus Approach

Andy Ratcliffe, Benchmark Capital founder, is known for his non-consensus yet successful investment approach.
This emphasizes the importance of identifying undervalued opportunities.

ANECDOTE

MongoDB Investment

Chetan Puttagunta invested in MongoDB in 2012, recognizing the need for a database that prioritized developer agility.
Despite initial skepticism from database experts, MongoDB's focus on rapid prototyping proved successful.

INSIGHT

Databases: The Foundation of Computing

Databases are fundamental components of the technology stack, comparable to large spreadsheets.
Understanding their features and history is key to comprehending computing.

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My guest this week is a good friend and a business mentor of mine. Chetan Puttagunta is a general partner at Benchmark Capital and has a remarkable track record of investing in early-stage software businesses, including several like Mulesoft, MongoDB, and Elastic that went on to be public companies.

Chetan has been my key guide for understanding the world of enterprise software as we at O’Shaughnessy Asset Management have built an investing platform called Canvas. His advice has been critical to our early success. In this episode, we explore the history of software and software investing, and go into the details on how to build and grow new software businesses. We discuss product, sales and marketing, recruiting, scaling, and everything in between.

Please enjoy this great conversation with one of my favorite business and investing thinkers.

For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.

Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub.

Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag

Show Notes

1:34 – (First Question) – How Chetan found MongoDB and decided to invest in it

8:01 – The evolution of databases in the growth of technology

16:19 – Market penetration of this space and what investors should be thinking about

21:46 – Advice how companies can build software effectively

25:12 – Tactics to effectively implement empathy led product building

30:33 – Companies asking users what to build vs telling users what they want

34:26 – The need for the right capital, and patient capital in particular

37:55 – Creating the perfect customer experience

44:37 – Common reasons they don’t invest in a company

48:48 – Lessons on scaling, especially in sales and marketing

52:47 – Best recruiting pipeline strategies

59:56 – Pitfalls of unit economic traps

1:00:23 – The Dangerous Seduction of the Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula

1:01:34– The Hierarchy of Engagement

1:02:18 – What has changed for Chetan in his time working with the team at Benchmark

1:06:009 – Later stage life cycle business considerations and Amazon’s AWS

1:13:29 – The business model of open-source software

1:15:54 – Being default open

1:17:53 – Kindest thing anyone has done for Chetan

Learn More

For more episodes go to InvestorFieldGuide.com/podcast.

Sign up for the book club, where you’ll get a full investor curriculum and then 3-4 suggestions every month at InvestorFieldGuide.com/bookclub

Follow Patrick on Twitter at @patrick_oshag